March 12, 2024 • 30 mins
When Phillip Chism, 14, doesn't come home from school, his mother calls the police to report him missing.
As the town begins to look for the 9th grader, word spreads around town that a 24-year-old teacher, Colleen Ritzer, is also missing. Chism is found walking along a road just after midnight. After a quick search of his backpack, he is arrested.
Later in the morning, Colleen Ritzer's body is found on school grounds, sexually positioned with a folded note next to her body that says, "I hate you all."
Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack break down the story of the student from Tennessee and the horrifying final moments in the life of Colleen Ritzer.
Transcription Highlights
00:01:00 Introduction of location, suspect, and victim
00:02:53 Suspect is student, 14, victim is a teacher
00:04:04 Discussion of suspect family
00:08:22 Talk about motive and possible “trigger”
00:11:49 Discussion of why victim went to public bathroom
00:15:28 Discussion of witness and surveillance video
00:19:07 Talk about investigation, pinging cell phones
00:21:47 Discussion of suspect on surveillance video
00:27:25 Talk about body being covered
00:30:36 Breaking down the evidence
00:34:35 Discussion of sentence
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Having for the better
part of my adult life been married to a public educator,
one thing I've come to realize is that if you
(00:32):
can find a really good math teacher, that's somebody that
you need to hold on to in the public education system,
because math is not something that most people warm up to.
It's not something that people say, you know, gee, I
want to take as many math classes as I can
(00:53):
in high school, including ap and all those sorts of
things most people are scared of. Math comes through all
the time. I hear it at college, even you know,
with my students. But you know, there was a math
teacher in Danvers, Massachusetts, back in twenty thirteen. She was
(01:17):
only in her mid twenties. She was bright. She was
in a position where she was attempting to teach her
students about the complexities of math and the functions. But
unfortunately for her, this young lady would never finish out
(01:38):
her career because at the age of twenty four years old,
she was attacked, raped, and murdered within the walls of
her own school. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this his
(02:01):
body bats. Have you ever had that moment where you're
talking to somebody, and you know, the term trigger gets
used a lot nowadays, and I don't put as much
stock in it as many people do, because you know,
if you look for things to be triggered by, you're
gonna find them, trust me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
At the end of the school day, Colleen Ritzer was
meeting with Philip Chism and another student and they were talking.
The other student was there for help with math, and
I don't know if Chism was there for help with
math or whatever, but Colleen Ritzer was not discussing algebra
with them right off the bat. She was connecting with
(02:40):
these students, fourteen year old Phillip Chism and this other
student who has remained anonymous all throughout, but she told us.
This unnamed student said that while they were both there
after school for a little help with the algebra class
they were dealing with, Colleen Ritzer was talking to them
about personal stuff mentioned the state of Tennessee See. Phillip Chisholm,
(03:05):
at fourteen, had only recently moved to Danvers, Massachusetts. He
had come from Tennessee. His mother and father divorced in Tennessee.
They had a very difficult marriage. A lot of accusations,
but finally, Philip Chisholm's mother decided to leave Tennessee and
move to Massachusetts with her son, Philip and a daughter.
(03:27):
They settled into a small basement apartment, and Philip was
not happy with it, apparently because while he was at
this after school help session, and apparently apparently according to
the other student that was there, she saw a change
in Phillip Chisholm immediately, and it took a minute for
the teacher to pick up on it, and she stopped
(03:50):
talking about Tennessee. But Philip Chisholm, the other students said,
really shut down and started talking to himself, saying words
to himself out loud that this other student, she was
impacted by it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
For this set of circumstances, if you have this, and
particularly if you're you know, I'm thinking about this through
the eyes of an investigator, but if you have that
moment in time where you get this kind of brooding, dark,
malevolent kind of presence that's there almost out of nowhere.
She recognized this and she changed subjects at that point time.
(04:31):
And I think, you know, some people, some people do
things I think in communications with folks and they don't
care what they say or how the individual reacts. They'll
just completely bul those over them and completely talk about
this thing that's irritating somebody. Maybe they're doing it to
be mean spirited, or maybe they're doing it because they
have no self awareness. But in this particular case, I
(04:53):
think that this was kind of a what do they
call it, a portent of things to come. And it
happened to Dave in a the flash of a twinkling
of the eye, essentially where this thing really went from
zero to sixty in just a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Philip Chism, the fourteen year old accused of murdering and
raping and robbing his twenty four year old algebra teacher
after school. They were trying to find a motive. I'm
thinking it had to have been. It had to have
been a big moment for her to realize what had
taken place, because again the teacher stops talking about Tennessee,
(05:33):
changes the subject, but he Philip is stuck. Philip Chism
is stuck in that rut right then, and remains in
that rut and doesn't get out of it. And how
important is a motive to an investigation?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I think to the extent where I'm trying and I'm
speaking only on my behalf here. I can't speak to
any colleagues or former colleagues and that sort of thing,
or even the people I teach. For me, I liked
to have an idea of motive because it would give
me an opportunity to have another perspective on the scene
(06:06):
and how I'm going to interpret that scene and listen.
The thing about it is is motives are highly subjective,
you know, because anybody, you know, we were talking about being
triggered a moment ago, well, you know, pick your you know,
pick your poison here, what would gee, what were you
triggered by today that sets you off to conduct this
kind of violence or act this way? And it could
(06:27):
it could vary from one day to the next. Is
that the motive? Is it triggering a motive? Or is
it something that's really deeper? Could it? Could it have
anything to do with maybe you've got a young man
that just hates women, and that's certainly you know, a potential,
(06:48):
maybe hates authority figures. Maybe it's something to do with race.
