STATE COLLEGE — A Centre County murder case is getting national attention after being featured on a long-running true crime television series from the Oxygen channel.
The 2016 killing of a Penn State professor, 56-year-old Ronald Bettig, was the subject of the network’s latest episode of “Snapped,” a show profiling the cases of various women accused of murder.
The episode “Snapped: Danelle Geier” aired on Sunday, Nov. 3, recounting Bettig’s death. The associate professor at the Penn State Bellisario College of Communications was found dead in August 2016 at the bottom of a quarry in Potter Township. Two residents, Danelle R. Geier and George G. Ishler Jr., were subsequently found guilty of the murder in 2018.
The Oxygen channel interviewed several Centre County individuals about the case including Chris Weaver, a former detective with the State College police; Brian Wakefield, a former state trooper; Bernie Cantorna, the Centre County district attorney; Deborah Lux, a former Centre County public defender; Scotts Sayers, the Centre County coroner; Geoff Rushton, the editor of StateCollege.com who was actively covering the case as a reporter; as well as members of Geier’s family and Bettig’s brother.
“Snapped: Danelle Geier” is currently available to stream on Peacock and YouTube TV and can be found On Demand with a cable provider.
Bettig, a Lemont resident, was reported missing by housekeepers on Aug. 15, 2016, and what started as a missing persons investigation soon developed into a murder case after police spoke to the victim’s 34-year-old girlfriend, Geier, and her uncle, 41-year-old Ishler.
It was reported that Ishler introduced Bettig to his niece in early 2016 when he claimed Geier and her young child were close to being homeless. Geier and her child then moved into Bettig’s home and began a romantic relationship.
“I think Danelle, her moving in and becoming a girlfriend, I think that was planned from the very beginning,” Weaver, the former detective on the case noted during the episode of “Snapped.” “For her to get in there and form a fake relationship and gain his trust, and they were going to exploit that.”
Rushton, who covered the case for StateCollege.com while it was unfolding, reported that right before being introduced to Geier, Bettig, who was usually described as quirky, passionate and even eccentric, had been in a deep depression and was on leave from his position at Penn State. Around that time, he began a friendship with Ishler, bonding over an interest in cannabis.
“He was the kind of guy to give you the shirt off his back if you needed it,” Lux said in the episode.
Geier and Ishler had claimed that the last they saw Bettig was when the three went to a beach in Delaware on Aug. 12, 2016, several days before he was reported missing, and had not seen the Penn State professor since. Weaver explained on the episode that the two implied that Bettig was suffering from depression due to the death of his wife years earlier and they were worried something bad had happened to him as a result of his mental health issues.
A couple of days later on Aug. 17, 2016, Bettig’s car was discovered abandoned and his body was found in Potter Township at the bottom of Blackhawk Quarry. Officials believe Bettig actually survived the nearly 75-foot fall before succumbing to his injuries.
“It was our pathologist’s conclusion that he had actually survived the fall, he survived for approximately two days,” Cantorna said in the episode of “Snapped.”
Both Geier and Ishler became suspects in the case after a witness came forward claiming to have seen a man, a woman and a child at the scene of the crime. After hours of interviews, Ishler eventually admitted pushing Bettig off the ledge and returning to the scene of the crime with Geier to make it look like the victim was at the quarry alone.
The motivation for the murder? Money, is what investigators found. Which is the reason the three had gone to the beach in Delaware in the first place.
“Danelle tells a story that George Ishler is going down there (Delaware) to get money because he owes the professor money,” Cantorna told the interviewers during the episode. “He was mad at George Ishler because he discovered the fact that he’d been using his credit card for purchases that he wouldn’t have authorized.”
Geier went on to claim that Ishler was unable to come up with the money and offered to give Bettig cannabis plants that he was growing at the Potter Township quarry, and that’s when the murder took place.
Ishler’s version of events, however, differs from the picture Geier attempted to paint.
Although he confessed to the crime, Ishler accused Geier of being the mastermind of the whole plan, talking him into killing Bettig.
“He said it was because Danelle wanted (Bettig’s) money because of a will,” Wakefield explained to the “Snapped” interviewers. “He explained to us that he had written a will, knowing that Ron’s mental state seemed to be diminishing, and Ron signed it.”
Geier and Ishler were tried in connection to the crime together and both were found guilty of first-degree murder charges in April 2018, carrying a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Initial appeals from Geier and Ishler were rejected, but the two have continued to appeal the conviction arguing that the cases should have been severed rather than the two being tried together and that statements they made to the police should have been suppressed.
Bettig joined Penn State as faculty in 1988 where he specialized in teaching and research on the political economy of communications.
“Ron was the kind of teacher who connected powerfully with students, who found his classes in political economy — at both the graduate and undergraduate levels — transformative,” Marie Hardin, the dean of the College of Communications, said in a statement from the school following his death in 2016.
Bettig was the recipient of many awards and recognitions during his career at Penn State including the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Communications Alumni Society, being named faculty marshal and chairing up to five dozen doctoral, masters and scholar thesis committees.
“Bettig was intensely private and kept in touch with a handful of close friends that he had since high school,” the 2016 statement from the Bellisario College of Communications said. “Bettig fought for the underdog and, as an example, would not hesitate to lend a helping hand to previously unknown persons who were struggling with lost employment. Bettig also played harmonica, guitar or piano to small gatherings around town in the evenings or on holiday weekends.”
