On this day, July 7, in 1977, Yale grad student Richard Herrin bludgeoned Yale college student Bonnie Garland to death with a hammer as she lay sleeping in her wealthy parents’ Scarsdale, N.Y. home. Herrin, an illegitimate child, then stole the family’s car, drove to a church and told a priest, “I just killed my girlfriend.”

He said he did it because Bonnie was going to break up with him.