Maybe it's something to do with coming from the south
and he goes to the north and he holds some
kind of animosity about that. You know, maybe there the
fact that he probably speaks with maybe a Southern accent,
(07:10):
and he shows up up there. And I love my
friends in Massachusetts. I love going to and I could
just sit back for hours and listen to him talk.
One of my favorite colleagues that I work with is
from He's a former Boston police officer, and I'd give
him five dollars just to say stuff you know, to read,
because he's so fascinating to listen to. But you never
know what's going to set anybody off, and that, Dave,
(07:34):
is why that makes this all the more ominous, because
you never know, you never know what's waiting for you
around the next ben, even in a public restaurant. To
(08:07):
say that the murder Colleen Ritzer, to say that it's
brutal is kind of an understatement. It's one thing for
someone to be murdered in some obscure location that is
kind of out of sight. It could even be a
(08:29):
private home. I think one of the things that kind
of sends a chill up your spine with this particular
case is that anybody, and I mean anybody, could have
walked in during the commission of these.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Deeds anybody did.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're right, and boy, we're really I think Dave very
fortunate that we're not talking about a double homicide here.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Hey, one little thing to add to this. Joe she
lives at home with her mom and dad because she's
also working on getting her master's degree. This is and
Colleen Ritzer, she was this kind of person who lit
up her room. Most of the faculty and students who
talked about he said they never saw her where she
wasn't smiling.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, and she's got this beautiful, big, big smile. You know,
she's just she has that appearance, a big, beautiful smile,
and she just looked like somebody that would, you know,
readily engage with you and chat with you.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Breaking down the timeline, Joe, two fifty four pm. Colleen
Ritzer is going to use the restroom, but the faculty
restroom is busy, so she uses the student's restroom on
the second floor. At two fifty five. One minute later,
Philip Chisholm, fourteen year old, wearing gloves and a red
hoodie pulled over his head, enters that same restroom. He
(09:47):
follows her into the restroom. By the way, we have
all this on videos, surveillance video who's throughout the school
help us with this timeline, and that's why we can
tell you what he was wearing when he went in.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I got to say before you go any further, these
screen captures in this case are chilling. I know I
keep using the word chilling. They are. They are absolutely
chilling because I think that you and I, as you
previously mentioned, Dave, can identify with this environment, this moment
school environment, and when you see this going on and
you know the story behind it, oh boy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So two fifty four, she goes in the bathroom two
fifty five, he's right behind her. At three oh six,
in the middle of everything horrible. You can imagine a
female student enters the bathroom and on video, we don't
know what she sees. We just know that she walks
into the bathroom and immediately quickly walks right back out.
Later on we find out she tells investigators that she
saw the back of a person who appeared to be
(10:38):
changing clothes. The person's rear area was exposed and clothes
were piled on the floor. A minute later, three oh seven,
Chishlm is seen leaving the restroom three twenty two. Now
Chishman is walking back and forth. He's in and out
of the room several times. He is seen coming back
to the restroom with a recycling barrel. At three twenty two,
(11:02):
Chisholm leaves the restroom pulling the barrel. This time he's
got a black mask on his forehead. I want to
point something out here. While we have video of all
of these things, we only have video of Colleen Ritzer
entering the bathroom. We do not have video of Colleen
Ritzer leaving the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Bets on really, bets on Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Chisholm is on video pulling the barrel outside. He pulls
it towards the student parking lot. Investigators say there is
what appears to be bloodstains near the bathroom in the video.
They also say there are what appeared to be blood
stains on Chisholm's pants in the video. Three point thirty
in the afternoon, a parent of student sees Philip Chisholm
(11:41):
running away from the school. The reason this comes up
is because Philip Chisholm didn't go home after school and
his mom starts calling around looking for him. His mom
ends up coming to the school can't find him anywhere.
She finally calls police at six thirty four to report
(12:01):
Philip Chisholm is missing. He went to school this day,
he didn't come home. In the meantime, Colleen Ritzer, her
parents also were worried, and they come to the school.
You know, her car is still in the parking lot.
They're trying to retrace final footsteps, and they report her
missing later on. Now here's the kick, Joe. At nine
o'clock that night, the high school principal actually sends out
(12:24):
a mass email to high school staff and parents, Hey,
we've got a fourteen year old student who is missing.
After that email comes out, everybody say, hey, wait a minute,
we've got a teacher missing too. So if you can
imagine in this very small community, Joe, you know, there
were a lot of rumors.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh, you're absolutely right, and you know, fear begins to
settle in and you begin to think about, well, first off,
teachers just don't vanish off the face of the planet,
you know, particularly when they're you know, they're attached to
the community like this. And one of the things that
we look for in investigations has has anybody that is
(13:08):
part of the principal investigation deviated from any of their
normal day to day activities. You know, like, is it
within was it within the realm of possibility that she
would not make contact with her parents? Is it within
the realm possibility she would not go back to her apartment,
(13:30):
within their home. Is it within the realm of possibility
that she would leave her car at the school and
not you know, not attend. Would she just wander off by.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
The way, Yeah, go ahead, us running in the timeline.
Take all that away from what the everybody in the
community knows. All they know, They don't know the timeline
we just broke down. All they know is a fourteen
year old student never made it home from school. And
then later that evening, Wait a minute, his math teacher
didn't return home from school either. And then another math
you're who is friends with Colleen tells the principle, Hey,
(14:04):
Philip was in her classroom today, and they start putting
all this together and that thankfully they had the video.
