Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts is a production of iHeartRadio. Previously on Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 1: Going down the highway between here and the next exit.
Speaker 1: I talked myself in and out of calling the police
Speaker 1: about a hundred times, and the last thought I had was,
Speaker 1: if it was my daughter, I'd want to know. Back then,
Speaker 1: my understanding was that to the extent that there were
Speaker 1: any traces of DNA on anything like the blanket or
Speaker 1: clothes or anything like that, the technology was such that
Speaker 1: they just couldn't. It wasn't usable, right, There wasn't enough
Speaker 1: of it. A lot of people were critical of the
Speaker 1: publicity that was put out the States, and well, doesn't
Speaker 1: it bother you? Yes, but I see her face, whether
Speaker 1: I see it on a picture or whether I don't.
Speaker 1: My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: and author more than forty true crime books. This is
Speaker 1: season three Paper Ghosts in Plain Sight. Over the past
Speaker 1: thirty years, a number of suspects have stood out in
Speaker 1: Tammy Ziwiki's murder case. When I began my own investigation,
Speaker 1: it was apparent that the semitruck driving serial killer types
Speaker 1: who preyed upon young females in the late eighties and
Speaker 1: early nineties were at the top of the list. There
Speaker 1: was also Lonnie Dumott, the guy who found and helped
Speaker 1: move Tammy's body from the roadside in Lawrence County, Missouri.
Speaker 1: And then there was a lead that came in five
Speaker 1: days after Tammy was reported missing in August of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two. That tip from an eyewitness who said she
Speaker 1: was driving eastbound on Interstate eighty when she saw a
Speaker 1: man in a blue or green pickup truck parked behind
Speaker 1: Tammy's car along the westbound side of the highway. It
Speaker 1: was a lead that former ISP investigator and Marty McCarthy
Speaker 1: believes was largely ignored. So what do we know about
Speaker 1: this man? All slender, unshaven, just kind of disheveled, I
Speaker 1: would say, And you've got to have ballpark hat, kind
Speaker 1: of a typical denizen in a home, I mean, nondescriptive
Speaker 1: in that sense. White guy. Marty believes to this day
Speaker 1: that the guy driving that pickup truck is the best
Speaker 1: suspect in Tammy's disappearance and murder. If you look at
Speaker 1: all the details on paper, it's understandable why he appeared suspicious.
Speaker 1: All the pieces seemed to fit when you break this
Speaker 1: lead down, any investigator worth their weight would be drawn
Speaker 1: to the guy. Still based on the sheer number of
Speaker 1: tips about a white on my truck seen park near
Speaker 1: Tammy's car, the esp was solely focused on finding an
Speaker 1: eighteen wheeler, specifically one with rust colored stripes, essentially a
Speaker 1: needle in a haystack. As the year came to an end,
Speaker 1: Tammy's case had started to run cold. Then in early January,
Speaker 1: a new call came into the tip line. Call comes
Speaker 1: to the office from this woman who I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody recognized her or not, saying, hey, these people
Speaker 1: they came to my office. It turned out the person
Speaker 1: on the other end of the line was the same
Speaker 1: woman who just four months earlier had called in the
Speaker 1: tip about the blue or green pickup truck. She calls
Speaker 1: back in, you know, and I gonna go out and
Speaker 1: see her, and no one talked to her an intermediate
Speaker 1: period of time. During this second call, the eyewitness claimed
Speaker 1: that the man she had seen on the side of
Speaker 1: the road with Tammy had actually shown up to her
Speaker 1: place of work along with his wife. She has an
Speaker 1: airy feeling about him from the get go. She told me,
Speaker 1: this guy whoa I had my hair kind of went up. Guy,
Speaker 1: it looks like the guy out of the road. Looks
Speaker 1: like the guy she told me that, And I don't
Speaker 1: think he obviously wouldn't have recognized her, but she was
Speaker 1: somewhat free by that. He just kind of sits there,
Speaker 1: Marty says. The person the eyewitness identified was a thirty
Speaker 1: one year old man named Lonnie beer Brought, not to
Speaker 1: be confused with Lonnie Dumott, the repairman who found Tammy's body. Rather,
Speaker 1: this Lonnie Lonnie beer Brought was a former semitruck driver
