Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. September
Speaker 1: one began like any other day for Lonnie Dumont. I
Speaker 1: worked for a company in Ingle Rock, Massouri at the time,
Speaker 1: and I was going to Joblin to do service calls.
Speaker 1: Lonnie was a former truck driver turned repairman who fixed
Speaker 1: wood stoves, pellets, stoves, and hot tubs. He says he
Speaker 1: was on his way to his first job of the day,
Speaker 1: about five miles west of where Tammy Ziwiki went missing
Speaker 1: nine days earlier. It was a Tuesday, around nine am.
Speaker 1: Lonnie was driving his boss's pickup truck along in the
Speaker 1: state forty four when it started to rain, so it
Speaker 1: started franklin. I pulled off an exit ramp and got
Speaker 1: out and got my tools and set them in the
Speaker 1: front of the truck. And I can smell something real
Speaker 1: d I mean it was funky, and it uh was.
Speaker 1: I shut the truck door. When I turned to walk
Speaker 1: around the front of the truck, I've seen it. Laying
Speaker 1: there roughly twelve ft from where Lonnie stood was a
Speaker 1: shocking sight. A bulky red blanket rolled up like a
Speaker 1: big cigar duct taped on both ends usual till it
Speaker 1: was a body laying there with this bunk and everything.
Speaker 1: I figured it was either that or somebody had an
Speaker 1: old dick now for cat and they just wrapped it
Speaker 1: up and throw it off alongside the road, so they
Speaker 1: didn't have disposed of it. Lonnie knew something was off.
Speaker 1: What he didn't know was what to do next. I
Speaker 1: went I hadn't got in the truck and started down
Speaker 1: the road, and I kept thinking, you know, I really
Speaker 1: ought to call the highway troll and turn again, and
Speaker 1: you know, we think, no, I'm not gonna call the
Speaker 1: highway troll turned in because it's not my business. What
Speaker 1: Lonnie Dumott chose to do act would leave him with
Speaker 1: a cloud of suspicion that lingers to this very day,
Speaker 1: thirty years later. Previously on paper ghosts, people started buying phones.
Speaker 1: Guys and tasks are running out by the phone. They saw, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's good, my wife got my daughter. I took a
Speaker 1: phone call in the kitchen and he said, Jen, don't
Speaker 1: say anything, I just want you to listen. They found
Speaker 1: a body in Missouri. Tammy is a very young girl
Speaker 1: on our way to college. Who would she willingly go with?
Speaker 1: On a sunny afternoon in the summer when her car
Speaker 1: broke down. Now we have a crime sneed. Now I
Speaker 1: have a place to start looking. Before we had nothing.
Speaker 1: My name is m William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: and author of more than forty true crime blows. This
Speaker 1: is season three of paper Ghosts in Plain Sight. Vehicles
Speaker 1: are trucks. Yeah, thirty thirty years ago thereyone near this
Speaker 1: made cars out here. You can stand along this highway
Speaker 1: thirty minutes sometimes now see anything, just truck, just just trucks.
Speaker 1: I first met Lonnie Dumott during a trip I took
Speaker 1: to Missouri last year. He's a good natured, heavy set
Speaker 1: guy with cropped hair, a long, square shaped goatee, and
Speaker 1: a somber looking, slow moving dog that tags along wherever
Speaker 1: he goes. We met a long Interstate forty four at
Speaker 1: the exact location where he found Tammy's a Wicky's body
Speaker 1: in described to me what happened. It out. I was
Speaker 1: going to Joplin, and I had my boss's truck and
Speaker 1: and he was at the time he was a deputy
Speaker 1: sheriff and the fire ju so he had radio in
Speaker 1: his truck. And when I pulled off the rampstar raining
Speaker 1: and I come across the crossroad just about where that
Speaker 1: guardrail starts up there, and it uh, there was a
Speaker 1: body laying off in the DearS. I got out to
Speaker 1: put my tools in the front of the truck because
Speaker 1: it was raining. So you stop up at the guardrail, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well almost to the guard not like to the guardrail
Speaker 1: like before it or after this this side of it.