Thankfully they have surveillance cameras, or we wouldn't know a
lot of what we know.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, we would have no idea. And this is in
the early days of kind of digital technology and digital sleuthing,
and you know, they they were able to they the
authorities were able to actually you know, ping both of
their phones. And what was fascinating about this is that
with Colleen they pinged her phone and the last known
(14:39):
location was approximating, you know, the school. But for Chisholm,
they had pinged his phone and it was last scene,
our last it last pinged in the vicinity of Hollywood
Hits Theater, a movie theater, Dave, you know, several hours later.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Not even in It was in a community that it
wasn't like right down the street. This was in a
different community, a little ways away.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And he had bolted, you know, to that location for
whatever reason. I don't know. I mean, you know, you're
talking about the brain of a fourteen year old. I
think probably one of the things that we have to
return to here when you have a case like this
and you you have evidence of violence, certainly in this bathroom,
(15:26):
you've got significant deposition of blood, you know, lying about
in the bathroom. You know that the individual that is
eventually discovered and found, Chisholm, he's got bloodstains on him.
You know, even after all of these after all these hours,
(15:50):
and one of the things that you're looking at here
with with a crime scene like this is something that
we refer to and let me break these for us.
We've got the primary crime scene most of the time,
and death investigation we consider a primary crom scene as
to where the body is actually located. Some people will
(16:12):
deviate from that and they'll say where the action actually
took place, But for me, everything is eccentric to the body.
So if you have a location where the body is,
that's where you're going to set up as your primary
location or your primary crime scene. And then because you've
got so much movement with this case, you've got a
(16:33):
secondary crime scene okay, which might yield a lot of
evidence at that location, but you're not going to have
the body the corpus delecti at that moment time. And
then you'll have things like tertiary crime scenes. So if
you've got say some kind of vessel, our vehicle that
has transported a body somewhere and it's found in another location,
(16:58):
that would be a tertiary crime. I'm seeing uh, people
throwing throwing, throwing car clothing out of a car as
they're going down the road. You know, those items left
behind on the on the roadside are not the primary
crom scene, but yet they're valuable, and that would be
a tertiary cromscene. But in this case, Dave, something that's
(17:18):
very ominous is that in one of the clips you
can see Chisholm pulling a garbage can as he's leaving
the building and he disappears into a wooded area, and
later on that's where Colleen is actually found. Going back
(17:59):
years and years compared those years to where we are
now in investigations, and I begin to think about, Wow,
if I had only had that technology way back then,
if my colleagues that were in law enforcement that were
all about trying to locate individuals, particularly suspects in crops,
(18:21):
if they had only had the technology we have today.
In this particular case, Dave, we've got a phone that
is pinging that belongs to Philip Chisholm, And what a
big break in the case this was.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, they were able to, as you mentioned earlier, get
it at this place called Hollywood Hits Theater where they
have his phone ping there and he bought a ticket,
but they also say he didn't stay for the movie.
He bought the ticket, but he left the theater he
was found. Now that was eleven thirty or so at
twelve twenty, twelve thirty in the morning, he's walking down
(18:58):
the road and they are looking for him. There is
now a fourteen year old missing. You know, they've got
the bolo out be on the lookout. And when they
stop him, they find out that, hey, this is the
fourteen year old we're looking for. Well, as they check
him out, they find out he has a knife on him.
But when they look in his backpack, that's when police
(19:20):
realized they they've got a problem here. Police find a
bloodstained box cutter. When they asked him, hey, where did
the blood come from? Allegedly, he said the girl Chisholm
is also carrying Colleen rid Through's driver's license and credit
cards and has a pair of blue and green women's underwear.
(19:45):
When he's asked, hey, where did you get this stuff?
He said that he found the items at a gas station.
That's what he said. At first. Of course, they didn't
believe him, and they pushed harder, and that's when he
later said that he took them her driver's license, credit cards,
and underwear from her car, and that's when they arrested him.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Still, Colleen Richard is missing and David. It wasn't until
I don't know, I guess after daybreak the next morning
where her body is actually found just off school grounds
are immediately adjacent to school grounds.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Near where they saw him dragging that tub.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
It's a big wheeled garbage can, is actually what it is.
It's the same thing that for those of us that
live in urban areas, you know, you drag your garbage
out to the curb and the you know, the sanitation
people come by and pick it up and you retrieve
it. It looks just like that. It's the same thing and
certainly could accommodate a human remain very easily. And you know,
(20:43):
if you see somebody pulling this thing, listen, the first
thing that you're going to think of is, gee, I
wonder if he's got a dead body in there. It's not,
you know, and the guy's just like walking down the sidewalk.
And what's really interesting is one of the screenshots they've
got of him pulling this garbage can is there's another
individual working walking in front of him that's completely unaware
(21:04):
of what's going on at that moment time you see
this young man pull in a garbage can taking it
out to this location. And you know, videography played a
key role in this all the way along, and maybe
and isn't it weird? This is all the way back,
all those years ago, Dave. And you know now, you know,
we'll we'll still have problems with videography C see TV
(21:27):
where we can't make out detail. And man, I got
to tell you, you can make out every single detail in
this case relative to you know, these kind of electronic
breadcrumbs that are being left behind.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All I could think of was, whoever set that up?
Boil boy, if I'm doing if I'm hiring security for
my school, that's who I'm hiring that company?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, And and they, you know, they were in
that sense, they were able to get a hold of this.
And what a valuable piece of evidence to have if
you're a prosecutor and you're moving forward with this case,
it's really hard to stare, stare this down and deny
that you were having physical contact with her, because you know,
(22:06):
I go back to you remember what I was saying
about the crime scene. This is a very bloody affair
day because as it turns out, this is uh.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Well, when they found her body, they found her body
right there in the in the brushes on school property
and her body had been covered with least Yeah, and
the video that you and I have already talked about.
