Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away

by David DeKok

  17 - “sent it to Dick and Esther Aardsma”: Linda Marsa interview, October 8, 2008.

  18 - “nothing that was fruitful”: Triebold interview, November 3, 2011; “a damn shame”: Richwine interview, September 2008.

  19 - “He had three theories”: Ken Silverman, “Aardsma Case Still Mystery,” Daily Collegian, Penn State, January 15, 1971; “And in all probability, he was the killer”: GHK interview, June 8, 2012.

  20 - “singularly blameless”: Op. cit Silverman.

  Part III: The Good Girl and the World Outside

  Epigraph

  1 - Three Hollanders a heresy: Traditional saying quoted by Larry Ten Harmsel in his thin but influential book, Dutch in Michigan (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002), 10. Ten Harmsel, who teaches at Western Michigan University, writes about Dutch-American history without ignoring inconvenient truths.

  Chapter 14: Betsy Who Dreamed

  1 - “Betsy Aardsma led the group”: “Camp Fire Girls News Round-up,” Holland Evening Sentinel, March 14, 1956. The Blue Birds were the youngest division of the Camp Fire Girls, founded as the sister organization of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910, two years before Juliette Gordon Low organized the rival Girl Scouts of America. The Blue Birds, whose members were between seven and nine years old, took their name from a 1908 play by Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck about a young sister and brother who travel around the world, seeking the Bluebird of Happiness, only to discover he was in their home the whole time.

  2 - “to make friends”: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., The Blue Bird Wish Comes True (New York: Camp Fire Girls, Inc., 1960), 10.

  3 - “seemingly happy marriages”: Victor D. Brooks, Boomers: The Cold-War Generation Grows Up (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), 37; moved the family: The Aardsma family’s moves around Holland were discerned from their listings in the Holland City Directory, an annual publication that also mentioned where people worked.

  4 - “had graduated from Hope before her”: Esther Van Alsburg Aardsma obituary, News from Hope College, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, volume 44, number 2, October 2012.

  5 - “including two great-great-uncles of Betsy Aardsma’s”: Mark Van Allsburg, The Van Aalsburg Family in America (Grand Rapids: Self-Published). This family genealogy tells the history of the emigration from the Netherlands of the Van Aalsburg family, whether spelled with one “a” or two, or one “l” or two. It is all the same family.

  6 - “Also changing Holland after the war”: “Holland Industry in Transition,” Holland Sentinel, January 1978, Vertical file, “Holland-Industry-General Electric,” Herrick District Library, Holland, Michigan.

  7 - “bursting into tears”: Sandy Vande Water, interview with the author, September 23, 2008; “very brilliant”: Margo Hakken, interview with the author, October 5, 2008.

  8 - “E. E. Fell Junior High School”: Among the children who started there with Betsy that year was a boy, Pat Duncan, who would grow up to be the Hollywood screenwriter Patrick Sheane Duncan. He drew on his memories of E. E. Fell teachers and some from Hamilton High School, where he finished his secondary schooling, when he wrote the screenplay for the 1995 film, Mr. Holland’s Opus, about a dedicated small-town music teacher.

  9 - “Ted and Toshi Sasamoto”: Janice Sasamoto Brandt (JSB), interview by the author, September 21, 2012.

  10 - “That’s how it started”: JSB, interview by the author, September 25, 2012.

  11 - “crashing the senior high dances”: JSB, September 21, 2008.

  12 - “shot to death two innocent young girls”: “Dead Eye,” Front Page Detective, August 1961; spotted by a local police chief: Angeline Grysen, The Sheriff (Lansing: W. Curtis Company), 68–72. Grysen was the widow of longtime Ottawa County sheriff Bud Grysen.

  13 - “we were pretty tight”: JSB interview, September 21, 2008; “we were pretty cute”: Wich interview, September 24, 2008.

  14 - “highlight of Tulip Time since 1935”: Randall P. Vande Water, Tulip Time Treasures, self-published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Tulip Festival in 2004.

  15 - “a special place”: A chronology of the Dutch royal family visits to Holland, Michigan, is found in the online collection register for H88-0082.1. Royal Family of the Netherlands. Papers, 1933–2004, Hope College Digital Commons (http://digitalcommons .hope.edu), accessed October 7, 2012.

  16 - “no prude”: JSB, November 27, 2012; “many male friends”: Vicki Sparks Miller, interview by the author, September 24, 2008; closest Betsy came to a serious boyfriend: JSB, September 25, 2012.

