Speaker 1: The destination is on your right. Hi, joy aunt. It's humid.
Speaker 1: It's very humid. Violence, suffering, and death are never more
Speaker 1: sobering than when juxtaposed with an exceptional human being, so
Speaker 1: much life left to live. Nice to me, Let me
Speaker 1: give you a hug. I'm a little that's okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1: As with many unsolved Thomas sides, there is a face
Speaker 1: attached to this case. It's one you're likely familiar with,
Speaker 1: the dispensable girl next door, smiling, laughing, making those around
Speaker 1: her feel loved, full of joy and light one day
Speaker 1: and the next nothing more than a mention on the
Speaker 1: nightly news or a faded memory, a piece of paper
Speaker 1: handed out to strangers and posted in grocery store windows.
Speaker 1: You need Yeah, I'm also the voice in on sold
Speaker 1: case as well. That is a different story. Victims can
Speaker 1: no longer speak for themselves, which leaves it up to
Speaker 1: others to speak for them. My name is m William Phelps.
Speaker 1: I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than forty
Speaker 1: true crime books. This is season three of Paper Ghosts
Speaker 1: in Plain Sight. Thank you. So you live on a
Speaker 1: golf course? Do you play golf? Joanne Ziwiki is an outspoken,
Speaker 1: kind hearted woman. Petite with white hair, she could be
Speaker 1: anyone's grandmother. Quite the conversationalist, Joanne never runs out of
Speaker 1: things to discuss, especially when it concerns her only daughter,
Speaker 1: Tammy Joe's Wicki, whose murder thirty years ago still remains unsolved.
Speaker 1: Let me just go get my case. It's the reason
Speaker 1: why I paid Joanna visit over the summer. Uh No,
Speaker 1: I think I got it. We spent countless hours talking
Speaker 1: on the phone. But this would be our first time
Speaker 1: meeting face to face, barely nine o'clock and it's not
Speaker 1: ninety degrees already nine. We now get this. This is unusual.
Speaker 1: Joanne has lived in a modest, single family home in
Speaker 1: central Florida for the better part of twenty three years,
Speaker 1: seven of which have been spent alone after her husband
Speaker 1: Hank passed away in two thousand fifteen. She keeps busy,
Speaker 1: often talking to neighbors, helping them with everyday chores, or
Speaker 1: watching the golfers play on the course outside her window.
Speaker 1: Inside family photos dot the walls, some of Joanne with
Speaker 1: her late husband, others of her many grandchildren, and a
Speaker 1: handful of her daughter Tammy. You see the pictures up there.
Speaker 1: I do. I do see the pictures that was at
Speaker 1: the beach, that was our that was all of us
Speaker 1: at the beach, And there's a picture with Tammy and me.
Speaker 1: Nearly every photo of Tammy's a wiki shows her smiling
Speaker 1: ear to ear, her golden blonde hair always with bangs,
Speaker 1: often fluctuated in length, her green eyes always protected by
Speaker 1: a pair of round, amber wire framed glasses. There's a sentimental,
Speaker 1: yet umbertone and Joanne's voice whenever she talks about Tammy.
Speaker 1: You can hear the pain is still very real and
Speaker 1: very much present. I had people saying to me, why
Speaker 1: do you keep her picture around? Why don't I keep
Speaker 1: the picture around? Yeah? Why wouldn't you want to not
Speaker 1: remember her? People or I don't know, they don't think
Speaker 1: in those terms. I try not to focus on things
Speaker 1: too too strongly. I try to just live through day
Speaker 1: to day, look for the good things in life, and
Speaker 1: forget about the other things. What got you interested in
Speaker 1: all this? Well, my brother's wife was murdered um and
Speaker 1: she was five months pregnant. She was strangled to death.
Speaker 1: It's an unsolved case that was would have to be terrible.
Speaker 1: What's driven me is helping families find answers and telling
Speaker 1: family stories. You know, with every murder there's a ripple effect,
Speaker 1: and that ripple effect still keeps going to this day.
Speaker 1: I can see it on your face. I I it's there.
Speaker 1: I was first introduced to Joanne by a man named
Speaker 1: Robert cut Leric. He's one of the administrators of the
Speaker 1: Who Killed Tammy's a Wicked Facebook group. In two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: a member of the group, familiar with my work on
Speaker 1: cold cases, reached out to ask if I would look
Speaker 1: into what happened to Tammy. In any given month, I
Speaker 1: received dozens of messages from people across the country looking
Speaker 1: for help and a loved one's missing or murder case.
