Students Will Never Go Back to School After What They Saw… | True Crime Documentary
She walks into the staff restroom after school just like she had dozens of times before. A few seconds later, a 14-year-old student walks in behind her. He’s already wearing gloves. Inside his backpack are a knife, a mask, and a change of clothes. For the next 11 minutes, the door stays closed. When it finally opens, the boy walks out alone, calmly, without any sign of urgency.
Not long after that, security cameras capture him pushing a large green trash container through the school hallways. That footage will later become one of the most important pieces of evidence in the entire case. At that very moment, the family of 24-year-old math teacher Colleen Ritzer has no idea she will never come home again.
They call her co-workers trying to figure out why she’s running late. Meanwhile, the mother of that same student is already reporting her son missing to the police. No one has connected the two stories yet, but the school’s surveillance cameras already have. They’ve already recorded every single step. When investigators begin reviewing the footage, they’ll uncover a sequence of events that raises far more questions than answers.
Why did a teenager come to school carrying gloves, a knife, and a mask? Why did he act as if nothing had happened after the attack? And why years later would the courtroom debate not who committed the crime, but whether he truly understood what he was doing in that moment? Hey guys, let me grab you for just a second.
I’m really curious where my audience is watching from. So, I’d love for you to drop a comment and tell me what city you’re in and what time it is for you right now. Thanks for taking a moment. Go ahead and share that in the comments. And now, let’s keep going. In October of 2013, 24year-old Colleen Ritzer stayed after school like she often did.
She was a math teacher at Danver’s High School in Massachusetts. Colleen regularly remained after classes to help her students. That afternoon, one of her students stayed behind. His name was Philip Chisum. He was 14 years old. Earlier that morning, he had arrived at school carrying gloves, a mask, a change of clothes, and a box cutter.
After work, Colleen never made it home. Um, her family began calling her co-workers trying to find out where she was. The school had more than 100 surveillance cameras throughout the building. And when investigators started reviewing the footage, it quickly became clear that Colleen hadn’t simply disappeared after work. The cameras showed her leaving her classroom and walking toward the second floor restroom.
Just a few seconds later, her student followed her inside. A short time later, he walked back out alone. Then the cameras captured something else. He was pulling a large trash container through the school. At that point, the case was no longer a search for a missing teacher. Massachusetts teen accused of and killing his teacher. But how could something like this happen in broad daylight inside a school filled with students, teachers, and security cameras? How did no one notice a 14-year-old student doing something to a young teacher that even many serial
killers would never have dared to do? Having it in the place you go to every day, spend most of your time right in your backyard. It’s crazy. Colleen Ritzer was 24 years old. She had been teaching 9th grade algebra at Danver’s high school for the past 2 years. Every morning, her students walked into the classroom and saw a quote written on the board.
Not a math problem, but a quote. something to help them start the day with the right mindset before they ever got to numbers and equations. Her family said Colleen knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was just three years old. She watched her preschool teacher and in that moment something clicked.
It was a feeling that stayed with her for the rest of her life. And that’s not a story her family came up with after the tragedy to make her seem extraordinary. That’s who she had always been long before any of this happened. Philip Chisum was 14 years old. He was a student at Danvers High School. You already know what happened on October 22nd, 2013.
Philip had moved to Danvers earlier that year. After his parents divorced, he relocated from Tennessee with his mother Diana and his two younger sisters. Diana didn’t really have another option. Her aunt lived in an apartment in Danvers and offered to let them stay there. So, they packed up and moved.
They started attending a local church and Philip made a few friends through the church’s youth group. In the fall of 2013, he enrolled at Danvers High School and joined the junior varsity soccer team. He was a good soccer player and that’s where his friends were. Outside the team, hardly anyone knew him. He was the new kid.
And being the new kid in a small town in the Northeast usually means exactly what you’re thinking. You exist on the edges of school life until someone decides to let you into their circle. That’s how Philip’s mother saw him. A boy who loved soccer, had friends on the team, and was slowly adjusting to a new life.
It wasn’t easy, but he was getting through it. On October 22nd, 2013, soccer practice was scheduled to begin at 4:00 that afternoon, but Philip never showed up. His teammates said the last time they saw him, he was running away from the soccer field, not toward the school, not toward the parking lot, but in the opposite direction.
At approximately 6:34 that evening, Diana Chisum went to the Danver’s police department. She had already checked both the school and the athletic fields, but Philip was nowhere to be found. She filed a missing person report and gave investigators his phone number so they could try to track his location.
They managed to get one signal. Just one ping recorded at 4:28 that afternoon showed Philillip near the Hollywood hits theaters in Danvers. Officers went there and confirmed it. Philip had bought a ticket. He watched a movie. Then he left. After that, nothing. No more phone signals, no location data, no contact with anyone. Diana told police none of it made any sense.
Philip had never skipped practice. He had never disappeared without telling her where he was going. He loved soccer. That’s where his friends were. He had never acted like this before. Later that same evening, Danver’s police posted a missing person alert on social media. They shared his description and notified neighboring communities.
A 14-year-old boy last seen running away from his school’s soccer field. His phone stopped transmitting after he went to a movie by himself on Tuesday afternoon. That’s what the story looked like at 9:00 that night. Uh around that same time, Danver’s high school principal, Sue Ambrosovich, sent an email to the entire school staff letting them know that Philip was missing.
One of the teachers who received that email was Sarah. She also taught math at the school. And the moment she read it, something immediately clicked. Earlier that evening, she had received a phone call from Tom and Peggy Ritzer, Colleen’s parents. They were calling because their daughter hadn’t come home from school. They weren’t fully panicking yet.
Not yet. They were simply trying to figure out what was going on. Had Sarah seen Colleen? Were there any after school activities they might not know about? Had Colleen mentioned she would be staying late for any reason? Sarah told them she hadn’t heard from her, but if she learned anything, she would let them know right away.
Then she read the principal’s email about Philip’s disappearance. She immediately picked up the phone and called Sue Ambrosovich. You’re telling me a student is missing? And I’m telling you that Colleen Ritzer’s parents just called me because Colleen is missing, too. A student and a teacher, both from the same school, both disappeared on the exact same day.
And at that moment, no one connected the two events. It looked like a coincidence, a scheduling mixup, some harmless explanation. On October 22nd, Colleen Ritzer stayed at school after classes ended. There was nothing unusual about that. She stayed late regularly to help her students. It was simply part of who she was as a teacher.
