Twenty-seven-year-old Susan “Su” Taraskiewicz was often the talk of her hometown, Saugus, Massachusetts, part of greater Boston. She was the local buzz in 1989 when she became only the second woman hired by Northwest Airlines as a ground services employee. Su was again in the news three years later after becoming Logan International Airport’s first female ramp supervisor. Seven months afterwards, her name was again in the headlines, not just in Saugus but across the Bay State. The reason, this time, was most awful, as she had been brutally murdered.

The trailblazing Su Taraskiewicz had endured multiple instances of resentment and harassment as many of her male coworkers were angered by her rapidly advancing in a “man’s field.” The workplace misogyny, along with her possibly knowing of illicit activities committed by some of her tormentors, may have been the impetus for her slaying.

Su Taraskiewicz

The instances of harassment documented by Su in her journal occurring from February to November 1989 ranged from irritating, such as multiple late night and early morning crank phone calls, to illegal, namely the keying of her car and the slashing of its tires. The vehicles of Su’s boyfriend and those of several coworker friends were also vandalized.

A male coworker had exposed himself to Su and another female employee in the company break room, and demeaning graffiti had been etched of Su in the airport’s men’s rooms and the jet cargo holds. In some instances, the scribblings were obscene, including a large drawing of her in a sexual position; others were sinister, amounting to death threats against her and other work friends.

Su filed three formal complaints with her Union, International Association of Machinists, and Northwest Airlines management, and she had also contacted an employment attorney. Several coworkers contend that rather than taking actions to stem the harassment, the angered brass instead ordered Su to do demeaning work, such as emptying the airplane toilets.

Su Is Harassed

The harassment intensified after Su was named the nightshift ramp supervisor in February 1992. She had initially been passed over for the promotion until winning a grievance contending the man originally awarded the position was a union member who had had illegally bid for the job.

Many of Su’s male co-workers were upset at having to take orders from a woman who had worked with them on the tarmac, and the graffiti soon became more macabre. In one instance, a coffin with her name on it was drawn inside her personal locker.

The Anger Escalates Towards Supervisor Su

Su worked the 11:00 p.m.-7:00 a.m. graveyard shift on the evening/morning of September 12-13. At approximately 1:00, she told several of her crew members that she had received a phone call from someone wanting to meet with her. She left and said she would bring back sandwiches afterwards, but she never returned.

Su Disappears 

At around 7:30 a.m. the following morning, Su’s 1991 Toyota Tercel was found parked in front of the Bravo Auto & Tire Service Co. now known as Top Auto, in Revere, approximately three miles south of Logan Airport. Blood lay by the car and she lay inside the blood-splattered trunk, having been beaten and stabbed multiple times. She was fully clothed and an autopsy found she had not been raped.

Police believed Su had been killed elsewhere and that her killer had driven her car to the auto shop. Because she still had the money for the sandwiches, robbery was ruled out as the motive for her murder, and the sandwich shop owner who knew her said she had not been to his business the prior morning.

Su’s work timecard had been marked to indicate she had returned from the sandwich run, completed her shift, and had begun working the following day. A coworker, however, admitted marking her card, believing she was covering for her.

 

Su Is Found Stabbed And Stuffed In Her Car’s Trunk

The auto shop was near the Esquire Club, a bar frequented by airline employees, including Bobby Brooks and Joseph Nuzzo, two men responsible for much of the workplace harassment toward Su.

Brooks and Su had previously dated, during which time they twice had sex. Shortly before Su’s murder, Brooks, for no apparent reason, had intentionally wrecked her new radio. He had said he would pay for it, but he never provided any money, and he had threatened to beat up Su’s current boyfriend, who also worked at Northwest, after he and Su both pressed him over payment.

Nuzzo’s anger toward Su dated back longer. After having been disciplined for several infractions, he was suspended by Northwest in April 1989 for calling her a “fucking cunt” after she had attempted to break up a fight between him and two other employees. Shortly thereafter, Su began receiving the late night phone calls and her car was damaged. She also believed Nuzzo had staked out her house on multiple occasions.

