by David DeKok
10 - “get him kicked out of Penn State on moral grounds”: Roger Cuffey, interview by the author, July 23, 2012. Cuffey was speaking in general terms, not specifically about Rick Haefner.
11 - “slammed the blade horizontally into her chest”: Mike Simmers interview, February 19, 2013.
Chapter 21: The Night Visitor
1 - “spent her days in private study”: Obituary of Myrtle K. Wright, Centre Daily Times, January 4, 1990.
2 - “came face-to-face with Rick Haefner”: Sascha Skucek, “Murder in the Core,” State College magazine, January 1, 2009; a “pretty good” geologist: Lauren A. Wright, interview by the author, August 30, 2010.
3 - “seen running from the front of Pattee Library”: News release, Penn State Department of Public Information, December 2, 1969.
4 - “Many of them desire to see blood”: J. Paul de River, MD, Crime and the Sexual Psychopath (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1958), 48. De River was the founder and director of the Sex Offenses Bureau of the City of Los Angeles, California.
5 - “was not a frequent visitor”: Lauren Wright interview, August 30, 2010; being killed in Pattee Library: Sascha Skucek, “Murder in the Core,” January 1, 2009; stayed about an hour: Lauren Wright interview, August 30, 2010.
6 - “would have helped him bury her body”: Christopher L. Haefner (CLH), interview by the author, September 15, 2010.
7 - “summoned for a routine interview”: Op. cit., Skucek.
8 - “Schleiden has little or no memory”: Ken Schleiden, interview by the author, February 13, 2013. The question then arises how Skucek can report authoritatively in his magazine articles what is contained in Schleiden’s report. The answer could be that he, alone among writers, was given access to the report or told what it contained. In his interview with the author in 2008, Skucek mentioned in passing that the police had given him access to some of their documents on the Aardsma case; Other retired troopers say: Mike Simmers, interview by the author, January 3, 2013.
Part IV: Flight from Justice
Chapter 22: Bad Seed
1 - “a good citizen in every respect”: Joseph Haefner obituary, IJ, Lancaster, PA, January 12, 1916; perfecting his knowledge of the beer business: Charles O. Lynch and John W. W. Loose, “A History of Brewing in Lancaster County, Legal and Otherwise,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 1966, Vol. 79, 31–33.
2 - “married “Miss Margaret Fisher”: Op. cit., Lynch and Loose; referred to Harry as “my stepson”: Joseph Haefner will, Lancaster County Archives; The couple . . . seven more children: Ibid.
3 - “beset by financial woes”: Haefner obituary, January 12, 1916; to open up 500,000 acres: “Half a Million Acres of Rice Lands to Be Developed by Irrigation,” Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, June 27, 1903; “a large loser financially”: Op. cit., Haefner obituary.
4 - “His will made equal provision”: Joseph Haefner’s lengthy will is on file at the Archives of Lancaster County, 150 N. Queen Street, Lancaster, PA.
5 - “When Prohibition finally ended”: Lynch, 20, 33–34.
6 - “secretary in the bursar’s office”: Richard Gehman, A Murder in Paradise (New York: Rinehart, 1954), 7–11; bludgeoned and strangled her: Gehman, 158; how long it took a body to decompose: Gehman, 95–96; to buy the paper: Gehman, 52–53.
7 - “son of an overprotective, smothering mother”: Gehman, 63; who also hated women: Gehman, 95; what he thought he was supposed to do: Gehman, 71; “He was devilishly clever”: Gehman, 241.
8 - “one of the better undergraduate geology programs”: Lane Shultz, interview by the author, August 7, 2011; as a volunteer guide: Temporary teaching certificate application of Richard Charles Haefner, Pennsylvania Department of Education, June 12, 1963; khaki pants: Op. cit., Shultz.
9 - “born that way”: Alan Zarembo, “Many Researchers Taking a Different View of Pedophilia,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2013; began carrying a homemade knife: CLH, August 23, 2010.
10 - “first became known to police”: Memo to the File, Lancaster Police Department, November 1, 1962. Obtained from Lancaster Police Department under the Pennsylvania Open Records Act. Franklin & Marshall has in its archives a confidential file on Haefner from this period that it will not release, a file that may well contain information about this and other incidents, possibly including some at the North Museum.
11 - “showing up at the front door”: Michael D. Witmer, e-mail to the author, August 28, 2011; fondled his genitals: Ibid.