Her students knew she would be at school. Her co-workers knew it, too. It wasn’t a secret, and nobody thought anything of it. Security cameras captured her inside the building that day. They also captured Philip Chisum. He was wearing gloves. Shortly before 400 p.m., he followed her into the second floor girl’s bathroom.
The people searching for Colleen and Philip that evening had not seen those recordings yet. They were still working with phone signals, missing person reports, and phone calls between teachers and the school principal. The footage already existed. It was simply sitting inside the school surveillance system, and no one had reviewed it yet.
Philip’s teammates knew he had run in the wrong direction. Diana knew her son had gone to a movie theater alone during a school day and then vanished without a trace. Tom and Peggy Ritzer knew their daughter had never come home. Um Sarah knew that two people from the same school had disappeared on the same day, but none of them knew about the gloves.
And soon investigators would discover exactly what happened and they would learn it at a terrible cost. Danvers was a small town. The kind of place where a teacher staying late after class wasn’t considered news. It was simply an ordinary Tuesday. The kind of town where a teenager disappearing would become a topic on social media within hours because the community was small enough that people immediately noticed when someone was missing.
When two people from the same school disappear on the same day, a town like that has no chance of keeping it quiet. Everyone finds out. Even before anyone understands what it really means, by the time messages were already spreading, by the time Sarah called the principal, and by the time Diana was sitting at the police station explaining that her son would never willingly skip football practice, Colleen Ritzer had already been dead for several hours.
Later, an autopsy would confirm that she suffered at least 16 stab wounds to the neck area. The injuries damaged major blood vessels and reached the vertebrae. The examination also found multiple hemorrhages in the facial tissues around the eyes and mouth, indicating that esphixia was one of the factors involved in her death. I won’t describe the other findings documented during the autopsy.
The medical facts alone are enough to understand the scale of what happened inside that bathroom. 16 wounds to the neck inflicted by a 14-year-old boy wearing gloves who followed her inside. Later, the defense would argue that Philip acted because of voices inside his head. That was the explanation given for what happened on that October Tuesday inside the school bathroom.
But what Philip did after leaving the school is a completely different question. And that part reveals something the explanation about voices in his head does not fully account for. After Colleen’s death, Philip did not run away. He did not hide. He did not go home. He went to Wendy’s. He ordered food. He sat down and calmly ate.
That detail is one of the reasons this case has remained so difficult to understand ever since it became public. It does not fit the image of someone who was so overwhelmed by something beyond his control that he could not understand his own actions. Instead, it creates a completely different picture, and the question of which picture was the truth became something courts would try to answer for many years, but that would come later.
At this moment, the investigation was only in its first hours after the disappearances. Police had a missing student and a missing teacher. They had a phone signal near the movie theater. They had teammates who saw the boy run in the wrong direction. and they had a school principal who had just learned that two people from her school had disappeared on the same day.
At that point, the principal only knew that two people from her school were missing. But somewhere inside the school’s surveillance system, there was already footage showing a boy wearing gloves walking into a girl’s bathroom behind a 24year-old woman who had stayed late after class simply because that was what she always did.
because she cared about her students. Because from the age of three, she already knew teaching was what she wanted to dedicate her life to. The recording was already there. The only question was what would happen when someone finally watched it. Colleen had a habit of writing an inspirational quote on the board before every class began.
Something that helped her students get ready before the math lesson even started. Her students looked forward to those quotes. They became part of the atmosphere in her classroom. part of what made her the kind of teacher people remembered for years. She was only 24 years old. This was just her second year teaching that class. She never got the chance to see how many students she could influence, how many people would remember her morning messages years after graduating.
She never got that time. Instead, she got October 22nd, 2013, and a student who was inside the school that day wearing gloves and waiting for her. The investigation was about to move very quickly. Only a few hours had passed since Diana called the police. Only a few hours had passed since Sarah contacted the principal.
And all the pieces of the story began coming together, revealing the horrifying answer to where Philip and Colleen were. But the answer to the much more important question, the question the defense tried to prove, the prosecution tried to challenge, and the courts examined for years, would not be found so quickly.
And depending on what you believe the answer is, it may still not have a simple conclusion. What made a 14-year-old boy on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon follow his teacher into a bathroom while wearing gloves? The defense talked about voices in his head. The prosecution argued something completely different and the surveillance footage investigators eventually reviewed showed neither voices nor explanations.
It showed a sequence of events step by step and that sequence appeared so deliberate that supporting the idea of voices in his head became extremely difficult. The entire case would come to revolve around that video, not around the missing person reports, not around the phone signal near the movie theater, and not around the football players who saw Philip run in the opposite direction.
It revolved around what the cameras showed and what Philip did after leaving that bathroom before he ever walked into Wendy’s. That part of the case would stay forever in the memories of those who watched the footage. Around 12:30 a.m. on October 23rd, a Topppsfield police officer named Neil High received a report about a pedestrian walking along the highway, walking in the wrong direction.
When he arrived, he found a 14-year-old boy. Stop for a moment and understand what that meant. Colleen’s family had been waiting for her since 3:30 p.m. Her mother and sister had already called Sarah. Another math teacher had already contacted the school. People had already started arriving at the scene. The principal was already there.
And many miles away from the school on a dark highway, Philip Chisum was alive. He was simply walking down the road, a ski mask was pulled down and hanging around his neck. Officer Neil High noticed it. But it was the end of October in Massachusetts. It was cold. So, the mask did not seem suspicious to him. Philip said he had come from Tennessee.
He said he was not going anywhere. That was his answer. He said he did not have an address and that his backpack contained survival equipment. Neil High quickly searched him. Inside one of the pockets, he found a rock and a small pot. Then he found a bank card. The name written on it was Colleen Ritzer.
At that moment, the name meant nothing to him. There was still no official missing person report for Colleen and no database had connected the two names yet. Um, Philip said he found the card near the Stop and Shop store. Neil High placed him inside the police cruiser so he could warm up and drove him to the station. At the station, one of the officers asked Philillip about the backpack.
It was a routine question, the kind asked before looking inside. Is there anything there that I could use to hurt myself? Philip replied, “Yes, there was a box cutter inside the backpack. The blade was covered in blood.” The officer asked where the blood had come from. Philip replied, “A girl’s uh” The officer asked where the girl was now.
Philip replied, “In the woods.” The officer asked, “If we find her, will we still be able to help her?” Philip replied, “No.” The same backpack also contained blue green women’s underwear. After that discovery, the search in the woods behind Danver’s High School became something completely different.
Earlier that evening, before Philip was found on the highway, Colleen’s parents had already arrived at the school with the principal. They were soon joined by math teacher Todd Butterssworth. Colleen had been caring for his one-year-old daughter. He knew her well enough that he came to the school in the middle of the night and went searching through the darkness.
