It’s been 32 years since Susan Taraskiewicz’s body, beaten and stabbed, was found in the trunk of her small blue Toyota outside an auto repair shop in Revere. But the time has not faded her mother’s passion for finding the killer.

“I don’t let anyone forget about Susan,” Marlene Taraskiewicz, who for years stood outside Logan International Airport with a sign asking for information on her daughter’s death, told the Herald. “I always say it’s the girl on the billboard who was murdered from Northwest Airlines, and it’s amazing how many people remember.

“I just wish and pray every day with the strength that God gives me,” she added, “that someone will come forward and tell us something that will solve Susan’s murder.”

Marlene Taraskiewicz was 50 when her 27-year-old daughter was murdered under mysterious circumstances. In the intervening years, she has lost most of her family, with only her eldest child, a daughter named Debra, surviving. She lost her son Ronnie 17 years ago and her husband 14 years ago.

Marlene Taraskiewicz and others paying close attention to the mystery say that it’s clear why Susan Taraskiewicz was killed: she knew too much about an organized crime-backed credit card fraud racket taking place at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where she worked as a ramp crew chief for the now-defunct Northwest Airlines.

Taraskiewicz was working an overnight shift on Saturday night, Sept. 12, 1992, when she received a mysterious phone call. After that call, she left work and told her co-workers she was going to pick up sandwiches for them at Beachmont Roast Beef in Revere.

But she never returned from the quick errand.

She wasn’t seen again until investigators discovered her remains in the trunk of her Tercel outside that auto body shop on Route 1A. A source close with the investigation told the Herald that the car was already there when workers arrived for their shift that Monday morning.

“The fact that none of her co-workers reported her missing is potentially significant. Were they trying to cover for her, or were they afraid of those who were antagonizing and harassing Susan, or were some of them aware of what was about to happen to her?” the source told the Herald.

Investigation

“I am never going to give up,” Marlene Taraskiewicz said. “I know this murder can be solved and it should have been solved in the first 12 years.”

Headway on the case was relatively non-existent for years, Marlene Taraskiewicz said, plunging family members themselves into the fray to try to find any scraps that could lead to an answer, like being the first go to the restaurant and confirm Susan had never arrived.

The police didn’t track the phone call. Marlene Tarasckiewicz said they told her at the time that it couldn’t be done. But when a new Massachusetts State Police investigative team led by Detective Lieutenants Joseph Flaherty and Bob Murphy took over the case 12 years later, the first thing they tried to do was track that call. Murphy said that call could have easily been traced, Marlene Tarasckiewicz said, but that in the years since the murder those records had been erased.

Northwest Airlines tried to help by putting up a $250,000 reward for information that could lead to a conviction for Susan Taraskiewicz’s murder. When that airline was absorbed by Delta Airlines in 2010, Delta decided to keep the offer going.

The Herald could not independently confirm the Delta Airlines reward status by deadline.

Marlene Tarasckiewicz said that she’s also pleased with the work being done by the new lead, MSP Det. Lt. Timothy O’Connor.

Conspiracy

Fellow Northwest employees Joseph Nuzzo and Edward Flaherty would be indicted in federal court in Boston in January 1995 on charges of stealing credit cards from United States mail entrusted to the airline and running a fraud racket with them from April 1991 through July 1992.

“The agreement was that they would steal credit cards from the mails coming in on Northwest Airlines together and then they would either go their separate ways with the cards,” federal prosecutor David Apfel said when Flaherty pleaded guilty on March 30, 1995. “Mr. Flaherty used his cards personally primarily to support what was then a cocaine habit as well as to support a gambling habit.”

Marlene Tarasckiewicz said that the baggage handlers involved in the racket probably know what happened to her daughter, and why. She extolls all of them and anyone else who might have information to finally share it.

“So please, clear your conscience,” she extolled anyone with any information “It’s been 32 years. How can you live with yourself? Please, help my family get closure.”

Law enforcement is still issuing calls for any information on the case. The MSP asks anyone with any information to call the agency’s Suffolk County detective unit at (617) 727-8817.

“In every unsolved case, just one person with accurate information can make all the difference for survivors, for the communities, and for investigators handling the case,” Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden said. “No matter how much time has passed since Susan Taraskiewicz tragic death, we retain hope and we pray that there’s someone who can come forward with information that can help solve the case. We urge them to contact us or the Mass State Police.”

A plane takes off at Logan Airport in Boston, where Susan Taraskiewicz worked when she was murdered in 1992. (Staff Photo By Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)