Fifty-eight-year-old Alma Preinkert had been the Registrar at the University of Maryland campus in Washington DC since the mid-1930s, and was much loved by the student body, who referred to her affectionately as “Miss Preink.”
It was Saturday, February 27th, 1954, and Alma and her sister Margaret had been out at a friend’s house playing bridge. They arrived back at Alma’s home at around one a.m. on the morning of February 28th, and as they parted on the doorstep, Alma said that she had a funny feeling that something bad was going to happen. Margaret didn’t think much about it, and went back to her own house next door. But it would turn out that Alma’s eerie premonition would turn out to be heartbreakingly correct.
Alma turned in immediately after getting home; her other sister Alvinia, who shared the house with her, was already asleep.
An hour later, a shadowy figure lurked in the alley outside of the sisters’ home, carrying a stepladder he had stolen from a neighboring boarding house. Using the ladder, the intruder climbed up to a window ten feet off the ground, broke the glass, and reached inside to undo the latch.
Evidently, after getting inside the house, the man headed straight for Alma’s bedroom and began ransacking it for valuables. Alma woke to see the terrifying figure in her room, and her shout of alarm apparently startled the perpetrator, who fell upon Alma, stabbing her repeatedly.
Alvinia, hearing her sister’s struggles, rushed into Alma’s bedroom, but she was stabbed as well, and shortly afterward, the man fled on foot, leaving behind no clues save for a gold tie clip.
Though Alvinia would ultimately survive her injuries, Alma was pronounced dead at the scene. The community was devastated by her loss, and helped the police in any way that they could, but despite hundreds of interviews, searches of the local area conducted by investigators and neighbors alike, and a large reward for information leading to an arrest, no suspects were ever identified, and the murder of the beloved Miss Preink passed into the annals of unsolved crimes. To this day, there remains both a building and a street on campus that bear her name, and a portrait of her hangs in the archives of the Hornbake Library in Maryland.
Crime Immemorial 