While checking the treeine at the edge of the school property, Todd found a school bag wedged between large rocks. At first, he thought the marks on it were rust, but it was blood. He took a few more steps deeper into the woods, and then he froze. Lying on the ground in front of him was a pair of white gloves, completely covered in blood.
He raised his hand and called over the police officers. Meanwhile, officer Stephanie Winnenburgger was already searching inside the school. She checked the restrooms near Colleen’s classroom and noticed that one of them appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned very recently. The strong smell of disinfectant filled the air.
But on the wall about waist height, there was a reddish handprint with streaks running downward from it. After hearing about the bag that had been found, she went outside. In the woods near the area where Todd had stopped, she discovered a piece of paper, pieces of clothing, two blue and white under arour gloves soaked with blood, and other items scattered across the ground.
Later, officer Ellington arrived with his service dog, Falco, who was trained to search for human remains. Falco immediately pulled him deeper into the woods. The dog found a gray sneaker soaked with blood. Then it found a pair of football cleats and women’s shoes hidden beneath the leaves. Clothing was scattered throughout the area.
Some pieces were hanging from branches, others were lying on the ground. Some items were covered in blood. Falco continued forward, climbed up a slope, and then went down into a ravine. There they found a large green recycling container lying on its side. Police surrounded an area of the woods measuring approximately 6x 10 ft. Inside that perimeter, the ground was covered with blood, leaves, and branches.
It was clear the earth had recently been disturbed. Later, one officer would say the scene looked like a grave, almost as if someone had cut out a square section of ground and then covered it back up. Then, one of the officers silently pointed toward the ground. Many law enforcement officers who worked the scene later admitted that during court hearings, they struggled to hold back tears while describing what they had seen there.
Some of them had to stop speaking because they could not continue without taking a moment. On October 23rd, prosecutors charged Philip as an adult. First-degree murder, aggravated rape, armed robbery. Later, a grand jury added another charge to the indictment. Aggravated sexual assault with an object. Philip was only 14 years old. Danvers High School had 140 surveillance cameras installed throughout the building.
Philip either did not know about them or he simply did not care. And both possibilities raised their own questions because the very next day, police reviewed the footage and they were able to reconstruct the events of October 22nd, almost minuteby minute. Approximately 90% of the crime was captured on camera. That day, Colleen stayed after school just like she often did.
Um, she was part of a team of teachers who worked with firstear students, helping them adjust to life in high school. After the final bell, she stayed behind as usual, offering extra help to anyone who needed it. That afternoon, two students remained in her classroom after school. One of them was Phillip. The other was a girl.
The cameras captured Colleen leaving the classroom and entering a staff restroom. Then they showed Philillip. He looked out from the classroom doorway. He glanced down the hallway. He stepped back inside. A few seconds later, he came out again. He pulled up his hood, and the footage clearly showed him putting on gloves as he walked.
After that, he followed Colleen into the restroom. He stayed inside for 11 minutes. When the door opened, another student walked into the restroom. She was simply looking for a bathroom. When she opened the door, she saw what she later described as the bare back of a person. Embarrassed, she immediately turned around and walked away. She never saw Colleen.
She had no idea what she had just walked away from. She simply went back down the hallway. Only seconds after the door opened, Philip walked out of the restroom. Take a moment and think about what that girl unknowingly walked past. She felt embarrassed because she believed she had accidentally interrupted someone using the bathroom.
She had no idea that the person she never saw was her teacher and that the person she saw from behind was the reason her teacher would never be found alive again. Then the cameras showed Philillip in the hallway. He was carrying something. This is where the the footage continues. And what happened in the following minutes would later be described by prosecutors as the most convincing sequence of evidence they had ever presented in a case involving a juvenile defendant in Massachusetts.
Because Philip did not run, he did not panic. He moved through the school calmly, deliberately, and without any sense of urgency. Investigators who reviewed the footage described his behavior with one word, calmness. What the cameras captured after Philip walked out of the restroom, along with what investigators later reconstructed from the trail leading from the staff bathroom to the recycling container in the ravine, revealed more about those 11 minutes than any witness ever could. The attack itself was not
captured on camera, but the cameras recorded everything that happened afterward. and everything that happened afterward appeared deliberate. When Officer Hi found Philip on the highway, the box cutter was still inside his backpack. Colleen’s bank card was in his pocket. Her underwear was inside the backpack. He had a ski mask.
He had survival gear with him. When the officer asked where he was going, Philip said he was not heading anywhere. And as the officer later recalled, he said it in a completely calm and even tone. Not frightened, not confused, just calm. By that point, he had already been walking along Route 1 in Topppsfield for several hours, moving farther away from Danvers, farther away from the school, farther away from the woods where Colleen’s body was lying beneath a layer of leaves.
Next to her was a note that read, “I hate you all.” The note was handwritten. The investigators never publicly revealed who the handwriting belonged to, but it was found next to the body. Inside the backpack nearby was Philip’s student ID. His DNA was discovered at the crime scene, and the box cutter from his backpack matched the wounds found on Colleen’s body.
There is one detail from the surveillance footage that the prosecution kept returning to again and again. And it is the kind of detail that the more you think about it, the quieter it becomes after leaving the bathroom. Philip does not run. He does not look over his shoulder. He simply walks at a normal pace, carrying what he is carrying, calmly heading toward the exit as if he were just another student who stayed late after class and was now going home.
The girl who opened the bathroom door had already left. The hallway was empty. The school was silent, and Philip simply walked out. The question raised by this footage, the question prosecutors spent months trying to answer was not whether Philip had done it after his arrest. That question was practically settled. The real question was something else.
What exactly did the footage reveal about those 11 minutes we never see? Because the gloves were already on before he followed Colleen. The hood was already pulled up. The knife was already inside the backpack he had brought to school that morning. And that meant the real question was never about what happened inside that bathroom.
It was about what happened before Philip ever stepped through the school doors. And that was the question the defense was preparing to answer. Because the story Philip’s attorneys plan to tell the jury was not about a crime committed in a moment of rage or because of a sudden loss of control. It was about voices, about a mental state that, according to defense witnesses, was so severe that no 14-year-old child should have been left alone with it.
Was that story true? And was it enough? Those were the questions the courts would spend years trying to answer. But by the time the grand jury approved the indictment, there was no longer any real dispute about the charges themselves. first-degree murder, aggravated rape, armed robbery, sexual assault with an object, four charges against a boy who legally was still too young even to drive a car.
