My biggest lesson after decades of learning and practicing aikido is how to adapt to a changing environment.

Attackers can come out of nowhere.

So can friends.

I met peace and harmony master Kazukai Tanahashi almost 30 years ago during a brushwork weekend he taught at Zen Mountain Monastery near Mt. Tremper, New York. Our paths crossed a decade later at a Tassahara retreat in a mountain valley in a remote part of the Ventana Wilderness, inland from the Big Sur coast. In the early 2000s my wife, Stephanie, and I attended his 70^th birthday party in Oakland, California. Now 90, “Kaz” lives in Berkeley where he paints, studies and prepares for whatever comes his way.

Attackers can come out of nowhere.

So can friends.

Depending on how you view existence, life and death can be either or both.

Kaz is known world-wide for his peace activism. He works for a world without armies and plants trees in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest to help save the planet. Kaz also paints what the Japanese call “enso,” sacred circles of togetherness — one-breath-one-stroke creations that have no beginning and no end.

https://www.brushmind.net/

I imagine myself sitting one day at 90, wearing my aikido hakama  (Aikido founder O’Sensei many years ago personally promoted Kaz to black belt in Iwama, Japan) and painting ensos in the attic. As a 3^rd degree aikido black belt and a 4^th degree aikijujutsu black belt, for now I train alone. In the future I will do my aikido moves alone on the canvas, painting mindless expression of bountiful universal energy as I go.

“Get out of my way!” I’ll yell, waving my brush in the air like a sharp samurai sword. “Here comes the old man!”

Black and purple intrigue me.

Black and green, too.

“Look,” I’ll say to Stephanie. “Look what I did.”

I’ll paint many multi-colored ensos as I await the cosmos to come and get me.

Overtaken by nature’s luster one day last winter, I entered into the snow and created what I call “ensnow,” my own chilled interpretation of no beginning and no end.

Winter always shows up.

Winter always departs.

Winter has no beginning and no end.

I sound like a Zen madman, one of those wild hermits sitting on a rock in his cave drinking homemade mulberry wine and laughing at the shadows on the wall. I like how I sound. I like the sound of lunatic laughter.

This morning when snow fell for the first time this year in a significant amount, I shoveled the sidewalks and the steps. Then I saw our newly constructed empty Zen platform in our Zen garden looking at me.

The wood beamed.

I was happy, too.

So I took the broom I use to sweep leaves and twigs from the platform and held it like a brush. Kaz often uses oversized brushes to generate some of his one-breath-one-stroke paintings. After I painted my ensnow the squirrels applauded. They knew a nut when they saw one.

I then stood back and contemplated my work.

Beauty pulsed at the circle’s core like a beating newborn heart.

Peace forms the ensnow’s center.

Peace has no beginning and no end.

Peace one day will last forever.

Chopping carrots to make “Zuppa Corbette” last night, I realized that unlike hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza I actually had carrots.

That morning, as I do each morning, I watched the BBC on television for the latest news from Gaza. Horrific images flashed in my head, distracting me from making my nice homemade Italian soup. If I wasn’t more careful I might slice a finger.

Even if I cut through the skin all the way to the bone, my personal longtime health care hospital is about ten minutes away in my Hill Section neighborhood. In a pinch I could walk to the emergency room. Doctors would quickly care for me under the best modern conditions.

I’d heal.

I’d live.

Then I thought about doctors, nurses, paramedics and others who live and die in Gaza under constant attack from Israeli bombs, good people who use skill and courage to treat the wounded and the dying.

Each day on TV I watch misery in motion.

Reports from veteran humanitarian workers, Israeli military apologists, scholars, reporters, victims and others fill my head with a sense of doom that reflects devolution of our species. We don’t have to wait for an asteroid to smash into our planet. Human animals have already flattened compassion and mercy for others who share the globe.

And there I am chopping fresh carrots.

Just that morning Stephanie picked up fresh vegetables at the massive supermarket where she shops.

Fresh celery, too.

And onions.

Don’t forget the onions.

Some of us who cook call the combination “The Holy Trinity” as in the sacred Christian doctrine of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost that spins off the central concept of God.

I believe in carrots.

In celery.

In onions.

I believe in the sad people of Gaza where food is consciously denied to the multitudes who lack basic nutrition crucial to survive even if the bombs don’t crush them. But the Israeli government and military, at the bequest of the majority of the Israeli people wield famine as a weapon – an evil strategy designed to kill Hamas, the political party whose armed wing attacked Israel on October 7 and slaughtered civilians.

In return, the Israeli military under orders from the Israeli government has slaughtered Palestinian civilians.

One Hamas atrocity on a single day does not justify a continuing barrage of Israeli government atrocities for 60 days. Around the clock bombing, a ground invasion, restricting humanitarian aid and fuel, cutting water and electricity, toxic sanitation and closing hospitals spells “apocalypse.”

Just by itself, starving men, women and children constitutes a war crime.

“No soup for you,” said the “Soup Nazi” character on the silly Seinfeld TV sitcom.

No carrots.

No celery.

No onions.

No Holy Trinity.

Like the snarling fanatics say while cooking up their savage recipes, “Kill ’em all.”

Let God sort ’em out.

It’s 6:59 a.m. in Scranton.

