TCNJ

34 The College of New Jersey Magazine and in the blowing dark, students jog briskly past Kendall Hall, listening for the eerie nocturne played by Sigrid Stevenson's ghost. The story of Sigrid has persisted as campus legend for the nearly half a century since her death. Allegedly haunting Kendall, her piano-playing specter is no different from any ghost story — a sensationalized placeholder for the unexplained. In Sigrid's tragic case, it's a deeper metaphor for a young girl's restless spirit, a traveler not yet ready to leave. Blue-eyed with a bright smile, 25-year-old Sigrid had short, reddish-brown hair and an eclectic wardrobe, and she often shunned eye contact. Her personality had many sides: a loner, quirky, incredibly smart and talented, a classical music buff, a Kerouac admirer, and an avid hitchhiker. According to a childhood friend from California, Sigrid was never boring. A piano prodigy at age 8, she played Beethoven after a single sight-reading. After graduating, she hoped to become a music teacher. She never did. On the night of September 4, 1977, three days before classes started, Sigrid was murdered in Kendall Hall. Her sheet music was found placed at the piano, set to be played. In a 2024 episode of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries, we meet the Sigrid- obsessed sleuths who have examined every detail in her murder. Among them is Scott Napolitano '06, who has tirelessly pored over the facts. What began as his undergraduate film project has become a decades-long search for the truth. "Once I learned her name and what happened to her," Napolitano said, "I couldn't stop. It was like cleaning off a dirty window — every news article, every interview, every new fact made it easier to see the view of the other side. And the more I saw, the more my heart ached for her." With renewed interest and attention to the case, investigators hope the show will generate new leads that will bring Sigrid her long-deserved justice. Even so, the tabloid nature of Sigrid's murder still eclipses her life. Sigrid was a person. A Trenton State College student, with dreams, fears, and ambitions. Among her possessions, investigators found her diary. In it, her story survives. According to her diary, Sigrid's days were busy. A full courseload. Multiple jobs, music lessons, gym, choir practice (twice weekly), volunteering — all without owning a car. She biked and rode the bus but mostly thumbed rides. She'd spent the previous summer on a solo trip, adventuring across Nova Scotia. When criticized for recklessness and chided about the risk of catching rides from strangers, she'd abruptly end the conversation. "I wasn't brought up to ask for things," she wrote at one point in her diary. Sigrid felt most alive at the piano bench. As she played, color faded from the walls. She played compulsively, late nights, even if it meant finagling her way into locked music buildings. She was notorious with campus security and maintenance. "Rules such as 'You can't stay here after five' mean nothing to me. The time to leave is when practicing is done and I've done what I want with the piece," she wrote. No one might guess that Sigrid, a self-proclaimed "feisty, female countertenor, who admittedly didn't wear a brassiere," suffered violent mood-swings, often losing her temper, publicly weeping. "Why is everyone trying to push me around?" she asked, a year before her tragedy. Night falls, " Every news article, every interview, every new fact made it easier to see the view of the other side. And the more I saw, the more my heart ached for her." — Scott Napolitano '06

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