Colleen’s family had been waiting for her at home since 3:30 p.m. on October 22nd. With every passing hour, their worry grew stronger. They called Sarah. They called the school. Then they drove there themselves. And while they were still hoping Colleen had simply stayed behind because of something she forgot to mention, the security cameras were already recording everything that was happening.
No one knew those recordings existed yet. The footage was there before anyone thought to watch it. The evidence in the woods was there before anyone began searching. The knife was already inside Philip’s backpack when he arrived at school that morning. And Colleen was already in her classroom.
Like she often did, she stayed after school to help students who needed extra support. That was the person everyone knew. Someone who cared about being a sister, a cousin, a best friend, a daughter. That was how the people who loved her described what mattered most in her life outside of school. At 3:30, she did not come home. By 4:00, her family already knew something was wrong.
At midnight, investigators were standing in the woods behind the school, looking at a pink toenail sticking out from beneath a pile of leaves. Meanwhile, Philip was walking along a highway in Toppsfield in the wrong direction, telling a police officer that he was not going anywhere. The last time Philip appeared on camera that night, he was barefoot.
Not because he accidentally lost his shoes, but because somewhere between the bathroom and the hallway, he made the decision to take them off. The cameras captured him returning toward the stairs with blood stains on his jeans and his bare feet exposed. At first, he moved slowly.
Then, he quickly entered another bathroom, changed into his football uniform, and walked out of the school, stopped for a moment, and think about what you are seeing. This is not someone panicking, not someone running away. This is someone carefully following a series of planned actions. Before all of this happened, he had already been in the parking lot, sat in the bushes, looked around, changed his shirt, walked past a teacher in the hallway, returned to Colleen’s classroom, took her belongings along with his own, walked downstairs wearing a red sweatshirt
pulled over his head to hide his face. Then he went back upstairs. This time he was wearing a completely black ski mask. Over it he pulled the red sweatshirt and he ran down the hallway. At some point between those two movements, he removed the mask. Um the footage does not explain why.
Um before the next step, he put it back on. Uh the next step involved a recycling bin. Uh, Philip found a large green recycling container inside the school building. He pushed it up to the second floor, rolled it into the bathroom, removed the red sweatshirt, put the mask back on, and using the container moved Colleen’s body down in the elevator, and then out of the school.
The cameras captured him pushing the container toward the wooded area. It was clear the weight was difficult for him to handle. 7 minutes later, he appeared on camera again. He was pushing the same container back. This time, the container was noticeably lighter. There is one thing the cameras cannot tell us and something investigators later considered only as a possibility.
Colleen may have still been partially alive when she was placed inside that container. It was never fully confirmed. Um, but that possibility was considered. And once you know that, it becomes impossible to watch those 7 minutes of footage the same way. After returning inside the school, Philip was already without shoes.
He went back into the same bathroom where the attack happened. After that, he left the school. The cameras captured nothing after he walked out of the building. They did not record what happened afterward. That evening, Philip used Colleen’s bank card not to buy a cheeseburger at Wendy’s, as many retellings of this story often claim.
That detail is not accurate. In reality, he used the card to pay for dinner and a ticket to see the movie Gravity. He sat inside a dark theater watching a film. And at that same time, Colleen’s body was lying in the woods behind the school, exactly where he had left it. Police found her after midnight.
He was 14 years old. He was tried as an adult. He was charged with two counts of rape, armed robbery, and first-degree murder. Prosecutors did not believe his age was a reason to reduce the charges, and the grand jury agreed. Now, it is important to look at the defense’s version of events because it matters, even if perhaps not for the reasons his attorneys hoped.
That day, another student was still in Colleen’s classroom. He was present during the conversation that happened right before Philip followed her into the bathroom. Later, that student explained what he saw. Colleen asked Philip how he was adjusting to life in Danvers compared to Tennessee, where he had moved from after his family relocated north in July.
She asked whether he had gotten used to his new life. According to the witness, Philip became visibly irritated by the question. At first, Colleen did not notice, and when she did, she simply changed the subject. The defense argued that the word Tennessee was a trigger for Philip, that it caused him to lose control in a way he could not resist, and that the murder and sexual assault were direct consequences of that moment.
That was their version of the story. That day, he brought gloves to school. He brought a box cutter. He brought a change of clothes. He brought a ski mask. He knew where the recycling containers were kept. He knew where the elevator was located. He knew the second floor well enough to move through it wearing a mask almost in darkness after most people had already left.
The defense argued that Philillip should not be held criminally responsible because he was experiencing psychosis, that voices told him to do all of it, and that the word Tennessee was the trigger that started everything. The prosecution saw it differently. A person who comes to school with gloves, a cutting tool, a change of clothes, and a mask does not become violent because of one word they hear.
That was the choice the jury ultimately had to make between two completely different explanations. But that verdict would come later. For now, what mattered was something else. What investigators discovered during the months between the arrest and the beginning of the trial, because those facts significantly changed how the entire case was viewed.
Philip moved from Clarksville, Tennessee in July about 2 and a half months before the murder. Neighbors remembered him as a normal kid who was well known by everyone around him. He played football. He played basketball. He skateboarded. He had many friends. And he had a girlfriend, 14-year-old Hannah Walker. She told reporters that she and Philip had grown close over the course of a year.
They walked home from school together every day. Everyone who knew him in that community described Philip as an ordinary, popular teenager who had strong connections to the place where he lived, the same community his mother decided to take him away from. His mother drove him and his younger sister north in a minivan.
According to people who knew the family, Philip kept hoping she would change her mind even after the car was already on the road. That context matters. Not because it explains what happened. It does not. But because the defense needed to present it as the complete explanation and it was far from the entire story.
Because while Philip remained in custody waiting for trial, investigators continued examining the information they had received. According to that information, Philip allegedly had a history of setting household cats on fire and doing it for the thrill. It was reported that this happened more than once.
That information was never confirmed with the same level of certainty as the surveillance footage. However, investigators considered it serious enough to investigate further. And the reason they did so is the same reason it is still worth examining today. Court documents describe another incident in significant detail. Philip secretly slipped away from the people supervising him.
He moved through a common hallway, crouching down to avoid being noticed. He followed a young female staff member into a locker room. There he began choking her. Then he repeatedly struck her in the head and face. He had a pencil with him which he used as a weapon. Other staff members heard her screams and rushed in to stop him.
Um, court documents state that during the arrest, Philip showed signs of psychosis. He was screaming, speaking incoherently. Foam was coming from his mouth. Afterward, he was placed in a psychiatric facility for 30 days for evaluation and treatment. Prosecutors used this incident as an argument for increased security measures during the trial.