Investigators find that and that helps them put everything together.
And I don't know how quickly they watched the video.
I'm going to assume it was very early on.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Pretty Dog one quickly because they're looking for this teacher
and they got this kid wandering around.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Hey, he's got her ID credit cards on a bloody
box cutter. This is not going to end well.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
No, it's not. And in addition to that, he's got
blood on his pants.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Oh, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So it's it's really hard to to kind of separate
these things out. And and the fact that you know,
initial reports when it came out regarding this it said
that Colleen had had her throat cut. But that's really
soft pedaling this thing.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
It's a lot more to that, Right. How was her
body positioned when they found her body under the leaves
and everything else? How was she positioned? What did the
police see when they found her?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, when they found her, she was in this very
provocative positioning, So that and they have framed this as
saying she was sexually positioned, which in cases involving females
like this, you've got they're posed so that their genitalia
is readily visible. And you know, having work cases involving
(23:43):
sexual predators. And I gotta say, I think that this
kid probably is. I don't know if this was just
something that was burgeoning within him at this moment point
in time, or if he had had previous experiences, maybe exposure,
maybe inappropriate touching, this sort of thing, and it escalated
to this point because it was an opportunistic thing. And
(24:06):
here's another piece to this. They found him with a
box cutter, Dave, And I'm thinking, why do you have
a box cutter with you at school? Why are you
carrying this thing with you? Were you looking for an
opportunity to assault someone? And you have this excuse, Remember
we were talking about the triggering thing where you know,
(24:26):
she had mentioned his former home state of Tennessee, and
now he has an excuse to move forward with maybe
this fantasy that he has. But I can tell you this,
he had made an effort to conceal her body and
it's much more horrible. I think that what he did
with her that gives me an indication that this is
(24:49):
not maybe a one off event, because after after he
had literally killed her in that bathroom, Dave, he stabbed
her multiple times in the throat with a box cutter,
which is not it's not like being stabbed with a knife.
It is kind of shallow, if you will, because you know,
(25:11):
box cutter are only you know, it's maybe an inch
inch and a half in depth to blade itself, very
sharp point sharp edge that dulls very quickly. But he
cut her throat in addition to that, So that's going
to check her out. But in the midst of this,
there's a sexual assault coin on inside of a women's
stall in this bathroom that's open to the public. That
(25:32):
child that walked in there. That's why I was saying,
she really dodged a bullet with this thing, because this
guy was ripping this poor teacher to shreds in there.
But it gets worse because after he had transported her
body out to this location, he actually left behind two
(25:52):
significant pieces of evidence, and those bits of evidence, first off,
he took a stick and assaulted her again in her
post mortem state. So this is literally the abuse of
a corpse at this point in time, so much so
that he left this stick in place that when the
(26:16):
medical examiner went to examine her remains they had to
remove it at autopsy. Just let that kind of seep
into the groundwater there and begin to think about that.
But also one other thing that he left behind that
is real telltale. Here he left a note that was
immediately adjacent to her body, and the note was simply
(26:41):
written out. It said, I hate you all. Now. I
don't know if we had you know, forensic psychologists don't
here with us or whatever. Maybe they could read a
lot into that. I don't need a psychology degree, you know,
to kind of assess this and begin to think. There's
a lot of anger that's tied up in this, a
lot of psychopathology that's tied into this. And poor Colleen
(27:06):
happened to be in the wrong place the wrong time.
Maybe he had targeted her. Maybe for some reason he
decided that she was representative of everything that he hated
about his life or whatever. Because you know, it's wrote
for people to say, well, sexual assault and rape are
not a sexual event. It's a power event where you're
(27:26):
in control. And he would have been in total control.
This poor woman with this beautiful smile that wanted to
help kids learn probably one of the most complex things
that you can learn at this level in school. And
she's taking time and Dave he ripped her to shreds Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
There was something that was added to that. They said
that he folded the note folded in such a way
that it wasn't just laying out there. I wonder about that.
You know, what, if any did that have. But they
talked about the change of clothes that he had with
him that day and this so called of this talking
about the state of Tennessee. Well, I'm thinking if he
(28:04):
had planned all this ahead of time, Joe, to have
a change of clothes. When I was fourteen, I didn't
have a change of clothes. I wouldn't. I would never
have done that. That wouldn't be part of my regular day.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I remember several occasions I forgot my dress out clothes,
you know that you have to have for pe or whatnot.
You know, your fourteen year old boy, boys do that.
We're idiots at that age.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
He was planning, you know, he was.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Planning, and he's got the box cutter. I guess some
people would say, in his defense, well, he's in a
new environment. He felt threatened in this environment to the
degree that you're going to bring a sharp a sharp
instrument to school. And I can't imagine in under any
circumstances that this young teacher was threatening him. As a
matter of fact, she was trying to help him. In
(28:51):
the end, the conclusion that was arrived at was that
he destroyed her life. And I would to you that
he destroyed or damaged severely a lot of the lives
of the people in that school moving forward. This is
something that no one is ever going to forget that
was at that school at that period of time. Anytime
(29:14):
you drop by that school and you're a former student there,
or whatever the case might be, maybe maybe you occupy
home that's immediately adjacent to that location. You look across
the street and you think about what happened. It's forever
scarred that community. But what eventually happens to him. Please
tell me that he's now behind bars.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
He was convicted, He was tried as an adult. He
was fourteen when this happened, seventeen when he was convicted,
and he was sentenced twenty five years for the murder,
forty years and one day for raping and robbing Colleen Ritzer.