Sliced crimson sky the color of ketchup on my breakfast eggs greets me this morning. I’m listening to Eric Burdon and War. San Francisco nights give cover to the sky pilot flying high above Monterrey.

My mother bought me the painted ceramic statuette pictured in this post when I graduated in 1969 from Susquenita High School in Perry County, Central Pennsylvania Appalachian mountain country. She said the figure reminded her of me — studious, thoughtful, and introspective as I pondered the ways of the world.

Dotty was right.

I took everything personally.

Keeping most thoughts inside my head, I acted out, rebelling by drinking beer at keg parties in hidden hills, reading “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Carpetbaggers” by Harold Robbins, “The Green Berets” by Robin Moore and other works that riled my unconscious mind. At night I dug deep into swirling heartfelt visions as I tossed and turned listening to music on faraway radio stations.

I thought about running away but had no place to go. So I stayed amid the harsh rural landscape and raw emotion that too often ruled a sometimes very bad scene.

I never kept a diary or journal.

I just wrote.

Sitting in 10^th grade biology class in 1967 I scribbled silly words on a yellow legal pad, my first original writing since writing letters to my mother when I was 13, visited the 1964 World’s Fair in New York  and stayed for a week on Long Island with my Aunt Jewel, Uncle Jerry and cousins Francis and Michael.

Dear Mom, I saw bandleader Xavier Cugat and his little Chihuahua dog, Poquito. I saw Japanese people handing out pamphlets and lying on the ground to call attention to the 1945 American bombing of Hiroshima.

The memory of my first exposure to political protest remains burned in my mind.

As a senior in 1969 I wrote columns challenging political authority, mimeographed the inflammatory words and handed out the newly-founded “underground” newspaper in front of the high school. One Sunday a local preacher in Marysville, PA denounced me by name from the pulpit.

I knew I had arrived.

Hell here I come.

Nothing has changed in more than 50 years.

Consider this and future posts under the common title “How High Can You Fly” another underground newspaper, an incendiary diary and revolutionary journal of community development from my golden years. Expect my thoughts to come in a rushed, unedited stream of consciousness, a free-wheeling freedom of speech barrage of radical intellect.

Sharing life in some 55-plus corporate Margaritaville retirement community with golf carts and bourgeoisie Boomer bores can kiss my ass. At 72 I’m playing the last quarter in a championship game and expect to score.

One of my former newspaper editors once said, “You act like you’re better than we are.”

“No,” I said. “I’m just different.”

That was true.

But I was better than she and her servile wannabe columnist managing editor put together.

And she knew it.

I’ll always be thankful for the handful of editors and bosses — Thompson, Connor, Duncan, Schechtman, Contreras, Bolton and Bemis  — who despite our differences understood my unique value and taught me what they could about journalism. Those who didn’t get my outlaw style only got in my way.

I still value the ride — even during dark times when everybody loses.

Like now.

I’m thinking about the continuing two month Israeli war against the people of Gaza, thoughts that have angered some of you. I don’t respect your opinion, but respect your right to hold a viewpoint different from my own. I will always maintain self-respect by nurturing and staying true to my deepest held beliefs that drive me to engage injustice and refuse to accept atrocity in the name of democracy.

Each day I work to better understand current events. I read, think, study, draw from personal experience. I talk at great length with my wife who also spends considerable time and brainpower continuing to learn about the world from the bountiful information we have available to us.

My guess, and I don’t like guessing, is too many of you draw conclusions from too few thorough news sources. We’re on different sides for different reasons. I understand your plight and accept your flight as friend or acquaintance. As a professional social critic and lifelong cultural dissident, my path still finds me rejecting opinion from many associates and presumed allies.

My side of the battle usually pits me against the status quo. I’m thankful I reject the mainstream maelstrom. The older I get the more committed I become to the struggle for human freedom, independence and liberation.

My mother was right.

The ceramic figurine I keep on the shelf above my desk in our snug home office where we work reminds me of myself. That little symbolic student of human behavior reminds me of how much I need to learn while I can.

Of course, I still take everything personally. But, to get lazy, become distracted, self-absorbed and complacent, to content myself with middle-class creature comforts that numb the masses that remain asses is a fate worse than death.

How high can I fly?

I’ve already reached the sky.

Blood Red Syrah, A Gruesome California Wine Country Thriller, is my first novel.

Published in 2019 by Avventura Press, a small independent publishing house, the book seethes like a rabid desert coyote on the prowl. Complex characters both real and imagined move into your head and refuse to leave. Wally Wilson wields a psychotic corkscrew. Syrah, the voice in Wally’s head, taunts, teases and tortures her victims like an unhinged ghost child channeling sunlight through a magnifying glass into the burning body of a sizzling piss ant.

Racism, sexism and assorted raw bigotry rage against ragged violence and unpredictable psychedelic chaos. Leftover countercultural madness descends like sea smoke then lifts fading like June gloom on the Central Coast. Twenty-first century psychosis builds to a crescendo of peace, love and pot.

And Jesus Zarate and Tripper, our heroes, marry, run off to Mexico and live happily ever after among extra-strength tequila dreams of tomorrow.

We’re good up to that last part.

Happily ever after?

Don’t even try it.

Current reality demands I write a sequel that provides potent doses of Mexican cultural mysticism, blessings and curses steeped in hallucinatory encounters with American heroes and devils who continue to blow your mind.

