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.

We watched excited children lick dripping double-dipper cones as their parents matched them scoop for scoop or ate top-heavy sundaes loaded with whipped cream and bright maraschino cherries – happy families out for ice cream on a hot summer day.

Low-key, the four of us sat at a red wooden picnic table beneath a green pavilion at a popular Wilkes-Barre business. My wife sat across from a soft-spoken woman spooning mango-flavored ice from her cup. I had already finished my large root beer slushy while Odetta Todd enjoyed her fruit-flavored frozen treat. We dug in like little kids relishing innocence in a sweet sunshine-filled world.

Despite the terrible loss that brought us together last week, we had a nice time.

We talked about soul music and laughed about Odetta’s age, so young at 52 she knew nothing about the Delphonics, Philadelphia’s love song legends from the late ’60s and early ’70s who so sweetly sang “La-La (Means I Love You)” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).”

We also talked about the great Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, to whom Odetta’s been listening lately, and his anthem about why Black women like her and the woman sitting beside her need to pay particular attention to the message of the song “Keep On Pushing.”

 “ ‘Cause I’ve got my strength

And it don’t make sense

Not to keep on pushing

Hallelujah, hallelujah

Keep on pushing”

I once posted a link to this hopeful song on my Facebook page among supportive comments advocating reopening the Juanita Todd homicide investigation. I have so far posted nine columns about her murder on that page. The song provides encouragement and the promise of perseverance.

The woman sitting beside Odetta had been friends with Odetta’s murdered mother, Juanita. Young Black women sharing the same circle of friends, they worked hard, tried to enjoy life and raise their children as best they could. That’s why the woman spoke with Wilkes-Barre detectives following Juanita’s September 28, 1972 murder, telling them information about a male friend of Juanita’s, the man she still believes killed her friend.

Now she worries that so many years have passed police might have “lost” her statement.

She believes that same man carved the words ‘You’re next’ on the outside of the wooden door to her apartment after she talked with police. She said she reported the threat to police and an officer took photographs of the door.

More than 50 years later she clearly remembers when that man later pointed his finger in her face and said “I’ve killed before. I can kill again.”

No ‘70s soul song lyrics match those deadly words.

But our nostalgic trip down oldies’ music lane then took on an equally grim significance.

Odetta said her aunt had told her about the O’Jays, another ’70s R&B group, and how she found one of their 45 RPM records on the record player in Juanita’s apartment as she was removing her sister’s most cherished belongings after Juanita’s murder.

“‘Back Stabbers,’ ” Odetta said. “The song on my mother’s record player was ‘Back Stabbers.’ ”

Released one month before Juanita Todd’s murder, the song’s lyrics remain a chilling omen of what lay ahead for the 22-year-old mother of two who died with 22 stab wounds in her body. Juanita Todd suffered stab wounds in her back.

The words to the song “Back Stabbers” slash a nightmarish edge into the heart of Juanita’s killing.

“I believe (my aunt) shared that with me for a reason,” Odetta said.

The O’Jay’s words are predictive:

“A few of your buddies, they sure look shady

The blades are long, clenched tight in their fists

Aimin’ straight at your back

And I don’t think they’ll miss”

Juanita Todd’s killer’s blade didn’t miss.

The autopsy report confirmed the cruelty.

“Back: There are six superficial penetrating lacerations located along the right scapula ranging in diameter from .5 cms. to 1 cm. They are approximately distributed 5 cms. right of the midline. There is also noted at the level of L-1 a deeply penetrating puncture wound at the posterior axillary line.”

Even today those cutting “Back Stabbers” words give rise to haunting questions that beg answers.

“I keep gettin’ all these visits from my friends, yeah, what they doin’ to me?” sang the O’Jays. “They come to my house again and again and again and again ….”

Were some of Juanita Todd’s “friends” involved in her murder? Odetta and her mother’s friend believe they were. Ghostly “Back Stabbers” lyrics still wield solemn power to provoke many people, mostly Black people living in Wilkes-Barre, into remembering the names of those supposed “friends” who still live in the city.