Speaker 1: and a convicted felon who had been ordered to serve
Speaker 1: three concurrent twenty year sentences for armed robbery. He ended
Speaker 1: up getting paroled in July nineteen ninety. Is a trucker
Speaker 1: violent felon got a green pickup truck a few miles
Speaker 1: from the scene. Lived in Sharkozi, sal Peru. According to
Speaker 1: the esp the beer Brought family owned property about ten
Speaker 1: miles from the stretch of highway in Sarcoxi, Missouri, where
Speaker 1: Tammy's body was found. Sarcoxi wasn't a heavily traffic city
Speaker 1: at the time, still isn't today. There are only about
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred residents, and back in nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 1: only logical route off the highway to get to the
Speaker 1: beer brought residents was Exit thirty three, the same exit
Speaker 1: where Tammy's body was found. More importantly, Lonnie beer Brott
Speaker 1: also had family five hundred miles away in Peru, Illinois,
Speaker 1: the neighboring town from where Tammy went missing. He was
Speaker 1: from that area as well, and the ISP confirmed that
Speaker 1: on the day Tammy vanished August twenty third, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: beer Brott was just minutes from the spot on I
Speaker 1: eighty where she was last seen. I've done this long time,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, whoa bingle. I can't say everybody
Speaker 1: else did, but how many coincidences can there be? Here?
Speaker 1: So they decided to go down the whole task force
Speaker 1: to Missouri, and for whatever reason, I didn't get a
Speaker 1: signed to go down there. I don't know why. I'll
Speaker 1: take who knows. I didn't care. I had some stuff
Speaker 1: to do here, and they took as I recall, they
Speaker 1: took a lot of physical evidence out of there. Did
Speaker 1: they bring him in for questioning? They come back and
Speaker 1: they bring him in, interview him, take his blood, take
Speaker 1: all the samples, DNA all this kind of ship. At
Speaker 1: the time, Marty was actually out in the field assigned
Speaker 1: to handle other parts of the Ziwiki investigation, so the
Speaker 1: responsibility of documenting and chasing leads fell on other members
Speaker 1: of the task force, including one of Marty's colleagues, who
Speaker 1: questioned Lonnie beer Brott at the station. So he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I interviewed him. He's just spacing as hell. He's just like,
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything, and it was just kind of a
Speaker 1: space cadet type of thing which happened. Meantime, while he
Speaker 1: is there at the State Police, incomes his brother and
Speaker 1: makes a big scene saying, hey, where's you got my brother?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? What are you making a big
Speaker 1: scene in the State Police about where he's supposed to be,
Speaker 1: which always interesting. Newspapers reported that beer Brott's wife and
Speaker 1: d laws were interviewed. Investigators searched through the beer Brott's
Speaker 1: trash and reviewed their phone records. But before anyone on
Speaker 1: the task force could further pursue their strongest lead yet,
Speaker 1: Marty and his colleague were hit with a surprising development
Speaker 1: all of a sudden in February, they walk in were
Speaker 1: dissolving the task force fifteen sixteen. Guy. They had been
Speaker 1: taken from other districts. There's other cases building up. Commanders
Speaker 1: are saying blah blah, blah blah. I can understand that,
Speaker 1: and we've been there for a number of months. But here,
Speaker 1: in my view, we get the best lead we've ever had.
Speaker 1: By early nineteen ninety three, the fourteen member task force
Speaker 1: investigating Tammy's murder had completely disbanded, citing a lack of
Speaker 1: progress as the main reason. Investigators vowed to follow any
Speaker 1: additional leads as they came in, but the number of
Speaker 1: law enforcement working the case was significantly cut. To me,
Speaker 1: it's a clear example of the department's mismanagement early in
Speaker 1: this investigation. Why take a team of seasoned investigators chasing
Speaker 1: a lead their supervisor deemed one of the most relevant
Speaker 1: off the case. This always bugged me, but I'm told
Speaker 1: no one in certain terms to stay out of this case,
Speaker 1: and I do because I know what those will do.