Weed Wine Magic, A Freaky California Cannabis Country Chiller, slams Cali stoner bliss headfirst against berserk corporate degeneracy, secret Dunite mysticism, death saint Santa Muerte and the human embodiment of mythical south-of-the-border bandit Jesús Malverde vs. ruthless fentanyl drug cartels/

We got multi-colored dancing gummy bears, too.

Twenty-twenty-three is just the 60s turned inside out – a societal facelift marinated in pharmaceutical LSD and bathtub fentanyl.

Arriba!

Merry Pranksters legend Neal Cassidy would loan this book to Ken Kesey and Richard Brautigan if they hung out on the same cell block. Red Hot Chile Peppers’ “Californication” might still bake modern hipsters’ heads but Cali’s deep-fried tribal experience fuels authentic stoners’ brains forever.

My responsibility is to write – yours is to read. I expect some loyalty if you consider me a friend or even just a passing acquaintance.

That’s why I’m giving you another chance to sense the power of Blood Red Syrah and prepare you for the follow-up.  In coming weeks I’ll read and post online videos of select chapters from the book, tempting you to pick up your own copy and throw open the doors to perception for the second trip in this sequence of tales twisted tight as the ends of a hard-rolled joint.

Maybe you’ll get it.

Maybe you won’t.

Most people don’t ponder life the way I do.

Different strokes and all that Sly and the Family’s Stoned stuff. So free your mind. brothers and sisters and everybody else. Reading my novels will take you to the center of your brain stem.

Unless Syrah digs out your cerebral body part with a corkscrew.

At my friend Al “Sonny” Drake’s funeral at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, about 75 members of the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club rode dark heavy metal beasts through the sacred green land of the dead, passing headstones commemorating warriors past, parking in a long line that reminded me of a fire-breathing dragon.

Beneath wooden beams of an open air pavilion, uniformed Marines gently folded Old Glory and presented America’s symbol of freedom to Sonny’s widow, Margie. Christian prayers ended as the nice pastor presented his pious smile and disappeared back into the solemn, silent crowd.

The service had officially ended for the former Pagan’s chapter president.

But the Pagan’s had the last word.

Stepping to the front of the crowd where the pastor earlier stood, an East Coast Pagan’s chapter president and military veteran took centre stage for an encore. Evoking Sonny’s bold spirit in a startling shout, he made clear his personal allegiance and his deceased brother’s final destination.

“Valhalla!” he blasted in a deep voice, referencing the hallowed Norse afterlife reserved for Viking chieftains.

“Valhalla!” assembled club members boomed in response.

“Valhalla!” bellowed the president.

“Valhalla!” rumbled the outlaw multitude.

“Pagan’s Nation!” thundered the president.

“Pagan’s Nation!” boomed club members.

“Valhalla!” shouted the Pagan’s chapter president one last time, raising a clenched fist into the air.

“Valhalla!” exploded the uncompromising grand finale.

Moving en masse and climbing on their bikes, Pagan’s wearing their colors on the backs of well-worn cut-off denim vests kicked over well-oiled engines and roared away from the remains of a good man who loved his country, loved his family and friends and loved his club.

Without a doubt, Sonny Drake lived and died a Pagan – a Pagan forever, forever a Pagan.

After almost four months of official silence, Luzerne County Detective Charles Casey last week called Odetta Todd, one of murder victim Juanita Todd’s two daughters, and asked to schedule an interview.

Odetta said Casey told her Luzerne County District Attorney Samuel M. Sanguedolce and Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay will attend the meeting scheduled for September 25 – three days short of the 51^st anniversary of Juanita Todd’s unsolved September 28, 1972 murder.

The detective told her to bring with her any documents or ideas she has about her mother’s unsolved murder.

Odetta told me she also wants supporters to accompany her to the interview. She even asked if my editor wife and I want to attend. I said we do not and doubt any official meeting with the DA and other members of law enforcement would occur with a member of the press in attendance. Odetta said she plans to bring 10 people with her to the meeting – family, activist friends and her pastor.

Not a good idea I responded in a Friday Facebook message.

“Neither of us would think of attending a meeting prosecutors and police respectfully offer you,” I wrote. “They don’t have to meet with you. Ever. This is not a public meeting.”

“You pushing for people other than you and your sister Tamu to attend this meeting will hurt your cause. This could be the beginning of a new, fresh investigation. You need to give prosecutors and police the benefit of the doubt. If you challenge them and try to tell them how to do their jobs, you seriously risk losing any chance of them helping you,” I wrote in my message

Even when prosecutors and police are wrong, they do not take kindly to anybody – even victims’ family members – telling them how to do their jobs. I know how quickly law enforcement can turn against anyone they believe is not playing by their rules.

In 1991 Luzerne County prosecutors and police arrested me and three of my newspaper bosses on felony charges for embarrassing them in a Wilkes-Barre murder investigation that led to the conviction and 13-year imprisonment of a dentist who killed his wife. We did nothing illegal, a new district attorney dropped the charges and we won a national First Amendment journalism award for our service to a free press.

Odetta Todd doesn’t agree some official meetings must remain private –especially meetings to discuss whether to reactivate an unresolved homicide case. Confidentiality is one reason police rarely release details about an “ongoing” homicide investigation, as they classify all unsolved murders. Another reason for confidentiality might be to protect the reputation of law enforcement officials who failed in the past.