Speaker 1: And I walked around the truck and get my tools
Speaker 1: out of back, and then I went to the right
Speaker 1: door and opened the door and was set them in
Speaker 1: the foreboard because I carried two trays. I should know
Speaker 1: there are people who don't believe Lonnie's account of what happened,
Speaker 1: That he's given varying accounts as to why he pulled
Speaker 1: over in the first place, and that the decisions he
Speaker 1: made after finding Tammy's body seems suspicious. He was laying
Speaker 1: right there. And there's another report to you said you
Speaker 1: stopped to take a piss. Did you know you never
Speaker 1: said that I stopped to get my jewels out of the
Speaker 1: the back of the truck. I don't know where that
Speaker 1: came from. Well, I sort of figured, you know, just
Speaker 1: like you, you're gonna try to to make a a
Speaker 1: sort of a report out of this, and there's things
Speaker 1: that get bobbled around. But this is your voice. This
Speaker 1: is your story, not mine. You're telling your story to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna tell it for you, and I want
Speaker 1: to get it right. So you pull off that ramp.
Speaker 1: You're heading west, okay, So you pull over, you get out,
Speaker 1: and I walk around. The truck smells something funky, but
Speaker 1: you know, alongside the road, you don't don't really know,
Speaker 1: So did describe the odor to me? And if you've
Speaker 1: ever found a dead body, it's it's undescribable, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's a smell, it just all my
Speaker 1: he turns your stomach. I looked at there and seen
Speaker 1: it laying there, and I thought where, And then on
Speaker 1: the side of the road, drive here, up here? So
Speaker 1: was up here? How far off the road? And she
Speaker 1: was probably I don't bous far from here to that
Speaker 1: piece of plastic right there ten twelve ft And Lonnie
Speaker 1: said he saw what appeared to be a body wrapped
Speaker 1: in a red blanket with silver duct tape sealing both ends.
Speaker 1: He could tell it was a body just by the
Speaker 1: way it was laying, which is why knowing what he
Speaker 1: did immediately after seeing the blanket seems so strange. Lannie
Speaker 1: hopped back into his truck and drove away. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's not my problem. At the time, I didn't have
Speaker 1: a driver's license. Uh. And then I thought, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna going down the road my own business and going
Speaker 1: down the highway between here and the next exit. I
Speaker 1: talked myself in and out of calling the police about
Speaker 1: a hundred times, and the last thought I had was,
Speaker 1: if it was my daughter, I'd want to know. I
Speaker 1: shared this last detail with the source, someone close to
Speaker 1: this wiki case with access to the autopsy and crime
Speaker 1: scene reports, and they found his comments troubling. Why would
Speaker 1: Lonnie Dumott say daughter if he didn't know the gender
Speaker 1: or age of the person and the blanket. It's small
Speaker 1: details like these that can be so easily twisted into
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory and make someone like Lonnie an easy target.
Speaker 1: But what Lonnie said didn't strike me as strange. It
Speaker 1: was apparent he was recalling what happened from a contemporary mindset.
Speaker 1: In other words, he already knew who the victim was
Speaker 1: as he retold his story. Minor discrepancies in anyone's recollections
Speaker 1: are understandable. Thirty years is a long time. The truth
Speaker 1: is inherent, sure, but time can affect memory. Besides line,
Speaker 1: he did end up calling the police. So I pulled
Speaker 1: off and called the state how I tolled and they
Speaker 1: said would you meet us there? And I said yes,
Speaker 1: and they said what are you driving? I said, white
Speaker 1: three quarter tons should be pick up. So take me back.
Speaker 1: I mean, see, have you have all these cops here?
Speaker 1: What are you thinking? I'm thinking I want to go
Speaker 1: to jail because I don't have a license. They asked
Speaker 1: me to see my idea and I give it to him,
Speaker 1: which it was expired or wasn't expired. He was revoked,
Speaker 1: but he didn't say that, and they they just wrote
Speaker 1: my name down and stuff. And when we after the
Speaker 1: corner got there and we'd picked her up and put
Speaker 1: her in the down are the cops there when the
Speaker 1: corner comes? Yes? Okay, So the corner comes and you
Speaker 1: say we picked her up, you helped? Yes? Yes? How
Speaker 1: how did that happen? The state trooper that was there,
Speaker 1: he got out and got a pair of gloves and
Speaker 1: he walked down there and looked at it and sort
Speaker 1: of walked around, and he come back to get his
Speaker 1: pocket and I file the car and he said, I
Speaker 1: hope you know you made my day. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: if you got another pair of gloves, I'll help you.
