A. Dramatis Personae.

Starting in 1983, Brooks worked as a baggage handler for Northwest Airlines at Logan International Airport. While there, he became friendly with a co-worker, Joseph Nuzzo.(1) Some four years later, Northwest broke the gender barrier and hired Susan Taraskiewicz as a baggage handler. With a few notable exceptions, Brooks and Taraskiewicz had little interaction. Early on, however, the pair twice indulged a sexual dalliance, and, on one subsequent occasion, they argued bitterly over Brooks's destruction of Taraskiewicz's radio.

In April of 1989, Taraskiewicz attempted to break up a fistfight between Nuzzo and two other employees. Displeased by her gratuitous intervention, Nuzzo called Taraskiewicz a "f_ _ _ _ _ g c_ _t." This incident capped a string of disciplinary infractions and led Northwest to fire Nuzzo. Nuzzo's discharge was not permanent -- it turned out to be the functional equivalent of a six month suspension without pay -- but Nuzzo vociferously blamed Taraskiewicz for his predicament. During his absence from work, he engaged in a campaign of menacing conduct directed at Taraskiewicz: he "keyed" her car, slashed her tires, staked out her house, made anonymous telephone calls, and told others that he would exact revenge. Brooks knew that Nuzzo blamed Taraskiewicz for his enforced vacation and that Nuzzo harbored considerable ill will toward her.

To read the rest of the court proceedings which reveal few possible clues that in my mind link the 2 above to her death go here http://www.law.emory.edu/1circuit/june98/98-1111.01a.html

http://www.law.emory.edu/1circuit/june98/98-1111.01a.html

Nice find. Thanks.

The Su Taraskiewicz case always creeped me out, mainly because she went missing and no one bothered to look for her when she failed to return to work (She went to get the crew sandwiches and never came back.) To me, that screams of an inside job.

Nice find. Thanks.

The Su Taraskiewicz case always creeped me out, mainly because she went missing and no one bothered to look for her when she failed to return to work (She went to get the crew sandwiches and never came back.) To me, that screams of an inside job.

That's what I suspect. The details of the case have always given me the impression that Su's co-workers were involved in her murder (or at the very least, they know who was).

I think Law and Order CI had a show that bore a great resemblance to this case...

This Robert Nuzzo seems to be the prime suspect in my book with all his threats against her it seems very likely he may have been responsible

It just surprises me given that they know of 2 possible suspects and neither have ben charged

It just surprises me given that they know of 2 possible suspects and neither have ben charged

Most likely, that's because there isn't enough evidence to arrest them. That's the only reason I can think of as to why no one was ever charged with Su's murder. I think that any evidence the cops might have against the suspects is so scant that arresting them for the crime at this point would be very risky, especially since we have double jeapordy laws.

I just had to bump this thread. ;) OK, here are some of my thoughts.

If Nuzzo was the one who killed Su, he must not be the brightest bulb. Everyone one would have suspected him from day one. It doesn't seem like he was the only one responsible.

It's very strange that none of Su's coworkers were concerned when she disappeared. It's been said that Su was a punctual person. This gives me the impression, as others believe, that her death was an inside job.

I don't understand why Su didn't tell her mother about the harassment. Perhaps she was afraid her mother might get harassed as well but still. Also, Su should have informed the police that Nuzzo was a dangerous man if he had harassed her like that. It sounds to me like Su tried to keep the whole ordeal under wraps.

Here is a little more Apparrently Su took a call shortly before she left by someone she trusted wanting to meet her somewhere.... It is 2 pages

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/13/mother_holds_hope_she_can_help_solve_daughters_killing/?page=1

Wow, I didn't know they punched her time card and then checked her out at the end of the shift as if she was there! How could it NOT be an inside job? That is shady beyond belief.

I agree with you Apostapler. But the fact that no one has been arrested seems to suggest that they had a pretty good alibi for doing that.

I believe this is a lot more than an inside job.

Considering it involved credit cards, airport and a very well executed murder...it screams of an organized crime operation.

Three or Five n baggage handlers couldn't carry off their credit card scam by themselves. They had to have some outside assistance from local mob.

Here is yet another article i found on the case it claims that the people arrested and convicted in the credit card scam well they were part of the mob

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/10548584/detail.html

This Robert Nuzzo seems to be the prime suspect in my book with all his threats against her it seems very likely he may have been responsible

Okay this sounds probable BUT what if there was someone ELSE that wanted to do her in---ex boyfriend etc... then Nuzzo if the perfect fall guy cause he acted so mean and nasty towards her.

Hmm, I have thought about this case off and on for a while. There is more than one possibility here as to what went down. Interesting theory mysteryphile. While a bit far fetched it is not entirely out of the question that someone else killed Su and knew beforehand about her troubles with Nuzzo and figured that he could kill Su and then use Nuzzo as the fall guy thinking that because of the troubles that Su and Nuzzo had had, that everyone would think Nuzzo did it, not him (an ex boyfriend or a jealous acquaintance or whatever the case may be).