Um, the defense used the exact same incident in a completely different way. In their view, it supported what they had argued from the beginning, that Philip was not in control of himself, that the psychosis was real, documented, and ongoing. This is what the case eventually came down to. And it is an uncomfortable place for any conclusion.
Either Philip was a teenager suffering from severe mental illness who committed an extremely violent crime during a psychotic episode using objects he had brought from home and then spent the following hours paying with his victim’s bank card, buying dinner and watching a movie.
Or he was someone who had been moving toward this for a long time. someone who planned everything carefully, someone who carried out his actions step by step and after his arrest built a defense asking jurors to look at the recycling bin, the ski mask, the gloves, and the box cutter and believe that none of those things had been prepared in advance.
The jury had to decide, and the most important thing was not the surveillance footage itself. No one disputed that it was authentic. The most important question was something else. What did that footage actually prove about the person shown in it? Because there was another possibility, a version where the mental illness was real and at the same time the planning was also real.
A person can truly experience psychosis and still be capable of planning their actions. The voices the defense described may have been real, but that does not automatically mean they were an excuse. The law does not always have simple answers in situations like this. In November of 2015, 12 jurors were tasked with deciding which version of the story they believed.
But even before the verdict, there was another question. What exactly did investigators find inside that bathroom? The detail the surveillance cameras could never show. That was the evidence prosecutors plan to present to the jury as the strongest proof of what Philip did to Colleen Ritzer after following her into the bathroom.
That detail changed the way the entire case was viewed. And at that point, it had not yet been fully revealed in open court. Um the prosecutor in the case was Kate McDougall. Um by the time jury selection began, she had already worked on the case for two years. And even before the first juror took a seat, Philip had already tried to stop the trial from moving forward.
The third day of jury selection, a short break, Kate McDougall’s team returned to the courtroom. Philip’s attorney returned as well. Philip himself did not. A clinician informed the judge that Philip was lying on the floor in a room behind the courtroom and was hitting his head against the floor and that bringing him into court would be dangerous.
The clinician did not say Philip was sick, did not say he had passed out. He only said that it was dangerous, and that wording mattered. Psychologist Colleen McMillan was brought in to evaluate Philip’s condition. Later, she explained to the court how the assessment went. According to her, she spent 90 minutes with Philillip.
And during all 90 minutes, he sat without turning his face toward her the entire time with his back to her. He said he did not want a trial. Said he hoped someone would walk into the room with a gun and shoot him. Claimed that a voice had warned him not to trust his own attorneys. He said he had started communicating with an imaginary man and that this man refused to reveal his name because according to Philillip, the psychologist herself was part of a group of people who had sent him to prison.
Um, he also complained of intense burning sensations throughout his body caused by the stress of the court hearings. He said he was afraid of people walking behind him in the courtroom. And he said he already had a suicide plan, but he refused to explain what it was. Stop for a moment and look at this entire list. Not because it is automatically convincing, but because of how complete it appears.
voices, paranoia about his attorneys, a suicide plan he refused to reveal, physical symptoms that could not be verified, fear of people around him. Each of these points looked exactly like something that could delay a trial. The prosecution did not leave that unanswered. Kate McDougall told the court directly that the question was not whether Philillip was capable of participating in the trial.
The question was whether he wanted to. She said Philillip was effectively holding everyone involved in the process hostage and that everything that had happened during the previous 24 hours was not genuine. It was staged. And according to her, the state had documents supporting that position. Philip had already undergone a full psychiatric evaluation.
The final report was 96 pages long. The doctors who prepared it did not conclude that Philip was truly hearing voices. In fact, they stated that his behavior did not match the pattern of genuine auditory hallucinations. According to prosecutors, they used one key word, manipulative. The judge, however, had little choice.
Despite the prosecution’s arguments, despite the 96page evaluation describing Philip’s behavior as an act, the court could not allow the trial to continue if there was even a minimal doubt about his ability to participate. Any conviction against someone who was truly unable to stand trial would not survive an appeal. So, Philip was sent to a specialized facility for an official evaluation of his competency. The trial was paused.
Nearly 3 weeks passed. After the evaluation was complete, experts reached their conclusion. Philip was competent to stand trial. Jury selection resumed. Now you know everything the jurors did not know at that moment. You know that on October 22nd, 2013, Philip arrived at Danvers High School wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, carrying gloves, a mask, and a box cutter.
Kate McDougall began her opening statement without offering any excuses. She told the jury that Philip did not come to school in a state of psychotic confusion. He came with a plan. Gloves, mask, box cutter. According to her, those were not things someone experiencing hallucinations accidentally gathers and brings to school.
She said Philip was focused, determined. Her exact words were, “He had a goal, a terrible, terrible goal, and he carried it out in the woods, and he did not care at all what happened afterward.” Then she said something else, something that had never been made public before. What is this case about? This case is about why did this happen? Why did a 14-year-old boy, well behaved, quiet, one month into high school do these terrible things? The answer is he was severely mentally ill.
He had been suffering from a psychotic disorder since the age of 10. Then she told the jury one more important detail. According to the prosecution’s version of events, when Philip moved Colleen out of the school inside the container, she was not dead yet. She was severely injured. Um, but she was still alive. That meant everything that happened in the woods happened to someone who was still breathing at the moment she was placed inside the container, taken through the school doors, and pushed out into the darkness. Kate McDougall also returned
to the moment when a student walked into the bathroom. You already know that part of the story. The prosecution’s position was that Philip had not finished what he intended to do inside the bathroom. And that was the reason, according to them, why Colleen was moved to the woods. That was where the attack continued and that was where the injuries described by the medical examiner were inflicted.
After all the years I have spent studying cases like this, this was the one detail that stayed with me the most. The defense did not deny that Philip killed Colleen. His attorney said that directly in court. They were not going to argue with the facts. They were only going to argue about his mental state.
Their position was that Philip was experiencing psychosis during the attack. that he was following commands from voices he believed were real and that a kind, intelligent, well-raised 14-year-old boy does not do what Philip did unless something catastrophic has happened inside his mind. Now, at the end of his stay in 2015, did you reach a diagnosis for Philip Chisum? I did.
And what was that diagnosis? I made two diagnoses. One was a depressive state, best described in my view as a major depressive state, and another was a brief or transient psychotic episode. The defense’s expert witness was psychologist Dr. Richard Dudley. He had spent decades evaluating the mental state of children and teenagers with severe psychiatric disorders.