The sentence is to be served. Concurrently, he will not
be eligible for parole until the forty years has been served.
(29:57):
There'll be fifty four before he had as a chance
to walk free.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
You know, many people think, you know, you're fourteen years old,
How can you be held responsible as an adult for
these actions that you took all those years ago. I
think the question to that should be, how could you
not hold him responsible for the destruction and the desecration
(30:22):
of Colleen. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
Dots
Body bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Having for the better
part of my adult life been married to a public educator,
one thing I've come to realize is that if you
(00:32):
can find a really good math teacher, that's somebody that
you need to hold on to in the public education system,
because math is not something that most people warm up to.
It's not something that people say, you know, gee, I
want to take as many math classes as I can
(00:53):
in high school, including ap and all those sorts of
things most people are scared of. Math comes through all
the time. I hear it at college, even you know,
with my students. But you know, there was a math
teacher in Danvers, Massachusetts, back in twenty thirteen. She was
(01:17):
only in her mid twenties. She was bright. She was
in a position where she was attempting to teach her
students about the complexities of math and the functions. But
unfortunately for her, this young lady would never finish out
(01:38):
her career because at the age of twenty four years old,
she was attacked, raped, and murdered within the walls of
her own school. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this his
(02:01):
body bats. Have you ever had that moment where you're
talking to somebody, and you know, the term trigger gets
used a lot nowadays, and I don't put as much
stock in it as many people do, because you know,
if you look for things to be triggered by, you're
gonna find them, trust me.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
At the end of the school day, Colleen Ritzer was
meeting with Philip Chism and another student and they were talking.
The other student was there for help with math, and
I don't know if Chism was there for help with
math or whatever, but Colleen Ritzer was not discussing algebra
with them right off the bat. She was connecting with
(02:40):
these students, fourteen year old Phillip Chism and this other
student who has remained anonymous all throughout, but she told us.
This unnamed student said that while they were both there
after school for a little help with the algebra class
they were dealing with, Colleen Ritzer was talking to them
about personal stuff mentioned the state of Tennessee See. Phillip Chisholm,
(03:05):
at fourteen, had only recently moved to Danvers, Massachusetts. He
had come from Tennessee. His mother and father divorced in Tennessee.
They had a very difficult marriage. A lot of accusations,
but finally, Philip Chisholm's mother decided to leave Tennessee and
move to Massachusetts with her son, Philip and a daughter.
(03:27):
They settled into a small basement apartment, and Philip was
not happy with it, apparently because while he was at
this after school help session, and apparently apparently according to
the other student that was there, she saw a change
in Phillip Chisholm immediately, and it took a minute for
the teacher to pick up on it, and she stopped
(03:50):
talking about Tennessee. But Philip Chisholm, the other students said,
really shut down and started talking to himself, saying words
to himself out loud that this other student, she was
impacted by it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
For this set of circumstances, if you have this, and
particularly if you're you know, I'm thinking about this through
the eyes of an investigator, but if you have that
moment in time where you get this kind of brooding, dark,
malevolent kind of presence that's there almost out of nowhere.
She recognized this and she changed subjects at that point time.
(04:31):
And I think, you know, some people, some people do
things I think in communications with folks and they don't
care what they say or how the individual reacts. They'll
just completely bul those over them and completely talk about
this thing that's irritating somebody. Maybe they're doing it to
be mean spirited, or maybe they're doing it because they
have no self awareness. But in this particular case, I
(04:53):
think that this was kind of a what do they
call it, a portent of things to come. And it
happened to Dave in a the flash of a twinkling
of the eye, essentially where this thing really went from
zero to sixty in just a very short period of time.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Philip Chism, the fourteen year old accused of murdering and
raping and robbing his twenty four year old algebra teacher
after school. They were trying to find a motive. I'm
thinking it had to have been. It had to have
been a big moment for her to realize what had
taken place, because again the teacher stops talking about Tennessee,
(05:33):
changes the subject, but he Philip is stuck. Philip Chism
is stuck in that rut right then, and remains in
that rut and doesn't get out of it. And how
important is a motive to an investigation?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I think to the extent where I'm trying and I'm
speaking only on my behalf here. I can't speak to
any colleagues or former colleagues and that sort of thing,
or even the people I teach. For me, I liked
to have an idea of motive because it would give
me an opportunity to have another perspective on the scene
(06:06):
and how I'm going to interpret that scene and listen.
The thing about it is is motives are highly subjective,
you know, because anybody, you know, we were talking about being
triggered a moment ago, well, you know, pick your you know,
pick your poison here, what would gee, what were you
triggered by today that sets you off to conduct this
kind of violence or act this way? And it could
(06:27):
it could vary from one day to the next. Is
that the motive? Is it triggering a motive? Or is
it something that's really deeper? Could it? Could it have
anything to do with maybe you've got a young man
that just hates women, and that's certainly you know, a potential,
(06:48):
maybe hates authority figures. Maybe it's something to do with race.
Maybe it's something to do with coming from the south
and he goes to the north and he holds some
kind of animosity about that. You know, maybe there the
fact that he probably speaks with maybe a Southern accent,
(07:10):
and he shows up up there. And I love my
friends in Massachusetts. I love going to and I could
just sit back for hours and listen to him talk.