This has happened in other cases where someone wanted to kill someone but waited until the right opportunity came along (like that the person they wanted to kill would get into personal trouble with someone else, than the person could kill the person they wanted to kill and everyone would think it was the person that had been having problems with the dead person and not actually the killer).

Think of the Mark Winger case for instance. He had been wanting to kill his wife for several months, maybe a year or more but he did not know how to go about it. He knew he could not just kill her because he would be the obvious suspect then. So he waited and then a few weeks before the murder, his golden opportunity came. His wife and daughter were taking a van service from the St. Louis airport back to their Springfield, Illinois home after taking a trip to Florida. Well, the van driver Roger Harrington, a young man with a history of mental illness and who had been committed to a mental hospital on at least two occasions was acting very erratically on the trip and was just acting very strange. This made Mrs. Winger very uncomfortable. She told her husband and they filed a complaint and got Harrington suspended and ultimately fired from his job.

It was the golden opportunity for Mark Winger. He was going to kill his wife and he was going to kill Roger Harrington too but he was going to make Harrington the fall guy. Winger was going to lure Harrington over to his house, kill his wife before Harrington got there and then when Harrington arrived he was going to shoot him and claim he shot him in self defense because Harrington was killing Winger's wife.

Winger actually got away with this crime for several years and was actually hailed a community hero in Springfield. It appears the cops had tunnel vision and just seemed all too eager to write it off as the weird, mentally ill guy killed the all American woman as revenge for getting fired from his job. Winger collected on his wife's life insurance so he ended up getting paid a couple hundred grand from that. He re-married and had a couple more kids.

Where Winger's story started to crumble was 3 or 4 years after the murder. His deceased wife's best friend had severe depression since the wife's death. So much so she was actually committed to a mental hospital a couple of times and given electric shock treatments for severe depression. Eventually she broke down and admitted that yes while she was depressed over her friends death what made the depression a lot worse was she felt she had protected the killer. She then came up with a bombshell. That at the time of the murders and for a year or so prior to them, she and Mark Winger had been conducting an affair. She said that Mark Winger on several occasions talked about how he was unhappy in the marriage to his wife and wanted to get out of the marriage without having to go through a divorce because it would be too costly and he did not want to have to pay child support. She even said that Mark Winger had talked about killing his wife before but that she just thought he was blowing off steam and did not take him too serious until the murders happened. It seems this woman thought Winger would marry her but he ended up having another affair with his daughter's nanny and ended up marrying the nanny.

Anyway, when the cops questioned Winger about this he admitted the affair but denied everything else and said the woman was off her rocker. A couple more years went by, but the cops began investigating this case and finding several holes in Winger's story. The bodies were not in the positions they should have been had Winger's story been true. Roger Harrington when he came to the house had brought in a coffee mug and a pack of cigarettes, weird for a guy that was allegedly so bent up with rage that he was planning on killing Mrs. Winger. They also found directions to the Winger home in Harrington's car. Hand written directions in Harrington's handwriting, so it was obvious he did not know where the Winger's lived and had not been to their residence before. The murder weapon of Mrs. Winger was a hammer that was from the Winger home. Odd that Harrington would not bring his own murder weapon to kill Mrs. Winger.

The cops ended up checking Mark Winger's work phone records. They had originally checked out the Winger home's phone records but had never checked Winger's work phone records. They found the day before the murders Winger had called Roger Harrington's home from his office at the Illinois Department of Energy. It appears the last straw in this was when Winger filed a wrongful death civil suit against the company that employed Roger Harrington. Winger was arrested in 2001 and charged with two counts of first degree murder. In 2003 he was convicted at trial and sentenced to two life terms with no possibility of parole. He was convicted a few years later of conspiracy to commit first degree murder for trying to organize the murder of a key prosecution witness from behind the prison walls. He was given an additional 30 years for that crime.

Sorry for the longwinded synopsis of an unrelated case. Just wanted to show you mysteryphile that while your theory is a bit far fetched it certainly is not impossible.

In terms of the other details of this case. My own personal theory is she was murdered by one or more of her NWA co-workers. Certainly at the very least these co-workers knew more about what happened there than they were letting on. I mean to me, what really stinks is how Su goes out for sandwiches for the entire crew, she does not come back and not only does no one report her missing but at the end of the shift someone used her time card to clock her out as if she had been there the whole time! That just reeks. To me that just stinks that not only did no one on the crew report her missing but someone on the crew used her time card to clock her out at the end of the shift even though she was not there. Now, why would someone, someone on the same crew all of whom claimed they did not know she was missing, why would they use her timecard to clock her out at the end of the shift, making it appears she was there when she was not? Why would someone do that unless they knew something had happened and they were covering their tracks?

It just seems weird to me that everyone on that crew seemed to be aware that Su was leaving to get them all sandwiches. She never comes back, thus the crew never ate the sandwiches. They should have been wondering where she was and why she was not back with their food yet none of them ever asked any questions or wondered where she was? I just do not buy that.

I agree. This is one of the scarier murder cases the show has profiled. I really hope they get her killer someday, preferably before her parents die so they can die in peace.

I have to agree that the airport staff is either involved, or know who is involved, but are too afraid of being targeted.