In court, he testified that in his professional opinion, Philip had been hearing voices since he was 10 years old. He also said that on the day Colleen was killed, Philip was not acting as himself. He was reacting to hallucinations. According to Dudley, Philip did not choose to do what he did. And this is where the biggest problem begins.
The problem with this version, the problem with the prosecution’s version and the problem with the entire situation, the jury had to evaluate. The prosecution had its own experts. The defense had theirs. The prosecution’s doctors argued that Philip was pretending. The defense’s doctors said he was truly suffering from a severe mental illness.
Both sides were made up of highly qualified professionals. Both sides were paid for their work and both sides directly contradicted each other. In the end, 12 jurors, none of whom had medical training, had to decide which experts were telling the truth about the inner mental state of a 15year-old boy. This is not a criticism of the jury system.
It is simply a description of the difficult question this case placed in front of them. The question of whether Philip was a violent criminal or someone experiencing psychosis could not be answered simply by looking at him from the outside. No one can look inside another person’s mind. All anyone can do is evaluate their actions before the crime, during the crime, and after the crime.
Before the crime, he gathered the items he needed and brought them to school. During the crime, when he was interrupted, he changed his plan. After the crime, he went to the movies. He used Colleen’s bank card. He ate dinner. That is the behavior of someone making decisions. When something terrible happens, people will often say, “It could always be worse.
It is difficult for this to this court to imagine what could be worse for an individual or a family to endure than the brutal and senseless murder of Colleen Ritzer. Colleen Ritzer lived a life of quiet heroism. That’s what most teachers do. Henry Adams observed that a teacher affects eternity.
She can never tell where her influence starts. Colleen Ritzer’s parents, more than most, have learned the reach of their daughter’s influence, but at a cost no parent should have to endure. While the extent or lack of extent of the defendant’s mental health was the subject of exhaustive testimony at trial, the Commonwealth presented overwhelming evidence that the defendant had substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct and had the substantial capacity to conform his con conduct to the requirements of the law.
I will punish the defendant for the murder of Colleen Ritzer and I will punish him for the rape as well as the armed robbery of the underpants she put on on the morning of her death. But I may not utilize the horrific rape and robbery of Colleen Ritzer to punish the defendant for this unspeakable murder more than the law allows.
That is exactly how a person who is making decisions behaves. But the defense argued something different. Psychosis does not always look the way most people imagine it does and that is also true. So the jurors had to live with that contradiction and still reach a verdict. But they were not given much time to sit with that question.
Soon Philip tried once again to disrupt the trial. It was the second day of the actual trial, not jury selection, the trial itself. Philip refused to enter the courtroom. It was the same pattern of behavior as before almost exactly. This time the prosecution was not just frustrated. They were concerned and they were especially concerned about the timing because that was the day the jury was supposed to see the green recycling bin.
This court will impose the mandatory life sentence for the murder of Carlen Ritzer and set a parole eligibility date of 25 years, the highest level our law allows. This court will impose a concurrent sentence of 40 years to 40 years in one day for the rape of Carlen Ritzer and a concurrent sentence of 40 years to 40 years in one day for the armed robber.
The same bin was brought into the courtroom so the jurors could see it with their own eyes. McDougall strongly urged the judge not to allow Philillip to keep controlling the pace and direction of the trial. And this time the judge agreed. He told Philip’s defense team that if Philip chose to give up his right to be present, the trial would continue without him.
The proceedings would not stop. And then then something happened that the prosecution did not expect. Philip changed his mind. The moment he was clearly told that the trial would continue whether he was in the courtroom or not, Philip decided he wanted to be there. No explanation was ever given for why he changed his decision and one was not necessary.
The judge removed the very thing this strategy was designed to create a delay. Without a delay, there was no reason to remain lying on the floor. What you are seeing in both of these situations is a person testing the limits of the system to find out where it will stop. During jury selection, the system stopped.
The judge sent him for an evaluation. It worked. So he tried the same approach again during the actual trial, but this time the system did not stop. The judge did not fall for the bluff. As a mother, one of your worst fears for your daughter is that she could be assaulted. He would now, in addition to the original three charges, be charged with sexing Pauline in the bathroom.
This charge added to the horror of the crimes. We once again had to go home. As Tom talked to Dan and I told my 17-year-old daughter that her sister had been raped as I saw such pain and fear in her eyes. The emotional and physical pain was intensified when we received a phone call on Christmas Eve of 2013 following the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling that changed sentencing for juveniles convicted of first-degree murder by ruling that they could no longer be giving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. It was
devastating to hear that news knowing that the legal battle would never end for our family. Instead of following the federal court’s appropriate and respectful decision to extend discretion to the judges, Massachusetts took that law one step too far and took away your right to sentence him to life without parole.
Because of that immoral and unjust ruling, our family will be forced to publicly go through this pain again as we have to fight to keep such evil person in prison where he belongs for life. As Tom and I age, that burden will fall to Dan and Laura, a burden that they should not carry. As we have sat through this very long trial and this very long judicial process, the horrific details of that day have been made known to all.
You have heard and seen all the evidence, including statements he made that night to the police that clearly demonstrates that he knew exactly what he was doing. He deserves the sentence of death for the brutal crimes he committed. But that is not an option. He deserves life in prison without the elig eligibility of parole.
But that is not an option. You do though have the option to set consecutive life sentences with parole eligibility at the highest level that the court allows for each of these crimes. Please begin the long and painful process of writing the wrong of the SJC and legislators. You have the responsibility for Colleen, for our family, and for the community to put him away for the rest of his life.
Even after 50 years, he could still have a life, a family, children, which cannot happen. He is pure evil and evil can never be rehabilitated. You need to consider the safety of our family and the rest of the community as we live in fear if he ever gets out of prison. Colleen and our family will never get a second chance and neither should he.
I will never forgive him for what he did to Colleen and for what he took away from our family. Today, you need to make the right, just, and brave decision to give him three consecutive sentences with the maximum number of years before federal eligibility eligibility for each crime. The question that still has no clear answer is what the jurors actually thought about everything they had heard.
They saw Philip refuse to enter the courtroom twice. They heard the prosecution argue that his behavior was an act. They heard the defense say it was a symptom of his condition. They listened as two groups of doctors gave completely opposite opinions and they heard McDougall explain in simple terms what Philip brought to school that morning and what he intended to do with it.
The entire defense strategy rested on one main argument that no ordinary 14-year-old boy could have done what Philip did unless he was under the influence of something beyond his own control. The prosecution’s response was quieter but far more specific. Court will impose a sentence in this case without emotion, passion, sympathy or pity.
