On Nov. 28, 1969, Betsy Aardsma, a 22-year-old Penn State graduate student, was stabbed to death in the stacks of Pattee Library. The case remains officially unsolved, but my guest David DeKok thinks that he knows who murdered Betsy. He believes it was a troubled and hot-tempered fellow grad student named Richard Haefner, and lays out the evidence to make his argument. 

His book is called "Murder in the Stacks: Penn State, Betsy Aardsma, and the Killer Who Got Away". 

More information on the author and the book can be found at his website: https://daviddekok.com/

More from the publisher: http://www.globepequot.com/books/9781493013890





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Most Notorious website: https://www.mostnotorious.com/


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266:  The Murder of Betsy Aardsma w/ David DeKok - A True Crime History Podcast

Serial killers. Gangsters. Gunslingers. Victorian-era murderers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Each week, the Most Notorious podcast features true-life tales of crime, criminals, tragedies and disasters throughout history. Host Erik Rivenes interviews authors and historians who have studied their subjects for years. Their stories are offered with unique insight, detail, and historical accuracy.

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Many saw the dark side of the American dream, but none wrote about it like Jim Tully. Having spent six years of his childhood in a Cincinnati orphanage, Tully returned to his hometown of St. Marys, Ohio before climbing aboard a freight train in 1901. Drifting across the country as a "road kid," he spent his teens, sleeping in hobo jungles, avoiding railroad cops, and haunting public libraries. After six years on the road, he settled in Kent, Ohio where he boxed professionally and began to write. Following a move to Hollywood where he worked for Charlie Chaplin, Tully issued a stream of critically acclaimed books that serve as a dark and astonishing chronicle of the American underclass. Having established himself as a major American author, he turned his attention to Hollywood writing dozens of articles about the movies, often shocking the Hollywood establishment. Along the way, he picked up such close friends as W. C. Fields, Jack Dempsey, H. L. Mencken, and Frank Capra. He also memorably crossed paths with Jack London, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, and Langston Hughes.

My guests are Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer, authors of "Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler". They not only share details from Tully's wild life, but talk about two infamous Hollywood murders that he was connected to.

Paul Bauer's Archer's Used and Rare Books: https://www.biblio.com/bookstore/archersbookscom-kent

Mark Dawidziak's website: https://www.markdawidziak.com/

Jim Tully Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100050314553406


The Most Notorious Podcast website: https://www.mostnotorious.com/
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343:  Jim Tully: Father of Hard-Boiled Fiction & "The Most Hated Man in Hollywood" w/ Paul Bauer & Mark Dawidziak

Eric Jay Dolin, returns to the show to share details from his new book, "Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World". It's the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812.

Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half.

More about the author and all of his books can be found here at his website: https://www.ericjaydolin.com/
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342: The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Nanina w/ Eric Jay Dolin

Just after midnight on July 6, 1932, twenty-year-old Zachary Smith Reynolds, a renowned aviator and an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, was shot in the family's summer home in what is now Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While some believed the moody young man had committed suicide, evidence suggested someone else had pulled the trigger, and eventually Reynolds' wife, Broadway actress Libby Holman, and his best friend, A.B. Walker, would be indicted for murder.

I'm joined by Phil Archer, the Betsy Main Babcock Deputy Director at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. He helped create Reynolda's popular exhibition, called "Smith & Libby: Two Rings, Seven Months, One Bullet", which can now be experienced in a condensed form on the very porch where Smith died.


More about the Reynolda Museum here: https://reynolda.org/
Watch the original exhibition trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVYrVhMK7M&t=5s
Libby Holman sings the traditional folk song "House of the Rising Sun": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4ZGrlO7JU4
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341:  The Mysterious Death of Zachary Smith Reynolds w/ Phil Archer

This week we revisit one of my favorite Most Notorious episodes. In the small town of Isadore Michigan in 1907, a young nun named Janina disappeared. Ten years later, her body is discovered by a priest intent on building a new church on the foundation of the old one. Mardi Link, author of "Isadore's Secret", chats with me about the terrible circumstances surrounding the death of Sister Janina.

The author's website: https://www.mardilink.com/
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MoNo Encore:  The Murder of Sister Janina w/ Mardi Link

On a warm August day in 1910, Sheriff Jake Houpt and his deputies attempted to arrest brothers George and Oscar Chitwood outside the Garland County Courthouse in Hot Springs, Arkansas. A gunfight soon erupted, leaving both the sheriff and George dead. And when Oscar himself was killed in December under the protection of deputies, a mob of mysterious masked men were blamed for the lynching. But evidence suggests the story of Oscar's death might have been a cover for something else.

My guest is Christopher Thrasher, who along with fellow author and historian Guy Lancaster wrote the book "The Murder of Oscar Chitwood in Hot Springs, Arkansas". He summarizes this fascinating story for us on this latest episode of Most Notorious.


Christopher Thrasher's Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Christopher-Thrasher/author/B0C3Z3ZGQK
The book's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/9781467153270
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
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266: The Murder of Betsy Aardsma w/ David DeKok - A True Crime History Podcast

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