The people who loved Juanita believe clues and truth lie in the O’Jays’ warning:

“Smilin’ faces smilin’ faces sometimes tell lies (back stabbers)

(They smilin’ in your face)

They smilin’ in your face) might be your neighbor

Your next door neighbor, yeah (back stabbers)”

Odetta Todd says her mother sensed danger from people she knew, smiling faces she once liked. Shortly before her death Juanita scheduled a hearing with Magistrate Michael Collins to obtain a restraining order to keep three specific former friends away from her. Juanita died three days before that hearing took place.

One of those people is the man Odetta believes killed her mother – the same man who threatened her mother’s friend and yet a second woman friend of Juanita Todd. Both women said they reported the threats to Wilkes-Barre police. That man still lives in Wilkes-Barre.

Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolche has not yet met with Odetta and Tamu Todd. He and Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay will hopefully soon  sit down with these still grieving sisters and dedicate resources and skills to reopening a modern, thorough investigation with help from the Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI.

Now that Odetta Todd is listening to Curtis Mayfield, she’ll sooner or later hear another of his many greatest hits. A woman of abiding Christian faith, Odetta will no doubt agree with some of the words to “People Get Ready,” the 1965 song Mayfield said he wrote that links struggles of “freedom” and “slavery” while stressing an abiding faith in God.  

Mayfield said in interviews he wrote the song in response to both the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the deadly September 16, 1963 KKK church bombing on Bloody Sunday in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four Black girls.

Police eventually identified the guilty killers in that terrible tragedy.

I still have faith we can find Juanita Todd’s killer.

More than 20 years ago Odetta Todd stood alone knocking on the front door of the small brown-shingled house on a narrow Wilkes-Barre street.

After waiting and feeling the increasingly frequent stress that often made her wonder if anyone was listening, she turned away in frustration. A solitary figure fighting the world all by herself, pressure creased her face that day in 2000 as she turned back to the old house, stepped to a window and peered inside. Undeterred, she went back to knocking on the door.  

To say Odetta, now 52, refuses to give up would be an understatement. For decades she has relentlessly pursued every lead, every rumor and every instinct surrounding the unsolved murder of her mother. Brave in the face of adversity, Odetta refuses to give up.

On September, 28, 1972, Wilkes-Barre police found 22-year-old Juanita Todd’s naked body with 22 stab wounds and a knotted bedsheet tied around her neck. Odetta, then 18-months-old, sat on the floor by her mother’s head. Her baby sister, Tamu, played in her crib in another room. An uncovered electric fan played its death knell, spinning sharp blades in the deadly air.

The power of that long-ago horror sent Odetta to the brown-shingled house in Wilkes-Barre years later to talk with one of her mother’s friends and ask for help. Standing firm in her mission, Odetta waited patiently for the woman who lived inside to finally open the door. Welcomed and seated at the kitchen table, a friendly yet tense conversation provided a rare glimmer of hope for Odetta, a young Black woman who had then spent 28 years living in the shadow of her mother’s cold body.

The woman told Odetta she’d try again to help police with the case. She said she always believed she knew who killed her friend, Juanita. The woman said she believed the same man threatened her after he found out she had talked with police following the murder.

“You’re next,” said the note she found on her front door.

Wilkes-Barre police always considered that man a suspect yet never cornered him. City police never thoroughly followed up on what Juanita’s friend told them. It’s unclear if police ever interviewed that suspect.

The day Odetta and I visited Juanita Todd’s friend, she told us about another friend of Juanita’s who also knew information about the case and also spoke to police during the original investigation. She backed off when she said the same man threatened her.

Fear grew in the city.

Rumors spread – some true, some false.

Both women had told police about a piggy bank they had seen in this man’s apartment after Juanita Todd’s murder. They knew the piggy bank belonged to Juanita. But when police visited the man the women said threatened them, the piggy bank had disappeared. An officer found a blood-stained coin in the apartment and turned over the potential piece of damning evidence for analysis.

Both women believed that man killed Juanita Todd.

And both women agreed to meet with Odetta and me to talk again about how they could best serve the memory of their long-dead friend. Both had promised Odetta they would again talk to detectives if detectives wanted to talk to them – anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Juanita Todd’s friends said they would even testify in court.  