Speaker 1: Because at that time I was part of the fire
Speaker 1: department where I live at and it, uh, there was
Speaker 1: just massively covered with bug you can't imagine. I mean
Speaker 1: bugs were on this. We cut the blanket, and once
Speaker 1: we cut the blanket, we had to cut a lot
Speaker 1: more because she was wrapped in a sheet. We had
Speaker 1: to get down in there with all in bugs. And
Speaker 1: what did you see when they when you cut that
Speaker 1: blanket open? We've seen that it was a body. You
Speaker 1: could tell it was a body. Could you see the face? No,
Speaker 1: now we didn't didn't open the end of it. And
Speaker 1: and uh, we've seen a femur in her leg and
Speaker 1: it was exposed. It was rothered enough that it was fallen.
Speaker 1: And he said, that's all I need to see. And
Speaker 1: at that time we didn't even know it was a girl. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at that time we had two girls and a
Speaker 1: lady in Springfield that went missing right the Springfield three three.
Speaker 1: I thought that may have been one of them. Ah
Speaker 1: Lonnie said, he helped carry Tammy's body up the embankment
Speaker 1: and placed it next to a body bag that was
Speaker 1: along the side of the road. This may sound odd
Speaker 1: to many, and multiple law enforcement sources, including one from Missouri,
Speaker 1: told me this would not have happened, that the person
Speaker 1: who found a body would never be asked to help
Speaker 1: move it, and under modern day police policy, they're absolutely right. Today,
Speaker 1: Tammy's body would have remained in that gulch for hours,
Speaker 1: so the entire crime scene could be processed for evidence,
Speaker 1: but cold cases need to be looked at within the
Speaker 1: context of the time and place this was in. In
Speaker 1: rural Missouri, the Lawrence County Sheriff's office, which initially took
Speaker 1: the call, only had about twelve officers on staff at
Speaker 1: the time, and some of them worked part time. Brad
Speaker 1: Delay is the current Lawrence County Sheriff. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that the body wasn't moved, but that is probably an
Speaker 1: unlikely thing unless they were to the point for two reasons,
Speaker 1: one being that all the evidence that they needed to
Speaker 1: collected was collected, and the corner was on scene and
Speaker 1: was able to or was ready to remove the body,
Speaker 1: or there was sometimes of extended circumstance that would have
Speaker 1: necessitated the body being moved immediately. Uh. In something like
Speaker 1: that would have been you know, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was gonna be this downpour that was gonna cause
Speaker 1: flooding that may have damaged the body or the crime
Speaker 1: scene or something. As the person who found Tammy's body,
Speaker 1: Lonnie DeMott, was, by mere happenstance, the first suspect, they said.
Speaker 1: Before they got down with me, he said, I got
Speaker 1: one more question for you. And I said, what's that?
Speaker 1: And he said, I know this goes sound like a
Speaker 1: stupid question. Do you know how the body got there?
Speaker 1: I said no, sir, But I said I can tell
Speaker 1: you one thing. I used to drive of a truck.
Speaker 1: And from what I see, most truck drivers have a
Speaker 1: sheet in their bed, and most truck drivers have a
Speaker 1: blanket in their bed, and almost all truck drivers have
Speaker 1: an uptape. And if you retch up in the sleep,
Speaker 1: open the door and the sleeper and retch up and
Speaker 1: grabbed her and pulled her out, that's about where she'd live.