Speaker 1: There's an endless number of reasons why certain cases appeal
Speaker 1: to different people. For me, it's the possibility of developing
Speaker 1: new information, the opportunity to help a family when no
Speaker 1: one else will. And even though it's been thirty years,
Speaker 1: Tammy's case seems solvable to me. I wouldn't even be
Speaker 1: here talking to you now though it wasn't for rong.
Speaker 1: Robert cut Laric has been helpful and as someone who
Speaker 1: has become a source of support for Joanne over the years.
Speaker 1: He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the case and actually
Speaker 1: grew up one town over from where the Ziwiki has
Speaker 1: lived in New Jersey, but says he didn't get interested
Speaker 1: until years later. It was just bored with what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and it popped into my head. So I
Speaker 1: went to this relatively new fangled thing called the Internet.
Speaker 1: The reason why I was looking it up was because
Speaker 1: I wanted to see if it had been solved, and
Speaker 1: it hadn't. He just called me and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he was interested in finding out more information. I mean,
Speaker 1: he didn't know Tammy. He was grutinized by the place
Speaker 1: and a lot of other people because he didn't know Tammy,
Speaker 1: and yet he got involved in it, you know, with
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Did you think it was weird at
Speaker 1: the beginning when he called, Yeah, I did. I mean
Speaker 1: I was very careful to begin with. What did you
Speaker 1: think of him when you met him? He was easy
Speaker 1: to talk to, and he knew a lot. He had
Speaker 1: been following the case, and I was careful, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. I was wondering, you know, you just you
Speaker 1: don't say, Okay, this guy is really somebody I want
Speaker 1: to really get involved with I was. I was cautious.
Speaker 1: What was his interest in the case, Just a young girl.
Speaker 1: Mates had seen the pictures of the paper and things
Speaker 1: like that, and he thought it was so terrible that
Speaker 1: it happened. And at first I don't know what he
Speaker 1: wanted to do. He was about the same age as
Speaker 1: she was, and it really just hit him part and
Speaker 1: he was just interested in the story. And then it
Speaker 1: just got to revolved from there. An archaeologist by trade,
Speaker 1: it's in Robert's nature to dig and patiently uncover information.
Speaker 1: I started collecting every scrap up newspaper article there wasn't
Speaker 1: the case and trying to get a picture of what happened.
Speaker 1: He's not alone. Thousands of people, including many who never
Speaker 1: met Tammy, have tried for years to understand what happened
Speaker 1: to her. As for me, my approaches to not follow
Speaker 1: that lead to truly serve an unsolved murder case in
Speaker 1: an investigative fashion, not to mention honor the victim respectfully.
Speaker 1: Within that process, I need to think beyond the box.
Speaker 1: What I mean is, if I were to go down
Speaker 1: the same rabbit holes everyone else has explored for the
Speaker 1: past thirty years, I would be doing nothing more than
Speaker 1: spending my wheels rehashing old information. What I need to
Speaker 1: consider is within all that law enforcement has done, and
Speaker 1: within all the theories presented, there is undoubtedly a different
Speaker 1: direction to explore in finding the answer to this mystery.
Speaker 1: In my experience talking to detectives from around the country,
Speaker 1: murder is not that complicated a riddle to solve. The
Speaker 1: simplest answer often is the answer her. The key is
Speaker 1: knowing where to look for it. It was nearing the
Speaker 1: end of summer and twenty one year old Tammy Joe
Speaker 1: Zwicki was getting ready to start her final year at
Speaker 1: Grinnell College, a private liberal arts school in Iowa. She
Speaker 1: was double majoring in art history in Spanish and spent
Speaker 1: most of her free time doing the things she loved most,
Speaker 1: taking pictures. Tammy spent the summer at her family's house
Speaker 1: in Marlton, New Jersey, a relatively quiet suburb just half
Speaker 1: an hour east of Philly. Her oldest brother, Todd, was
Speaker 1: working at a law from in Atlanta, but her two
Speaker 1: other brothers, Darren and Dean, were back home with her.
Speaker 1: She was fresh off as semester abroad in Spain and
Speaker 1: spent those few months back in the States, working part
Speaker 1: time at local stores, taking photos and hanging out with friends. Well,
Speaker 1: it was just a busy time, Tammy. She was at
Speaker 1: home and she was an organizer and says she organized everything,
Speaker 1: and she fixed her room the way she wanted to be.
