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Sunday, August 13, 1995 Page: 3A
A time to let go
Juanita Marie Todd’s murder will likely remain unsolvedWhoever killed the
young mother on Sept. 28, 1972, will probably continue to go unpunished.
Officially, Wilkes-Barre police will carry the case on their books
indefinitely because no statute of limitations exists for homicide.
But no one will hunt down her killer. No one will track the truth.
Though some have tried.
In February, 1994, Luzerne County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski
Jr. showed compassion and concern in his search for truth when he reopened the
sad case of sheer slaughter that rocked the community 23 years ago.
Now, once more the case is closed.
But the end didn’t come until some of the top cops in the history of this
city and county gave it their best.
For two of them, it became their last hurrah.
Detectives Bill Maguire and Tom “T-Bird” Bird recently retired from the
job, quietly disappearing into the silence where old cops go when they fold
their badge into a clean handkerchief and stick it somewhere at the back of
their underwear drawer.
But they didn’t go quietly.
The trip they took to Los Angeles last year was a final drive to solve the
Todd case.
Together, these two cops had worked on more major cases than any two
detectives in the history of the city. Billy Maguire and T-Bird are two of the
best detectives to have ever worked this city.
Period.
Yet, even they couldn’t crack the mysterious veneer that clouds the facts
of this terrible crime.
Douglas DeGraffenreid, the man they traveled more than 3,000 miles to see,
told them he was sorry, but he couldn’t help them. Now a God-fearing man, he
said he didn’t kill Juanita Todd and didn’t know who did.
The cops believed him.
DeGraffenreid said he fled Wilkes-Barre the day before he was scheduled to
take a lie detector test because he feared that the cops might frame him for
her murder.
The man never looked back.
But bad luck awaited him in L.A.
Now doing life for blowing a guy apart with a shotgun, DeGraffenreid was
the last hope for everybody involved with the case.
But little chance of a resolution remained after the interview.
T-Bird and Maguire came home knowing they had tried.
Odetta and Tamu, Juanita’s daughters, handled the hurt the best they could.
So did Juanita’s aging mother and father, who, when it came to hope,
justice or truth, never put much faith in police, the press or the DA’s
office.
T-Bird says he always will remember coming into the apartment that awful
day 23 years ago and finding Juanita on the floor in a thick pool of blood.
Odetta, then 18 months old, was sitting by her mother’s naked corpse.
Tamu, then 5 months old, was safe in her crib.
T-Bird looked at the 22 stab wounds and the bed sheet knotted around
Juanita’s neck and sensed a viciousness that taught him just how rotten the
human species can be.
Looking at the babies, he sensed some gentleness, too.
The search for her mother’s killer hasn’t been easy for Odetta, who
exhibited great courage and love during her quest.
Some of the gentleness she carried has diminished.
Now a young mother herself, she recently stood before a judge who cut her a
break for her role in a dispute that left a cop injured and shots fired on a
wild night at a bar called the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Tamu has some serious problems as well.
Since I first wrote about this case on Sept. 30, 1993, I really believed
that someone would step forward and finally put it all to rest.
I put faith in cops and killers alike.
But it didn’t work out.
Maybe someday it will.
Until then, life goes on for us all.
And one day, that too will stop.
It always does.
Steve Corbett’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.