But these conscientious Black witnesses didn’t trust white Wilkes-Barre police.

And they feared the suspect even more than they feared the cops.

So Odetta wasn’t surprised when the second woman said she changed her mind and no longer wanted to talk about what she knew. The first friend, however, repeated to us what she had already told Odetta and Wilkes-Barre police.

Sitting with Odetta and her mother’s friend that afternoon, I listened to the woman talk about when she and Juanita were young and how she used to laugh at how “square” Juanita was. Odetta seemed relaxed, happy for the first time in the seven years I had known her. To laugh and listen to joyful stories about her mother provided a rare treat – loving insight into the woman Odetta never knew. When soft memories loaded with love and life ended, though, loneliness poured in as it always did.

Solitude often fuels Odetta’s obsession.

Passion to unravel the mystery of the woman who gave her life and then 18 months later lost her own has taken on an impenetrable force of its own. The violent killing police failed to solve drives Odetta as much as any of the many worries that plague her existence – so many worries I sometimes wonder how she has the strength to go on.   

Yet go on she does.

“I won’t give up,” she said when we left her mother’s friend’s house that day so long ago.  “I’ve been through too much.”

Still, she sounded tired, disappointed and hurt.  

“I’m not giving up,” she said. “Even if nobody’s behind me.”

In 2000 Odetta Todd at least had her mother’s friend behind her, the woman who courageously agreed to talk again with detectives – to even testify in court if police ever made an arrest.

That brave woman died last year in 2022.

The second woman still fears the suspect who still lives in Wilkes-Barre. Police need to know that and do everything in their power to ease her fears – everything in their power to ease the ongoing fears of mostly Black people who worry police and prosecutors just don’t care.

Does Odetta Todd truly stand alone?

No matter how long it takes or how much money it costs, good people of conscience with the power to reopen a thorough, modern investigation into Juanita Todd’s murder will hopefully refute this stark, telling question.

Others will turn away, political pretenders who forsake decency and call their cowardice public service.

I speak with Odetta regularly and believe she knows detail and context about her mother’s murder better than anybody. The abundance of facts she compiled in a lifetime of loss comprise a wealth of information into which investigators can dig deep.

Odetta Todd wants to help. She doesn’t want pity, to make trouble or use her mother’s death as an excuse for her own past failings. Odetta Todd deserves and has earned our respect.

Juanita Todd’s death story is Odetta Todd’s life story – the story of a city, a county, a community still struggling to find its identity, a chilling story of a knife-wielding killer who likely still walks among the living.

Odetta Todd believes she knows who killed her mother. She wants to share all she knows with police who already know the man’s name. After more than 50 years other suspects are alive as well.

The best smartest cops might never solve this tragedy.

But they need to try again.

“I picked up the baby, Odetta, in my arms,” said Wilkes-Barre police detective Thomas Bird, his eyes staring into space like he was seeing a ghost and I wasn’t there.

That March day we talked almost 30 years ago marked the first time in 22 years the cop whom colleagues called “T-Bird” publicly shared his story about finding Juanita Todd’s two babies near her butchered body.

More than 50 years have now passed since she died.

Juanita Todd’s murder remains unsolved.

A hellish sight tore at T-Bird’s heart and mind when he entered Todd’s second-floor Academy Street apartment in the early hours of September 28, 1972. Somebody had stabbed the 22-year-old Black woman 22 times, leaving her nude corpse on the floor with a knotted bed sheet tied around her throat.

In 1994, when the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and I persuaded police and prosecutors to take a closer look, in addition to weeding through piles of unorganized interviews, T-Bird said he relived the gruesome scene of violence he would never forget. Even as decades passed, T-Bird said he often thought about what he encountered that night in the neat apartment where Juanita Todd, who worked as a secretary at the telephone company, did her best to raise her children.

Even before Luzerne County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. reactivated the investigation in 1994 and asked T-Bird to be part of a new investigative team, T-Bird said he often talked to other cops about the case and how the gruesome nature of what he witnessed bothered him. For a young policeman who dreamed of someday being promoted to detective, the 1972 crime scene screamed as the kind of horror that couldn’t help but shape the way he would come to view his job.