  17 - “parents who guarded them pretty closely”: Kliphuis interview, March 22, 2012; Horizon formal dance: Betsy was active in Horizon, the senior level of the Camp Fire Girls, in high school.

  18 - “second or third cousins”: Tom Bolhuis, interview by the author, September 10, 2012.

  19 - “They didn’t dislike her”: JSB interview, September 25, 2012.

  20 - “I don’t think they valued that”: JSB interview, November 27, 2012.

  21 - “She was authentic”: Wich interview, July 21, 2011; “high point of her life”: Wich interview, September 24, 2008; “I would always volunteer to drive”: JSB interview, September 21, 2008.

  22 - “smart, kind, and beautiful”: Jo Ann Pelon Wassenaar, e-mail to the author, April 4, 2011; “was just so easy”: Wich interview, September 24, 2008; “never had any enemies”: Margo Hakken Zeedyk, interview by the author, October 5, 2008; “just that kind of friendship”: JSB interview, September 25, 2012.

  23 - “the kind of girl you wanted to marry”: Jeff Lubbers, interview by the author, October 6, 2012.

  24 - “a voracious reader”: Wich interview, July 21, 2011; finished the course with a straight A: Deborah Noe Schakel, e-mail to the author, September 26, 2012. John Noe moved to E. E. Fell Junior High as principal for the 1963–64 academic year, and was there for the next seventeen years.

  25 - “sources of great pain to her”: Wireback article, 1972.

  26 - “only about 7 percent”: American Medical Association, Women Physicians Congress, Women in Medicine: An AMA Timeline (www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/wpc/wimtimeline.pdf), accessed October 8, 2012; medical illustrator: JSB interview, September 21, 2008.

  27 - “slanted toward the top kids in school”: 1 Dirk Bloemendaal Sr., interview by the author, September 2008; named the fourth of his five children after her: Linda DenBesten Jones interview, October 11, 2008; “Just water my plants, too”: JSB interview, November 27, 2012.

  28 - “then we did the circulatory system”: Bloemendaal interview, September 2008; done at Betsy’s home: JSB interview, September 21, 2008; “We were perfect lab partners”: JSB interview, November 27, 2012.

  29 - “She was a nursing trainee, or Pinkie”: “35 High School Students in Training at Hospital,” Holland Evening Sentinel, October 29, 1964.

  30 - “her favorite teacher”: Sparks interview, September 24, 2008, and Wich interview, September 24, 2008; Van Lare’s intense love of poetry: Judi Jahns Aycock, interview by the author, September 23, 2008.

  31 - “American School in Yokohama”: “High School Operetta Set,” Pacific Stars and Stripes, January 19, 1950.

  32 - “near-perfect grade point average”: Academic transcript, Betsy R. Aardsma, Holland Public School record group, Holland Museum Archives, Holland, Michigan. The transcript also included her SAT scores and class rank; she was one of several: “Many Are Awarded Scholarships,” Holland Evening Sentinel, April 30, 1965.

  33 - “She was going to Hope College”: Op. Cit., Sentinel article, April 30, 1965; applied to Michigan, had been accepted: DenBesten interview, October 11, 2008; about rooming together: JSB interview, September 21, 2008; to please her parents: Op. cit., DenBesten interview; took out loans: JSB interview, September 21, 2008, and DenBesten interview.

  Chapter 15: Way Station to the World

  1 - “She
just never annoyed anyone”: Linda DenBesten Jones interview, October 11, 2008; “just not her thing”: Ibid.

  2 - “recalled the pranks”: Margo Hakken Zeedyk, interview with the author, October 5, 2008.

  3 - “smart and pretty”: George Arwady, e-mail to the author, September 7, 2008; ran into her once or twice: Bolhuis interview, September 10, 2012; wasn’t exclusive: Op. cit., Linda DenBesten Jones, October 11, 2008.

  4 - had to be back in their dorms: Linda DenBesten Jones, e-mail to author, October 19, 2012; had to attend 8:00 a.m. chapel services: Reverend William Hillegonds, Hope College chaplain, 1965–78, oral history, July 10, 1978. Interviewed by Conrad Strauch Jr. for the Living Heritage Oral History Project, Hope College Archives Council, Holland, Michigan; That was an improvement: The author’s mother, Olga Kilian DeKok, told the story of how, in the mid-1940s, she could make it from her family home near the Hope campus to Dimnent Chapel in time for the morning service if she ran out the door when the chapel’s bells began tolling; “everything became immediately clear”: Op. cit., Linda DenBesten Jones e-mail; provide the name of a relative: “Why Do Hope Students Leave?,” Hope College Anchor, February 24, 1967.