Speaker 1: By May of nineteen ninety three, eight months after Tammy
Speaker 1: Ziwiki's murder, police said they had followed up on more
Speaker 1: than six hundred and fifty leads and twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: truck sightings to no avail. A police spokesperson at the
Speaker 1: time said they just ran out of leads. Because of this,
Speaker 1: the Illinois State Police did something it hadn't yet done.
Speaker 1: Investigators publicly released a list of items belonging to Tammy
Speaker 1: that were missing from her car and person when her
Speaker 1: body was found. Among them Tammy's pair of round, wire
Speaker 1: framed eyeglasses, a woman's watch that played rain drops keep
Speaker 1: falling on My head, a pair of gray A six
Speaker 1: running shoes, a large brown faux alligator skin purse, Tammy's
Speaker 1: driver's license, and her cannon EOS thirty five millimeter camera
Speaker 1: and lens. The spokesperson noted that the ISP had been
Speaker 1: aware of the missing items all long, but quote, we
Speaker 1: have no new suspects and no new leads, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter anymore. Quote their hope that someone had purchased
Speaker 1: one of the items at a pawn shop or would
Speaker 1: see one of them and call in. After Marty McCarthy
Speaker 1: was removed from the task force in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: he eventually became the commander of the ISP's the vision
Speaker 1: of internal investigations for all state employees in the Chicago area.
Speaker 1: All along he never stopped thinking about what happened the
Speaker 1: Tammy's at wiki. When he retired in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: he amped up his involvement in the case and became
Speaker 1: determined to find out more about the man in the
Speaker 1: pickup truck. He believes that Lonnie beer Brott was that
Speaker 1: man and had something to do with Tammy's murder. Marty
Speaker 1: eventually connected with Tammy's mom to share his theory and
Speaker 1: discuss the investigation. For him, it was about getting this
Speaker 1: Ziwicki family the answers they deserved and following evidence he
Speaker 1: believed had been overlooked. I'm up in Michigan on vacation.
Speaker 1: I'm playing tennis with my wife and I stopped. I said, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, I just can't live with this. So what
Speaker 1: are you doing? We're playing tennis? I cannot live with
Speaker 1: this bad. I gotta do something. I gotta call missus Wickie,
Speaker 1: just driving me crazy. I go call her and I said, Hello,
Speaker 1: it was Morney McCarthy. Blah blah blah. I said, I said,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Lonnie beer brod No, although
Speaker 1: she wasn't happy with the investigation at that time, I said, well,
Speaker 1: Lonnie beer rot was a suspect in this case, a
Speaker 1: very strong suspect in this case. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: know if you knew, and if you didn't know, I
Speaker 1: wonder why. And I personally believe he should be pursued.
Speaker 1: And she said, I agree with you. I'm on your side.
Speaker 1: And we took off for like twenty years together. And
Speaker 1: as talking to people as part of his own investigation,
Speaker 1: Marty made a point of reaching out to the eyewitness
Speaker 1: who led investigators to beer Brought in the first place.
Speaker 1: He trusted her account and deemed her to be extremely
Speaker 1: credible because her husband was a prominent member of the
Speaker 1: law enforcement community. It was during one of their meetings
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands that Marty claims the eyewitness
Speaker 1: revealed new details to him about her encounter with the
Speaker 1: beer Brought family a decade earlier, details which shifted his
Speaker 1: investigation into high gear. As he explains it, the eyewitness
Speaker 1: said she found herself engaged in conversation with Lonnie beer
Speaker 1: Brott's wife on the day they came into her workplay
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three. Missus bear Rock is talking. Lonnie's
Speaker 1: sitting there morrows and the wife is rattling on and
Speaker 1: she starts talking about Lonnie gave me this watch. It
Speaker 1: plays a musical tune, and she kind of showed it
Speaker 1: to me, and and you were seeing it, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't see it on it like that. She didn't play
Speaker 1: a tune for me, so I go, holy shit, Holy shit.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that the eyewitness did not mention
Speaker 1: a watch in her statement to the police. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until nearly a decade later, during her meeting with Marty,
Speaker 1: and long after it was publicized that Tammy's watch was missing,
Speaker 1: that she told the story of Lonnie's wife wearing one.
Speaker 1: How many fucking watches play a tune. I want to
Speaker 1: know what that tune is. Let's find out. If that
Speaker 1: is rain drops, that's the killer to me. Just that's it.