Speaker 1: When she came back, come again, don't anybody change it around.
Speaker 1: That's my room, stay out. It was what she told
Speaker 1: a boys. And she had visited a lot of her
Speaker 1: friends and just really enjoyed her time there. She had
Speaker 1: one more year left that she was heading right into
Speaker 1: her senior year. Jen Nelson was Tammy's closest friend. They
Speaker 1: first met at Grinnell College three years earlier, when Jen
Speaker 1: was a student adviser assigned to help Tammy on her
Speaker 1: first day of school. We had talked about the possibility
Speaker 1: of finding a place to find jobs and be roommates together.
Speaker 1: Jen says they've made plans to see each other as
Speaker 1: much as possible. At the time, she was living in Chicago,
Speaker 1: where Tammy would spend the false am stir studying photography
Speaker 1: at the Art Institute. We were excited about her semester
Speaker 1: in Chicago since I had already graduated and was back
Speaker 1: in Chicago. I was looking forward to getting to spend
Speaker 1: time with her while she was here for the semester.
Speaker 1: On the morning of August one, Tammy and her brother
Speaker 1: Darren packed up Tammy's white Pontiac He one thousand hatchback.
Speaker 1: The plan was for Tammy to drive Darren back to
Speaker 1: his college campus in Illinois, then to drive to her
Speaker 1: own school in Iowa, where she'd visit with friends and
Speaker 1: take photos for the yearbook before heading back to Chicago
Speaker 1: to start a semester. They were excited about getting back
Speaker 1: to school and getting back in with their friends and everything,
Speaker 1: because you know their friends want her in college. Your
Speaker 1: friends are all over the country. Tammy and Darren left
Speaker 1: New Jersey and headed west to Pittsburgh, where they spent
Speaker 1: the night with relatives. From there, the two drove roughly
Speaker 1: five miles about eight hours to Evanston, Illinois, where Darren
Speaker 1: would be dropped off to start his sophomore year at
Speaker 1: Northwestern University. It was a route Tammy was familiar with,
Speaker 1: having driven it with her dad once before, except this
Speaker 1: time there were issues with the car. Her brother, Darren
Speaker 1: would later say in an interview that they experienced engine
Speaker 1: problems since leaving New Jersey, The engine would decelerate, the
Speaker 1: oil light flicker, and when they pull over the engine
Speaker 1: would shut up. The car stalled a few times during
Speaker 1: the trip, but Darren said it was running fine once
Speaker 1: he topped off the oil and water. Were they calling
Speaker 1: along the road, Darren and Tammy? Were they checking in
Speaker 1: with you? Not? Not a whole lot, but they checked
Speaker 1: in from time to time. Do you remember anything? She said,
Speaker 1: just that they were on the road and didn't They
Speaker 1: didn't have much traffic and everything seemed to be going okay.
Speaker 1: Tammy also spent that night in Evanston at the home
Speaker 1: of a friend she had met in Spain the previous semester,
Speaker 1: and next morning she went over to see Darren one
Speaker 1: last time before heading out to Grinnell. Darren said he
Speaker 1: checked the car and told Tammy that if it started
Speaker 1: acting up again she should pull over and wait until
Speaker 1: evening to let the engine cool down. There was no
Speaker 1: reason for Darren to worry about his older sister. Tammy
Speaker 1: was tough, she was savvy. She had this I can
Speaker 1: take care of myself attitude he learned to find for
Speaker 1: herself because her brother's they didn't give her much room.
Speaker 1: Three brothers, three brothers. Yes, she was tough. They made
Speaker 1: her tough. She wasn't afraid of anybody or anything. She
Speaker 1: lived pretty well the way she wanted to. At around
Speaker 1: one in the afternoon on Sunday, Tammy said her goodbyes
Speaker 1: to her brother on Northwestern's campus. The drive to her
Speaker 1: own school would take no more than five hours. When
Speaker 1: do you begin to worry when I wasn't getting hold
Speaker 1: of her Because she was pretty dependable. Her calling us
Speaker 1: was unusual that she didn't go. She would check in,
Speaker 1: what's the plan is she supposed to call you when
Speaker 1: she gets there? Yeah, And she didn't call, So then
Speaker 1: I started calling around campus because she should have been
Speaker 1: there by then. It's hard for anyone to say what
Speaker 1: exactly happened after Tammy's a wiki left her brother's school,
Speaker 1: but here's what's been pieced together in the years that followed.
