Police made an arrest this week in a Centre County cold case. Here are others that are unsolved
Tuesday’s arrest of a man accused in the 1995 rape of a Penn State senior offered a reminder that unsolved mysteries from bygone decades are rarely forgotten.
Sometimes an unsolved case can be cracked with one new conversation, while other cases can be pieced together because of advances in technology.
A South Carolina man was charged in February in the 2016 homicide of Pine Grove Mills woman Jean Tuggy. Christopher Kowalski, a former co-worker of Tuggy’s, was charged with one count of criminal homicide. His case is pending.
Centre County has more than a handful of prominent cases that remain unsolved. Here’s a look at some that have captured the county’s interest for decades.
Betsy Aardsma, fatally stabbed in 1969
It’s been more than a half-century since Aardsma, 22, was killed the day after Thanksgiving inside Penn State’s Pattee Library.
The graduate student from Michigan who loved literature and thought of joining the Peace Corps died after she was stabbed in the chest.
Nobody has ever been charged with her death.
Dana Bailey, fatally stabbed in 1987
Bailey, 21, was killed at her South Allen Street apartment. The killer watched Bailey from a separate building before breaking through her apartment window and stabbing her during spring break, State College police said.
More than 800 people were interviewed, but nobody has been charged with her death.
Brenda Condon, missing since 1991
Condon, 28, was tending bar in Spring Township the night before her disappearance. Employees arrived the next day and found her 1986 Mercury Capri in the parking lot the next day, but there was no sign of Condon.
For the better part of three decades, that’s largely all anyone has known about her disappearance. Her two children were left behind.
The Spring Township investigation remains open.
Cindy Song, missing since 2001
Song, 21, disappeared from her off-campus apartment in the wee hours after a Halloween party. That was the last time anyone is reported reported to have seen the graphic arts major from South Korea.
Several unsubstantiated theories have been put forward about her whereabouts, leaving unanswered what happened after she was dropped off at her apartment in Ferguson Township.
Ray Gricar, declared legally dead in 2011
Gricar, 59, was Centre County’s longtime top prosecutor when he disappeared in April 2005. The former district attorney was reported missing after his red and white Mini Cooper was found abandoned in a Union County parking lot.
No definitive answers have been found, but everything from homicide to suicide to Gricar deliberately walking away has been considered by investigators.
The latter two are the leading theories, especially after police reviewed Gricar’s search history and found that someone searched “how to fry a hard drive.”
Gricar, whom friends and peer described as a quiet man, was months away from retirement at the time of his disappearance. Bellefonte police led the investigation for years, but later turned it over the state police.
Jennifer Cahill-Shadle, missing since 2014
Cahill-Shadle was a 48-year-old mother of three at the time of her disappearance. She was last seen walking out of a restaurant along North Atherton Street in Patton Township.
Her case is “presumed to be a homicide,” Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said in December 2018.
Ferguson Township police detective Josh Martin — one of two officers leading the department’s investigation of unsolved cases — put forward two main theories. She either walked off and is living under an alias, or someone did something to her.
“Our biggest goal is to figure out where she is, then we can figure out what happened to her,” Martin said in December 2018. “Somewhere, somehow, we’re gonna get a break .... Somebody knows something and they’re probably waiting for us to talk to them.”