Tennessee:Philip Chism·Colleen Ritzer

Colleen Ritzer was 24 and in her second year teaching math at Danvers High School in Massachusetts. She was known for staying after the bell to help students. Philip Chism, 14, had recently moved to Danvers from Tennessee and sat in her last class of the day on October 22, 2013.

That afternoon Chism followed Ritzer into a second-floor girls’ bathroom. School cameras showed him putting on gloves before going in, and later coming out and moving her body from the building in a recycling bin to the woods behind the school. When Ritzer did not come home, her family called police. Late that night, officers in neighboring Topsfield found Chism walking along Route 1. He had a knife on him, his backpack held a bloodstained box cutter and her cards and license, and her body was found in the woods near campus.

Chism’s lawyers argued he was psychotic and not criminally responsible. On December 15, 2015, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, rape and armed robbery. Because he was a juvenile, life without parole was off the table, and on February 26, 2016, he was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 40 years. The state’s highest court upheld the conviction in February 2025.