Speaker 1: Tammy was about two hours into the drive when her
Speaker 1: car broke down along I eighty in Lasau County, Illinois.
Speaker 1: She was stranded near mile marker three on the westbound
Speaker 1: side of the highway. Witnesses reported seeing a young woman
Speaker 1: matching Tammy's description looking under the hood of her car.
Speaker 1: A little after three pm. You're standing on the sideline
Speaker 1: off the side. It's amazing how fastest cars are going
Speaker 1: standing there. Marty McCarthy is a former Illinois State Police
Speaker 1: investigator who spent years looking into the Tammy's a Wiki case.
Speaker 1: Have you been on eighty Cars are just zooming down.
Speaker 1: There is nothing there but cornfields for miles and miles
Speaker 1: and trucks, trucks all over. It's a main artery. And uh,
Speaker 1: they are less capable of stopping obviously in cars, and
Speaker 1: so people may have noticed this really blonde girl, young
Speaker 1: girl next to her car and maybe wanted to stop
Speaker 1: and help her, but it would have been by time
Speaker 1: making that recognition and stopping and pulling off. You know,
Speaker 1: it just didn't happen. Many people did notice Tammy on
Speaker 1: the side of the road that day. While I was
Speaker 1: looking into her case, a source provided me with the
Speaker 1: official tip sheet from the earliest part of the Illinois
Speaker 1: State Police's investigation. On Sunday, August, dozens of people claimed
Speaker 1: to have seen Tammy standing near her car for close
Speaker 1: to an hour after three pm. By four pm, several
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses accounts reported seeing just the car on the side
Speaker 1: of the road, no signs of Tammy. Then at five
Speaker 1: oh five PM, a state trooper found the hatchback. It
Speaker 1: was locked, so he tagged it and marked it as
Speaker 1: an abandoned vehicle. By Monday afternoon, it had been towed.
Speaker 1: As far as the police were concerned, Tammy was an
Speaker 1: adult who likely took off on her own. It's just
Speaker 1: a ben car. It's not adult college girl. I think
Speaker 1: like that, that's just not going to get on their radar,
Speaker 1: and rightly so. And I mean, it's just At the
Speaker 1: beginning of the summer, I took a trip out to
Speaker 1: LaSalle County in Illinois to see the site myself. I
Speaker 1: parked by mile mark eighty three around the same time
Speaker 1: of day as Tammy had and recorded what I heard
Speaker 1: out of every ten vehicles that passed by, at least
Speaker 1: six or eighteen wheel tractor trailer type trucks. The shoulder
Speaker 1: of the road where Tammy pulled over is so narrow
Speaker 1: that if you stretch your arm up you can nearly
Speaker 1: touch the cars as they whiz by. If you remove
Speaker 1: the cars, there's not much else, just thousands of acres
Speaker 1: of farmland. The closest Sexit ramp with a gas station
Speaker 1: at pay phone was two miles away plus the Midwest
Speaker 1: in the summer, in the middle of the day, it's hot.
Speaker 1: On the day Tammy's car broke down, the temperature was
Speaker 1: in the eighties at best. Passing Tammy on the side
Speaker 1: of the road at seventy eight miles per hour, you
Speaker 1: had seconds to assess the situation. Standing there in the
Speaker 1: same spot as Tammy did thirty years earlier made it
Speaker 1: easy for me to understand why the sight of even
Speaker 1: one vehicle stopping to help might be a godsend. But still,
Speaker 1: would she have just taken anyone's offer her help? Was
Speaker 1: Tammy the type of person who would trust somebody to
Speaker 1: help her? Or would she be standishous, very cautious, very cautious,
Speaker 1: very cautious? So she wasn't naive in anyway. No, Dammy
Speaker 1: was by no, meaning that I and she had the
Speaker 1: three brothers. They didn't give her much more in an
Speaker 1: inch of anything, and we moved and she had to
Speaker 1: get to know new people all the time. She was
Speaker 1: very cautious with people. Police frequently categorized these types of
Speaker 1: situations as runaway cases, and to their credit, that often
Speaker 1: ends up being the scenario. But Tammy's friends and family
Speaker 1: refused to believe that she had just taken off. It
Speaker 1: would have been out of character. What's the first indication
Speaker 1: that you heard of that something might have been wrong.