Prosecutors and police have an ethical duty to admit if they lost or destroyed evidence in the Juanita Todd case, including the murder weapon. Nobody in an official capacity will say whether or not Wilkes-Barre police still have the knife. If not, this cover-up raises more questions than provides answers and warrants an outside investigation of county prosecutors and city police.

Ample evidence police collected at the crime scene should still exist. Testing and retesting with forensic science, particularly DNA testing, should help. Suspects still reside in Wilkes-Barre and elsewhere.

Odetta Todd can provide valuable help to police who have unanswered questions about her mother’s murder. To do that she must do her best to answer whatever questions police ask and fully cooperate in the process. I said from the beginning that I don’t want to fight with law enforcement officials. I’m asking for their help. So should Odetta respectfully ask for their help while not dwelling on unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories of the past.

I understand her distrust in prosecutors and police who failed to solve this heinous crime that left her mother, a 22-year-old Black woman, dead on the floor with 22 stab wounds in her body.

I understand Odetta’s distrust of the predominately white system in a largely white city and county. I’m white and distrust the system. But the system is all we have. That’s why we need to fight to hold accountable those who control politics and power in a government still rooted in fundamental white supremacy, bigotry and privilege.

For justice to prevail, Odetta Todd and her sister Tamu need significant public support. These traumatized and vulnerable sisters need serious help from a wide range of people in Wilkes-Barre and elsewhere, particularly Black people, who have done little or nothing to help to spark interest and awareness to reactivate this case. Only steady public pressure will persuade prosecutors and police to re-enter this case with a thorough and modern investigation.

So far, public apathy abounds.

No letter of support from the NAACP.

No Black Lives Matter backing.

No Black church support.

No all-white Wilkes-Barre City Council support.

No white Wilkes-Barre mayoral support.

Sparse public support for reactivating Juanita Todd’s case consists mainly of Facebook comments including many mentions of God and prayer.

Other than the undeveloped WNEP-TV report that provoked me to step back into the Juanita Todd story and two recent Times Leader articles, the case received no media coverage. The September 9, 2023 Times Leader article by staff writer Bill O’Boyle said, “Odetta and Tuma (NOTE: O’Boyle misspelled Tamu’s name) were interviewed by the Times Leader, but they have asked that their comments not be a part of this story.”

After the O’Boyle interview, Odetta said she did not trust the reporter and decided to ask that she and Tamu not be quoted. That omission denied readers the chance to hear her voice and heartfelt story. That decision was ill-advised.

A reporter for NBC Dateline Cold Case Spotlight recently told me the network plans a story next month. Black Press USA also promised coverage but failed to follow-up. Other national news outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic magazine, Capital B, a Black-led, nonprofit media organization reporting for Black communities across the country and “Charlamagne tha God,” a powerful Black celebrity radio host and others, failed to even give me the courtesy of an email response.

Still, this series of 14 columns accomplished the original goal that prosecutors and police review and consider restarting the Juanita Todd case. Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce has asked Wilkes-Barre police to do just that.

In an August 21 email I asked Sanguedolce, “Please answer this on the record question: As you ponder whether to reopen this homicide case, why haven’t you reached out to Odetta Todd, the murder victim’s daughter?”

I reminded Sanguedolce that in a July 24 email to me he wrote, “I plan on meeting with the Chief and possibly the lieutenant in the next week or so depending on schedules to see what cases they are reviewing – and to see if this is one or if not, whether it should be added.”

“After that meeting,” he wrote, “regardless of the outcome, I will reach out to Ms. Todd. If someone has information, I would like to make sure we get it. Obviously, that information could be important and time sensitive regardless of whether it leads to solving the crime.”

On August 22 Sanguedolce responded, “Not for public consumption, but I have reached out to Wilkes-Barre who has assigned detectives to locate and amass the file, reports, and evidence. In my experience, information leaked to the public does more to hamper an investigation than help unless you know the case well and know exactly what to release. Regrettably, we’ve learned that the same goes for sharing too much information with family.

“As you are probably also aware, we are suffering from a lack of personnel like most employers so unfortunately, amid trying to gather, review, and analyze the decades-old investigation, our detectives and lawyers along with Wilkes-Barre police, have been trying to keep up with current crime and ongoing investigations.

“We certainly haven’t forgotten about the case, but our limited resources are hampering us from moving as fast as we might like.”

Prosecutors and police certainly deserve the benefit of the doubt. Official explanations are understandable. Excuses are unacceptable.

I believe Sanguedolce, Coffay, county, city and state police detectives as well as forensic science experts and others working together can solve the Juanita Todd murder. I believe Odetta Todd can help, not hurt, her deeply personal sacred cause.

I’ll continue to write columns as the investigation proceeds – if the investigation proceeds –a decision entirely up to prosecutors and police. Journalists raise awareness, ask questions, demand answers and draw conclusions. Journalists sometimes make a difference for the better. Our search for truth is always worth the effort. For now, though, I’ll suspend my consecutive Sunday columns pending new developments in this case.

We must pay attention to how law enforcement officials behave and hold them accountable to the people and the laws they serve. We must take to heart our moral duty to help one another in the common purpose of fairness wherever and whenever we can. We must know the difference between right and wrong. We must take action to right those wrongs.

