BRISTOL  -- When Helen Stewart talks about her dead son, the anger boils up inside her just as powerfully as it did nearly three years ago, when someone shot him.

"Todd died for nothing at all," she said recently. She tapped an index finger at the center of her chest and grasped the necklace hanging there. "And it tears a hole in me right here."  The most wrenching part of her son's death, she said, is that she has no idea who killed him.

The face of the killer is a blank; the case has not been solved.  The hollow, unresolved feeling that the killing left in the Stewart family is shared by many whose loved ones were slain by unknown assailants.

A few months ago, the Stewarts began attending meetings of Families of Unsolved Murder Victims, a support group that meets monthly in Bristol Township to share grief, offer encouragement and listen to crime experts talk about cases like theirs.

"It is a very emotionally healing experience," Helen Stewart said of the
meetings. "You can't keep it all inside you forever."

Todd Stewart, 30, died in a parking lot next to the Bensalem Presbyterian Church on the morning of Sept. 2, 1995, alone with his killer.   Witnesses told police Stewart was driving his car down Route 13 at 5:30
a.m., hours after having a few drinks with friends at the Five Points Sports Bar in Levittown.

 No one knows where he was between about 2:30 and 5:30 a.m. Just before the glow of the sun appeared on the horizon, a dark, two-tone Ford pickup truck was spotted tailgating Stewart's 1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
 It may have been "road rage," family members say; Stewart's car may have stalled at an intersection, sending the driver behind him into an irrational, murderous anger. Or maybe someone he knew wanted him dead for reasons no one knows.

 Whatever the reason, the driver of the pickup apparently pulled ahead of Stewart, forced him off the road, and then shot him twice, in the head and chest, according to police.  Stewart's body was found minutes later, 20 feet from the open door of his car. The engine was still running, and police speculated that he had left the
car to confront the driver who had run him off the road.   "For the first week or so, we had such strong hopes that the case would just come together," said Todd's brother Bruce Stewart, 39. That hope gradually evaporated as the days, weeks, months and years went by.

"It kept dragging on and on, and eventually we realized that it just wasn't going to go away," Bruce Stewart said.
 "Sometimes it still feels like his death is not real. Not knowing who did it, you don't have a way to put it out of your mind. You don't even have a start to closure."

Each member of the family deals with the murder differently, Helen Stewart
said.

Her sons Bob and Michael seem to keep it inside. "They are the quiet men of
the family," she said.   For Bruce Stewart, the killing has become a consuming passion. For several
months after the murder, he frequented the bars where his brother spent his last hours, hoping the killer might be there.

"I look something like my brother, and I hoped to surprise someone into a giveaway reaction," he said.

These days, Bruce Stewart wears a shirt with the face of his dead brother emblazoned across the front.

At the Families of Unsolved Murder Victims meeting on June 22, held at the Bristol Township Senior Citizens Center, the Stewarts sat in folding chairs arranged around a table, sharing with families of 11 other Bucks County victims the experience of losing loved ones to unknown killers.

The group founder, Dorothy Cambray, who lost her brother Donny in an unsolved murder a decade ago, introduced several speakers, who talked about everything from keeping hope alive to dealing with law enforcement officials.

Many families felt that as time passed, the police were less responsive to their pleas for new information about their cases.  "How do you think it feels when you call the Police Department to ask if anything new has happened, and they don't even bother to call you back?" Jeannie Bernstein asked one speaker, her voice thick with emotion.

Bernstein's daughter Dana was shot to death in 1996; the killer has not been found.

Frank Friel, chairman of the board of the Vidocq Society, a group of retired and working law enforcement officers, pathologists and others who investigate unsolved murders in their spare time, emphasized that victims' families need to build friendly relationships with the police officers working on their
cases.

"I can tell you that it is not indifference, it is not lack of interest, it is not uncaring when law enforcement seems to make no progress in a case," said Friel, a former Bensalem public safety director and Philadelphia police
captain.

The Stewarts said that the group had helped them feel they were doing something about Todd's death, but that perhaps the most important part was knowing others who have shared their experience.  "Until this group formed, I could talk to someone about what happened to me, and people could say they understood what I have been going through, but they had no idea," Helen Stewart said. "Except for these people. They know what it
is like. They have walked in my shoes."

Bruce Stewart, meanwhile, has begun pouring his energy into designing Web pages and posters for the group. The longer the case stays in the public eye, he said, the better the chance that his brother's killer will slip up, or
that somebody who knows more about the killing will talk.

"I want my brother's killer to know that he should be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life," Bruce Stewart said, "because one way or another, we will track him down."

®1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

Webmaster's Note:
About Families of Murder Victims

Two Vidocq Society Members addressed the April 1998 meeting of a unique
new support organization for families who are enduring the daily hell of a loved
one's unsolved murder.

Vidocq's Director of Communications, Dick Lavinthal, V.S.M., talked about The
Society, its history  its volunteers and its work.

James Dunn, V.S.M. then recounted the heart-wrenching story of his quest to
solve the mystery of his son's disappearance in Texas, a struggle that led him to
The Vidocq Society. After Vidocq took Dunn's case, Richard Walter, V.S.M., a
Vidocq co-founder who is a well-known forensic psychologist and profiler from
Michigan, worked hand-in-glove for four years with Texas local law enforcement to
help solve the crime.  The result was first-degree murder convictions for Dunn's
son's former girlfriend her new boyfriend, Timothy Smith.

"Families of Murder Victims" was recently formed in suburban Philadelphia and
the April meeting was the second that the fledgling group held.  The multi-racial
organization was borne out of the frustration endured by men, women and
children who have waited years to see someone identified or charged for a loved
one's killing.

Lavinthal left the two-hour meeting with file folders from five families who have
asked Vidocq to pursue their loved ones' unsolved murders.
Approximately 35 men, women and children who gathered at the Edgely
Volunteer Fire Hall in Levittown, Pennsylvania, did not appear daunted by the low
prospects of seeing their cases solved. Their search for answers is a lifelong
search and Vidocq represents a chance, albeit small, that a solution can be
found.

Lavinthal was careful not to cross the fine line between hope and false hope as he
explained the Vidocq case management process and warned that a Vidocq case
review a might not advance beyond the initial examination of material that was
turned over after the meeting.

Some of those who attended the meeting expressed what appeared to be
annoyance at local authorities for not clearing their loved ones' murders. On
closer examination it was obvious that they were frustrated that the murders
remain open cases and not really blaming law enforcement.

"There's no police officer alive who doesn't want to solve the murder he or she is
investigating. That's what we all live for," a senior police officer from a local
community force who attended the meeting said.

Postscript: Inexplicably, the Texas jury that convicted
Timothy Smith of first degree murder then sentenced him to
probation for the crime.  Look for more from the Vidocq Society 
on this appalling turn of events.