Speaker 1: I was back then in Charlottesville to get ready to
Speaker 1: start my final year of law school, and I got
Speaker 1: a call from either my mom or dad at the time.
Speaker 1: That's Todd Zwicki, Tammy's eldest brother, and they said, have
Speaker 1: you heard from Tammy. We can't find Tammy. People just
Speaker 1: thought they just didn't know where she was, what it
Speaker 1: might be going on. The police were not alarmed, and
Speaker 1: so at that point I thought, oh, that's weird, and
Speaker 1: they basically said, well, if you hear from her, let
Speaker 1: us know. Not a big alarm at that point, and
Speaker 1: then um, it was within a day or two later,
Speaker 1: when she hadn't turned up, that things got more urgent.
Speaker 1: A little over twenty four hours had passed before Tammy
Speaker 1: Ziwiki was identified as the owner of the Toad Pontiac.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the car's registration was entered into a
Speaker 1: database that word finally got back to Hank and Joanne
Speaker 1: Ziwiki that their daughter may have been last seen in
Speaker 1: LaSalle County, Illinois. A missing person's report was immediately filed
Speaker 1: with the Illinois State Police, and both Hank and Joanne
Speaker 1: packed their bags and headed in that direction. That's when
Speaker 1: I hopped on a plane and flew out there. Hearing
Speaker 1: that the Zowikis dropped everything and immediately went to Illinois
Speaker 1: gave me a better understanding of how close knit the
Speaker 1: family was. They were not just another family in denial
Speaker 1: of a troubled daughter. If the Ziwikis were uprooting their
Speaker 1: entire lives and high tailing it out to the Midwest,
Speaker 1: they knew something wasn't right. We all met in Chicago.
Speaker 1: We were staying with our friend's parents, and I joined
Speaker 1: them pretty soon after that to try to help and
Speaker 1: try to figure out what was going on and just
Speaker 1: help anyway I could. We had central control in my
Speaker 1: dining room. That's Jen Nelson, Tammy's closest friend, who you
Speaker 1: heard earlier. The dining room table had maps out of
Speaker 1: Illinois and Iowa, and we were coordinating groups that were
Speaker 1: searching different areas and getting reports back in when people
Speaker 1: would return from searching. For the next week, the Ziwiki's
Speaker 1: new home base was with Jen Nelson's family in Chicago.
Speaker 1: They'd make the ninety minute drive back and forth Lassau
Speaker 1: County every day to meet with local law enforcement. The
Speaker 1: Zawikis were not doing well, None of us were. Who
Speaker 1: was getting worse and worse to think about what could
Speaker 1: what could be happening to her and why we hadn't
Speaker 1: been able to find her. And I think the longer
Speaker 1: it goes on, the more likely you are to get
Speaker 1: bad news. And you know that, and it weighs you down.
Speaker 1: So what do you guys do next? What are you feeling?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Well, you just you don't feel anything.
Speaker 1: You just kind of do and hope that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You hope that maybe she's just stopped someplace and just
Speaker 1: forgot to call. I had car trouble something like that.
Speaker 1: But then as each day went by, and you know,
Speaker 1: you you lost hope. And what did you think then?
Speaker 1: I didn't think. I didn't know what to think. I
Speaker 1: was just blank. No. No, that feeling when you know
Speaker 1: that her car had been abandoned on the road and
Speaker 1: towed away, was what let go of any little hope
Speaker 1: that she had walked off for help and found help,
Speaker 1: you know, or that you know, we knew at that
Speaker 1: point that something really bad had happened, and our hope
Speaker 1: was that she was alive and we could find her,
Speaker 1: but we knew that whatever situation she was in was
Speaker 1: in a really dangerous one. By August, two days after
Speaker 1: Tammy disappeared, a massive search effort was underway. The Illinois
Speaker 1: National Guard had helicopters flying over the area where Tammy
Speaker 1: was last seen on the side of Interstate eight. State
Speaker 1: police canine units search acres upon acres of ground. Roadblocks
Speaker 1: were set up on interstates. We opened the investigation because
Speaker 1: the car was recovered and she was nowhere to be faring.