What happened to Odetta and Tamu Todd almost 51 years ago can happen to you and your family – a cruel and unjust future nobody deserves.

You know the criminal justice system is broken when a white district attorney in an overwhelmingly white community ignores a Black murder victim’s daughter’s plea for help.  

Luzerne County District Attorney Samuel M. Sanguedolce, a smug law-and-order Republican running uncontested for re-election, is ignoring murder victim Juanita Todd’s daughter Odetta’s plea for help.

Neglecting her.

Rejecting her.

Disrespecting her.

The county’s influential chief law enforcement officer knows Odetta anxiously awaits his call to hear him say he will help find whoever killed her mother – that he’ll take whatever action in his power as an elected law enforcement official to support the 52-year-old woman’s heartfelt quest.

The DA knows Odetta needs to talk with him because I told him she needs to talk with him.

Sanguedolce promised to call Odetta.

The district attorney broke his word.

Whitewashing responsibility through passive retreat is cowardly.

So on Monday Odetta called Sanguedolce. At least she tried.

She called his courthouse office and identified herself to the woman who answered the phone. The woman asked what the call was about. Odetta told her she was calling about her mother’s 1972 unsolved murder and she wanted to make an appointment with the DA. The woman told Odetta to hold on while she transferred the call to County Detective Jensen – believed to be Charles Jensen.

Odetta said Jensen picked up the phone and asked what her call was about. Odetta told Jensen what she told the woman about her mother’s murder, adding “in case you don’t know what this is about.” Jensen said he was familiar with the case, according to Odetta, but didn’t know why the woman who answered the DA’s office phone transferred Odetta to him. Jensen said he was not authorized to schedule an appointment with the district attorney, saying appointments “come from upstairs,” according to Odetta.

After Odetta and Jensen hung up Odetta called the DA’s office a second time.

“A different lady answered and I told her why I called back,” Odetta said.

Odetta told the second woman about her short conversation with County Detective Jensen.

 “She listened then put me on hold for five minutes,” Odetta said.

“When she came back on she asked me what this was about. That told me she wasn’t listening to me the first time,” Odetta said.

The woman again put Odetta on hold.

Odetta said when the woman came back on the line she said the person who schedules appointments with the DA was not in the office that day. She asked for Odetta’s name and telephone number which Odetta provided.

Odetta asked who scheduled the appointments.

The woman said “Kelly.”

Kelly A. Conner is Sanguedolce’s executive assistant.

Odetta asked the name of the woman to whom she was speaking.

“Heather,” said the woman, who promised someone would get back to Odetta “shortly.”

The next day (Tuesday) Odetta called the DA’s office for the third time.

“I spoke with Heather,” Odetta said. “She then transferred me to Amanda the office manager. Amanda stated that the person who handles the scheduling wasn’t in the office today. Amanda had been in touch with the district attorney. He is totally aware of me calling and wanting to schedule an appointment with him. She asked for my telephone number and said that I should be hearing from someone today. I explained to her that’s what I was told yesterday and she apologized for the office not getting back to me yesterday.”

To be clear I asked Odetta, “You say ‘Amanda has been in touch with the district attorney. He is totally aware of me calling and wanting to schedule an appointment with him.’ Did Amanda tell you that? How do you know that?”  

Odetta said, “After I was placed on hold by Heather, Amanda picked up the line. That’s what Amanda said to me. And then I reiterated what she said and then she confirmed that’s correct.”

Later that day Odetta updated me on Amanda’s most recent telephone call.

“Amanda from the DA’s office called me Tuesday (2:47 PM) to inform me she had been in touch with the district attorney. Unfortunately they’re not available until next week. (They) will reach out next week to me to set up a time (Amanda said).”

“Next week” starts tomorrow, Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 2023.

Maybe the DA will call Odetta the day after that.

For Odetta Todd tomorrow is another trying day in her lifelong struggle to find justice in her mother’s name. Tomorrow is also the first day of the rest of Samuel M. Sanguedolce’s re-election campaign to ask voters to trust him to uphold the public trust.

One cruel day long ago life ended for Juanita Todd.

For her tomorrow never came.

Where’s the knife?

Where’s the murder weapon?

On September 28, 1972, Wilkes-Barre police found a knife sticking out of Juanita Todd’s corpse. If they lost or threw away that murder weapon, city officials must admit and explain their recklessness.

If police still possess the blood-smeared blade that’s crucial to helping solve the mystery of who killed the 22-year-old Black mother of two babies, at least a sliver of hope remains investigators will reopen the investigation using modern scientific DNA and other forensic testing.

I don’t believe cops have the knife that killed Juanita Todd.

So I asked Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay.

“Is the knife (murder weapon) Wilkes-Barre police officers wrote in the initial crime (report) they found ‘protruding’ from Juanita Todd’s body still secured and in possession of Wilkes-Barre police?” I asked in the August 23^rd email I described as “on-the-record.”

“Did Wilkes-Barre police lose or destroy this crucial piece of evidence?” I asked Coffay.

After ignoring my most recent emails, Coffay quickly responded to this one the very next day.

“Mr. Corbett,” Coffay wrote in his August 24^th email, “I received and want to thank you for your correspondence on the Juniata Todd case.”

“As you are no doubt aware from your extensive experience with criminal cases, neither our department, nor any other reputable agency would release such information on a criminal investigation.”

A criminal investigation?

