Steve Haataja (Hah-dee-ya) vanished 8 days before fall exams were to begin at Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska. The last time anyone saw the 6'4" 46-year-old was after 4 p.m. on December 4, 2006. Someone accessed Haataja's school e-mail account later that night, but no one knew if it was actually the professor signing on.
The newly-minted math professor had only been at the college since August, 2006. Prior to taking a teaching position at Chadron, Haataja studied for his doctorate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and also worked at that University as a teaching assistant. One student saw fit to comment about Haataja at Ratemyprofessor.com: "Knows his math very well but is often nervous and unclear during class. Overall he is a nice guy who is better suited to research over teaching."
That was only one assessment. An article published on March 10, 2007 -- after it was determined that Haataja was dead -- was commented on by one person who also claimed to be a former student of Steve Haataja's: "Dr. Haataja was my College Algebra teacher here in Chadron. He was an excellent teacher who cared deeply about how each and every one of his students were doing. You're missed more than you could ever know Dr.H. I too am glad that they found him. At last closure can be brought about..."
The anonymous commenter's optimism about closure was probably misplaced. On March 14, 2007, it became clear that finding Dr. Haataja's remains only deepened the mystery that began with his disappearance: "Professor's death investigated as homicide."
On "Pi Day" -- 3.14.07 -- Dawes County Nebraska Attorney Vance Haug issued a statement about the investigation into Steve Haataja's disappearance and death. In part, Haug said, "Due to unusual circumstances and the condition in which the body was found, law enforcement is treating this case with an abundance of caution and is investigating it as a homicide."
The concern during the months between Haataja's vanishing and his remains being found March 9 was not that he'd been murdered, but more that he'd either met with misadventure or perhaps committed suicide.
Steve Haataja was still single, at 46, and in early 2006 he'd had major surgery to correct hip injuries. He'd battled depression, but Haataja told family members before his disappearance that he'd "weaned" himself off antidepressants.
In his apartment in Chadron Haataja had over 1,000 books, and though he had 3 computers, he didn't have an Internet connection at home. The math professor had a car, but it was in disrepair, didn't run. To top things off, he was new at Chadron after establishing a life active enough to socialize at the University of Nebraska, and likely still getting to know his fellow faculty members, the town, and the students.
A history of depression and working a new job in a new place -- circumstances that could certainly trigger a cataclysmic depression.
Because the circumstances as they are now publicly known simply beg the question -- who could possibly find a reason to murder Professor Haataja?
If Steve Haataja's death truly was foul play after all, it is likely that investigators might find any failing grades in classes the professor was teaching when he vanished of great interest. Chadron exams being just a week and a day away when Haataja disappeared might be very significant if Steve Haataja was indeed murdered.
Then again, sometimes people are simply picked at random, or caught in an awful moment where another's desperation and the victim's very presence collide -- a terrible equation that equals murder.
Just a few days after Steve Haataja's remains were found, his family endured a second blow. Haataja's father Esaja, age 74, died Monday, March 12.
Sometimes crime scenes are searched by investigators establishing a perimeter then walking inwards towards the center of the scene in a spiral pattern. The spiral also can embody one of the other great numbers in higher math besides Pi, Phi, or 1.618..., the "golden section." Hopefully the weaving of these elements around the death of the professor bode well for answers one day being found.
This portion of the entry may be updated as needed.
(Invaluable information for this blog entry also came from "Math professor still missing," an article published December 12, 2006 on the Chadron State website.)
Steve Haataja's website from his time at UN-Lincoln:
http://www.math.unl.edu/~s-shaataj1/.
I wanted to take this opportunity to give a fellow blogger a shout-out.
The British love their true crime tales, and some of the greatest crime stories of all time came out of the United Kingdom (Jack the Ripper -- 'nuff said). True crime blogging, a small niche in the blogosphere in general, still seems to be more often an American and occasionally Canadian interest.
But if you are not reading The True Crime Blog UK, you are missing out on some of the more well-written and interesting crime-blogging to be found online at the moment. Neill, the blogger running the show there, puts in a good deal of work on every entry, both in developing his own crisp writing style and in researching each story he covers. He has a few more hurdles to leap, too -- the laws governing what one can and cannot write about a crime still under investigation appear to be more draconian in the UK than they are in the U.S. or Canada.
If my weblog (the one you're reading right now) has a true counterpart in style and spirit outside the U.S., that counterpart is most certainly to be found at:
http://truecrimebloguk.blogspot.com.
Americans can be terribly insular about the news we like to read -- I'm certainly prey to that sort of thing. If Anna Nicole truly was a murder victim, why that's all we'll know about for the next few days.
If you are a fan of reading true crime tales online in particular and you become frustrated with that sort of journalistic jingoism, do yourself a favor and check out what the malefactors are up to in the United Kingdom, with Neill's able help. Then bookmark the site so you can go back, and be among the most well-informed of true crime aficionados in two countries.
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