Police had received an anonymous 3 a.m. telephone tip from a man apparently calling from a phone booth at the United Penn Plaza on South Main Street across the street from Juanita Todd’s apartment. Police have never disclosed whether they lifted fingerprints from that telephone receiver. The caller’s identity remains unknown.    

When T-Bird entered the apartment he witnessed a shocking sight he never saw before and would never see again. Odetta, 18-months-old, sat by her mother’s head. Five-month-old Tamu played in her crib in another room.

“She was sitting on the floor by her mother’s body. An electric fan was close by,” T-Bird said.

Had baby Odetta been alone for too long, T-Bird said, she likely would have reached for the hard metal blades cutting through the sweltering humidity on a fan that had no safety guard.

“Somebody was worried about those little girls,” T-Bird said. “Somebody cared about them, in a strange way.”

T-Bird said he would always remember walking into the hot apartment that awful morning and finding Juanita on the floor in a thick pool of blood. T-Bird said he looked at the young woman’s naked butchered body and sensed a viciousness that taught him just how cruel the human species can be. Looking at those healthy babies, the city police officer sensed a confounding gentleness too.

Police never figured out who might have cared for Juanita Todd’s children during the approximately 15 hours that passed from the time the coroner said she died to the time police found her body.

The babies appeared fed.

Somebody changed their diapers.

Rumors that a woman cared for the children as Juanita Todd died still circulate throughout Wilkes-Barre, particularly among members of the Black community who remember the crime and the failed investigation.

Now adults with children of their own, Odetta and Tamu handle their deep hurt and trauma as best they can. The women still need people who care – this time for the right reasons.

In 2023 our responsibility as a community is to persuade law enforcement officials to reopen this investigation with a new generation of detectives, including seasoned Pennsylvania State Police cold case detectives who might be better equipped and better trained to solve this heinous crime. Last Monday I contacted state police asking what it will take to get their cold case unit involved in the Juanita Todd case.

Police long ago said they collected blood samples, fibers, a murder weapon and other physical evidence. Modern technology and improved forensic testing can revisit those original tests. With renewed interest, smart police work and luck, police and prosecutors might make up for their lack of successful investigative action after the homicide and during the short-lived 1994 reactivated investigation in which state police didn’t participate.

Wilkes-Barre police also said in 1972 they had identified several unnamed suspects.

Douglas DeGraffenreid might be willing to talk with police a second time in the California prison where he’s serving a life sentence for murder. Wilkes-Barre detectives privately considered DeGraffenreid their main suspect and T-Bird personally interviewed him in prison in 1994.

DeGraffenreid fled Wilkes-Barre in 1972 on the night before he was scheduled to take a lie detector test. Police never bothered to look for him then even after he called Wilkes-Barre police from California two years later and offered to surrender on another charge.

In 1993 I located the murder suspect in just a few days.

Only after settling into the Los Angeles area with a wife and children did DeGraffenreid become a California killer.

I sent DeGraffenreid a letter last week asking if we could talk.

And what about other unnamed suspects Wilkes-Barre police acknowledged in media interviews at the time of the murder, people whose names have been known by police and others from the beginning?  

I even know their names.

What about three people Juanita Todd feared so much she asked Magistrate Michael Collins to approve a restraining order to keep the trio away? Does any official record exist of the hearing Juanita Todd’s family members say Collins scheduled to occur three days after Juanita died? Are those three people the same people police privately identified as suspects?

When the second failed investigation ended in 1994, I believed Juanita Todd’s murder would likely remain unsolved. I believed investigators had permanently closed the case. Whoever killed this young Black mother would likely go unpunished. Police would officially carry the case on their books indefinitely because no statute of limitations exists for homicide. But no one would focus on the hunt for her killer. No one would seek and find the truth.

In my final Times Leader columns about the reactivated 1994 case I gave T-Bird and the lead detective credit for the work they did. I now know how wrong I was to praise the bigoted white lead detective who lied to me, to the people of his city he served and worse, to the Todd family before convincing colleagues to close the case.

That bad cop later served time in federal prison for his part in Luzerne County political corruption.