One of my favorite colleagues that I work with is
from He's a former Boston police officer, and I'd give
him five dollars just to say stuff you know, to read,
because he's so fascinating to listen to. But you never
know what's going to set anybody off, and that, Dave,
(07:34):
is why that makes this all the more ominous, because
you never know, you never know what's waiting for you
around the next ben, even in a public restaurant. To
(08:07):
say that the murder Colleen Ritzer, to say that it's
brutal is kind of an understatement. It's one thing for
someone to be murdered in some obscure location that is
kind of out of sight. It could even be a
(08:29):
private home. I think one of the things that kind
of sends a chill up your spine with this particular
case is that anybody, and I mean anybody, could have
walked in during the commission of these.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Deeds anybody did.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're right, and boy, we're really I think Dave very
fortunate that we're not talking about a double homicide here.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Hey, one little thing to add to this. Joe she
lives at home with her mom and dad because she's
also working on getting her master's degree. This is and
Colleen Ritzer, she was this kind of person who lit
up her room. Most of the faculty and students who
talked about he said they never saw her where she
wasn't smiling.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, and she's got this beautiful, big, big smile. You know,
she's just she has that appearance, a big, beautiful smile,
and she just looked like somebody that would, you know,
readily engage with you and chat with you.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Breaking down the timeline, Joe, two fifty four pm. Colleen
Ritzer is going to use the restroom, but the faculty
restroom is busy, so she uses the student's restroom on
the second floor. At two fifty five. One minute later,
Philip Chisholm, fourteen year old, wearing gloves and a red
hoodie pulled over his head, enters that same restroom. He
(09:47):
follows her into the restroom. By the way, we have
all this on videos, surveillance video who's throughout the school
help us with this timeline, and that's why we can
tell you what he was wearing when he went in.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I got to say before you go any further, these
screen captures in this case are chilling. I know I
keep using the word chilling. They are. They are absolutely
chilling because I think that you and I, as you
previously mentioned, Dave, can identify with this environment, this moment
school environment, and when you see this going on and
you know the story behind it, oh boy, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So two fifty four, she goes in the bathroom two
fifty five, he's right behind her. At three oh six,
in the middle of everything horrible. You can imagine a
female student enters the bathroom and on video, we don't
know what she sees. We just know that she walks
into the bathroom and immediately quickly walks right back out.
Later on we find out she tells investigators that she
saw the back of a person who appeared to be
(10:38):
changing clothes. The person's rear area was exposed and clothes
were piled on the floor. A minute later, three oh seven,
Chishlm is seen leaving the restroom three twenty two. Now
Chishman is walking back and forth. He's in and out
of the room several times. He is seen coming back
to the restroom with a recycling barrel. At three twenty two,
(11:02):
Chisholm leaves the restroom pulling the barrel. This time he's
got a black mask on his forehead. I want to
point something out here. While we have video of all
of these things, we only have video of Colleen Ritzer
entering the bathroom. We do not have video of Colleen
Ritzer leaving the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Bets on really, bets on Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Chisholm is on video pulling the barrel outside. He pulls
it towards the student parking lot. Investigators say there is
what appears to be bloodstains near the bathroom in the video.
They also say there are what appeared to be blood
stains on Chisholm's pants in the video. Three point thirty
in the afternoon, a parent of student sees Philip Chisholm
(11:41):
running away from the school. The reason this comes up
is because Philip Chisholm didn't go home after school and
his mom starts calling around looking for him. His mom
ends up coming to the school can't find him anywhere.
She finally calls police at six thirty four to report
(12:01):
Philip Chisholm is missing. He went to school this day,
he didn't come home. In the meantime, Colleen Ritzer, her
parents also were worried, and they come to the school.
You know, her car is still in the parking lot.
They're trying to retrace final footsteps, and they report her
missing later on. Now here's the kick, Joe. At nine
o'clock that night, the high school principal actually sends out
(12:24):
a mass email to high school staff and parents, Hey,
we've got a fourteen year old student who is missing.
After that email comes out, everybody say, hey, wait a minute,
we've got a teacher missing too. So if you can
imagine in this very small community, Joe, you know, there
were a lot of rumors.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh, you're absolutely right, and you know, fear begins to
settle in and you begin to think about, well, first off,
teachers just don't vanish off the face of the planet,
you know, particularly when they're you know, they're attached to
the community like this. And one of the things that
we look for in investigations has has anybody that is
(13:08):
part of the principal investigation deviated from any of their
normal day to day activities. You know, like, is it
within was it within the realm of possibility that she
would not make contact with her parents? Is it within
the realm possibility she would not go back to her apartment,
(13:30):
within their home. Is it within the realm of possibility
that she would leave her car at the school and
not you know, not attend. Would she just wander off by.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
The way, Yeah, go ahead, us running in the timeline.
Take all that away from what the everybody in the
community knows. All they know, They don't know the timeline
we just broke down. All they know is a fourteen
year old student never made it home from school. And
then later that evening, Wait a minute, his math teacher
didn't return home from school either. And then another math
you're who is friends with Colleen tells the principle, Hey,
(14:04):
Philip was in her classroom today, and they start putting
all this together and that thankfully they had the video.
Thankfully they have surveillance cameras, or we wouldn't know a
lot of what we know.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, we would have no idea. And this is in
the early days of kind of digital technology and digital sleuthing,
and you know, they they were able to they the
authorities were able to actually you know, ping both of
their phones. And what was fascinating about this is that
with Colleen they pinged her phone and the last known
(14:39):
location was approximating, you know, the school. But for Chisholm,
they had pinged his phone and it was last scene,
our last it last pinged in the vicinity of Hollywood
Hits Theater, a movie theater, Dave, you know, several hours later.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Not even in It was in a community that it
wasn't like right down the street. This was in a
different community, a little ways away.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And he had bolted, you know, to that location for
whatever reason. I don't know. I mean, you know, you're
talking about the brain of a fourteen year old. I
think probably one of the things that we have to
return to here when you have a case like this
and you you have evidence of violence, certainly in this bathroom,
(15:26):
you've got significant deposition of blood, you know, lying about
in the bathroom. You know that the individual that is
eventually discovered and found, Chisholm, he's got bloodstains on him.
