Editor's note: The information about Ronald Bettig's death has been taken from police, court records and a court hearing.

STATE COLLEGE -- At first, Ronald Bettig was going to drown in the waters off Delaware's Rehoboth Beach.

But that plan, hatched by Bettig's two traveling companions in his State College-area home, failed when they reached the surf, police say.

It was two days later, while stopped at a gas station on the way back to Centre County, that authorities say the plan took a new shape.

The plotters convinced the 56-year-old Penn State professor to come with them to a quarry near his home, police say, telling him they could harvest marijuana growing there. Bettig agreed, and the trio arrived at the Blackhawk Quarry soon after.

The quarry road sits high atop the rim of Penns Valley, under a dome of brittle-looking sky not far from the geographic center of Pennsylvania. The road passes clapboard barns, a mix of more modern split-level homes, and the site of a settler family's massacre by Lenni-Lenape Indians in 1778.

It's not known whether Bettig took notice of the scenery.

What is certain is that when he finally reached the quarry, he got out of the vehicle and minutes later plunged 80-feet off a cliff.

It would be 5 days before his body was discovered by police, and authorities believe he may have remained alive for up to two of those, unable to move and possibly unconscious.

Police have charged two people -- a 32-year-old single mother he'd taken in months earlier, and her uncle -- with his death, alleging they conspired to kill Bettig for personal and financial reasons.

But while the plot against him may have only formed days earlier, his road to that quarry and the people accused of luring him there began long before that on a private path lined not with clapboard barns and macabre historical sites, but rather personal grief, secrets and, perhaps, misplaced trust.

To hear those who knew him tell it: Ronald Bettig was falling long before he reached the quarry.

'Outside of suicide'

In the weeks and months before his death and disappearance, Ronald Bettig's life was unraveling.

His coworkers in Penn State's College of Communications knew it, and so did employees at the Choice Cigarette Discount Outlet on East College Avenue where Bettig was a regular. He was always friendly, the employees insist, but would often vent about his new house guests, work, or some combination of the two, usually before purchasing an assortment of generic and brand name smokes and returning to his waiting car.

The story of Bettig's death begins at the cigarette store, where he encountered 39-year-old George Ishler Jr. sometime in mid-to-late 2015. Ishler, then an employee, was eventually fired for stealing from a wallet that had been left behind by a customer, a store manager told PennLive.

The manager, Casey Murdie, said when confronted with videotaped evidence of the theft, Ishler apologized but refused to return the money. His employment was promptly ended, but his relationship with Bettig had only just begun.

Within months, Ishler had introduced Bettig to his niece, Danelle Geier, and by January she was living at the professor's home with her toddler son. Ishler was also a frequent presence there, police and neighbors say.

It was during this same time that the frequency of Bettig's visits to the cigarette store increased.

"He came in all the time, the professor. He used to say 'I gotta buy cigarettes for the people living with me,'" Kimberly Brown, an employee of the store, recalled.

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Brown added that one of those guests, the 32-year-old Geier, was struggling with an addiction and Bettig said he was "trying to get her help."

But police now say it was Bettig who needed saving, accusing Geier and Ishler of having orchestrated a Fargo-esque murder plot against him.

Traces of their presence at the professor's home remained visible even weeks after his death. On a recent Wednesday, a car seat, pieces of children's clothing and a diaper box lay in a heap in the driveway of Bettig's home in Lemont, just outside State College. Inside, members of Bettig's family sat in silence with only the soft light of living room lamps visible through a window. They would not comment when approached by a reporter at the door.

A view of the Blackhawk Quarry in Potter Township, Centre County. Photo by Colin Deppen.

For some who knew him, the professor's death, his involvement with Geier and Ishler - described as "known drug users" by police - and his willingness to invite them into his life and home remained implausible when viewed through the lens of his standout academic career, one that spanned decades at Penn State and produced a number of acclaimed published works.

It made more sense, though, when considering his struggles before and after the sudden death of his ex-wife, fellow PSU College of Communications professor Jeanne Hall, in 2011. The two had divorced just prior to her death, which doctors attributed to cardiac arrest. Hall was 53.

"I think many who interacted with him regularly knew that he was going through a rough time," Bettig's colleague, professor Russell Frank, said. "And I think I could say that ever since Jeanne died, he seemed to struggle to get back on an even keel."

Members of Hall's family declined to comment on her relationship with Bettig when reached by PennLive.

But colleagues say Bettig appeared lonely and troubled after her death. There were even rumors of drug use, although none recalled ever seeing him under the influence. Murdie and Brown said the professor never appeared intoxicated to them in the store, but certainly appeared "stressed."