Speaker 1: Why do you say that, Well, I drove a truck
Speaker 1: for years, and and uh, if you got ahold of
Speaker 1: her and drug her out the sleeper, that's about where
Speaker 1: she'd lit was where she was at, and right here
Speaker 1: there's nothing around. And you know, we look too, We
Speaker 1: look to the north of where her body was and
Speaker 1: we see nothing but acres of farm land, not even
Speaker 1: a farmhouse. You see nothing, nothing. You look west, nothing,
Speaker 1: you see nothing. You look south, you see that old
Speaker 1: truck stop. But you say that old truck stop is
Speaker 1: really small. Yeah, it was small. It It mainly was
Speaker 1: the fuel stop. Truckers would often pull off here to
Speaker 1: do the log book. All the time. Truckers pull off
Speaker 1: extra amps to do the log books basically when they
Speaker 1: know that there's a scale at Joplin and they're real
Speaker 1: known to be real stickier about your log book. So
Speaker 1: that would answer the question of why a truck was
Speaker 1: parked there. So if the cop is driving by, there's
Speaker 1: no way he'd stopped following. Absolutely, they wouldn't bother you.
Speaker 1: I've slept on this ramp before, used to be in Missouri,
Speaker 1: and well the whole country you can pull off on
Speaker 1: extra ram, go to sleep and no one bothers you.
Speaker 1: What's most troubling to me is what Linnie said happened
Speaker 1: after the body was recovered. Do they call you in
Speaker 1: for a report or you go down there. No, they
Speaker 1: never never ever talk to me at all outside of
Speaker 1: the scene. I think shortly after they figured out that
Speaker 1: she was here and she was from up north and
Speaker 1: out the east. I don't believe that once they run
Speaker 1: all their leads they had. I believe they's done with it.
Speaker 1: I believe it's set for thirty years or close to it.
Speaker 1: With the exception of a brief and formal call later
Speaker 1: that day in Lonnie claims that no one, not Lawrence County,
Speaker 1: not Missouri State Highway Patrol, not the Illinois State Police,
Speaker 1: no one contacted him for a formal interview after he
Speaker 1: found Tammy's a Wicki's body. Lonnie told me he had
Speaker 1: no idea the body was part of a multi state investigation.
Speaker 1: He had no clue that it was a young woman
Speaker 1: who had been abducted five miles away, or that her
Speaker 1: case would go on to become a national news story.
Speaker 1: After he drove away from the scene that day, Lonnie
Speaker 1: said that nobody from law enforcement ever spoke to him
Speaker 1: again until twenty eight years later in two thousand twenty.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone involved in the discovery of Tammy Ziwiki's body
Speaker 1: had no idea that the young woman they'd found in
Speaker 1: Missouri was a missing college student whose case had started
Speaker 1: to attract national attention. How could they Tammy's disappearance was
Speaker 1: being handled by a different law enforcement agency in Illinois.
Speaker 1: This event took place in District seventeen, which is our
Speaker 1: neighboring district. And my boss, my captain, called me into
Speaker 1: the office and said, um, you're going over seventeen. A
Speaker 1: girl disappeared on the interstate and you're gonna help the
Speaker 1: p i O over there run the media and all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. Jeff Hanford was a public information officer
Speaker 1: or p i O with the Illinois State Police at
Speaker 1: the time. At District seventeen, he worked alongside another p
Speaker 1: i O, Jerry Myers. Jerry and I were sitting there
Speaker 1: in the phone ring, and you know, I mean, we
Speaker 1: had been a fielding media calls and it was a
Speaker 1: media outlet, I believe in Missouri, and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this is so and so from channel such
Speaker 1: and such, and we're trying to verify that the body
Speaker 1: that was found here was Tammy Zwicky. And I said,
Speaker 1: what body? And they said, well, we found a body
Speaker 1: rolled in a carpet and the clothing matches. Tammy was
Speaker 1: found wearing a blue T shirt from her high school
Speaker 1: soccer team, along with sweatshorts adorned with soccer patches from
Speaker 1: various leagues she played in. So I went over and
Speaker 1: knocked on the door, and the vest one of guests
Speaker 1: there came. I said, they found a body in Missouri
Speaker 1: and the clothing matches Tammy Zwicky. You need to talk
Speaker 1: to the guy. So you know, they basically I think
Speaker 1: they talked to him briefly and then they called the sheriff.