But one cannot see and hear what this court has during the course of this case without feeling that the crashing waves of this tragedy will never. There is no quote right and quote sentence. No amount of prison time would ever be enough to be commenurate with this crime and no math will ever erase the reality that this crime was committed by a 14year-old boy.
While this court is constitutionally required to consider that there is always the possibility of redemption, even if the defendant were to live a perfect life from this moment on, his repeated stab wounds to Colleen Richer’s young body will remain indelible with Colleen Rich’s family, friends, and community until the last person who knew Colleen Ritzer takes his or her last.
They were not debating what kind of boy Philip was. They were debating what he did in the hours leading up to and following the crime. The gloves, the mask, the box cutter, the movie, the cheeseburger, the credit card. These facts did not require a medical background to evaluate. They only required the willingness to look at them honestly and face what they showed.
The jurors looked at those details and there was still one more piece of evidence they had not seen yet. One more fact that had not been presented to them, something that would leave a different impression than everything the expert witnesses had said. For years, the defense had built its entire argument around one central idea.
Philip was not a killer who knowingly chose what he did. He was a sick child who never truly had a choice. And for a while, it seemed like that argument might actually succeed. During the trial, his attorneys kept returning to the issue of his mental health. They wanted the jurors to see brain scans, hear from expert witnesses, and review documentation about the voices Philip claimed were controlling him.
The judge denied most of those requests. The defense argued that the decision could be grounds for overturning the verdict. They were already preparing an appeal before the jury had even reached a decision. But instead of brain scans, this is what the jurors had. They had the video. When a beautiful life such as Colleen’s is taken with such brutality, callousness, and premeditation, that individual needs to be in prison for life.
It doesn’t matter how old he was when the crime was committed. And it doesn’t matter that in 30 years he might be rehabilitated. He does not deserve to have a life outside of those prison walls. Every step Philip took on the evening of October 22nd, 2013 was recorded and preserved. The prosecutor walked the jurors through everything piece by piece.
Philip checks his pocket for the box cutter, pulls on his hoodie, puts on gloves, opens the bathroom door, and then wheels a trash bin out into the hallway. Each of those actions carried out in that specific order said something not about voices but about preparation. The prosecutor stated it clearly. She argued that the footage showed a conscious decision and a plan that had already been formed.
But the most important image was the one from the woods. The image Philip himself created. She described what investigators found there without softening the details. Colleen stripped, beaten, and harmed. That was the image the jurors were asked to keep in their minds as they decided what Philip Chisum had done.
They did not hold on to that question for much longer. On December 15th, 2015, they returned with their verdict. Guilty on all counts. First-degree murder, aggravated rape, and armed robbery. It was a force, like this amazing positive force in so many people’s lives. She was that person when you were having a bad day, she’d be the first person I’d reach out to.
Jennifer Burgerer was Colleen Ritzer’s best friend for 19 years. October 22nd is a day she’d rather not have to mark. We wanted to shift it into something positive. So instead, she chooses to mark it, showing kindness for Colleen, holding a door, a single flower from a stranger, donuts for the school faculty, or in Jennifer’s case today, a generous tip.
We were witness to the cause. gentleman was charged for two sandwiches and I tried to stop him in his assistance. He said, “No, please buy somebody else a lunch for me and he left a $20 gratuitity that he wanted us to force forward also.” And the effect this afternoon really and how just being nice is nice.
Hopefully the next person comes in and keeps it going throughout the rest of the day. Jennifer knew Colleen better than almost anyone and she’s pretty sure it’s what Colleen would want. She’s the sunshine in I think a lot of people’s lives. She brought so much every day to my life and not having her here is hard.
It will always be hard and I think what I can do as a friend is make sure she’s not forgotten. Next came the sentencing hearing and that was when Colleen’s family finally had the chance to speak. Her mother, Peggy, stood up and described the moment when she had to tell Colleen’s younger sister what had happened. Think about what it takes for someone to have that conversation.
Finding the right words, watching a child’s face change as those words begin to sink in. Peggy Ritzer stood in that courtroom and described that moment. Then she asked the judge to impose the harshest sentence allowed under the law. The judge did not need much convincing. He described the crime in terms that left no room for misunderstanding.
Then he delivered the sentence life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Philip sat through all of it without any visible reaction. No tears, no obvious emotion. His face remained unchanged, showing the same detached expression he had maintained throughout the entire trial. Everyone can interpret that however they choose.
But there was not a single moment during the hearings when Philip Chisum appeared to truly understand that because of his actions, another person was no longer alive. And that complete lack of reaction mattered because the sentencing was not the end of the story. Even before the trial for Colleen’s murder had come to a close, Philip had already attacked another person.
Boring of grief and compassion at the wake of a beloved teacher. Hundreds turning out to honor the memory of Colleen Ritzer. She is the young math teacher who was murdered at Danver’s High School last week. Our Julie Lanchek is live in Andover tonight where that wake is happening. Julie, Heather, at times the line of mourners wrapped around St.
Augustine’s church here in Andover. Hundreds coming to pay their final respects to a beloved daughter, sister, friend, and teacher. She’s an inspiration to all of us. She was an inspiration to me to live my life to the fullest every single day. Colleen’s favorite color was pink, a color that dotted the crowd in ribbons and flowers, a crowd that included many of her students and her former roommates at Assumption College.
Colleen was a wonderful person. Her our room was decorated with inspirational quotes everywhere. It was such an upl uplifting place to live. A math teacher at Danver’s High, Ritzer was murdered last week at the school she loved, allegedly by one of her own students. But friends say she wasn’t just a victim.
She was a vibrant young woman with an infectious smile and outlook on life. Years passed and by that time, Philip had already developed a clear pattern of behavior. The defense strategy built around mental illness had not saved him in the Colleen case, but it had at least given his attorneys an argument to use. So when the trial began for the attempted murder of another person, everything started to sound familiar again.
The voices diminished responsibility. Insanity caused by a mental disorder. That was once again the foundation of the defense. But then the victim had a chance to speak. During the earlier hearings, she made a statement. She said that even more than 10 years after the attack, she was still haunted by nightmares.
that sometimes she could not bring herself to leave her room for hours because she was afraid Philip would be waiting outside the door ready to kill her. She said those words openly under oath in a courtroom and that was when something happened that had not happened even once during the entire decade since Colleen Ritzer’s death. Philip changed his position.
He pleaded guilty. But there was more. His attorney asked the court to impose the maximum possible sentence and said that Philillip wanted to take responsibility for what he had done. Stop for a moment. Think about that. Philip Chisum, the person who for 10 years had never once accepted responsibility for Colleen Ritzer’s murder.
