Swarthmore Murder 68th Anniversary Approaches
By Bob Small
On Tuesday, Jan. 11, 1955, Robert E. Bechtel, then a junior at Swarthmore College, shot fellow student Francis Holmes Strozier.
As we arrive at the 68th anniversary of this event, the last murder to happen within the borders of Swarthmore, Pa., many details remain to ponder. A 2015 review in MyCityPaper concerning the premiere of the documentary “Blood Ties” notes:
On the night of Jan 11, Bechtel drove home to his mother’s house in Pottstown, where he collected guns and a slice of coconut cake. He returned and, even though he was planning a mass murder because he felt he had been the victim of “bullying”, he ended up only shooting one person.
Bechtel was a proctor (resident advisor) at the time of the shooting.
He was found not competent to stand trial and was committed to the Farview State Hospital for The Criminally Insane for life. After four years and five months, Bechtel was released in January 1960. He underwent a trial, which found him not guilty by reason of insanity.
After the trial, Bechtel went to Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and then to the University of Kansas, receiving his doctorate in 1967. He never mentioned the shooting.
When he applied to teach at the University of Arizona, Bechtel similarly neglected to mention the shooting.
In 2005, Bechtel planned to attend his 50th class reunion at Swarthmore College, despite never having graduated and the antipathy of many of his fellow students.
He first revealed the murder in 2004, in a class that he taught entitled “The Psychology of Happiness”.
With all of that, he’s still the second most famous student in that class, the most famous being Michael Dukakis.
Pondering this story, one wonders whether the good Bechtel did in his life, as a teacher and as a family man, overrides the evil.