12 - “stole an important part of his childhood”: Dave S., interview by the author, February 19, 2013; seemed nonthreatening: Ibid; tell his parents . . . what had happened: Witmer e-mail, August 28, 2011.
13 - “called Haefner in for a meeting”: Re: Richard Charles Haefner Interview, Date 8/30/65, memo by Philip Bomberger III, director of the Lancaster Recreation Commission. This was one of a number of documents obtained by the author from the Lancaster Recreation Commission via a Pennsylvania Right To Know request (LRC-RTK). These documents provided much of the information used by the author in describing the incident in August 1965 in which Haefner molested the two boys; sick beyond help: Witmer e-mail, August 28, 2011: relieved from his assistant scoutmaster position: Ibid; banned from Boy Scout work for life: Op. cit., Bomberger memo, LRC-RTK. Haefner’s crimes occurred a few years too early to have been included in the so-called Perversion Files, a collection of case files from all over the country released by the Boy Scouts of America in 2012 in response to litigation settlements involving former Scouts who had been sexually abused by Scout leaders. The earliest of these documents dated from the mid- to late 1960s, and the latest from early in the twenty-first century.
14 - “second-highest rating for his leadership”: “Recreation Leader’s Rating Scale for Richard Haefner,” Lancaster Recreation Commission, 1965.
15 - “Haefner evidently molested them both”: Op. cit., Bomberger memo, LRC-RTK.
16 - “appeared very nervous and shaken”: Op. cit., Bomberger memo, LRC-RTK.
17 - “a member of Sacred Heart Church”: “Dr. Robert Kurey, Founder of LGH Mental Health Unit,” obituary in Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, PA, December 16, 1993.
18 - “Rick did see Dr. Kurey”: Letter, Robert J. Kurey, MD, to Albert F. Reese, Lancaster Recreation Commission, September 15, 1965, LRC-RTK.
19 - “in its attitudes toward pedophiles”: Philip Jenkins, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 2; unlikely to cause significant harm: Jenkins, p. 2.
20 - “obtained help from Arlen Specter”: Cuffey interview, July 23, 2012.
Chapter 23: Death Valley
1 - “Wright joined the faculty”: Marli B. Miller and Lauren A. Wright, Geology of Death Valley National Park, Second Edition (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing, revised printing, 2007), v.
2 - “suggested to Haefner”: Cuffey interview, July 23, 2012; send the thesis advisor to verify the fieldwork: Charles Hosler, interview by the author, November 8, 2011.
3 - “Rick did reasonably well in his graduate studies”: Official transcript of Richard Charles Haefner, Office of the Registrar, Penn State University.
4 - “had received the 2-S student deferment”: Selective Service Classification Record, Richard Charles Haefner, obtained by author via FOIA request; were usually allowed to keep them: Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, The War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 23.
5 - “wasn’t sure Rick really liked girls”: Dan Stephens, interview by the author, June 21, 2012; “a geek kind of position”: Cuffey interview, July 23, 2012.
6 - “between late September and the middle of May”: Ken Lengner, interview by the author, June 3, 2011; had signed up as Haefner’s field assistant: Joe Head, interview by the author, May 18, 2012.
7 - “Rick had his
picture taken”: Joe Head, e-mail to the author, April 14, 2013.
8 - “dug their own caves and lived in them”: Hal Silliman, “Shoshone: Reviving Oasis in Death Valley,” Mountain Democrat, Placerville, CA, October 15, 1999; Fairbanks and later his descendants owned nearly everything in the town: Ken Lengner and George Ross, “Town of Shoshone: A Family-Owned Enterprise,” contained in Remembering the Early Shoshone and Tecopa Area (Shoshone: Deep Enough Press, second edition, 2009), 8; Wright knew her well: Head interview, May 18, 2012.
9 - “in the field with Rick”: Joe Head interview, May 18, 2012; about ten miles northwest of Shoshone: Richard C. Haefner, Emplacement and Cooling History of a Rhyolite Lava Flow and Related Tuff at Deadman Pass, Near Death Valley, California: A Thesis in Geology, The Pennsylvania State University, The Graduate School, Department of Geology and Geophysics, December 1969.
10 - “They seemed like they were really good friends as brothers”: Joe Head interview, May 18, 2012.
11 - “was at the dinner”: Joe Head was uncertain whether the dinner was over the Thanksgiving holiday or closer to Christmas. Smith College, however, did not dismiss for Christmas vacation until December 22, 1967, nearly two weeks after Head, Professor Wright, and Rick Haefner left to drive back to Pennsylvania.