You know, even after all of these after all these hours,
(15:50):
and one of the things that you're looking at here
with with a crime scene like this is something that
we refer to and let me break these for us.
We've got the primary crime scene most of the time,
and death investigation we consider a primary crom scene as
to where the body is actually located. Some people will
(16:12):
deviate from that and they'll say where the action actually
took place, But for me, everything is eccentric to the body.
So if you have a location where the body is,
that's where you're going to set up as your primary
location or your primary crime scene. And then because you've
got so much movement with this case, you've got a
(16:33):
secondary crime scene okay, which might yield a lot of
evidence at that location, but you're not going to have
the body the corpus delecti at that moment time. And
then you'll have things like tertiary crime scenes. So if
you've got say some kind of vessel, our vehicle that
has transported a body somewhere and it's found in another location,
(16:58):
that would be a tertiary crime. I'm seeing uh, people
throwing throwing, throwing car clothing out of a car as
they're going down the road. You know, those items left
behind on the on the roadside are not the primary
crom scene, but yet they're valuable, and that would be
a tertiary cromscene. But in this case, Dave, something that's
(17:18):
very ominous is that in one of the clips you
can see Chisholm pulling a garbage can as he's leaving
the building and he disappears into a wooded area, and
later on that's where Colleen is actually found. Going back
(17:59):
years and years compared those years to where we are
now in investigations, and I begin to think about, Wow,
if I had only had that technology way back then,
if my colleagues that were in law enforcement that were
all about trying to locate individuals, particularly suspects in crops,
(18:21):
if they had only had the technology we have today.
In this particular case, Dave, we've got a phone that
is pinging that belongs to Philip Chisholm, And what a
big break in the case this was.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, they were able to, as you mentioned earlier, get
it at this place called Hollywood Hits Theater where they
have his phone ping there and he bought a ticket,
but they also say he didn't stay for the movie.
He bought the ticket, but he left the theater he
was found. Now that was eleven thirty or so at
twelve twenty, twelve thirty in the morning, he's walking down
(18:58):
the road and they are looking for him. There is
now a fourteen year old missing. You know, they've got
the bolo out be on the lookout. And when they
stop him, they find out that, hey, this is the
fourteen year old we're looking for. Well, as they check
him out, they find out he has a knife on him.
But when they look in his backpack, that's when police
(19:20):
realized they they've got a problem here. Police find a
bloodstained box cutter. When they asked him, hey, where did
the blood come from? Allegedly, he said the girl Chisholm
is also carrying Colleen rid Through's driver's license and credit
cards and has a pair of blue and green women's underwear.
(19:45):
When he's asked, hey, where did you get this stuff?
He said that he found the items at a gas station.
That's what he said. At first. Of course, they didn't
believe him, and they pushed harder, and that's when he
later said that he took them her driver's license, credit cards,
and underwear from her car, and that's when they arrested him.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Still, Colleen Richard is missing and David. It wasn't until
I don't know, I guess after daybreak the next morning
where her body is actually found just off school grounds
are immediately adjacent to school grounds.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Near where they saw him dragging that tub.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
It's a big wheeled garbage can, is actually what it is.
It's the same thing that for those of us that
live in urban areas, you know, you drag your garbage
out to the curb and the you know, the sanitation
people come by and pick it up and you retrieve
it. It looks just like that. It's the same thing and
certainly could accommodate a human remain very easily. And you know,
(20:43):
if you see somebody pulling this thing, listen, the first
thing that you're going to think of is, gee, I
wonder if he's got a dead body in there. It's not,
you know, and the guy's just like walking down the sidewalk.
And what's really interesting is one of the screenshots they've
got of him pulling this garbage can is there's another
individual working walking in front of him that's completely unaware
(21:04):
of what's going on at that moment time you see
this young man pull in a garbage can taking it
out to this location. And you know, videography played a
key role in this all the way along, and maybe
and isn't it weird? This is all the way back,
all those years ago, Dave. And you know now, you know,
we'll we'll still have problems with videography C see TV
(21:27):
where we can't make out detail. And man, I got
to tell you, you can make out every single detail in
this case relative to you know, these kind of electronic
breadcrumbs that are being left behind.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
All I could think of was, whoever set that up?
Boil boy, if I'm doing if I'm hiring security for
my school, that's who I'm hiring that company?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, And and they, you know, they were in
that sense, they were able to get a hold of this.
And what a valuable piece of evidence to have if
you're a prosecutor and you're moving forward with this case,
it's really hard to stare, stare this down and deny
that you were having physical contact with her, because you know,
(22:06):
I go back to you remember what I was saying
about the crime scene. This is a very bloody affair
day because as it turns out, this is uh.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Well, when they found her body, they found her body
right there in the in the brushes on school property
and her body had been covered with least Yeah, and
the video that you and I have already talked about.
Investigators find that and that helps them put everything together.
And I don't know how quickly they watched the video.