Speaker 1: The closed. Tammy it was found wearing were her own,
Speaker 1: but it was later discovered that the items she had
Speaker 1: on were not the same ones she was wearing when
Speaker 1: she said goodbye to her brother hours earlier. According to
Speaker 1: her brother, Tammy was wearing a white T shirt and
Speaker 1: dark shorts. Here's Jeff Padilla, a retired lieutenant from the
Speaker 1: Illinois State Police. She was wearing a pair of shorts
Speaker 1: from a soccer club that she played for, but was
Speaker 1: what was very important to us was that the patch
Speaker 1: from that soccer club was cut off the leg of
Speaker 1: those shorts, notably one circular white patch with red stitching
Speaker 1: that read St. Giles Soccer Club. Had been torn off
Speaker 1: the shorts Tammy was wearing. Why would her killer cut
Speaker 1: off that patch? We thought it possibly that it was
Speaker 1: a souvenir. According to Padilla, Tammy's killer took the patch
Speaker 1: as a trophy. It's an interesting idea since serial killers
Speaker 1: can sometimes be prone to exhibit that kind of behavior,
Speaker 1: and in theory, there is no other reason beyond maybe
Speaker 1: the killer wanting to remove evidence from the scene if
Speaker 1: some of their own DNA got on the patch. As
Speaker 1: for the change of clothes, it's possible Tammy changed when
Speaker 1: she picked up lunch at Hearty's or later after her
Speaker 1: car broke down on the side of a hot highway.
Speaker 1: She had bags of clothes packed in the car. Still,
Speaker 1: what is the likelihood she needed to switch out of
Speaker 1: everything she was wearing. Authorities kept a number of details
Speaker 1: surrounding Tammy's death private, but Lawrence County corner Don Laken
Speaker 1: spoke to a reporter shortly after the body was found
Speaker 1: and revealed this She was fabbed seven times in the
Speaker 1: chest and one time in the right arm. To those
Speaker 1: stab wounds puncture her long and one punctured her labor.
Speaker 1: In an interview with another reporter, Laken noted that Tammy's
Speaker 1: body didn't appear to have any blood quote, just some
Speaker 1: body fluids on the sheet and blanket from the decomposition
Speaker 1: end quote. Law enforcement never publicly released the official cause
Speaker 1: of death. What we do know is that Tammy died
Speaker 1: from those stab wounds which were caused by a short
Speaker 1: blade like a Swiss army or pocket knife. Here's Marty McCarthy,
Speaker 1: one of the members from the I s P Task Force.
Speaker 1: What was unusual. It was a pen knife no more
Speaker 1: than that seven times around the heart and one is
Speaker 1: on scrapes the side of the of the arm. So
Speaker 1: she had to be unconscious when that. No one's going
Speaker 1: to sit there and take that kind of Some including Marty,
Speaker 1: have speculated over the years that there was a pattern
Speaker 1: to Tammy's wounds, one that circles her heart. Those with
Speaker 1: direct knowledge of the autopsy report, however, have told me
Speaker 1: there was never any indication of this. From what I
Speaker 1: have learned so far, I can speculate confidently that Tammy's
Speaker 1: killer was likely positioned on top of her, straddling her body,
Speaker 1: stabbing in a frenzied outburst. That this was not some
Speaker 1: sort of ritualistic, methodical placement of wounds. It's just strangest
Speaker 1: murder I ever saw. Why would someone stab somebody seven
Speaker 1: times around the heart. Is that saying something? It would
Speaker 1: indicate to me that it wasn't necessarily gonna kill her,
Speaker 1: that I better get rid of her, and all I
Speaker 1: got this little pen knife, and there's no preparation for it.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let his road. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is just my speculation. I've never
Speaker 1: seen a murder like this. Ever, it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to understand how that happened, other than in fact, it
Speaker 1: seems to me she has to have been unconscious, has
Speaker 1: to them. I don't think you could find someone and
Speaker 1: there would be marks on her wrist. If there weren't
Speaker 1: any as far as on it, they could have ye,
Speaker 1: and no continusion is on the head As far as
Speaker 1: I don't know. It took some time. Where in the
Speaker 1: hell is she? What you're doing with you know? It's
Speaker 1: just strange as hell? And where's the blood? Where's the
Speaker 1: you know? These are questions I have. I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer. While I was in Missouri, I was able
Speaker 1: to track down one of the first officers on the scene,
Speaker 1: There's been plenty of misinformation spread over the course of
Speaker 1: thirty years regarding that day, so I was eager for
Speaker 1: this source to help clear up any doubt about Lonnie
Speaker 1: Dumott's story and what the crime scene itself can clarify. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: my source just wasn't comfortable being on the podcast. What
Speaker 1: I can say about our conversation is this. The source
Speaker 1: told me that the first cop on the scene wasn't
Speaker 1: a big guy, so it made sense to him that
Speaker 1: Lonnie would have been asked to help carry Tammy's body
Speaker 1: up the embankment. Why was there a rush to get
Speaker 1: her out of the gulch and not wait for backup.