Speaker 1: Tim really is a former FBI agent. It was nearly
Speaker 1: a decade into his twenty three year career with the
Speaker 1: Bureau when he was assigned to work the Tammy's a
Speaker 1: wikie case. We opened a kidnapping case and not knowing
Speaker 1: where you are what happened to her, and so we
Speaker 1: worked the case as much as we could, so we
Speaker 1: had no clue where she was, didn't know where you
Speaker 1: begin to look at the I s P. Now they
Speaker 1: have a special investigative Unit who are also looking into this,
Speaker 1: and are you guys working together. What we had was
Speaker 1: we had kind of a gentleman's agreement. They would cover
Speaker 1: all leads in a state of Illinois, we would cover
Speaker 1: the our stately. So the two meshed and that was
Speaker 1: the general agreement we had with the state police. And
Speaker 1: were they good about it. Very much. So they put
Speaker 1: the cover season investigated on a case and they did
Speaker 1: a good job in current leads, a good task force.
Speaker 1: One of those investigators was Marty McCarthy, who became part
Speaker 1: of that new task force created by the Illinois State Police.
Speaker 1: After getting his start with the local police department, he
Speaker 1: worked for the Illinois Bureau of Investigation, which he describes
Speaker 1: as the state's version of the FBI. He left that
Speaker 1: to join the FBI, but returned to the I s
Speaker 1: p S Investigated Division because he wanted to work on
Speaker 1: Tammy's case. Asked to come back to work this case,
Speaker 1: and it was really kind of shocked to see what
Speaker 1: the state of investigation was. This is my personal opinion,
Speaker 1: of course, the state of investigation was at that time.
Speaker 1: The people I've spoken to are generally split in their
Speaker 1: views of how law enforcement handled this case. FBI agent
Speaker 1: timilely gave the task force top marks. Marty's opinion is different.
Speaker 1: It makes him a polarizing figure in the community. But
Speaker 1: if you know nothing else about Marty, know this. He
Speaker 1: is unafraid to speak his truth. And in his opinion,
Speaker 1: the investigation was a mess from day one. They merged
Speaker 1: under his umbrella, separate division, but the state police bureaucracy
Speaker 1: was in charge of us as they had not been before.
Speaker 1: They are, in my view, basically highway patrol, and they
Speaker 1: do that and that's their emphasis. And they told me
Speaker 1: a number of times that they just don't see investigation
Speaker 1: as especially they'll tell you that they see, well, the
Speaker 1: troopers investigate traffic accidents. It's not the same thing. They
Speaker 1: didn't believe that, and in fact, would put guys at
Speaker 1: lieutenant captain level in charge of investigatives who had never
Speaker 1: worked the case in their life. Marty's assessment of how
Speaker 1: the Illinois State Police operated at the time echoes what
Speaker 1: I've heard from Tammy's own family. As her brother Todd
Speaker 1: explained to me, the Ziwikis had to fight to convince
Speaker 1: law enforcement that Tammy wasn't a runaway. My parents spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking to the press but also
Speaker 1: talking to the police to kind of keep the pressure
Speaker 1: on them not to give up right, number one, but
Speaker 1: number two also frankly, to be a little more aggressive
Speaker 1: about what they were doing. For quite some time, they
Speaker 1: defaulted to the proposition that this wasn't missing person's type thing, right,
Speaker 1: or that maybe she had runoff with a boy or
Speaker 1: something like that, and so there was less of a
Speaker 1: degree of urgency, and my parents kept kind of saying, look,
Speaker 1: that's not who she is, we know her, she didn't
Speaker 1: do that. She's missing. They had a lot of those
Speaker 1: interactions with the police, but I think that was something
Speaker 1: that added to their anxiety and frustration as well. They
Speaker 1: just kept telling us from the beginning, shella, she'll be back,
Speaker 1: she'll be back. What are the police telling you about
Speaker 1: what happened at this point? Early on? They don't know,
Speaker 1: they don't know, They have no clue. They give you
Speaker 1: no information. I had a lot of problems with the
Speaker 1: Illinois tape place, what kind of problems, communication problems. They
Speaker 1: just didn't want to talk to you. We'll tell you
Speaker 1: what you need to know when you need to know it.