To this day many people, particularly Black people born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, believe racism, sexism and political corruption protected Juanita Todd’s killer or killers. You can read their comments on my Facebook page whenever I post a new column, a new video reading or new promotion calling attention to the investigation.

Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown, Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Joe Coffay, Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce and Wilkes-Barre City Council members Tony Brooks, Bill Barrett, Mike Belusko, Beth Gilbert McBride and John Marconi have failed to publicly respond to several emails and six consecutive columns asking them to support reopening the Juanita Todd investigation.

While these public officials claim to represent the best interests of the city and county, they hide from bold leadership that shapes the core of public service. As more time passes with weak inaction as its guide, more and more people involved in this tragic story die.

T-Bird is dead. The white racist lead detective is dead. John Lowe, the lead detective in the original case – eventually demoted for his incompetence for bad behavior while investigating a different Wilkes-Barre murder – is dead. Magistrate Collins is dead. Juanita Todd’s mother and father are dead.

Is passion to solve this painful homicide also dead? Is compassion lost? Do inequality, discrimination and social injustice still govern Wilkes-Barre?

If so, hope for the city dies as well.

Juanita Todd’s life matters.

Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown knows the terrible details of Juanita Todd’s story.

City Police Chief Joe Coffay does, too.

So does Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce.

In addition to these three public officials, I also sent emails and my first five columns about the 1972 unsolved Wilkes-Barre murder of Juanita Todd to Wilkes-Barre city council members Tony Brooks, Bill Barrett, Mike Belusko, Beth Gilbert McBride and John Marconi

More than 50 years have passed since police found the 22-year-old Black woman naked and dead on the floor of her second-story apartment with 22 knife wounds in her body. Her babies rested nearby – 18-month-old Odetta close to her body, five-month-old Tamu in a crib.

Five long decades have gone by without answers to questions that could bring closure to a family and a community that has suffered in silence for too long. We’re no closer to an arrest today than we were back then. Or are we?

A modern investigation might solve Juanita Todd’s murder. New forensic technology, particularly advances in DNA science, might increase the chances of resolving this tragic crime. Renewed interest in this case might overcome the indifference that too often controls the way too many people live.

We need all the help we can get to solve Juanita Todd’s murder, mostly from people in power who can and will influence other decision-makers to restart the investigation police have essentially closed for 30 years. Long before law enforcement officials restarted the most recent 1994 probe, 22 years had passed with no police work on the case.

Terrible truth has eluded us for more than 50 long years.

We need genuinely interested and truly skilled public servants to restart and lead this mission. Public faith in public trust continues to weaken – often deteriorating for good reason. Restoring faith in politicians and police is crucial to morality and decency. Without protection and leadership, humanity crumbles beneath evil.

That’s why I’m recruiting good citizens to help.

We need you.

Everyday people who want to encourage law enforcement officials to revive this investigation will hopefully include church leaders, particularly Black church leaders, the local branch of the NAACP, the local Black Prince Hall Masons and young Black Lives Matter leaders who led hundreds of protestors in a June 2020 march on Public Square in the wake of police murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

We need new voters, old voters, high school students and college students, particularly from downtown Wilkes-Barre-based Wilkes University and King’s College. We need everyone who can and will fight for social justice. We need to hold public officials accountable.

With the exception of WNEP-TV, credible local and national mainstream media so far have expressed no interest in helping raise awareness to this shameful injustice. Not one Wilkes-Barre or Luzerne County public official has publicly declared support for a new investigation.

That’s life in an apathetic community.

People of conscience must now consider one day filling Wilkes-Barre City Council chambers with protestors demanding action. An end-of-summer rally on Public Square could bring together hundreds of people to encourage each other and press for answers.

Justice for Juanita Todd is long overdue. But no progress will occur without significant public pressure. I’m looking for help, not a fight.

The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and the Citizens’ Voice daily newspapers remain bitter rivals born of a 1978 Times Leader walkout that morphed into a sometimes violent strike and eventual split that resulted in a still unsettled war of words. Editors at both papers can show common community purpose by writing editorials asking for a recharged look into Juanita Todd’s death. Those editorials could be shared to emphasize just how important Juanita Todd’s legacy is to our hard part of an increasingly cruel world.

