May 25, 1968 – Madison, WI – Unsolved
Christine Rothschild entered the University of Wisconsin in 1967, living in
Ann Emery Hall, room 119. Christine had hopes of becoming a journalist upon
graduation. She was an attractive young woman, with long blondish-brown hair and often spent her summers modeling for department
store catalogs.
On a raining evening Phillip Van Valkenberg was pushing through the bushes along side
Sterling Hall to knock on a window so a friend would let him in, when he came across
Rothschild’s body. She had been stabbed 14 times in the neck and chest, several ribs were broken and her heart punctured. She
had been strangled by a strip of lining from her coat and both upper and lower jaw bones were broken. Her gloves were pushed
into her throat. She was not sexually assaulted and still had expensive rings on her fingers.
2010
Sometime in the last five years it was discovered that evidence in many cases has been discarded or lost by the Dane County
Sheriffs department.
Key evidence in the murder of Christine Rothschild has simply been lost. Because the murder occurred before the UW Police
department had a facility for storing evidence, the Sheriff’s Office was handling it.
The lost evidence was important enough that it was sent to the FBI for testing. Bloody clothing, a bloody man’s handkerchief
found under Rothschild’s head, a broken, black umbrella that was stabbed into the ground, items that could contain the DNA of
the killer. The FBI processed the evidence, but no one knows what happened to it after it was sent back.
Christine Rothschild (18)
Was Rothschild the first victim of the
Capital City Murders?
