Dzung Ngoc Tu, a 25-year-old Vietnamese woman and Cornell student, was last seen on campus on May 12, 1981, reportedly in Warren Hall that morning. She was later found dead in Fall Creek at the bottom of a gorge. Early investigators could not reach a consensus and her death was variously left open to accident, suicide, or homicide; people who knew her had mentioned depression.

In 1984 Michael Bruce Ross was arrested in Connecticut for unrelated murders, and Ithaca authorities publicly identified him as a suspect in Tu’s death. Reports indicate Ross later confessed in a psychiatric session in 1987, and some accounts say he admitted strangling and raping her and disposing of her body from Triphammer Footbridge, but he was never charged in her killing in New York. Prosecutors said there was little practical point in pursuing a separate case while Ross faced a death sentence elsewhere.

Tu is remembered by surviving remembrances as an idealist who worked hard and volunteered.