  5 - “organic chemistry professor”: Marlin D. Harmony, “History of the KU Chemistry Department, 1950–2000: A Personal Account,” 2006, University of Kansas Chemistry Department, accessed at www.chem.ku.edu/docs/historyofthedepartment.pdf on October 11, 2012; belonged to a liberal Congregationalist church: James C. Kennedy and Caroline J. Simon, Can Hope Endure? A Historical Case Study in Christian Higher Education (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 129; raised as a Quaker: Hillegonds oral history, 17; deeply committed to the cause of civil rights: Jack Arbolino, “Calvin A. Vander Werf: The Choice of His Peers,” Fall 1980, College Board Review; recruited blacks from the South: Douglas C. Neckers, letter to KU Giving magazine, Spring 2010.

  6 - “piety is no substitute for excellence”: Kennedy and Simon, 130; “somewhat sleepy and backward”: J. Cotter Tharin, Hope College geology professor, oral history, July 14, 1987, interviewed by Brian Williams for the Living Heritage Oral History Project, Hope College Archives Council, Holland, Michigan; who could provide more of the financial support: Kennedy and Simon, 138; non-Protestant faculty: Kennedy and Simon, 131–35; strong reputation in the natural sciences: Kennedy and Simon, 129.

  7 - “But the changes students remembered most”: Vander Werf’s changes to student life and the reaction to his bringing Dick Gregory to campus are described in Kennedy and Simon, 139–42. The author attended the Gregory speech.

  8 - “scared . . . Uncle Tom types”: Hillegonds oral history, 25–26; not work in their father’s insurance agency: Hillegonds oral history, 22.

  9 - “He didn’t work with people”: Alvin Vander Bush, oral history, July 6, 1977, interviewed by Nancy A. Swinyard for the Living Heritage Oral History Program, Hope College Archives Council, Holland, Michigan; ultimately was deposed: Kennedy and Simon, 144–45.

  10 - “by the end of her freshman year”: Linda DenBesten Jones interview, October 11, 2008; The idea of being a physician: JSB, September 21, 2008.

  11 - “I think that’s pretty feminist”: Linda DenBesten Jones interview, October 11, 2008.

  12 - Richard M. Nixon was still in the political wilderness in 1965, but after he was elected president in 1968, Vander Bush could barely contain his disdain—and sometimes didn’t. On one memorable occasion in the fall of 1971, before Watergate but well after the Cambodian invasion, Vander Bush got onto the subject of Nixon, worked up a head of steam, and then blasted out, “I can’t stand that man.” He was balanced ideologically on the Hope College political science faculty by Jack Holmes, a dedicated Republican who later became the Ottawa County Republican chairman.

  13 - “we enjoyed him”: Leslie Nienhuis Herbig interview, September 29, 2008; “She wasn’t a political nut”: Linda DenBesten Jones interview, October 11, 2008.

  14 - “teach art to low-income black children”: Dennis Wegner, e-mail to the author, February 13, 2012; traveled . . . to the Mescalero Apache Reservation: Tom Boughter, “Selection of PSU Made By Dead Girl,” December 1, 1969, Pennsylvania Mirror, State College, PA; poverty on the reservation: Reverend Frank Love, interview by the author, October 28, 2011; work in the church’s Vacation Bible School: Reverend Herman Van Galen, interview by the author, October 31, 2011; made a presentation to her church: “Trinity Reformed Church” news roundup, Holland Evening Sentinel, October 21,1966.

  15 - “the former Nibbelink-Notier Funeral Home”: Randall P. Vande Water, interview by the author, October 6, 2008. The funeral home moved to 16th Street and became the Notier-VerLee-Langeland Funeral Chapel, which handled Betsy Aardsma’s funeral arrangements in 1969; Edgar Allan Poe Club: Verne C. Kupelian talked at length about his teen clubs in Holland and Saugatuck, and about Betsy Aardsma and her friends, in an interview with the author on October 6, 2008.

  16 - “driving as long as an hour”: JSB, September 21, 2008; Noah’s Ark: Kupelian interview, October 6, 2008; “Her personality was super”: Op. cit., Kupelian.

  17 - “She joined the cast of”: Winnie the Pooh: “Freshmen Win Nykerk Cup,” Holland Evening Sentinel, November 7, 1966. Betsy Aardsma is mentioned in the story.

  18 - “thoughtless, inconsiderate, and immature”: “Voorhees Co-eds Demonstrate: Fire Conditions Unsafe,” Hope College Anchor, December 2, 1966.

