A Bay Area high school teacher was stabbed in her classroom in 1978. Police just identified her killer
Recording grades on the last day of the school year nearly 50 years ago, a Bay Area high school teacher was stabbed in the chest by a man police wouldn't be able to find for decades.
Diane Peterson, a 26-year-old English teacher at Branham High School in San Jose, had just been told she would be laid off because of dwindling enrollment in the school, newspapers reported in 1978.
But she was stabbed in the chest before the day's end. Bleeding profusely from the wound, she ran screaming across the campus for 70 yards before collapsing on the floor. Her colleagues tried to stop the flow of blood, but she died at a local hospital.
In the immediate aftermath, police said they were mystified as to a motive and had no suspects. No weapons were found; the only clues were some fingerprints on the doorknob.
But on Monday, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office announced they had solved the cold case and identified her killer: Harry 'Nicky' Nickerson, a student at the school who was 16 years old at the time. Nickerson was not her student.
Nickerson emerged as a suspect in the killing, but for years, police were unable to corroborate witness accounts or develop any usable forensic evidence, district attorney's spokespersons said.
A booking photo of the teenager four days after the killing 'bore a strong similarity' to the sketch based on eyewitness accounts of the attack, spokespersons said. Five years later, the family of a Branham student told police that their son claimed to have seen the murder and had identified Nickerson as the murderer — but the student later denied making that statement.
The following year, in 1984, a witness told police that Nickerson had 'implicated himself' in the murder, allegedly admitting he killed Peterson after she discovered him in the act of a drug deal. Nickerson allegedly was carrying a knife that had 'Teacher Dear' written on it, a witness said.
But with no murder weapon or clear DNA linking him to the crime, police were unable to arrest Nickerson, who in the years following the murder was arrested and convicted of other charges, including armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping, spokespersons said.
In 1984, the same year a witness claimed Nickerson had implicated himself in the shooting, Nickerson was shot and critically injured while attempting to commit a drug robbery. No charges were filed 'given the circumstances,' spokespersons said.
In 1993, Nickerson shot and killed himself.
Investigators finally broke the case in 2025, after meeting with one of Nickerson's family members who admitted that the teenager had come to their home 'minutes after the killing' and confessed to the stabbing.
District Attorney's spokespersons said because the relative was not involved in the killing or an accessory after the fact, no crime was committed and thus the witness would not be subject to arrest, even if '(we) think they should have come forward earlier.'
Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement that he was pleased by the work the office's cold case unit had done to solve the case, even if the murderer was not alive to face justice.
'This marks the end of a terrible and tragic mystery,' said Rosen.
San Jose police chief Paul Joseph said he hoped the resolution would bring a measure of peace to Peterson's loved ones — and to a 'community that has carried this loss for too long.'
Since being established in 2011, the DA's cold case unit has solved over 30 cold case murders from as early as 1969, officials said. Peterson's case is the fourth to be solved by the office in 2025.
In a statement, Peterson's family member — who wished to stay anonymous — thanked investigators for 'not giving up for 47 years.'
'Diane was a beautiful and wonderful person who is missed dearly,' the relative said.
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