Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 30

fflll rVS, Cf, -yf. PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS Page 30 Monday. Aug, 24, 1 1087 i i a THE NORTH PHILADELPHIA MURDER MYSTERY Em nil X' i Staff Photography by Lloyd Francis Jr. The third-floor room of house on N. 19th Street; remains of seven women were found in another room Many Differ On Suspect By JOSEPH GRACE and EDWARD MORAN Daily News Staff Writers For seven days, Jim Hansen and 1-amont Anderson wondered about missing handyman Harrison "Marty" Graham.

The two detectives watched workers lug the corpses of six women and part of a seventh out of Graham's North Philadelphia apartment Aug. 9. They heard Graham had mental problems. They expected the worst. Imagine their surprise when Lt.

Hansen and Detective Anderson-went to police headquarters after Graham's surrender and found a calm, articulate young man who skillfully sketched women's faces during breaks in his interrogation. "After talking with him, I can understand why the people of this' neighborhood described him as a nice guy," Hansen said. During questioning, Anderson complimented Graham on his drawling skill. "He just shrugged it off like it was nothing, just something he does." the detective said. Patricia White encountered Graham and his drawings in a somewhat different setting.

White, a neighbor, walked into Graham's apartment on N. 19th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue one day and found him drawing obscene sketches. There were drawings of breasts with a foot stepping on them, of a naked woman with a man's head between her legs, and of a man's genitals. White said.

She said Graham showed her the sketches with a grin. "He just said, 'Look at and he showed me them," White said last week. "And he just started He said, 'That takes me Interviews in the past few days with family, friends and neighbors, as well as police sources, paint a confusing picture of Graham. There is the quiet, well-spoken man who enjoys drawing women's faces. There is the sardonic artist of obscene sketches.

Graham's lawyer, Joel S. Mol-dovsky, said his client, now at the Philadelphia Detention Center, is insane. On his block, where drug dealers and addicts are common and indifference a way of life, neighbors said Graham fit in. "Marty was pretty much like everybody in the neighborhood until he got high," White said one day last week as she stood surrounded by broken wine bottles in an empty lot across the street from Graham's apartment. Drugs such as Ritalin and Talwin were a constant of Graham's life, police said.

He did odd jobs to earn money to buy drugs. Police said he used drugs to lure seven women to their deaths. Police sources said Graham told homicide detectives in a remorseful confession that he enticed the women to his apartment with a promise of drugs, had sex with them, and then strangled them. But there are many contradictions How Most Met Ends Will Remain a Mystery By JOSEPH GRACE Street near 49th (No. 1); Patricia Franklin, 24.

of Leland Street near Wylie (No. 5); and Cynthia Brooks, 28, of Diamond Street near 23rd (No. 6). Investigators believe Body No. 7.

found in parts on the roof of Graham's apartment house and in a nearby rowhouse basement, is that of Robin DeShazor, 30, of 33rd Street near Ridge Avenue. But they have been unable to secure the necessary medical records to make a positive identification. Body No. 3 remains unidentified, the investigators said. Detectives are pursuing several leads concerning that victim's identity.

Investigators from the medical examiner's office have used dental records. X-rays, tips from victims' families, police fingerprint records and clothing found on some victims to positively identify five sets of remains. The identification effort has been painstaking. In Brooks' case, investigators knew she had dental work done, but they didn't know where, sources said. Investigators had to call every dental clinic in her North Philadelphia neighborhood until they found the one that had treated her.

Daily News Staff Writer he cause of death of most of the alleged victims II of Harrison "Marty" Graham cannot be deter-II mined, investigators said. Two of the victims were strangled, police said. The way the other five met their deaths in the shabby apartment house on N. 19th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue, North Philadelphia, cannot be known scientifically, they said.

The remains were too deteriorated. However, the deaths have been classified as homicides. The bodies whose causes of death have been set are known to police as bodies No. 2 and No. 4, ranked in the order in which they were found by investigators.

The two thai the medical examiner's office determined were strangled were those of Mary Jeter Ma-this, 36. of Corlies Street near Ridge Avenue, Body No. and Sandra Garvin, 33, of 13th Street near Oxford, Body No. 4, according to investigators. The other victims identified thus far and assigned body numbers are Barbara Mahoney.

22, of Locust pharmaceutical expert at the University of Pennsylvania. Smith said amphetamines such as Ritalin have been known to be a contributing factor in murders. But his family believes Graham had nothing to do with murder. They protest the sinister image of him presented over the past two weeks in the press. They said he is friendly and intelligent, that he couldn't help living where he was, and that he lived on the second floor at 1631 N.

19th St. not the third floor where the bodies were found. His family said "Marty" read the Bible in his soiled apartment. A city Licenses and Inspections Department worker said he was assigned to clean up Graham's apartment after the bodies were removed. He said, amid the trash and dirty clothes, used syringes, and animal feces, he noticed drawings on the kitchen wall.

There were drawings of naked women, the worker said, and also what appeared to be some blood stains, as though someone had wiped their fingers on the wall. Beneath the drawing of one woman, someone had scrawled these words, according to a law-enforcement source: to whom it may concern fciss you Iwillfyouup die bitch Harrison Graham was born Oct. 9, 1958, the eldest of the three boys and See GRAHAM Next Page to Graham, as there are to life on N. 19th Street. A young man told this Graham story: At a now-closed diner across 19th Street from Graham's apartment, where a sign urges customers to, "Eat Like Helen B.

Happy." Graham used to get up early and sweep the front sidewalk in front of the shop before the proprietor arrived. Graham would sweep the stoop outside the owner's rowhouse, too. Then he would ask for 25 or 50 cents in return, the young man said. "I wondered how smart Marty was, doing all that work for only SO cents," said the young man, who asked not to be named. "But he always did a nice job." A woman neighbor had a different kind of memory of Graham.

The woman, who also declined to be named, said she hired Graham to install carpet. The job went along fine until he spent an unusually long time in her bathroom. The woman said she went into the bathroom and found a syringe Graham had used to inject Ritalin and Talwin. "He admitted he was high on 'Rits and TV and I told him I should throw him out," she said. "But I let him finish.

He did a good job, and he didnt touch me." Ritalin, an amphetamine, and Talwin, a pain-killer, each can cause psychotic behavior if taken in large enough doses, said Dr. Pam Smith, a.