Only two prior murders have occurred on USF’s campus, in 1994 and 1985

Feb. 17, 1994 – Nineteen-year-old Heather Haupin was gunned down on campus by her ex-boyfriend, 22-year-old Peter Howarth, just outside of Kosove Hall.

Both had just left a White Zombie concert at the Special Events Center when Haupin was shot in the head. She died instantly. According to a St. Petersburg Times article on the incident, Howarth shot himself in the head when police confronted him later that night, but did not die. After shooting himself, Howarth pointed his gun at an officer, who then shot Howarth in the midsection.

Howarth lapsed into a coma, but by 1996 recovered enough to be deemed competent to stand trial and was eventually sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to charges of first-degree murder. He is being held in Tomoka Correctional Institute in Daytona Beach.

August 9, 1985 – Fifty-year-old Virginia Bulger, a USF communications secretary, was strangled to death in a conference room on the fourth floor of Cooper Hall. Robert Acampora, a 28-year-old computer engineering student, was later charged with first-degree murder and sexual battery, and is serving two life sentences in Lake Correctional Institute in Clermont.

– Staff Report