Soon after Nuzzo returned to work six months later, he and several other baggage handlers began stealing credit cards from mail bags air-freighted by Northwest and then either using or selling them. The scam netted approximately $7.5 million (one Boston Globe article says $10 million) before being uncovered in August 1992 by an undercover Secret Service agent who described the theft ring as a “mini-Mafia” based in the Orient Heights section of East Boston and whose members were found to also be involved in drugs, gambling, and loan sharking.

Nuzzo, determined to be the ringleader, was fired one week later. The recently married Brooks had been transferred to working in Minnesota, where Northwest Airlines was headquartered, on August 25, 1992, three weeks before Su’s murder. He had not personally stolen any of the credit cards, but he had used several of them and had also been a paid lookout for Nuzzo and the other thieves.

Su was cleared of involvement in the thefts, and Nuzzo’s ire toward her intensified as he believed she had been the whistleblower. Less than one month later, she was murdered.

In 1995, ten Northwest employees and thirty-six people in total were convicted on various counts in relation to the several thousand stolen credit cards. Nuzzo was convicted of credit card theft and mail fraud and sentenced to three years and one month in prison.

Brooks cooperated with authorities and was given three years’ probation after pleading guilty to the same charges. In July 1997, however, he was charged with lying to the grand jury after his timecard records at his new job disproved his claim that he was working in another state at the time of Su’s murder. He had also said he had had contact with Nuzzo only once near that time, but phone records showed they had spoken three times, for twenty-two minutes on the day of the killing, and two times in the days afterwards.

Brooks pled guilty to obstruction of justice in relation to his false grand jury testimony in 1998 and was sentenced to fifteen months in prison.

I could not find pictures of Joseph Nuzzo or Bobby Brooks. They, along with several other of Su’s coworkers at Northwest, remain suspects in her murder.

In May 1995, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) found that Northwest Airlines failed to adequately address the sexual harassment complaints filed by Su Taraskiewicz and corroborated by several coworkers.

Five months later, northwest Airlines, without admitting any wrongdoing, settled a sexual discrimination lawsuit brought by the Taraskiewicz family, agreeing to pay $75,000 to the Susan Taraskiewicz estate, the promise of a $250,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of her killer or killers, and the establishment of a scholarship in her name. At the time, it was the largest such discrimination settlement granted in the state of Massachusetts.

Deborah Mazeikus had also worked as a Northwest baggage handler, and she had attested to witnessing multiple instances of harassment by several male employees against Su Taraskiewicz.

In May 2000, Deborah was awarded roughly $300,000 in damages after the MCAD found that Northwest had unjustly terminated her employment in 1995 because of her supporting the Taraskiewicz family’s lawsuit against the company.

Deborah Mazeikus

Shortly before her murder, Su had broken up with a boyfriend and had become a member of the Boston Church of Christ, a fundamentalist church described by some as a cult. I found nothing suggesting her murder may be related to her church involvement, nor did I find anything suggesting that the former boyfriend or her boyfriend at the time of her murder are suspects.

Su’s Beaus Are Not Suspects

Delta Airlines, which bought Northwest Airlines in 2008, continues offering the $250,000 reward for information leading to a break in the murder of Susan Taraskiewicz.  If you have any such information, please contact the Massachusetts State Police at 617-727-8817.

Who Killed Su?

Su Taraskiewicz adored the Peanuts comic strip, and she owned approximately 2,000 miniature Snoopy dogs. In February 1992, seven months before her murder, she met creator Charles Schulz in San Francisco. After losing her daughter, Marlene Taraskiewicz contacted him and told him of her love of his work.

The deeply moved Schulz remembered meeting Su and drew a unique, custom version of Snoopy that is etched onto her gravestone at Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/213048680/susan-taraskiewicz

                                                                     

Snoopy And Su

SOURCES:

• Boston Globe
• Boston Herald
• The Daily Item (Lynn, Massachusetts)
• FBI
• Lynn (Massachusetts) Journal
• Massachusetts State Police
• Minnesota Star Tribune
• Unsolved Mysteries
• UPI