The person who sat through the entire trial with the same emotionless expression on his face. The person who never once reached out to her family with words of sympathy suddenly wanted to take responsibility. But not for the first victim. For the second one, the court sentenced him to 17 to 20 years in prison for the attempted murder charge and another 9 to 10 years for the remaining charges.
All of those sentences were ordered to run at the same time as the sentence he had already received for Colleen’s murder. In reality, the new sentence did not add a single additional day to his time behind bars. The sentences were served concurrently. The sentence from the Colleen case remained the one that determined when he could potentially become eligible for release.
His attorneys understood that very well. And just 2 months after Philip told the court that he wanted to take responsibility for the other crime, they filed an appeal in the Colleen case. They argued that the convictions for aggravated rape and armed robbery were legally unsupported. They also claimed that the judge had improperly refused to allow certain evidence about Philip’s mental state, including brain scan results and additional expert testimony.
The implication was clear. If even one of those convictions could be overturned, it could potentially affect the entire structure of his sentence. Colleen’s family publicly responded to the appeal. They reminded people that Philip had never shown remorse. They said he was beyond rehabilitation and they spoke words that are worth quoting exactly.
Colleen and our family will never get a second chance. If we live in a society that believes in justice, then he should not get a second chance either. Since the day Colleen died, her family has organized yearly events built around that very idea. Not just remembering her, but doing good in her name. The Colleen Ritzer Memorial Fund was created with the goal of promoting kindness and compassion.
Every year, charity 5 km runs are held. People bring pink daisies. There is also a scholarship for students who dream of becoming teachers, just like Colleen did. The family also started the kindness for Colleen campaign where people share stories about acts of kindness done in her honor. This is how the family chose to use the years that Philip Chisum took away from them.
They turned their pain into something positive. In February 2025, the Massachusetts Supreme Court reviewed the appeal. The justices found no errors in the decisions made by the lower court. The conviction remained in place. The sentence remained unchanged as well. Philip will not be eligible to request parole until at least 40 years have passed from the date of his sentencing.
And even then, there will be no guarantee that he will ever be released. But now, there is still one question that this case never fully answered. Philip Chisum was only 14 years old when he killed Colleen Ritzer. The Massachusetts legal system, like most modern legal systems, recognizes that the brains of teenagers are still developing, that they are capable of change, and that the possibility of rehabilitation should remain.
This is not about being lenient. It is an approach based on modern neuroscience and decades of research into adolescent brain development. But Philip was not a child who in a moment of emotional chaos suddenly made one terrible decision. That is what the video showed. The gloves, the box cutter that was already in his pocket, the recycling bin.
Each one of those steps was a separate choice made one after another with an understanding of what would happen next. And then more than 10 years passed. And during all that time, he never said a single word to the family of the person he killed. The defense talked about voices, but investigators and the court concluded that a mental disorder was not the cause of the crime.
Near Colleen’s body, investigators found a handwritten note that said, “I hate you all.” The prosecution determined that Philip did not write it and that it had nothing to do with the motive behind the crime. Meaning the claim about the voices remained the only explanation the defense ever presented and the courts rejected it at every level, including the state’s highest court in 2023.
Colleen, come on. I’m trying. Okay. Ready? Laura can DO IT. WHO’S BETTER THAN YOU? You need to back up too cuz it’s too close. Okay. And go. [laughter] You know that that was it. She was going to be a teacher. Um and she never I don’t think she ever thought about doing anything else cuz we’d be like, you know, teachers don’t necessarily make a lot of money.
I used to give a lot of hard times. You you sure that’s what you want to do? Cuz you know, you’re not going to make a lot. You’re going to work a lot. It’s a lot of work. And she gets so mad at me. Like that’s what they want to do. Don’t discourage it. like just ask it. She would create a test and she’d be like, “Hey Laura, can you take my test?” to see if to see if it’s too hard or too easy or if they’ll like it or if they won’t understand it.
So, I used to have to take some of her math tests to see how her students would react to it. [laughter] So, you two were like guinea pigs with her sometimes. Oh, yeah. I don’t think she ever asked me to do it. She probably knew I wouldn’t succeed at it regardless. Colleen was sharp enough to know who might have needed some help.
jump right in and would help those that uh were in need of help. She would have these huge binders um like the biggest ones, you know, the like really big ones full of lesson plans. She started bringing the fun aspects of it in. So, she was, you know, saying when it was pi day and like where she would find just a funny math like joke type of geeky thing.
Every day in class I would share a quote or a little picture of the day um depending on whatever season it was when the math was tough or hard or like it didn’t seem to make any sense. Um it didn’t feel like something that we couldn’t figure out. These people never knew her, but they so understand who she was and they want to be supportive.
That to me that says it that says it all. I mean right there. The justice system left open the possibility of parole after 40 years. If Philip is ever released, he will be just over 50 years old. The woman he attacked in the juvenile facility will still be living with her nightmares. Colleen’s sister will be in her 40s.
Her parents will be in their 70s, if they are even still alive by that time. Rehabilitation is not just an abstract idea. It comes with a cost. And in cases like this, the people who pay that cost are often not the ones who decide whether rehabilitation worked. After 10 years of silence, a person can change their legal strategy.
They can change their position in court. They can admit guilt when the evidence has already become impossible to deny and the victim’s testimony has officially become part of the record. But there is one thing a person cannot fake for 10 years in every court hearing in every statement made through attorneys in every public appearance.
It is impossible to completely hide the absence of any genuine sign of regret for taking another person’s life. Colleen Ritzer stayed after school and tutored students for free because she wanted to. She gave her time to children who needed help. There was never any conflict between her and Philip. No argument, no personal grudge.
According to investigators, her colleagues, and the court records, she was exactly the kind of teacher people remember for the rest of their lives. The kind of person who can truly change someone’s future. She was only 24 years old. After her death, her family created a foundation that has continued its work for more than 10 years.
Because of her name, future teachers receive scholarships. People perform random acts of kindness. They share those acts on social media and they dedicate them to her memory. That was the impact one person’s life had on everyone around her. Philip Chisum will have the right to request parole when he is just over 50 years old.
And at that point, the members of the parole board will have to answer one question. Is the man standing before them truly different from the 14-year-old boy who in 2013 pushed a green recycling bin down a school hallway? Is there even one piece of evidence showing that he ever thought about Colleen Ritzer and felt something other than discomfort over the consequences he faced himself? Because if such evidence exists, it has never been made public.
And that is exactly what the parole board will be looking for 40 years from
