The Math Teacher Murder

Colleen Ritzer was a 24 year old high school teacher. Fresh out of college with a passion so strong for educating young minds and ensuring their success. She even stayed after school for the ones who needed extra help.

On October 22th 2013, one of those students violently attacked her, raped her and murdered her.

Beginning:

Danvers High school is a public school in Massachusetts. Its student enrollment for 9-12th grade was just under 1000. The teacher to student ratio at this high school was much smaller than average with 13 students for every teacher.

This gave them the ability to focus their time and energy on each student, more one on one time means better understanding of the material and even better grades.

Colleen Ritzer was a math teacher in her second year of teaching at Danvers and in general as well. She often spent time after school in her classroom, offering help to any student who needed it. Her openness, friendly nature and devotion made her popular among both students and faculty.

Philip Chisholm, a new student to Danvers and to Massachusetts as well, had recently moved from Tennessee with his mother, still reeling from a messy divorce. He excelled at soccer but not so much at math.

Ms. Ritzer noticed in class that he wouldn't pay attention and kept doodling, she realized he was probably just lost and was too shy to ask for help.

On October 22nd 2013, she asked him if he could stay after school ended that day so she could help him understand what they were all working on and she also complimented his doodling skills.

At one point in the conversation, she mentioned Tennessee, after which he became visibly upset. She noticed this and quickly changed the subject. Philip agreed to meeting after class.

The Incident:

After school ended, Ms. Ritzer headed to the restroom before meeting Philip Chisholm for tutoring. He saw where she was headed and followed her.

School cameras showed that at 2:54pm, she entered the restroom and 1 minute later Philip did as well, with gloves on his hands and a hoodie over his head.

At 3:06 pm, a female student entered the restroom and quickly left when she saw a pile of clothes on the floor and the backside of someone naked. She thought that someone was simply changing clothes.

One minute later, Philip was seen leaving the restroom. During the next several minutes, he was seen on camera entering and exiting the school a couple of times. He changed clothes and put on a ski mask.

After that he dragged a recycling bin to the restroom to move her to another location to finish what he was doing before being interrupted. That day he had come to school with extra clothes, box cutter and a ski mask.

This attack was obviously pre planned. In that girl's restroom, he strangled her, raped her and cut her but she wasn't dead yet.

At 3:22pm, he wheeled the recycle bin to the elevator and then out to the student parking lot. Only 6 minutes after that, a mother of a student saw Philip running away from the school and at 6:00pm she reported it to the Principal.

Around 9pm, a mass email was sent out to school staff, reporting Philip Chisholm as missing.

Shortly after that email, another teacher called the Principal to tell her that the parents of Collen hadn't heard from her which was very unlike her.

Aftermath:

They went to the school and saw her car still in the parking lot but couldn't find her anywhere. The police pinged her phone and located it to the middle school, which wasn't far away. While this was going on, the police found Philip in a neighboring town walking along the road. They patted him down and found a knife that was thrifted by him after the attack.

In his backpack, they found a bloody boxcutter, when questioned on it, he said 'the girl'. He also had Colleen's credit cards and ID along with a pair women's underwear. He said he picked them up from the parking lot but later changed his story.

Arrest and Conviction:

Philip was taken into custody. It was found that after the attack, he used Colleen's credit card to go watch a movie.

In the early morning hours of October 23rd, Colleen's body was found in an adjacent wooded area. She was on her back partially covered by leaves with her pants and shirt pulled off. She had been raped with a stick and her throat was deeply cut. Besides her body, a piece of folded paper was found which said 'I hate you all'.

On November 21st, Chisholm was charged as an adult with murder, aggravated rape and armed robbery. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.