Ample reason exists to reactivate the inquiry with a thorough, modern investigation utilizing advances in DNA and other forensic testing.

Maybe we’ll fail to solve Juanita Todd’s murder. But maybe we will identify and convict her killer. I say we because unless we really try as a community we’ll never know who we are. Unless we commit to succeed we’ll fail again and again as a principled society. More missteps are unacceptable.

Good people working together increase the chances of police making an arrest or arrests. Longtime residents of the Wyoming Valley, of which Wilkes-Barre serves as the Luzerne County seat, still embrace “The Valley with a Heart” moniker, a romanticized and shallow image created in the early ’50s by a local radio personality.

The time has come to put up or shut up.

The decision to restart the investigation into Juanita Todd’s murder requires a genuine commitment from competent people charged with protecting and serving everyone. The legwork and investigative technique of solving a decades-long homicide is difficult and expensive. Yet, the cumulative cost of inaction is always much greater than the fair cost of conscience. Too many people have let themselves and others down for too long. More people should have Juanita Todd and her family on their minds.

I’ve offered to talk with sources confidentially and not for attribution in future columns unless they want to be quoted in support of or opposition to resuming the investigation.

Some talked.

Some listened.

Some didn’t bother to respond to any of my emails.

In the 17 years I lived and worked in Wilkes-Barre as a Times Leader newspaper columnist (as long as I lived anywhere) I made a practice of not talking off the record with most elected officials. I needed information to publish in the paper, not information to keep secret from people in my city who needed to know what was going on. In this case, I agreed to speak confidentially with sources as an independent journalist because people involved in this case need to talk now more than ever.

Neither persistent journalism nor hard-nosed detective work guarantees change. But dogged perseverance in the hunt for truth empowers the afflicted. The odds of progress increase through public support.

The time has come for Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County officials to state publicly if they do or do not support reopening the Juanita Todd case. We need to know the names of who will and will not help the ongoing pursuit of justice, fairness and equality in a struggling town where Black lives often still don’t matter. The time has come for those officials to tell us exactly what they will do to help.

No excuse is acceptable from any elected or appointed Wilkes-Barre public official who ignores this ongoing travesty that disrespects race, class, gender and other living, breathing identities in this small city they all represent.

Inaction is indefensible. Indifference is unforgivable. Fear is understandable but inexcusable.

I once wrote a column calling Wilkes-Barre the pound-for-pound “most racist city in America.”

Only the pure power of the people will change that bleak reality.

Douglas “Bay” DeGraffenreid swears he didn’t kill Juanita Todd.

What if he is innocent?

More than 50 years ago police in Wilkes-Barre, PA, privately called DeGraffenreid their only suspect. Just because you’re a suspect doesn’t mean you’re guilty. But, if DeGraffenreid is an innocent man, why did he borrow money and flee to Los Angeles, CA, the night before taking a lie detector test to which he had reluctantly agreed?

A DeGraffenreid family member told me 30 years ago he believed he knew why.

“Douglas didn’t kill that girl,” said the man who asked that his name not be used. “But he figured that the cops were going to pin the murder on him or the guys who tortured that girl to death were going to kill him. Either way he’d lose.” 

The family member who communicated with DeGraffenreid in prison where DeGraffenreid is serving a double life sentence in California for murder, said he believed DeGraffenreid actually tried to shelter Juanita Todd from people who posed a threat to her life.

“Ever since Juanita and Douglas were teenagers, they were very good friends,” the man recalled. “Juanita felt protected with Douglas around.”    

That’s why Juanita asked Douglas to stay in her apartment, he said, providing no details about if, when or for how long DeGraffenreid stayed.

Wilkes-Barre was changing for the worse in the weeks and months before somebody stabbed the 22-year-old Black mother of two babies 22 times, knotted a bed sheet around her neck and left her nude body in a pool of blood on the floor. Police believed she died 15 to 24 hours before they found her body on September 28, 1972, at 3:15 am.

Some men, including one with whom Juanita had a relationship, were selling a large quantity of illegal drugs in Wilkes-Barre and had forced her to let them use her second-floor apartment at 13 Academy Street, DeGraffenreid’s relative remembered.

