5 chilling details about Sigrid Stevenson's murder

On September 4, 1977, Sigrid Stevenson, a 25-year-old music major student, was murdered on the center performing stage in Kendall Hall, Trenton State College, now known as The College of New Jersey. Volume 4, episode 4 of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries, deals with the re-investigations of the murder of the college student.

Titled Murder Center Stage, the official synopsis of the episode reads,

"Detectives suspected that when Sigrid was attacked, she was playing piano with her back to whoever approached. They also believed that she was s*xually assaulted, because she was found with her underwear off and her blouse tied around her mouth. A vaginal swab revealed the presence of sperm on the body."

How was Sigrid Stevenson's body found?

It was Sunday night, and after Labor Day weekend, the academic year had yet to resume, and the campus was empty. Thomas Kokotajlo, now a retired cop of the Trenton State Campus Police, was 22 years old at that time and was appointed for night duty on the campus.

Kokotajlo's shift started at 11 pm, and while patrolling he saw a bicycle chained to a railing outside Kendall Hall. No students were supposed to be on the campus, so he went inside looking for a trespasser and saw a body lying on the floor that felt like a prop.

But when he went near, he realized that it was a girl, lying in a pool of blood near a piano. He grabbed her wrist and realized she was dead. Her driving license indicated her name was Sigrid Stevenson and that she was a student on the campus.

5 details about the murder of Sigrid Stevenson

1) Sigrid Stevenson was found without clothes covered with a piano blanket

Her body was found lying a far beside the piano (Image via Pexels/Steve Johnson)

The body of Sigrid Stevenson was smeared in blood and covered with a piano blanket. Her clothes were lying at a distance from the body. From her bag, the police retrieved her driving license, which read her name as Sigrid Miller Stevenson. She was 25 years old and a music major at Trenton State College.

The police found that her parents lived in California. Upon investigation, one of her close friends, Carol Edson, described her as a very quirky girl who loved to talk and had a deep passion for practicing piano.

2) Sigrid Stevenson was brutally beaten

A blunt object was used for murder (Image via Pexels/Kindel Media)

The medical examiner in this case at that time was Dr. Raafat Ahmad. The doctor found that one of Sigrid's earrings was broken, and her blouse was found tied around her mouth.

Done at 10:00 am on September 5, 1977, the autopsy revealed that she had lacerations at the back of her head and the front of her face. The cause of death was massive cerebral trauma to the head. It was also found that she was beaten violently with a blunt object that caused the cracks underlying the tissues.

In addition, the murder weapon was predicted to be a baseball bat or a baton. There were bruises on Sigrid Stevenson's back, the thighs, and the pelvic area, respectively. The time of death was approximated anywhere between 7:30 pm and 10:00 pm.

Since it was a very violent attack, the police guessed that the murderer must have blood on his hands, clothes, and shoes. There was also blood splattered on the page of music she was playing. But the police found no traces of the murderer, not even fingerprints. They looked for the murder weapon in the nearby lake, the area surrounding the building, and even on the campus, but nothing was found.

3) Sigrid Stevenson was s*xually assaulted

Sigrid experienced sexual assault (Image via Pexels/Skylar Kang)

Dr. Ahmad, while going through the autopsy, took swabs from the body, which indicated that there was some kind of s*xual activity. She noticed that there were ligature marks on Sigrid's wrist that were symmetrical. This indicated that she was bound at some point by handcuffs.

This turned the suspicion to the campus police, as they were the only ones patrolling through the campus at night. Additionally, the police had handcuffs, the baton, and all the keys to the hall. All of them knew that Kendall Hall would be completely deserted at this time.

PD investigated the police officers, 15 of whom gave statements throughout the investigation. All of them passed the polygraph test, but the police soon realized that one of the actors in the theater was playing a police officer.

4) Sigrid's last diary entry was on September 3, 1977

Sigrid always carried a diary with her (Image via Pexels/Dom J )

During the investigation, the authorities found that on September 2, 1977, Sigrid had just come back from a trip. She had hitchhiked through Nova Scotia and was living as a tenant with a fireman's family.

The family was going to be on a vacation down the Jersey Shore, and Sigrid Stevenson couldn't stay with them until they got back, so she sneaked into the campus premises. Kendall Hall had a piano that she could practice on and a couch she could sleep on.

The last time Sigrid was seen alive was on September 3, 1977, by a cast member of a local theater group at the Black Box Theatre. When one of the cast members went to the green room and turned on the light, she woke up fairly shocked, her bags lying nearby. In her diary, she wrote, "It's 11:43 pm. They're breaking down the stage, and they're gonna turn the lights out and it's gonna be dark here in Kendall Hall."

5) The police suspected a member of the theater group

One of the theatre members was found suspicious (Image via Pexels/Monica Silvestre )

Sigrid Stevenson's wrist bore evidence of handcuff marks, but the authorities did not consider them to be conclusive. But then the investigators came to know that among the theater actors, there was a person named Charles "Chuck" Judkins Farrington who was supposed to play the role of a cop and was thus in possession of handcuffs and also a nightstick.

As per the other actors in the play, Chuck had gone downstairs and taken Sigrid Stevenson for a beer. He was taken into investigation in 1977, but he passed the polygraph test and was eliminated as a person of interest.

But decades later, a woman named Susie Banks reached out to Scott Napolitano, a writer and researcher interested in Sigrid's story online who also features in the Netflix episode, saying Farrington must have been involved in this case. Banks disclosed that she was in an abusive relationship with him in the 1980s, and one particular exchange frightened her.

"I could kill you and get away with it. I've done it before," Farrington seemingly told Banks after a violent abusive episode.

Around thirty years since the murder, the vaginal slides taken from the autopsy were submitted to the New Jersey State Police Lab. There was partial evidence of DNA when they opened the knots of Sigrid's red blouse, as they found some dead skin cells belonging to a possible suspect.

DNA testing was not developed in 1977, so when police suspected Chuck's involvement a second time, they prepared to collect samples from the former.

However, Chuck passed away in 2016. Later, his brother agreed to provide the police with Chuck's DNA sample, but it did not match the original.

Later investigations into Sigrid Stevenson's murder

Julia Caldwell from the Ewing Police Department took up the case again in 2018 and listed 12 individuals who could be potential suspects. Two of the suspects matched the criteria. One was an individual working on the lights for the production of the play who seemingly also happened to know every detail about the infrastructure of the building.

A maintenance worker was a potential second suspect, according to Caldwell. His duty was at the music building, and he had a history of letting Sigrid Stevenson into the buildings. Other witnesses also reportedly saw them together, including campus police officers.

The maintenance worker was not polygraphed. Julia is a retired cop, so she doesn't have access to the files anymore. She hopes the next investigator in this case will find the true killer.

Edited by Somava