Speaker 1: It's tough to say. As Sheriff Delay mentioned earlier, weather
Speaker 1: concerns could have been a factor. After all, Lonnie does
Speaker 1: maintain that he pulled over to cover his tools when
Speaker 1: it began to rain. Plus there were two agencies at play,
Speaker 1: Lawrence County and the Highway Patrol. In my opinion, however,
Speaker 1: it boils down to inexperience with major crime scenes. Here's
Speaker 1: Jeff Padilla. He has a bad idea. It's it's a
Speaker 1: bad idea. I don't know why that was allowed to happen,
Speaker 1: that she never should have been allowed to happen. Another
Speaker 1: point of contention I sought to clear up was how
Speaker 1: long Tammy's body had been left out next to the
Speaker 1: roadside in Missouri. Asked one of the many online sluice,
Speaker 1: and they'll tell you she was likely dumped the night
Speaker 1: before she was found, that she had been held captive
Speaker 1: some where. One of the more popular theories is that
Speaker 1: her body had been kept in a refrigerated truck for
Speaker 1: most of the time she was missing. My crime scene
Speaker 1: source actually carried Tammy's body, which was now in a
Speaker 1: body bag, from the roadside into the corner suburban. He
Speaker 1: says that the smell was so bad the officers needed
Speaker 1: to apply Vicks vapor rub under their noses. The source
Speaker 1: also said that Tammy's body and head appeared to be swollen,
Speaker 1: that her face had a bluish purple color, and that
Speaker 1: blood had pooled in the upper part of her body.
Speaker 1: The body was in a state of decomposition, which makes
Speaker 1: it difficult to for example, identify you know, decom as
Speaker 1: as opposed to bruising or abrasions. Um that was you know,
Speaker 1: very some some things that could provide us with some
Speaker 1: more information, but h so, there was a number of
Speaker 1: things that were recovered from the crime scene. Later on,
Speaker 1: we were able to try to go through and analyze
Speaker 1: items such as the blanket that her body was wrapped in,
Speaker 1: the clothing that she was found in, the there was
Speaker 1: duct tape that was used to secure the ends of
Speaker 1: the blanket that she was wrapped in, and so um,
Speaker 1: all of those items and those physical items are available
Speaker 1: to us. The origin of the blanket has been a
Speaker 1: source of misinformation that's been spread around the Internet for years.
Speaker 1: It's unclear even how the rumors started, but message boards
Speaker 1: and blogs claim Tammy was found wrapped in a red
Speaker 1: blanket made by Kenworth Trucking Company, something that was often
Speaker 1: used by truckers on the road. I have learned this
Speaker 1: is simply not true. In fact, I was told that
Speaker 1: law enforcement at the time looked into the Kenworth detail
Speaker 1: and discovered that the blanket was nothing more than a
Speaker 1: common product sold at kmart stores nationwide. Still, the handling
Speaker 1: of Tammy's body, in particular the initial testing and autopsy reports,
Speaker 1: would become a point of frustration for investigators like Jeff Dilla.