Does that mean Coffay is confirming he and city police have reopened the Juanita Todd case without telling the public or talking with members of the Todd family? Or is Coffay’s characterization of “your extensive experience with criminal cases” just an insult to me as a longtime crime journalist who wants answers he prefers to hide?

I sent Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce a copy of the email I sent to Coffay.

Both Coffay and Sanguedolce can easily prove me wrong without jeopardizing their case. Either man or both can just tell the truth. Police have the knife or they don’t. If they don’t, the public deserves to know. If they do, the prosecutor and police chief are morally obligated to launch a 21^st Century investigation. If the knife exists, Coffay and Sanguedolce are duty-bound to make sure forensic science experts test that evidence.

No, I don’t believe police have the murder weapon.

And, no, Sanguedolce has yet to offer Juanita Todd’s daughter, Odetta, the simple, decent courtesy and respect of a telephone call despite knowing the 52-year-old grieving woman waits by the phone each day to hear him say he will do whatever he can to help find whoever killed her mother.

If police lost or destroyed the knife, police also likely no longer possess other physical evidence they should have secured for more than 50 years – evidence competent cops need to find the killer.

If Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay and Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce refuse to publicly tell the truth, we should call their deception a cover-up. What else might these two public servants be covering up? Other than themselves, who else might they be trying to protect?

Black people in particular, including Odetta and her sister Tamu, have an indisputable right to know one way or the other if police are doing what police too often do in America – whitewash the truth.

If law enforcement officials continue to disrespect the people they serve, that’s when we organize a protest inside the courthouse by Sanguedolce’s office door and plan an autumn rally on Public Square demanding fairness for Juanita Todd’s family.

That’s when we ask the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division to open a criminal investigation into continuing public corruption in Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County, political wastelands where dozens of public officials in past years have gone to prison.

That’s when we invite national Black leaders and activists to Wilkes-Barre to see for themselves how the city remains shackled to bigotry and white supremacy – enduring as just another parochial coal cracker town where the mayor and city council members look at life through Caucasian-colored glasses.

This is a homicide.

No excuse justifies dishonoring the memory of Juanita Todd.

“In the front bedroom we found the victim lying on her back on the floor near the south wall,” Wilkes-Barre police officers Jack Morgan and Lawrence Smith wrote in their 1972 “initial crime report.” “A knife was protruding from her right side (abdomen) She had multiple stab wounds of the abdomen and chest.”

Deputy Coroner Walter W. Lisman also mentioned the knife in his coroner’s report.

“Victim was found on the floor alongside the bed with the handle of a kitchen knife protruding from the abdomen,” Lisman wrote. “Victim had received 22 stab wounds made by a knife approximately 4 ¼ inches long (blade) by ½ inch in width.”

Who removed the knife from Juanita Todd’s body? What did that person do with the knife? Did police test the knife for blood, skin, fingerprints or fibers? Where is that knife today?

Where is the knife, Chief Coffay?

Where is the murder weapon, Mr. District Attorney?

Where is the justice?

Now we wait.

We wait after readers shared, discussed and took to heart each of 11 columns about Juanita Todd’s 1972 tortured killing I wrote and published each consecutive Sunday on my website and on Facebook.

We wait after more than 50 years of heartfelt grieving.

We wait amid the brutal fog of sexism and racism.

Today we wait some more.

Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce and Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay must now decide whether to reopen the unsolved murder investigation.

We only move toward resolution if they do.

Yet, two long months after reading my first column, Sanguedolce has not kept his word to contact Juanita Todd’s daughters, Odetta and Tamu, who have pressed for justice during the more than half century they have lived without their mother’s touch.

To disrespect these Black women in such a cold manner is unacceptable. To reject their pain is unjust. Now mothers themselves, the daughters of Juanita Todd continue to mourn. Systemic disrespect gives people valid cause to question why these sisters are being ignored.

Always remember 22-year-old Juanita Todd was Black.

Sanguedolce and Coffay are privileged white men – just like the white men who neglected the pain of a family, a city and a county bereft of equity – powerful men sworn to protect and serve a community they have thus far denied and deprived of fairness.

Like it or not, race always matters in Wilkes-Barre.

If law enforcement officials ever do regroup for a thorough, modern investigation, all evidence police gathered, removed and stored remains more important than ever. My conclusion assumes all evidence still exists. But what if police lost or threw away evidence? What if somebody tried to cover his tracks – and I’m not talking about Juanita Todd’s killer. What if somebody today tries to cover for bad cops from yesterday?

More than 50 years ago Wilkes-Barre police collected essential crime scene evidence that should still be secured in a locked locker or wherever else responsible officers store evidence that might help solve a murder.

Police science textbooks highlight this “chain of evidence” method as a “process and record that shows who obtained the evidence; where and when the evidence was obtained; who secured the evidence; and, who had control or possession of the evidence. The “sequencing” of the chain of evidence follows this order: collection and identification; analysis; storage; preservation; presentation in court; return to owner.”

That priceless chain is as strong as its weakest link. Preserving evidence is crucial to any successful homicide case. If all evidence in this case does not exist, law enforcement officials owe Odetta and Tamu detailed answers as to how that evidence disappeared.

You don’t have to tell us what you have.

But you damn well better tell us what you don’t have.

Blood samples investigators retrieved from the bloody crime scene should still be secured.