Whenever Juanita objected she paid in pain for her protests, he said.

Douglas once hunted down one of those men, beating him worse than the man had beaten Juanita. DeGraffenreid’s relative with whom I spoke a long time ago recalled a conversation he said he had with that same man Douglas assaulted just before Juanita Todd died.

“He come in the bar saying, `Man, oh man, I can’t believe what Juanita done,’ ” the relative said. “He said, `She must be crazy to do that.’ ”    

What Juanita did, said the man with whom I spoke, was flush illegal drugs worth a lot of money down the toilet. The grapevine on the street put a $250,000 price tag on the cost of that white powder that might have ultimately cost Juanita Todd her life.

People who knew Juanita back then agree the young woman wanted nothing to do with drugs — that she wanted to raise her two daughters minus the madness. If she took a stand — however risky that stand might have been — it makes sense to believe that’s why she challenged those who wanted to turn her home into a drug house.

Juanita Todd worked hard to provide a good, clean life for her children. The drug story still circulates throughout Wilkes-Barre whenever Juanita’s death is discussed in detail.  Some of the people who survived those bad old days are still alive. They still talk about the gross injustice the Todd family continues to suffer.

Those bad old days remain some of Wilkes-Barre’s worst times.

Not only did the June 1972 Agnes Flood decimate the city and surrounding region just three months before Juanita died, other suspicious deaths, police dishonesty and political corruption took its toll then and in subsequent years during the ’70s.

In 1975 two men kidnapped, beat and dumped Wilkes-Barre Magistrate Michael Collins in a field near the New Jersey border. Collins, a primary candidate in a re-election bid, ran against Francis Hannon, a politically-connected man-about-town whose mother worked at City Hall. A personable young white man, Hannon owned and rented numerous properties in the city and aspired to one day hold increased political power. The attack on Collins occurred five days before the primary in which Collins defeated Hannon. Collins, who suffered a fractured skull in the attack, went on to win re-election. He died in 2000.

In 1978 Wilkes-Barre police found the body of an on-duty Black Wilkes-Barre police officer who died in a shooting at the end of his shift. That officer’s family rejected the official finding of suicide and believed he was murdered. Some people still believe he was murdered.

Also in 1978 city police arrested and a jury convicted former magisterial candidate Francis Hannon for the murder of Olga Burns, a tenant to whom Hannon owed money.

“Suspicions that Hannon’s connections provided him cover to commit crimes were so strong that – after his 1978 trial and conviction – Burns’ relatives pushed for an inquiry into whether city police protected Hannon from prosecution,” said one of many Wilkes-Barre Times Leader newspaper articles about the Burns murder.

“The police probe led by (District Attorney Chester Muroski) eventually produced a report alleging dozens of errors or omissions by police. The police chief at the time, John Ruddick, retired about a day after the report was given to city officials. A captain of detectives who allegedly hindered the investigation of Hannon was suspended and demoted,” the Times Leader article said.

That same suspended and demoted captain of detectives had once headed up the Juanita Todd investigation.

A judge sentenced former magisterial candidate Hannon, who law enforcement officials suspected of masterminding the Michael Collins abduction but whom police never arrested for the crime, to serve a life sentence for killing Olga Burns.

In April 1999 Juanita Todd’s daughter Odetta wrote a letter to Hannon after hearing rumors that Hannon might have known her mother. Odetta even sent Hannon her mother’s photograph. Hannon responded that same month in a type-written letter from prison.

“I don’t think I ever met her or rented to her (Juanita Todd),” he wrote.

“I am sorry I can’t be more helfful (sic),” he wrote. “I wish I could provide more information to you. It is obvious to me that you love and miss your Mother very much. And of course that a big part of your life is missing. I wish you the very best. I hope that you obtain the necessary information to obtain closure on your Mom’s situation.  So you can get on with the rest of your life. I wish you well and the best of luck in your search for the truth and all of the facts thereof.”

Hannon wrote to Odetta Todd from a Virginia prison. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections press staff said in an email this week they have to research why Pennsylvania corrections officials moved Hannon to another state and where he is currently incarcerated if, in fact, he remains alive.