I'm going to assume it was very early on.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Pretty Dog one quickly because they're looking for this teacher
and they got this kid wandering around.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Hey, he's got her ID credit cards on a bloody
box cutter. This is not going to end well.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
No, it's not. And in addition to that, he's got
blood on his pants.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Oh, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
So it's it's really hard to to kind of separate
these things out. And and the fact that you know,
initial reports when it came out regarding this it said
that Colleen had had her throat cut. But that's really
soft pedaling this thing.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
It's a lot more to that, Right. How was her
body positioned when they found her body under the leaves
and everything else? How was she positioned? What did the
police see when they found her?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, when they found her, she was in this very
provocative positioning, So that and they have framed this as
saying she was sexually positioned, which in cases involving females
like this, you've got they're posed so that their genitalia
is readily visible. And you know, having work cases involving
(23:43):
sexual predators. And I gotta say, I think that this
kid probably is. I don't know if this was just
something that was burgeoning within him at this moment point
in time, or if he had had previous experiences, maybe exposure,
maybe inappropriate touching, this sort of thing, and it escalated
to this point because it was an opportunistic thing. And
(24:06):
here's another piece to this. They found him with a
box cutter, Dave, And I'm thinking, why do you have
a box cutter with you at school? Why are you
carrying this thing with you? Were you looking for an
opportunity to assault someone? And you have this excuse, Remember
we were talking about the triggering thing where you know,
(24:26):
she had mentioned his former home state of Tennessee, and
now he has an excuse to move forward with maybe
this fantasy that he has. But I can tell you this,
he had made an effort to conceal her body and
it's much more horrible. I think that what he did
with her that gives me an indication that this is
(24:49):
not maybe a one off event, because after after he
had literally killed her in that bathroom, Dave, he stabbed
her multiple times in the throat with a box cutter,
which is not it's not like being stabbed with a knife.
It is kind of shallow, if you will, because you know,
(25:11):
box cutter are only you know, it's maybe an inch
inch and a half in depth to blade itself, very
sharp point sharp edge that dulls very quickly. But he
cut her throat in addition to that, So that's going
to check her out. But in the midst of this,
there's a sexual assault coin on inside of a women's
stall in this bathroom that's open to the public. That
(25:32):
child that walked in there. That's why I was saying,
she really dodged a bullet with this thing, because this
guy was ripping this poor teacher to shreds in there.
But it gets worse because after he had transported her
body out to this location, he actually left behind two
(25:52):
significant pieces of evidence, and those bits of evidence, first off,
he took a stick and assaulted her again in her
post mortem state. So this is literally the abuse of
a corpse at this point in time, so much so
that he left this stick in place that when the
(26:16):
medical examiner went to examine her remains they had to
remove it at autopsy. Just let that kind of seep
into the groundwater there and begin to think about that.
But also one other thing that he left behind that
is real telltale. Here he left a note that was
immediately adjacent to her body, and the note was simply
(26:41):
written out. It said, I hate you all. Now. I
don't know if we had you know, forensic psychologists don't
here with us or whatever. Maybe they could read a
lot into that. I don't need a psychology degree, you know,
to kind of assess this and begin to think. There's
a lot of anger that's tied up in this, a
lot of psychopathology that's tied into this. And poor Colleen
(27:06):
happened to be in the wrong place the wrong time.
Maybe he had targeted her. Maybe for some reason he
decided that she was representative of everything that he hated
about his life or whatever. Because you know, it's wrote
for people to say, well, sexual assault and rape are
not a sexual event. It's a power event where you're
(27:26):
in control. And he would have been in total control.
This poor woman with this beautiful smile that wanted to
help kids learn probably one of the most complex things
that you can learn at this level in school. And
she's taking time and Dave he ripped her to shreds Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
There was something that was added to that. They said
that he folded the note folded in such a way
that it wasn't just laying out there. I wonder about that.
You know, what, if any did that have. But they
talked about the change of clothes that he had with
him that day and this so called of this talking
about the state of Tennessee. Well, I'm thinking if he
(28:04):
had planned all this ahead of time, Joe, to have
a change of clothes. When I was fourteen, I didn't
have a change of clothes. I wouldn't. I would never
have done that. That wouldn't be part of my regular day.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I remember several occasions I forgot my dress out clothes,
you know that you have to have for pe or whatnot.
You know, your fourteen year old boy, boys do that.
We're idiots at that age.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
He was planning, you know, he was.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Planning, and he's got the box cutter. I guess some
people would say, in his defense, well, he's in a
new environment. He felt threatened in this environment to the
degree that you're going to bring a sharp a sharp
instrument to school. And I can't imagine in under any
circumstances that this young teacher was threatening him. As a
matter of fact, she was trying to help him. In
(28:51):
the end, the conclusion that was arrived at was that
he destroyed her life. And I would to you that
he destroyed or damaged severely a lot of the lives
of the people in that school moving forward. This is
something that no one is ever going to forget that
was at that school at that period of time. Anytime
(29:14):
you drop by that school and you're a former student there,
or whatever the case might be, maybe maybe you occupy
home that's immediately adjacent to that location. You look across
the street and you think about what happened. It's forever
scarred that community. But what eventually happens to him. Please
tell me that he's now behind bars.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
He was convicted, He was tried as an adult. He
was fourteen when this happened, seventeen when he was convicted,
and he was sentenced twenty five years for the murder,
forty years and one day for raping and robbing Colleen Ritzer.
The sentence is to be served. Concurrently, he will not
be eligible for parole until the forty years has been served.
(29:57):
There'll be fifty four before he had as a chance
to walk free.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
You know, many people think, you know, you're fourteen years old,
How can you be held responsible as an adult for
these actions that you took all those years ago. I
think the question to that should be, how could you
not hold him responsible for the destruction and the desecration
(30:22):
of Colleen. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body
Dots
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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