The knife Luzerne County Deputy Coroner Walter W. Lisman described in his report as “approximately 4 1/4 inches long (blade) by ½ inch in width” that the killer used to slash, cut, and stab Juanita Todd 22 times and kill her should still be secured.

The “length of white material which could have been a portion of a bed sheet,” according to Lisman’s report that police found tied around Juanita Todd’s neck should still be secured.

Although no mention of a tire iron is made in any official report I’ve seen, Juanita Todd’s daughter, Odetta, says John Lowe, the now deceased city police captain and lead detective in the original 1972 investigation, told her in 2002 when they spoke on his front porch that police found a bloody tire iron in the sink in the apartment where Juanita Todd died. If that’s true, that bloody tire iron should still be secured.

Odetta Todd said Lowe also told her police found three sets of fingerprints at the crime scene – one set belonging to the man Odetta and others believe killed Juanita Todd. Odetta said Lowe told her that suspect, unlike several others, refused to take a Pennsylvania State Police administered lie detector test.

Fingerprint evidence and lie detector results should still be secured, documented and easily available to investigators.

Fibers removed from beneath fingernails on both Juanita Todd’s hands should still be secured.

A bloodstained coin a Wilkes-Barre police officer told me long ago he removed from the apartment of a suspect in the case should still be secured.

If that evidence exists, forensic scientists can test all that evidence for DNA that could lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Juanita Todd. DNA covered that crime scene. But only law enforcement officials have access to the reports and files that should show whether police collected what they should have collected. Only law enforcement officials hold the power to authorize powerful new and improved DNA testing on whatever evidence remains – if, in fact, evidence does remain.

A criminal prosecutor recently told me one of the premier responsibilities of a recharged investigation into Juanita Todd’s murder would be to determine what evidence Wilkes-Barre police still possess. A former prosecutor told me Wilkes-Barre police should still have all that evidence and the results of any already completed testing, including the names of everyone who handled each piece of that evidence.

Forensic testing has advanced dramatically over the past 50 years, continuing to advance each day. Since no new testing of any kind occurred during the 1994 reopening of the Juanita Todd case, new testing is the key.

State-of-the-art DNA testing is the main reason to reopen the investigation.

In building their case, Sanguedolce and Coffay should also have at their disposal an equally large abundance of direct and circumstantial evidence drawn in 1972 from police interviews with people who might still offer testimony as witnesses – not necessarily witnesses to the crime itself but witnesses to the context of the crime and/or the criminals. People police privately considered suspects might even share clues they did not share in the past. Approached properly, one of these suspects might even confess to killing Juanita Todd.

Pennsylvania State Police detectives just a few weeks ago traveled to Georgia and obtained the confession of a killer who murdered 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington in 1975 in Delaware County near Philadelphia.

Capable prosecutors consider many kinds of evidence police gather in any criminal case, especially a homicide. I have addressed in previous columns a variety of evidence in the Juanita Todd case.

Physical evidence is crucial in this case.

Unfortunately, evidence tampering, evidence destruction, loss and deterioration are not uncommon among America’s countless dysfunctional police departments. If all physical evidence does not exist in Juanita Todd’s case, police have a civic and moral duty – an obligation – to inform the public, particularly Juanita Todd’s family members, of this loss. Odetta, Tamu and the rest of us have a right and a need to know.

Transparency in this case is thus far nonexistent.

That must change.

We have waited too long.

Police and prosecutors must be forthcoming about the true status of this case. If investigators fail because they haven’t tried to succeed, the Todd family continues to suffer.

Carelessness and irresponsibility can kill hope. Keeping hope alive fuels the promise of a better future for everyone. Letting faith in the system perish kills the dream.

Did Wilkes-Barre police brass purposely ignore evidence in the 1972 Juanita Todd murder investigation?  

If so, why?

Six years after the 22-year-old Black woman’s barbaric killing, Wilkes-Barre Patrolman Don Smith swore under oath that Captain of Detectives John Lowe neglected crucial information that might have helped solve the Todd case.

Smith also told investigators Lowe told him “a contract was out on a cop because of the Todd case.”

Little documentation exists to prove Wilkes-Barre police botched the original investigation into Juanita Todd’s killing. What does exist shows severe alleged incompetence and deception on the part of Lowe who led the investigation. Some critics consider Lowe’s behavior part of a political cover-up, consequences of which restrict the system to this day.

In 1978, following the murder conviction of Francis Hannon, a well-known city man, then Luzerne County District Attorney Chester Muroski and then Special Assistant District Attorney Charles R. Coslett launched an investigation into Wilkes-Barre Police Department corruption. After gathering sworn statements under oath from several people including Wilkes-Barre police officers, the probe offered a damning behind-the-scenes look into a politicized and untrustworthy department wracked by shoddy work, misconduct, personality clashes and other malfeasance that placed police and the people they were paid to protect in danger.

On November 19, 1978, the Wyoming Valley Observer, a weekly newspaper, published most of the results of that investigation. Attorney Anthony Lupas, who represented Lowe, “edited” the transcripts, according to an editor’s note on the front page of the published report. Among many serious accusations against Lowe, one dealt specifically with Juanita Todd’s murder and how Lowe overlooked what could have been crucial evidence.

Patrolman Don Smith made the damaging allegation in his 1978 affidavit sworn under penalty of perjury.