My guess is she stumbled onto the credit card ring, and the people involved, afraid of it being reported, lured her to her death. The fact that she apparently got a phone call from someone she knew right before she went to get the food, tells me that either her boyfriend, or the woman she was friendly with at the airport, was likely involved with the credit card scam, and set her up for murder.

Watched this episode again. I just don't understand how these guys were not arrested at all?! She documented the harassment for months. All these years and no justice for Su? ohno:

Recently watched the ST case. It's bad enough that ST endured regular harassment on the job due to her being a woman in a male-dominated field, but to have this end in her death was horrific.

I think she was killed for one of two reasons:

-I'm sure the harassers were hoping that she would quit (which many others would have done under similar circumstances) and when she didn't - ended up killing her in a rage.

-Another possibility: It's not clear if her death had anything to do with the credit card scam; IIRC she doesn't mention this in her diary (that her mother later read), but it's possible she was going to go to her management about this, and that's the actual reason she was killed.

It's extremely suspicious that no one at her job reported her missing for 1 1/2 days, despite the fact that she had only left to get the crew sandwiches & was going to be back soon. After she didn't come back in a reasonable amount of time, they should have contacted someone about this - especially given that she had left late @ night, when the possibility of foul play and/or an accident (that no one would notice due to it being dark) would have been increased.

I can’t believe in 3 months it will have been 30 years since her murder. I believe her mother is still alive but her dad had passed. :(
Anyway, I decided to look through other forums and I stumbled upon a forum on reddit which had this youtube link…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWNocKdMm7w


and I looked through the comments and saw these… this was from an account named mrnickbig1:

“Marlene, if you wanted the killer found, you should not have lied to the police about her fiancé and plans to move to Texas. My brother tried to give evidence to the police several times, but due to your lies, they would not listen. You kept directing them to her EX boyfriend, who you knew was dumped months earlier. Sue was killed because she put in notice that she was quitting to move to Texas, and someone obviously thought she would talk.”

“Marlene repeatedly lied to the police about Sue's personal life, causing the police to ignore information provided by her actual fiance. Sue was about to move to Texas to get away from all the crime and harassment she faced at work. She was murdered because she had just put in her notice that she was quitting the day before her murder. Marlene had pretty much disowned her because of the church (Church of Christ) she joined and other life choices. She had broken up with her ex boyfriend about a year earlier, but Marlene and the ex lied about it. Her real BF, Jeffery Hellnick, was concerned for her safety, having many texts, letters, and verbal accounts of criminal activity amongst the baggage handlers, including systematic looting of mail bags. They planned for Jeff to move to Texas, get a job and house, and then, she would join him and start a new life. He got everything set up in a few months, then told her things were ready. She put in notice, and then was murdered the next night. The police police ignored all the evidence Jeff tried to give them because Sue's narcissistic/psychopathic mother and co-conspirators lied to the police and said Jeff was lying.”

“Sue had been having great difficulties at work, due to harassment and suspicions about coworkers. She found support in the Church of Christ, that you denied her. Then YOU (he’s referring to marlene) just about disowned her because you did not approve of the church. She met my youngest brother and they fell in love. He did everything he could to help her. They finally decided to move to Texas, to get away from the bad situation. My brother moved to the Houston area and quickly got a good job and bought a house they could live in. They planned to get married shortly after she moved to Texas. They were in daily contact, with phone and emails. Within 2 months of moving to Houston, everything was ready and my brother told Sue so. She put in her notice, and was killed immediately, with coworkers initially covering it up. My brother tried to give all sorts of information to the police, but they would not listen due to your lying.”

Thanks for the link to the Youtube video. Very interesting, and the comments were also interesting. Not sure about their veracity, however.

On another note, I recently started watching an older TV crime drama, Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2001-2011). Excellent series! The 2nd season episode "Baggage" (2003) is obviously based on this ST crime. This is very well-done & disturbing, and will probably end up being one of my favorite episodes of the series:

https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Baggage_(CI)

Just watched this one. I think UM may have over focused on the harassment she was getting at work as the lead up to the murder. The two may or may not be related. I do think her murder was tied to the workplace, as evidenced by no one reporting her missing. But it may have had little to do with the fact that she was being harassed.

In light of the credit card theft, which clearly had to have some organized crime connection, one might suspect this was a mixture of a hit and an interrogation gone wrong. Being found in a car trunk is definitely a hallmark of professionals. The setup seems to be she was lured out of the airport and those working under her were either in on it or made to fear for their own safety to the point where they kept quiet. Everything mostly fits, but hard evidence as to who did what seems to be lacking. Its also possible that her unpopularity with some or much of the crew (whichever it was) may have limited anyone's desire to put their neck out to expose what happened.

On another note, the above posts about her supposedly intending to quit are interesting, but they show a high degree of bias against her mom, in favor of a particular church, and seem to aggrandize the boyfriend. Not sure what to make of those, trolling perhaps, the true story but distorted heavily? Not sure I'd take them at face value. But the idea that she did know something about the criminal activity taking place seems more realistic than her being totally out of the loop.