Not long after I first wrote about Juanita Todd 30 years ago, then Luzerne County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski, Jr. put together a city and county team of police and prosecutors and re-opened the investigation, interviewing old and new witnesses who might have vital information.

City police never tried to locate their suspect DeGraffenreid after he fled the city in 1972 and then ignored him after he phoned two years later from California asking to surrender on unrelated charges. After I easily located DeGraffenreid in a California prison in 1993, two Wilkes-Barre detectives flew to California to interview him.

DeGraffenreid’s family member even acknowledged “maybe Juanita told him things she told no one else.”

During the prison interview Degraffenreid denied killing Juanita. He said he didn’t know who killed her, according to what the city detective who led the investigative team told me after he returned from the trip.

The reactivated investigation stopped.

Thirty years later the time has come for police to again interview DeGrafenreid. Housed in the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison at Corcoran, CA, Degraffenreid has been eligible for parole since 2015.

Maybe DeGraffenreid will take the lie detector test he left behind in 1972 when police said other people who knew Juanita had taken a lie detector test and passed, including the Wilkes-Barre man DeGraffenreid had allegedly beaten for hurting Juanita.

“Wilkes-Barre Detective Capt. John W. Lowe has disclosed that five persons recently underwent polygraph or lie detcetor (sic) examinations in connection with the September 28 murder of a city woman,” the Times Leader reported Sunday, November 12, 1972.

“The five persons, including one female, voluntarily took the polygraph tests at the State Po (sic)-Barracks in Wyoming (PA). Three other persons, two males and a female refused to take the lie detector tests which were administered by a polygraph specialist assigned to the State Police facility at Montoursville,” said the Times Leader article. “The State Police polygraph specialist came to Wyoming Barracks on several occasions to administer the examinations with the final test being given late in the week.”

 “Police have pinpointed a number of potential suspects,” reported an October 1, 1972 Wilkes-Barre Times Leader article.

Some of those suspects still live in Wilkes-Barre as do some of the 50 witnesses the Times Leader reported police interviewed in the week following the murder.

“Detective Capt. John W. Lowe vowed, ‘I’m hopeful that someday this case will be solved. As long as I am a member of this police department, I won’t forget the case,’ ” the Times Leader reported.

“Do you have a suspect or suspects at this time?” a Times Leader reporter asked Lowe.

“Yes.” Lowe replied.

Lowe died in 2006, leaving an obituary that included Juanita Todd’s name among a few other notable cases he investigated during his career.

The October 1, 1972 article said, “Trooper William R. Koscinski, Member of the Criminal Investigation Unit at the Wyoming Barracks, has been assigned with the city police department to work on the case.”

State police reportedly tested physical evidence they gathered at the crime scene.

“Sources reported that despite reports to the contrary, ‘concrete physical evidence was uncovered in the victim’s apartment,’ ” another Times Leader article said. “It was reported that evidence is being analyzed in the State Police crime laboratory and that the results of this analysis should be made known within a few days.”

If that newspaper article is accurate, the Pennsylvania State Police should also have reports and scientific data available for any reactivated investigation.

Pennsylvania State Police did not assist in the revived 1994 investigation. A former person close to the case recently said PSP detectives were busy at the time solving another Wilkes-Barre homicide – a white, middle-class man whose wife poisoned him – that still attracts national media attention from a largely white true crime-obsessed audience.

Juanita Todd was simply not a priority.

After all these years Douglas DeGraffenreid remains as important as ever – a born again God-fearing man, based on letters he wrote to Odetta Todd from prison.

“I could always use the prayers offered by one that has an earnest heart towards our lord and savior!” DeGraffenreid wrote in a 1998 letter.

Righteousness requires his help to add context to new forensic testing that might help solve this terrible mystery that continues to crush hope among decent people in a frequently heartless city who deserve better.

Justice can prevail only if police reactivate their investigation. Justice can triumph only if law enforcement officials rise to the challenge of why good cops become cops in the first place. Justice can win only if public officials continue the search for truth.

Douglas “Bay” DeGraffenreid might very well be an innocent man.

Maybe he didn’t kill Juanita Todd.

But, if not him, who?