Cold Case Files: Ottawa County murder from 1974 of mother of two teenagers remains unsolved after fifty years

October 17, 1974, was an ordinary day in Quapaw, Oklahoma--until it wasn’t.

Tina Mae Duffell, a beloved mother, wife, and community member, vanished from her workplace at the C&D Grocery Store.

The next day, her body was found submerged in Prairie Dog Pond, weighed down with timber and brush, her life brutally ended by stab wounds to the neck and back.

Fifty years later, her murder remains one of Ottawa County’s most baffling mysteries, with no arrests and a trail of unanswered questions.

In the small, tight-knit town of Quapaw, Oklahoma, Tina Mae Duffell was a familiar face. At 37, she juggled multiple roles: part-time clerk at the C&D Grocery Store, secretary-receptionist for a local physician, and employee at the Quapaw post office.

To her husband, Jasper Richard Duffell, and their two teenage children, James (18) and Andrea (16), she was the heart of their family. Known for her warmth and dedication, Tina was the kind of person who left an impression on everyone she met.

But on October 17, 1974, between 11:45 a.m. and noon, something went terribly wrong.

Tina was working at the C&D Grocery Store when she either left willingly with someone or was forcibly abducted. Her purse, car keys, cigarettes, and an open soft drink were left on the counter, suggesting a sudden departure.

Approximately $250 in cash and several cans of beer were missing from the store, but investigators later ruled out robbery as the primary motive.

A shawl she had been wearing was found discarded in a brush pile along State Highway 137, over two miles from where her body would be discovered.

The next day, October 18, 1974, a grim discovery was made in Prairie Dog Pond, a half-mile northwest of Quapaw. Tina’s body was submerged, weighed down with timber and brush to conceal the crime.

An autopsy revealed a brutal attack: she had been stabbed in the neck and back, and her throat was cut. The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), launched a full-scale investigation, but no clear suspect emerged.

The trail quickly went cold, leaving the community in shock and Tina’s family searching for answers.

One of the case’s most intriguing elements is a letter Tina reportedly wrote before her death. According to her husband, Richard, Tina entrusted the letter to the Quapaw postmaster with instructions to keep it in a safe and open it only if something “odd” happened to her.

She retrieved the letter shortly before her murder, and it was never found.

A woman who claimed to have seen the letter at a football game the night before Tina’s disappearance said it related to a school board issue, but she feared for her safety if anyone knew she had seen it.

Click to expand

Later, she denied knowing its contents, leaving investigators with a frustrating dead end.

Richard Duffell believed the letter might have contained information about local drug dealing, a theory that gained traction given Tina’s roles at the post office and grocery store, where she interacted with many in the community.

Could she have overheard something dangerous? Did she know too much? Without the letter, the theory remains speculative, but it adds a layer of mystery to an already perplexing case.

Karl Myers

n 1996, investigators turned their attention to Karl Myers, a convicted felon from nearby Picher, Oklahoma, known for his violent tendencies and preference for using a knife.

Myers was serving time for a 1979 attempted rape conviction and was suspected in other unsolved murders in the area, including those of Charles “Chink” Enders and Julia Miller.

Former Ottawa County Sheriff Floyd Ingram and Cherokee County investigator Ernie Donaldson were convinced Myers was involved, with Donaldson noting Myers “liked to cut people up.” Myers even claimed to be an “eyewitness” to some of the murders, though his statements were inconsistent and lacked corroboration.

Despite the suspicions, there was insufficient evidence to charge Myers in Tina’s case. He died in prison in 2012, taking any secrets he might have held to the grave. For Tina’s family and investigators, the question lingers: was Myers the killer, or did the focus on him distract from other potential suspects?

In 2003, at the urging of Tina’s family, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case, enlisting the expertise of the Vidocq Society, a group of elite criminologists. A forensic pathologist reviewed the autopsy report, but exhumation was deemed unlikely to yield new evidence. Original witnesses were re-interviewed, but the case remained stubbornly unsolved.

In August 2021, the OSBI announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, a sign of renewed hope that someone, somewhere, knows something that could break the case open.

The passage of time has not dulled the pain for Tina’s family or the Quapaw community.

Her roles as a mother, wife, and active citizen made her loss deeply felt, and the lack of justice keeps her memory alive in a town that refuses to forget.

If you have information about the murder of Tina Mae Duffell, contact the OSBI at (800) 522-8017 or tips@osbi.ok.gov. Your tip could be the key to solving this decades-old mystery.