Born January 24, 1952, and raised in Livermore, California, where she played piano from childhood. Friends and family called her Ziggy. She came to Trenton State to study music and education so she could teach. She spent the summer of 1977 traveling through Nova Scotia, selling sketches of cityscapes to stretch her budget.

Locked out of her lodging when she returned to campus, she slept on the green room couch in Kendall Hall. She was found on the main stage at 11:29 p.m. on September 4, 1977. Her murder has never been solved.

Sources: TCNJ News, Sept. 10, 2024; The Signal, Mar. 27, 2021; Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024; Kokotajlo report No. 77-476.

Taught at Princeton University before the family moved west. He died in 1979, two years after his daughter. TCNJ’s campus police chief later said both of her parents died without learning who killed her.

Sources: Find a Grave memorial, as indexed by Trace Evidence; The Signal, Mar. 27, 2021.

Described for Netflix how a completely different side of Sigrid came out when she sat down at a piano.

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

In a 2016 letter to the Courier-Post, she remembered the Trentonian headlining a campus of fear while, on campus, the subject was almost verboten under the administration. She called the ghost story an insult to Sigrid’s dignity and asked the college for a garden, a tree, or a music scholarship in her name.

Source: Denise Fanelli, letter, Courier-Post, Nov. 12, 2016, via Newspapers.com.

Woke Sigrid in the green room around 7 p.m. on September 3, talked with her, and gave her a beer. A playbill found among her things had his name circled with a note calling him a nice man who gave her a beer. He played a police officer in the show, so his costume would have included a nightstick and handcuffs.

He passed a polygraph in 1977. Years later, a former girlfriend told investigators he once said he had committed a murder. He died in 2016, and DNA testing did not link him to the scene.

Open question: What was compared, from which item, and does the same profile appear on anything else from the stage?

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

Worked on the September 3 production, had a key to the building, and knew how to run the theater’s lighting system. Investigators believe the lights were on during the attack. When Kokotajlo arrived, only emergency lights were lit. Ewing Detective Julia Caldwell later focused on him as one of two men with keys.

Open question: Who turned the stage lights off, and when?

Sources: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024; Woman and Home, Aug. 2024; Kokotajlo report No. 77-476.

Had a key to the building and worked in another building Sigrid often visited. She had his address and phone number, and the two were reportedly seen together. He was fired soon after the murder and, according to Netflix, was never polygraphed.

Open question: Why was the college employee fired rather than tested, and who made that decision?

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

Months after the murder, he reportedly told a colleague he had killed Sigrid. Further investigation produced nothing conclusive. He has never been publicly named, and no published record says whether the remark was a confession, a boast, or something else. He is a different officer from Thomas Kokotajlo.

Open question: Who heard the statement, who investigated it, whether he was polygraphed before or after, and how it was closed.

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

After the first act of J.B. on September 3, Sigrid seemed upbeat. Later her mood dropped, and she told a cast member she had argued with a man and lost. He has never been identified.

Open question: Did anyone in the cast or crew see who she was talking to that night?

Sources: Netflix Tudum; Princeton Info, Nov. 13, 2024; Solve the Case timeline.

Spotted a girl’s bicycle cabled to the railing at Kendall Hall’s side entrance at 11:29 p.m. on September 4, unlocked the side door, and found Sigrid on the main stage under white material. He wrote that her wrist was cold and stiff. He then opened the rear loading door by removing its padlock and stayed crouched there, 10 to 15 feet from her, until help arrived. He appears in the 2024 Unsolved Mysteries episode. He is not named as a suspect in any source.

Open question: Was the loading door padlock locked when he reached it, and if so, how did he open it?

Sources: Trenton State College Investigation Report No. 77-476, Sept. 5, 1977; Netflix Tudum.

Kokotajlo radioed him after finding Sigrid. He was the first to arrive, ahead of Ewing officers. A search of the building found no one.

Source: Kokotajlo report No. 77-476.

