Black and full of faith, Mimi Todd’s great-grandchildren Dione and Amanda dance gracefully beside the Mt. Zion Church pulpit to religious hymns playing over well-worn speakers. Smooth movements proclaim God’s majestic spirit as the young people wave skyward and say goodbye. Dressed in matching red robes adorned with two wide white stripes that shape a […]
Blood. Fibers. Hair. A knife. A blood-spattered coin. Suspects. Evidence means everything in a homicide investigation. Police and prosecutors need physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, new and old evidence – all the evidence they can gather to solve a murder case. Evidence shapes the soul of hope for justice in the more than 50 years since […]
Cops called her “colored.” Two white male Wilkes-Barre police officers described Black homicide victim Juanita Todd as “colored” in the box reserved for “race” in their September 28, 1972 “initial crime report.” This pejorative helps us understand why police failed to work as hard to find who killed the 22-year-old single mother of two as […]
Each cut, 22 stab wounds, rips Juanita Todd’s flesh, drawing blood for each of the 22 years she has lived. The blade tears open her face, her neck, her breasts. An electric fan whirs in the small stifling apartment as Juanita’s babies – Odetta, 18 months, and Tamu, five months – lay unharmed near their […]
Better than a wind-up alarm clock, the gulls squawking encouragement outside Sam Bennett’s open bedroom window woke him with the sacred call of the wild. Announcing the dawn of a unique evolutionary day, the birds soared, gliding above his balcony and building at the Paradise Apartments, swooping excitedly as if they knew today would mark […]
