The Mysterious Murder of Penn State Student Betsy Aardsma

Interview: Derek Sherwood - Administrator of "Who Killed Betsy?" Website

TODD MATTHEWS (Missing Pieces Host): I'm Todd Matthews. This is Missing Pieces and tonight we have Derek Sherwood with us. Welcome, Derek.

DEREK SHERWOOD (Administrator of 'Who Killed Betsy?' website): Hi, welcome. How's it going?

TODD: It's going really good. It's very, very hot here in Tennessee in July. And you're in Pennsylvania, right?

DEREK: Yes. It's not much better here.

TODD: I think it's hot everywhere right now.

DEREK: It's very humid.

TODD: Now, I think you and I have something in common, I think. You sent me an email earlier this year, and we've talked, and you're working on a 40-year-old murder case.

DEREK: Yes.

TODD: Okay. Tell me a little bit about the case you're working on.

DEREK: Basically, it's a very regional case because of the fact that it happened in the Penn State University Library in 1969. Betsy Aardsma was a 22-year-old co-ed studying for her Masters in English in her first semester at Penn State, and she came back...actually she stayed home at the college over the Thanksgiving break to do some research for an end-of-term paper that she didn't feel that she had completely tied down. She was in the library on the day after Thanksgiving and was murdered around...somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon, with a single stab wound. No one really knows why it happened; motive is a huge problem with this case, but she was stabbed one time through the heart and left to die in the aisle in the core of the library. And the police, from my understanding, are as baffled today as they were 39 years ago.

TODD: I mean, that quick one stab, it seems like very calculated and neatly done.

DEREK: That's the frustrating part, because I go back and forth all the time in between, was this someone that actually really knew their stuff and knew that that would be instantly fatal, or was this somebody that, you know, forgive the expression, but somebody that got a lucky shot.

TODD: Yeah. Well, you've heard the old saying, "Either they are very smart or very dumb."