Speaker 1: I know that the Missouri State Police were there for
Speaker 1: the autopsy. In my opinion, the autopsy was less than
Speaker 1: I would have expected in regards to detail and analysis.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, at the time that you had an autopsy
Speaker 1: conducted in a jurisdiction that that's all they had. And
Speaker 1: the elected corner was also the local funeral director, and
Speaker 1: so he's not seeing the volume of suspicious debts that
Speaker 1: say somebody in a in a more urban area, a
Speaker 1: medical examiner or a corner and in a more urban
Speaker 1: area is seen. I would have loved to have a
Speaker 1: lot more photos taken, a lot more testing done once
Speaker 1: once you're done with the autopsy. If you don't, if
Speaker 1: you didn't take enough photographs, then there's no coming back
Speaker 1: from that. While investigators were just starting to piece together
Speaker 1: what happened, the Ziwicki family was really the worst possible
Speaker 1: outcome was now their reality. Any hope of Tammy returning
Speaker 1: home safe and alive was now shattered. Hank and Joeann
Speaker 1: Ziwicki's little girl was gone, murdered. It's unfathomable. You guys
Speaker 1: had like a memorial service for at the college. Tell
Speaker 1: me about that. How was that? It was very nice
Speaker 1: They had more students that they could handle. I wanted
Speaker 1: to speak because she's she was just an all around
Speaker 1: purpose on our person on campus because of her working
Speaker 1: with the paper and everything she knew from there. Does
Speaker 1: law enforcement want to hold onto her body for a
Speaker 1: little bit to examine Frenzy? They did have it for
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, and then they finally released the body
Speaker 1: to you And what do you what do you do?
Speaker 1: You have a service in Pennsylvania funeral service she had
Speaker 1: a lot of our college friends did come for the services.
Speaker 1: Dammy got along with everybody. She was very well liked,
Speaker 1: and it it was hard on the the not only
Speaker 1: the girls, but the boys too. It was hard on
Speaker 1: all of them. And how are your son's coping with
Speaker 1: all of this? Well, they did well with it. We
Speaker 1: didn't make more out of it than we should have.
Speaker 1: You know, it's happened. It's happened. The police are looking
Speaker 1: into what they're looking into. We're not going to make
Speaker 1: it a big thing and keep it over the family.
Speaker 1: It's something that's happened that we've got to get through it.
Speaker 1: Darren is the only one that really I think still
Speaker 1: it's been hard for him to let go of everything.
Speaker 1: A common complaint I heard from where the Ziwikis were
Speaker 1: concerned was how little the Illinois State Police seemed to
Speaker 1: be doing, or I should say how little they were
Speaker 1: telling the family what they were doing. In the I
Speaker 1: s p S defense, there's only so much you can
Speaker 1: tell the family of a victim during an active murder investigation.
Speaker 1: Early on, everyone is a suspect. That includes Tammy's brothers,
Speaker 1: her father, friends, and other family members. Still, the lack
Speaker 1: of communication with the Ziwiki family caused a great deal
Speaker 1: of frustration and anger, all of which I think could
Speaker 1: have been avoided. They were grieving and desperate to find
Speaker 1: out anything, but the state police were just not giving
Speaker 1: them any information. So did the Illinois State Police update
Speaker 1: you each day or well? I always made a point
Speaker 1: to try to be stay in touch with one person
Speaker 1: as far as them update me they were doing. They
Speaker 1: were just stuff. I'll tell you what what you need
Speaker 1: to know when you need to know it. It was
Speaker 1: not a very good relationship with the Illinois Date place,
Speaker 1: but I usually found someone that I could communicate with
Speaker 1: and get information, So I did stay up. One things,
Speaker 1: how does the investigation progress from here? As best that
Speaker 1: you could? I mean, it just was to look into
Speaker 1: everything and publicity. A lot of a lot of people
Speaker 1: were critical of the publicity that was put out. They said,
Speaker 1: why did you put, you know, publicity out? The picture
Speaker 1: appeared in some newspapers and things like that, and we said,
Speaker 1: because we wanted to try to get information. I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you get information? Well, doesn't it bother you? Yes,
Speaker 1: but I see her face, whether I see it on
Speaker 1: a picture or whether I don't. You know, it's in
Speaker 1: your mind. It's in your mind, it's there. Here's Tammy's
Speaker 1: eldest brother, Todd. Early on, we were getting pretty regular updates,
Speaker 1: and those kind of telled alf over time as people retired,
Speaker 1: as FBI agents changed over time, as when I state
Speaker 1: police people changed over time. In the beginning, did they
Speaker 1: mention anything about the type of DNA they had what
Speaker 1: they found forensics? Yeah, early on. The only thing they
Speaker 1: had for a long time that I was aware of,
Speaker 1: was they said they had found the beer can near her,
Speaker 1: and that the beer can had something on it. They
Speaker 1: had no idea whether the beer can was just there
Speaker 1: coincidentally or was somehow related, or whether the case would
Speaker 1: be you know, they kept all the physical of it end.