12 - “knocked on Susan’s door”: Sascha Skucek, “Case Closed?,” State College magazine, October 2010; seemed to be paying close attention: Dan Stephens, interview by the author, June 21, 2012; dinner at the Sorrells house: Ibid.
13 - “load up the Ford Bronco”: Dan Stephens interview, June 21, 2012; “Shoshone volcanics”: Richard C. Haefner, Igneous History of a Rhyolite Lava-Flow Series Near Death Valley: A Thesis in Geology (Penn State University, 1972), 2; listened to Wolfman Jack’s raspy voice: Op. cit., Stephens.
14 - “That’s a little odd for a geologist”: Stephens interview, June 21, 2012; no more important “than eating an ice-cream cone”: Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 301.
Chapter 24: Left Behind
1 - “was happy in Heaven”: Dennis Wegner, “Coping with Unexpected Death,” unpublished manuscript provided courtesy of Wegner.
2 - “A gentle man who liked to read history”: Confidential source, June 26, 2011; And a terrible driver: JSB, November 27, 2012; was admitted to Holland Hospital: Photo caption, Holland Evening Sentinel, February 20, 1971.
3 - “descended into deep depression”: Confidential source, June 26, 2011; kept to themselves: JoAnn Pelon Wassenaar e-mail, April 4, 2011; “They were quiet people”: Bernice Kolenbrander, interview by the author, October 22, 2008; Neither parent phoned for updates: GHK interview, June 8, 2012; any call to the Aardsmas: GHK interview, January 4, 2011.
4 - “grieved for “two or three months”: David L. Wright interview, November 10, 2008; first with a nursing student: Ian Osborn, interview by the author, November 28, 2013; She eventually became his wife: Op. cit., Wright; “very different from Betsy”: Joanne Lekas, interview by the author, November 29, 2011; “now I’m totally free and I can look around”: Op. cit., Wright.
5 - “I didn’t think it appropriate”: Ian Osborn, e-mail to the author, February 28, 2013.
6 - “He eventually found a degree of peace”: Wegner essay, 3–4.
7 - “asking him to strike down the death penalty”: Marvin Cook, “Kin of Murdered Woman Implore Courts to Spare Lives of All Killers,” Capitol Times, Madison, WI, January 13, 1972; full support of Carole: Dennis Wegner, e-mail to the author, May 1, 2013; “concurred with the spirit” of the letter: “Kin of Slain Coed Appeal for Mercy,” Evening Sentinel, Holland, MI, January 14, 1972.
8 - “Wegner’s letter to Burger”: “Relative of Stab Victim Opposes Death Penalty,” Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, WI, January 14, 1972.
9 - “down to six investigators”: Barbi Stine, “Little Progress Made in Aardsma Query,” Daily Collegian, Penn State, May 22, 1970; an ideal number: GHK interview, April 15, 2011; back to Rockview: GHK interview, January 4, 2011; he and his investigators had talked to: Ken Silverman, “Aardsma Case Still Mystery,” Daily Collegian, Penn State, January 15, 1971.
10 - “always came back to the one-hour delay”: GHK interview, Op. cit., Silverman.
11 - “more than twenty persons in the Core area”: Op. cit, Silverman; blamed “student apathy”: Taft Wireback, “Murder in the Stacks,” Focus Fall: Penn State’s Fountain of Truth, 1972.
12 - “Maurer dropped out of Penn State”: Memorandum to Acting Director, FBI, from Special Agent in Charge, Philadelphia, April 4, 1973.
13 - “a prime suspect”: Op. cit., FBI memo of April 4, 1973; “still talking to me”: GHK interview, July 23, 2012.
Chapter 25: Hiding in Plain Sight
1 - “blot out the horror”: Katherine Q. Seelye and Ian Lovett, “After Attack, Suspects Returned to Routines, Raising No Suspicions,” April 26, 2013, New York Times.
2 - “often brought young boys with him”: Charles Hosler, interview with the author, September 9, 2010.
3 - “We were very suspicious”: Hosler interview, September 9, 2010; not much else changed: Charles Hosler, interview by the author, November 18, 2011; a boy named Mark: CLH, e-mail to the author, November 12, 2010, 5:10 p.m.
4 - “things that would be tolerated here”: Hosler interview, November 8, 2011.
5 - “considered him a good friend”: Hosler interview, November 8, 2011; some could not reconcile: Cuffey interview, July 23, 2012.
