Ten-year-old murder of student remains unsolved

Ten years after a University student was murdered during spring break in her Allen Street apartment, police continue to look for her killer.

Dana Bailey, a 21-year-old health policy and administration major from Philipsburg, was found dead of multiple stab wounds to the heart and lungs on Thursday, March 5, 1987. Centre County officials determined she was killed sometime Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

Little evidence was found at the scene. Police found evidence of a break-in in the kitchen, but, as no one was in the apartment or neighboring apartments at the time of the killing, there were no eyewitnesses. That, coupled with the time lag between the crime and the body's discovery, made solving the case difficult for police in 1987, Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar said.

"Anytime a murder is not discovered until at least a day after it has taken place, the police are put at a tremendous disadvantage," he said.

And time is definitely not on the side of the State College Police Department now, said Detective Tom Jordan.

"It certainly gets more difficult as time goes on -- witnesses' memories get cloudy and people forget details," he said. "On the other hand, I know people who have solved cases that were eight or 10 years old. I personally have solved one that was seven years old."

Sometimes cases can break wide open with just one witness or fact that comes to detectives.

"We find out some little piece of information that we didn't know before, and when you follow it up, it leads to a solution," he said. "We are just looking for that one piece of information (in this case)."

That information may be found if detectives can link the Bailey case with a similar murder. State College police have traveled to other college towns across the county where similar crimes have taken place, Jordan said. Most recently they have been looking into a 1990 Florida case and a 1995 killing in Lincoln, Neb. The similarities in those cases may help State College police, Jordan added.

"There are many similarities between the three cases," he said. "It is not coincidence -- let's put it that way," he said.

Often, the way a criminal operates can be as distinctive and useful to police as fingerprints.

"Once a person is successful at a crime, they tend do every crime the same way after that," he said.

Police have used this theory to determine that Bailey's killer must have left the area since the murder, Jordan said.

"Over the years, there has never been a crime in the area, or in surrounding counties, that was very similar," he said. "That would lead us to believe that whoever did this is no longer in the area. That does not mean they left right after this happened."

Knowing that the killer is still out there and that the Bailey family has never seen the murderer brought to trial weighs on investigators' minds, Jordan said.

"It is just frustrating to not be able to solve this, to find out why it happened," he said. "I think about it every day."

Gricar said he is frustrated too.

"I can tell you that every time I walk down Allen Street past her apartment, I think of her and her case," he said. "I have thought about her from time to time."