There were many strange details surrounding Juanita Todd’s murder that seemed incongruous. Her killer removed any fingerprints from the scene of the crime in the second-floor apartment on Academy Street, according to a 1994 article from The Times Leader. It appeared that someone had fed the babies and changed their diapers. Yet according to journalist Steve Corbett — who began reporting on the case in the 1990s — police found the knife the murderer used to stab Todd 22 times still lodged in her body.
While the killer took the time to remove any fingerprints, the murder itself was so brutal that there was blood on the walls and floor of the apartment. The killer, in a seeming frenzy, stabbed her over and over and also struck her hard enough to leave contusions on her face and scalp, per the 1972 Times Leader story. Even with the amount of violence inflicted on the victim, it appeared as if there had not been a struggle, and the downstairs neighbors didn’t hear anything unusual in the hours before police found her body.