6 - “was arrested by police in Patton Township”: Officer John R. Dodson, “Affidavit of Probable Cause for Arrest,” August 27, 1981. Obtained from Patton Township via a Pennsylvania Open Records Act request. The details of the incident and arrest come from this document.
7 - “asked Lasaga to take a polygraph exam”: Op. cit., Dodson Affidavit, August 27, 1981; “Couldn’t we get this thing cleared up?”: Ibid; an incident earlier that month: “Child Sexually Assaulted in Park,” Centre Daily Times, August 7, 1981; the accuracy of the test was later questioned: Janice D’Arcy, “Yale Professor Accused Earlier,” Hartford Courant, May 19, 2000.
8 - “much admired and loved”: Hosler interview, November 8, 2011; worshipped his talented junior colleague: Carol Vonada, interview by the author, May 6, 2013; paid the parents $500 to back off: Ibid; “I got Tony off this time”: Cuffey interview, July 23, 2012.
9 - “150,000 child pornography images”: “Former Yale Professor Gets 20 Years for Molesting Boy He Mentored,” New York Times, February 16, 2002.
10 - “When you penalize Tony for his indiscretions”: Janice D’Arcy, “Ex-Professor Sentenced to 20 Years,” Hartford Courant, February 16, 2002; “comments so disconnected with reality”: Ibid.
11 - “his years behind bars”: Late in his sentence, Lasaga was transferred to the medium-security prison at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, seventy miles from State College, and then to FCI Petersburg in Hopewell, Virginia, a low security prison. He is scheduled for release from federal custody in February 2015, two years earlier than originally thought. His Connecticut state sentence, after credits are applied, currently runs to 2017.
12 - “related stories about a number of other professors”: Charles Hosler interview, November 8, 2011.
Chapter 26: Downfall
1 - “he didn’t really like teaching”: CLH, August 23, 2010; It was more like a little factory: CLH, September 15, 2010; sold them to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum: CLH, August 23, 2010; could not verify the business relationship: Letter, Annette Fancher-Bishop, assistant general counsel, Smithsonian Institution, to the author, September 14, 2010.
2 - “Rick employed neighborhood boys”: CLH, May 13, 2013; in and out of the building “like a fly”: Harry Bambrick, interview by the author, October 21, 2010; he would load up a trailer: CLH, September 15, 2010.
3 - “began to pocket the ones h
e fancied”: CLH interview, August 23, 2010; Rick invited Chris into the rock shop: Ibid.
4 - “Rick’s world fascinated him”: CLH interview, September 15, 2010; Andy Taylor country bumpkin: CLH interview, August 23, 2010.
5 - “an old silver mine near Pequea”: CLH, August 23, 2010; opened in the Colonial era: Ibid; lowered himself down the hundred-foot shaft by rope: CLH, e-mail to the author, August 20, 2010, 10:39 p.m.
6 - “Rick and his teenage helpers”: Willie Bise, interview by the author, December 6, 2010; to collect purple lepidolite: CLH, August 23, 2010.
7 - “Rick found two blue minerals”: CLH, e-mail to the author August 24, 2010, 10:36 a.m.; He took Chris along: CLH, August 23, 2010.
8 - “You never had to spend a dime”: CLH, August 23, 2010.
9 - “It was horrible”: CLH, September 15, 2010.
10 - “too interesting to leave”: CLH, August 23, 2010; scared only that he would try to molest him again: CLH, September 15, 2010.
11 - “hired two more boys”: Complaint, Richard C. Haefner v. The County of Lancaster, Pa., et al., 82-1018, March 5, 1982, US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 6; would claim he fired Burkey: Ibid; accused him of molesting: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Richard Charles Haefner, Criminal Complaint, August 15, 1975; Bismoline Medicated Powder: M. Richard Peters, interview by the author, October 19, 2010. Peters was one of the jurors in the Haefner trial; during one of Rick’s out-of-town collecting and camping trips: Op. cit., Criminal Complaint, August 15, 1975.
12 - “then told . . . what Rick had done to him”: Judge Anthony R. Appel, “Memorandum Opinion on Degree of Contempt,” February 27, 1976, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Richard Charles Haefner, CPCLC, 2: Jimmy urged Kevin to tell their mother: M. Richard Peters interview, October 19, 2010.
13 - “wanted to question him away from his mother”: Transcription of interview, January 5, 1981, FBI. Haefner filed a detailed complaint with the FBI against the Lancaster police early in 1981. All of the details of his arrest, interrogation, and arraignment on August 15, 1975, come from that document, which the author obtained from the FBI under the FOIA.