Ran a joint investigation with campus police. More than 100 people were questioned and several dozen were polygraphed, including campus officers, whose handcuffs were also tested for blood. New Jersey State Police divers searched Lake Ceva for the weapon about two weeks later and found nothing. Investigators also consulted University of Pennsylvania psychologists and a psychic.

Open question: Who administered the polygraphs, and did anyone review the charts?

Sources: The Signal, Oct. 4, 2011; Netflix Tudum.

Told Netflix that Sigrid had a reputation for sneaking into buildings, and that campus police had chased her out of buildings more than once.

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

Recalled seeing Sigrid around 11:30 p.m. on September 3. Her last journal entry is timed 11:43 p.m., noting the cast and crew were nearly done cleaning up. Where she was after that is unknown.

Sources: Netflix Tudum; Solve the Case timeline.

A 1977 campus paper account placed Sigrid at his home. Netflix describes her hosts as a local fireman’s family, and Solve the Case says she never rented from Austin. He was the professor brought in to help identify her.

Sources: The Signal, Oct. 4, 2011; Netflix Tudum; Solve the Case.

Performed the autopsy, case 77-199. The one-page summary that has been published lists nine findings, including skull and facial fractures, two broken ribs, and contusions of the lung, the caecum area, and the fundus of the uterus. It has no line for sexual assault, wrist marks, or time of death. A death window of 7 to 10:30 p.m. on September 4 is attributed to her by Solve the Case.

In the 2024 Unsolved Mysteries episode, she says on camera that Sigrid was raped, contradicting the 1977 Daily News headline. In a separate 1981 Trenton death, she ruled the manner undetermined, then reviewed her own autopsy in 2002 and concluded it was a beating. That case led to a murder conviction the New Jersey Supreme Court reinstated in 2006.

Open question: What was the death window based on, and was lividity fixed at the examination?

Sources: Medical Examiner summary No. 77-199; Solve the Case; Netflix; State v. Townsend, 186 N.J. 473 (2006).

Reopening the case, she concluded the killer knew Sigrid would be alone, knew the building, and likely had a key. She focused on the lighting technician and the maintenance worker.

Sources: Netflix Tudum; Woman and Home, Aug. 2024.

Told The Signal in 2021 that Sigrid’s legacy is not the ghost story, and that the case was being examined with modern methods.

Source: The Signal, Mar. 27, 2021.

Transcribed Sigrid’s journal entries for the open case and described clear, careful writing.

Source: The Signal, Mar. 27, 2021.

Formally took the case on September 17, 2024, after Ewing and TCNJ police jointly nominated it about two years earlier. Tips go to the Mercer County Homicide Task Force at (609) 989-6406.

Sources: Princeton Info, Nov. 13, 2024; unsolved.com.

Announced in September 2024 that a piano practice room in the Music Building would be dedicated to Sigrid, with a plaque.

Source: TCNJ News, Sept. 10, 2024.

Heard the Kendall Hall ghost story on a campus tour as a student and set out to make Sigrid a person and not just a ghost. He has worked the case for nearly twenty years, appears in the 2024 episode, and proposed the practice room that now carries her name.

Sources: Netflix Tudum; TCNJ News, Sept. 10, 2024; NJ.com, Sept. 4, 2014.

Hosts the Kokotajlo report, the medical examiner summary, the 1977 floor plan, and the scene photographs in a public gallery, along with a case timeline and a summary of the medical findings.

Source: solvethecase.org.

Aired July 31, 2024, with Dr. Ahmad, Kokotajlo, Napolitano, and retired Ewing investigators. The companion article published the 1977 report and medical summary and reported the swab result and the DNA exclusion.

Source: Netflix Tudum, July 31, 2024.

Gunter’s 2011 reconstruction pushed back on the ghost stories but repeated the “not sexually assaulted” claim without citing a document. Schroeder’s 2021 profile carried the campus police chief’s account of Sigrid’s journal and family.

Sources: The Signal, Oct. 4, 2011 and Mar. 27, 2021.