Speaker 1: But back then my understanding was that to the extent
Speaker 1: that there were any traces of d n A on
Speaker 1: anything like the blanket or clothes or anything like that,
Speaker 1: the technology was such that they just couldn't. It wasn't usable, right,
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough of it um And so my understanding
Speaker 1: had always been that they had this beer can and
Speaker 1: that maybe they could do something with d n A
Speaker 1: off of the beer can, but that that was all
Speaker 1: they had in terms of physical evidence to go on.
Speaker 1: After Tammy's body was found so far away alongside a
Speaker 1: popular trucking route in Missouri, the I s P and
Speaker 1: FBI's focus narrowed even more. A truck driver became their
Speaker 1: most likely suspect, and much of their investigative attention now
Speaker 1: shifted to reflect that. As former I s P investigator
Speaker 1: Marty McCarthy told me in the last episode, at one
Speaker 1: tip from a woman who saw a man with a
Speaker 1: blue or green pickup truck parked behind Tammy's car just
Speaker 1: didn't get the attention it deserved, but it could have. Now.
Speaker 1: Whoever assigned this to this agent, the supervisor recognizes from
Speaker 1: the get go hey, look at this, he says, look
Speaker 1: at it. When looking back at the I s P
Speaker 1: s tip sheet that I obtained. It's hard to miss
Speaker 1: a hand drawn star and the word possible written beside
Speaker 1: the tipster's name. This tells me that someone on the
Speaker 1: task force saw the value and following up. Marty's theory
Speaker 1: is that that never happened. So what happened was there
Speaker 1: was no follow up on this. He blows it off,
Speaker 1: and when they when we have a timeline to help
Speaker 1: the investigators, he doesn't even put it on there. What's
Speaker 1: even more significant about the eye witness who saw the
Speaker 1: man with the pickup truck is that she calls the
Speaker 1: I s P tip line a second time. Now. She
Speaker 1: says that she had just had an encounter her at
Speaker 1: her place of work with the same guy. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, the guy was not only in the area
Speaker 1: where Tammy disappeared in Illinois, but his family owned property
Speaker 1: in Missouri, only fourteen miles from where Tammy's body was found. So, um,
Speaker 1: we go back, We look him up two times, fell him.
Speaker 1: Here's a trucker. Violent felon got a green pickup trucks
Speaker 1: a few miles from the scene. It's like bingo on
Speaker 1: the next episode of Paper Ghosts. Obviously, over time, we've
Speaker 1: had some people who look like plausible suspects. I didn't
Speaker 1: know why there was so much focus put on that truck.
Speaker 1: There was also claims that there was a pickup truck.
Speaker 1: This always bugged me, but I'm no one certain terms
Speaker 1: to stay out of this occasion. To me, it was
Speaker 1: I don't want the game to the factor. I'll just
Speaker 1: see whether or not to sated my track or not.
Speaker 1: I'd wait till further down the road, whether or not
Speaker 1: I even wanted to do it in kilm or not.
Speaker 1: If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, please listen to my
Speaker 1: other podcast, Crossing the Line with em William Phelps, where
Speaker 1: I used the same storytelling elements you've heard in Paper
Speaker 1: Ghosts and cover missing person and murder cases. Paper Ghosts
Speaker 1: is written and executive produced by me and William Phelps
Speaker 1: and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by
Speaker 1: our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer is Darby Masters,
Speaker 1: Audio editing and mixing by Christian Bowman and Abou Zafar.
Speaker 1: Our series theme number four four two is written and
Speaker 1: performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for My Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.