In the months before his death, Murdie said, Bettig had grown frustrated with the goings-on at home, where Geier and her child were living and where Ishler was a frequent source of tension.

"He wasn't happy with George's demeanor and his overall way of conducting himself," Murdie said without elaborating. "But he was trying to help the girl and child get their act together."

Murdie said Bettig was also upset about his standing at work, and indicated he'd gotten into trouble with the university, possibly for his conduct in the classroom, and had been "forced" into a leave of absence. Bettig suspected he might not return to teaching, Murdie said.

University officials have confirmed Bettig was on leave and not scheduled to teach during the fall 2016 semester. They have said little more.

Colleagues, meanwhile, acknowledged Bettig's visible struggles, while saying they were struggling themselves to make sense of where those issues may have ultimately led him. None expected a murder case.

"My worry was that he had so isolated himself that he was a candidate for suicide," professor Robert Frieden said. "But nobody expected anything outside of that."

'So ready'

Police say it was on Aug. 10, while preparing to set off for Rehoboth Beach, that Geier and Ishler first set their plan in motion.

Both knew how the professor loved to swim, and they had arranged the trip with the goal of getting him in and ultimately under the water, police allege.

By 10 a.m. the next day, the three set off from Bettig's home with Geier's toddler son in tow.

When they arrived in Delaware hours later, Bettig made a beeline for the waves as expected. It was a balmy Thursday in August, and Ishler soon followed suit.

This June 17, 2016 photo shows people on the beach in Rehoboth, Del.

But while the plan they'd concocted the night before called for Bettig to be pulled underwater and held there, Ishler's initial attempt to do so failed, police say. He later explained that the professor proved too buoyant.

"[Ishler] stated that he did dunk Bettig while in the ocean, but that he felt he couldn't [hold him under] and didn't continue," Pennsylvania State Trooper Brian Wakefield said.

Geier wasn't satisfied, though, and let Ishler know as much.

"So ready. I am pissed off," she texted him at one point during the trip, later explaining to police that she had been angered by Bettig's criticism of her parenting and was, in fact, referring to the plot to kill him.

But Wakefield said Ishler had been stuck in traffic while on a drug run into town, and was unable to get there in time to try again.

And so, after staying overnight in Rehoboth, the trio headed home on the morning of Aug. 12, sand clinging to their feet and Bettig still very much alive.

It was on that return trip, while stopped at a gas station and with Bettig out of earshot, that police say Ishler and Geier decided on their next move.

'No Trespassing'

Bettig, Geier and Ishler reached State College at around 3:30 that afternoon and headed straight for the quarry.

When they arrived, Ishler and Bettig got out of the car, police believe, while Geier and her child stayed behind.

According to police accounts: Ishler led Bettig to the quarry's high ledge, ignoring the posted "No Trespassing" signs and following the vague notion of a footpath that leads up and around a steep hillside of loose rock.

Almost as soon as they reached the top, police believe Ishler pushed the professor over the side. He later described the "crunch" Bettig's body made when it hit the ground and gravel below.

Ishler then left with Geier, allegedly returning hours later to plant some of Bettig's personal belongings -- flashlights and water bottles -- alongside his car at the scene. It was likely an attempt to make it seem as if the professor had been out there alone, possibly at night, and accidentally fallen.

Authorities now believe that as Geier and Ishler placed those items, Bettig was still alive on the quarry floor below them. A medical examiner says it might have taken him as much as 48 hours to die.

Three days later, on Aug. 15, Ishler and Geier filed a missing persons report. In it, they said they hadn't seen Bettig or his vehicle since the Delaware trip. They also guessed that he had likely returned to his home state of California, police noted.

Meanwhile, the professor's disappearance had prompted emotional appeals for information from Penn State alumni, administrators and faculty. His photo was widely circulated online and a search was mounted in central Pennsylvania.

It ended abruptly on Aug. 17, with the discovery of Bettig's vehicle at the quarry and then his body, surrounded by buzzards.

'A capital offense'

Around that same time, Geier and Ishler had gone from concerned friends to prime suspects, after police received a tip from someone who recalled seeing two people, one of them a blonde resembling Geier, at the roadside entrance to the quarry site on the day of Bettig's fall.

Both Geier and Ishler were questioned, and both eventually admitted to their role in Bettig's death, police say.

In an attempt to explain "why," Ishler allegedly said that he and Geier believed Bettig's will had been updated to include them, and that they stood to inherit an unspecified sum of money if he died. Ishler also talked to police about longstanding tensions over Bettig's treatment of Geier, treatment he said included constant criticism of her parenting and an incident in which Bettig grabbed her arm, leaving a mark.