Speaker 1: It took over a week before the Ziwikis were told
Speaker 1: anything of substance. A lead from one of the eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: that finally pushed the investigation forward. I one of the
Speaker 1: witnesses say a tractor trailer with an orange stripe, and
Speaker 1: so we had a poster drawn up and the share
Speaker 1: that trying to find the truck. On day eight, investigators
Speaker 1: announced they were looking for a white five axel semi
Speaker 1: tractor trailer with two brownish orange rust colored diagonal stripes
Speaker 1: on both the truck and trailer. We felt we at
Speaker 1: least had something to work with in terms of a truck,
Speaker 1: and because if you've been on the Interstate eight you
Speaker 1: they're just a man trucks for different different logos and
Speaker 1: names and attractive trailers whatnot. A drawing of the truck
Speaker 1: in question was released to the public within our students
Speaker 1: at Grinnell and Tammy's friends from around the country rushed
Speaker 1: to get new flyers with the image printed and distributed
Speaker 1: to the public. Were connected about a few miles down
Speaker 1: the road, there's a gas station and service thing. We
Speaker 1: interviewed people there, We interviewed there's a town of pru Illinois.
Speaker 1: There's a truck stop for the restaurant. We interviewed truck
Speaker 1: drivers at the truck stop, and we did the best
Speaker 1: we could of what we had where, but we didn't
Speaker 1: have much to work with and stating all I believe
Speaker 1: I'm correct us. The scales are closed on Sundays, so
Speaker 1: we had no record trucks being on the Interstate authorities
Speaker 1: also announced that they had a person of interest based
Speaker 1: on tips from eyewitnesses. They were looking for a white
Speaker 1: male about six ft tall with dark, bushy hair who
Speaker 1: appeared to be talking to a young, blond woman resembling
Speaker 1: Tammy on the side of I e ight on the
Speaker 1: date and time in question. Local police said the man
Speaker 1: may have been the last person to talk to Tammy,
Speaker 1: but we're adamant he wasn't a suspect, just someone they
Speaker 1: wanted to speak with. It was the biggest lead today,
Speaker 1: a solid description of both the vehicle and a person
Speaker 1: of interest. It gave Tammy's friends and family a much
Speaker 1: needed boost of hope and gave law enforcement a flood
Speaker 1: of new tips. Everybody's looking at the semi truck with
Speaker 1: his unusual pattern. Now the phones are ringing off the hook.
Speaker 1: They can't even get out of the office. I'm following
Speaker 1: the truck right now. I'm in North Carolina, dead, I
Speaker 1: got I know where it is. I know, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the emphasis came on semi trucks, on my trucks,
Speaker 1: on my trucks, on my truck. From that point forward,
Speaker 1: the investigation developed blinders, blinders that obstructed any law enforcements
Speaker 1: for you beyond chasing this truck tip, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: any possibility that maybe, just maybe there was more than
Speaker 1: one solid lead to chase the major lead, the only
Speaker 1: human being ever seen with her by the best witness
Speaker 1: who slows down and is positive that that's is WICKI
Speaker 1: on the side of the road, recognizes the car. The
Speaker 1: best was blown off. From day one. That tip, which
Speaker 1: today lives just on an old, crumbled piece of paper,
Speaker 1: completely changed how I approached this investigation, which made me
Speaker 1: a firm believer that the answer to Tammy's murder has
Speaker 1: been staring at law enforcement all along. The lead is
Speaker 1: blown right there. This is my view. This is the kilt.
Speaker 1: This season on Paper Ghosts, it felt like if anybody
Speaker 1: had a chance of surviving, that it would have been
Speaker 1: Tammy and she didn't. It all always got me that
Speaker 1: that they never did call me or anything you know,
Speaker 1: ever had founder. It was never clear at the time
Speaker 1: why they completely ruled him out as a suspect. It's
Speaker 1: disturbing to me that the police we're not able to
Speaker 1: get more information early on. I don't think at this
Speaker 1: point in time, for as long as this has been
Speaker 1: an unsolved case, that anything can be discounted or should
Speaker 1: be discounted. It's a needle in a haste. It's a
Speaker 1: who done it? You know that that's what we got here,
Speaker 1: So who done it? If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts,
Speaker 1: please listen to my other podcast, Crossing the Line with
Speaker 1: em William Phelps, where I use the same storytelling elements
Speaker 1: you've heard in Paper Ghosts and cover missing person and
Speaker 1: murder cases. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by
Speaker 1: me and William Phelps and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett.
Speaker 1: Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Darby Masters, Audio editing and mixing by Christian
Speaker 1: Bowman and Abu Zafar. Our series theme number four four
Speaker 1: two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.