  19 - “moved to Douglas”: “Last Will and Testament of Richard C. Aardsma,” October 19, 1967, Allegan County Probate Court, Allegan, Michigan.

  20 - “Wooden Shoe Factory bumper stickers”: Andrea Yunker Marchand, interview with the author, September 6, 2011; at the H. J. Heinz pickle factory: JSB, September 21, 2008.

  21 - “Green season”: The description of work inside the H. J. Heinz pickle factory in Holland comes from the author’s own experience as a fourteen-year-old temporary employee. Factory work was normally barred to children that age under federal and state law, but there was an exception for certain types of work during high production periods in food processing.

  22 - “dead fish, all belly-up”: US Water Pollution Control Administration, The Alewife Explosion: The 1967 Die-Off in Lake Michigan, published in near-record time on July 25, 1967. No one ever quite figured out what made the alewives die in such vast numbers. Some believed it was a natural phenomenon related to spawning stress, while others wondered if pesticide runoff was to blame. What scientists did know was that alewives were an ocean fish that had escaped from the Atlantic into the Great Lakes via canals dug by man in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For a long time, they weren’t a problem, kept in check by lake trout who found them tasty eating. But when the Welland Canal around Niagara Falls was improved in 1919, parasitic sea lampreys also found their way to Lake Michigan. Beginning in the 1930s, they devastated the lake trout. The alewife population exploded, reaching its peak in 1965. There had been die-offs before 1967, but nowhere near as bad. Michigan environmental officials devised a plan to kill off the sea lampreys by spraying larvacide in their spawning waters, then to reintroduce predators, notably the Coho salmon from the Pacific, into the Great Lakes to eat the alewives. Thankfully, it worked, although it took a few years.

  23 - “Company B from Holland”: “Holland Guards Patrol in Thick of Riot Area,” Holland Evening Sentinel, July 25, 1967.

  Chapter 16: A Desirable Young Woman

  1 - “even though the ties are mentioned”: “John D. Van Alsburg Dies Unexpectedly,” Holland Evening Sentinel, October 29, 1953. Peter Van Allsburg, Chris Van Allsburg’s grandfather, is listed as a surviving brother; Some families just drift apart: Chris Van Allsburg, letter to the author, June 20, 2012. Some members of the family used one “l” in the family name and others used two.

  2 - “The Doors played”: Alan Glenn, “The Doors Disaster at Michigan,” Michigan Today, November 2010; Buffy Sainte-Marie: Philip Stine, on
line comment to Doors story. The article can be read online at http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2010/11/story.php?id=7894#.UJ1G545_1IA. Accessed November 9, 2012.

  3 - “organized the first teach-in”: Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, 30; the lover of Gilda Radner: David Saltman, Gilda: An Intimate Portrait (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1982), 58.

  4 - “fell by the wayside”: Margo Hakken Zeedyk interview, October 5, 2008; “a more sensible type”: Letter, Betsy Aardsma to Peggy Wich, September 1967. Courtesy of Peggy Wich Vandenberg.

  5 - “Oh, we got along great”: Andrea Yunker Marchand interview, September 6, 2011.

  6 - “I never considered her a saint”: Andrea Yunker Marchand quoted in Kevin Cirilli, “Betsy Ruth Aardsma: 40 Years Later,” Daily Collegian, Penn State University, State College, PA, November 20, 2009.

  7 - “ had been cut out of the company”: Dr. Elbert Magoon, interview with the author, December 2, 2012. The circumstances of Johanna Meijer Magoon and her husband, Don Magoon, leaving the Meijer company are sharply disputed within the family. Dr. Elbert Magoon says his parents were forced out by Fred Meijer, his uncle, and got approximately ten cents on the dollar for their 40 percent equity interest. An almost opposite story is told in the 2009 book, Fred Meijer: Stories of His Life, by Bill Smith and Larry Ten Harmsel. The book, which was an authorized biography, contends that the Magoons wanted out of the business in the late 1950s and asked for suitable dividend payments. Fred Meijer refused, saying he needed the money for expansion. The Magoons, the book says, agreed to accept $1.25 million paid out over several years. By the time the payments were complete, the Meijer company was worth more than $100 million. The two families did not speak for years, reconciling only when Fred and Johanna were in their mid-eighties. Fred Meijer outlived his sister and her husband, dying in 2011. No Magoons were mentioned in the Grand Rapids Press obituary, but Dr. Magoon says he did attend his uncle’s funeral.