The true nature of the relationship between all three remains uncertain and complicated, to say the least.

In a preliminary hearing on the charges against Ishler last week, Trooper Wakefield hinted at a possible sexual relationship between the uncle and niece, while police reports had previously linked the professor and Geier romantically.

At the tobacco shop, Murdie said he was under the impression that Ishler, not Bettig, was romantically involved with Geier, saying that while the professor wasn't approving of the relationship, he was "willing to help the family." Murdie said he did not know Geier and Ishler were related.

But he does recall Bettig mentioning his problems at home and cites Ishler as the usual cause.

Meanwhile, Ishler's own claims of quarreling with Bettig over the professor's treatment of Geier have proven hard to substantiate. Only one neighbor recalled witnessing a prior police response to Bettig's home.

The neighbor, who declined to be identified in this article, said police were seen outside Bettig's home two to three weeks before his disappearance. The man recalled seeing Geier clutching her child in the driveway at the time, and said the incident appeared to involve the baby. But local police were unable to confirm this, and interviews with other neighbors yielded no additional information.

Others said Bettig was thrilled to have Geier and her child in his home. Bettig had two children of his own through a relationship that predated his marriage to Jeanne Hall. The children, now grown, could not be reached for comment.

"He seemed saddened at first and was suddenly very lively when the child came around," Murdie recalled.

"He seemed to find more purpose."

A colleague of Bettig's also recalled him speaking glowingly of the "trio of mother and two sons - one a baby just a few months old" that he had "rescued from near-homelessness and housed in his basement." PennLive was unable to confirm the presence of a second child in the home, but a relative did confirm that Geier was homeless before meeting Bettig.

With that said, there are still questions about whether Bettig's relationship with Geier transcended that of benefactor and beneficiary, despite his having described it that way to people he knew.

But for some of them, those are almost certainly the wrong questions to be asking anyway.

As one colleague mourned: "What manner of world do we live in where it has become a capital offense to provide shelter for the homeless?"

'I knew nothing'

News of Bettig's death traveled fast across Penn State's main campus, and even faster within the school's College of Communications.

Colleagues remembered him as a firebrand and skeptic, whose rants against corporatized media structures had sent some students running for the hills and cemented others as lifelong devotees.

"While some respondents thanked him for a great semester of rude awakenings, others called him a 'nutty professor,'" Anthony Olorunnisola, head of the college's Department of Film-Video and Media, recalled in a piece for The Daily Collegian.

A student is pictured inside the College of Communications building where associate professor Ronald Bettig kept an office until his death in August. Photo by Colin Deppen.

For the most part, though, Bettig was remembered as an avid gardener, a devoted Los Angeles Dodgers fan, a man who spoiled his cat, and, strangely enough, an academic whose impact on communications research in Taiwan would long outlive him.

"He has alumni who are teaching, literally around the world -- China, South Korea, parts of Europe and Asia and all over the United States -- and so we're hearing from all of those folks," Marie Hardin, dean of Penn State's College of Communications, said in the days after his death. She called the response a testament to Bettig's impact.

More locally, Bettig's death prompted those who knew him to search their memories for clues, or anything they might have seen or heard that could have predicted trouble.

Often, the answer was "no." The photos of the alleged killers were unfamiliar, and their names rang no bells either, many said.

"I thought he was living alone after Jeanne, but apparently he was living with this woman," professor Frank said.

Frieden added: "He and I would have conversations and he would ask questions, sometimes legal questions, but I knew nothing about this. Had he asked my advice, I might have given him some insights. ... I knew nothing about this and this sort of process of putting trust in, and relying on, obviously untrustworthy people."

Frieden declined to elaborate on the nature of those legal questions, fearing doing so might violate an expectation of privacy. He simply returned to talk of how the death of Bettig's ex-wife seemed to be a turning point.

"It's hard to bounce back from the death of a spouse and that certainly was a major factor," he said.

Elsewhere, there was a similar assessment underway with those who knew either of his alleged killers.

"I remember he [Ishler] might say something to your face and do something else behind your back," Murdie said, referring again to the incident with the wallet. But beyond that, Murdie didn't recall any obvious signs of a more dangerous potential lurking beneath the surface.

If anything, Murdie said Ishler seemed more focused on making money. He said Ishler was often seen chatting up customers during his short stint as an employee of the tobacco store, usually on the hunt for odd jobs and extra cash. He believes this may be how Ishler first introduced himself to Bettig.

"George talked with several other regular customers trying to get under-the-table work," Murdie said. "George was a very smooth talker."

He paused for a moment, before adding: "But it's still hard to believe that he's a killer."