“With reference to the Guanita (sic) Todd murder, I went to Capt. Lowe three or four years ago,” Smith said. “I related that Jackie Knight had information relative to the murder. Jackie Knight told me that she would not call headquarters because there were too many leaks. Three days after Ms. Knight talked to me, she was arrested for possessing drugs. One month later, Capt. Lowe said that a contract was out on a cop because of the Todd case. When I attempted to relate the information that Ms. Knight gave me to Capt. Lowe, Lowe responded, ‘We know about that. We have a suspect who fled the area and we know where he went.’ But, Lowe did not follow it up. It is my feeling that Ms. Knight has information relative to the Todd killing and would be willing to talk if her daughter is protected.”

On March 31, 1978, six months before the 1978 investigation went public, Thomas McCartha, a 36-year-old Black Wilkes-Barre police officer, died from what officials called a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Investigators quickly determined the off-duty K-9 officer and Air Force veteran killed himself on the steps of a Wilkes College building.

Members of McCartha’s family and others in the community disputed the official finding. Police took a closer look and agreed more than enough evidence existed to prove McCartha killed himself. Questions remain unanswered about whether McCartha played any role in the Juanita Todd investigation or possessed any relevant information about the case.

In Detective Captain Lowe’s response to 28 specific accusations included in the 1978 report, he failed to address the most explosive charges contained in Patrolman Smith’s sworn affidavit. Lowe dodged any mention of the Juanita Todd investigation or Smith’s claim that Lowe told him “a contract was out on a cop because of the Todd case.”

And police never searched for their “suspect” even after he called Wilkes-Barre police from California two years after Juanita Todd’s murder and offered to return to Wilkes-Barre to talk with them.

In 1994 I worked as a news columnist at the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. After locating the “suspect” to whom Lowe referred in Muroski’s investigation, I persuaded Wilkes-Barre police and Luzerne County prosecutors to reactivate the Juanita Todd investigation. Two detectives traveled to California and interviewed Douglas “Bay” DeGraffenreid in a state prison where he is still serving a life sentence for murder. DeGraffenreid maintained his innocence in Juanita Todd’s murder. The reopened investigation quickly ended.

I wrote a letter to DeGraffenreid four weeks ago and have not received a response.

Juanita Todd’s name does not appear anywhere else in the troubling 11-page report the Wyoming Valley Observer published in 1978. But the name of another man who also knew Juanita Todd and associated with her inner circle of friends does. His name appears in the report that, among many other allegations, also accuses Detective Captain Lowe of bad police work and unethical behavior while investigating a double shooting case involving this same man.

Because that man still resides in Wilkes-Barre, I have deleted his name from this column to recognize his privacy. 

In his 1978 sworn affidavit Wilkes-Barre patrolman Don Smith made the following accusation about Lowe and that man.

“When (name deleted) shot Bob Southern, I reported to the General Hospital,” Smith says in his sworn affidavit. “A male nurse said they were taking the bullet out of Southern. No detective was on the scene, so I went up to the operating room and went with the nurse to the pathology department. I made a report of my findings to Captain Lowe and took the report to him. (Name deleted) was there at the time. Despite my wanting to see Captain Lowe alone, (name deleted) remained while I submitted my report and the evidence. The bullets were placed in packages and Lowe took the packages apart while in the presence of (name deleted). I testified in that case to the existence of two packages since the two pieces of the bullet were placed in separate packages. Following my testimony, Captain Lowe took the stand. I was subsequently recalled to the stand to relate that there were, indeed, two pieces. Apparently, Captain Lowe had lost the smaller piece. The first trial ended in a mistrial. (Name deleted) was later retried and found not guilty.”

Over the decades that same man whose name I have deleted has related to several people in Wilkes-Barre various theories about whom he believes might have killed Juanita Todd – including DeGraffenreid. City detectives interviewed this man in 1972 as part of their original Juanita Todd murder investigation. He told one city woman he sent me “four or five” letters about the Juanita Todd case from a state prison where he served his 10-to-20 year sentence for a 1994 Wilkes-Barre murder. I never received those letters from that man who still lives in Wilkes-Barre.

Wilkes-Barre Captain of Detectives John Lowe also maintained a relationship with yet another man who closely associated with Juanita Todd. This third man worked briefly at a Wilkes-Barre business where Lowe maintained an interest while serving the public full-time as the city captain of detectives. That man also still lives in Wilkes-Barre.

In the wake of Muroski’s inquiry city officials demoted Lowe to the rank of lieutenant. The police chief at the time, John Ruddick, retired shortly after city officials received the report. Other police officers involved in the Juanita Todd case and the Muroski investigation are long retired and/or have died.

Potential witness Jackie Knight is dead. Wilkes-Barre Captain of Detectives John Lowe is dead. Former Luzerne County District Attorney Chester Muroski – who went on to serve as Luzerne County president judge – died in 2019 at 80 years of age. One of the patrol officers on the scene in 1972 and who worked as a detective on the 1994 reopened investigation is dead. The lead detective in the 1994 probe is dead.

Will a fresh search for who killed Juanita Todd begin? Or, will bold civic duty die in Wilkes-Barre? Will public officials sworn to protect and serve purposely let the brave quest for truth succumb to bureaucratic insensitivity and drab indifference?

As justice dies, so dies the city.