Speaker 1: And all we gotta do is find that out. Here's
Speaker 1: Tammy's mom, Joanne. Do you remember the type of watch
Speaker 1: she was wearing. Did the watch play that song rain
Speaker 1: gain drops keep falling on my head? She was wearing
Speaker 1: that watch for sure? Yeah. And did it have a
Speaker 1: green watch band? Do you remember? I don't remember for sure.
Speaker 1: Grein was her favorite color, so I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: a green watch band. It was just a simple watch.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything fancy. If I remember her saying she
Speaker 1: needed a watch to keep todd because she had to
Speaker 1: move from one place to another set but you recall
Speaker 1: it playing rain drops keep falling on your head. During
Speaker 1: the latter part of twenty twenty one and throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, I made repeated attempts to reach out to
Speaker 1: the eyewitness to verify Marty's story about the watch. She
Speaker 1: never re bonded. What worries me about her information is
Speaker 1: that I'm hearing its secondhand and have no convincing way
Speaker 1: to corroborate it. She seems credible, but it's important to
Speaker 1: note that the beer brought identification, the watch story, and
Speaker 1: the sighting of the pickup truck all come from her
Speaker 1: and her alone. What I have been able to verify
Speaker 1: through police documents is that the eyewitness did call the
Speaker 1: IP Task Force in January nineteen ninety three. She said
Speaker 1: the Beer Brought's visit to her workplace occurred the previous
Speaker 1: month in December, and that Lonnie's wife did most of
Speaker 1: the talking for him. That the couple was originally from
Speaker 1: the LaSalle County area of Illinois, but as of December
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, had still maintained property in Lawrence County, Missouri.
Speaker 1: Here's Tammy's brother, Todd Zuwiki. Obviously, over time, we've had
Speaker 1: some people who look like plausible suspects. You know, there
Speaker 1: was the whole story with Lonnie beer Brought and the
Speaker 1: watch in the life. You know, kind of not quite
Speaker 1: clear what that evident, you know, where that all led,
Speaker 1: but that was who a lot of people thought was
Speaker 1: the most pausible suspect. Marty says. The witness also told
Speaker 1: him something he'd never heard before. That after the esp
Speaker 1: paid a visit to the Beer brought residence and brought
Speaker 1: Lonnie in for questioning, Lonnie and one of his brothers
Speaker 1: showed up to the witness's place of work upset. The
Speaker 1: next day or very soon after that, they both show
Speaker 1: up unannounced. She's scared. Who called the police? Who called?
Speaker 1: Who told us son of my brother? You know, it
Speaker 1: made a big scene there, and that kind of thing
Speaker 1: to me. Oh shit, Now, I'm not even sure the
Speaker 1: state police knows that second part. But my view was,
Speaker 1: I I haven't I can't write a police report. I'm retired.
Speaker 1: I called the States Attorney and he said, oh yes,
Speaker 1: sah but I said, I'll be right, I'll come done
Speaker 1: her right now. So I sit out there in his
Speaker 1: waiting room for an hour, about an hour, and I'm
Speaker 1: being blown off. So I go to the sectarise, Hey,
Speaker 1: look here's the deal. Well he's in there with a meeting.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, yeah, okay, fine, I'm gonna go over
Speaker 1: to the newspaper with this information. I'm gonna give this something.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to talk to. Be fine, I'll be
Speaker 1: over the newspaper he comes out. Marty's next move would
Speaker 1: turn him into a polarizing figure. He made good on
Speaker 1: his promise to contact the media. If you google Tammy's case,
Speaker 1: you'll see his name all over it. He's been very
Speaker 1: critical of how the ISP handled the investigation. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: can't interview Lonnie beer Abrod. He died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two while serving time in prison on unrelated charges.
Speaker 1: When Marty sought out Lonnie in the years after he retired,
Speaker 1: the state's attorney explained that Lonnie had passed away and
Speaker 1: that interest in him as a suspect fizzle. Marty told
Speaker 1: me he didn't understand why investigators had not pursued beer
Speaker 1: Brott more aggressively even after his death. He even pleaded
Speaker 1: with the prosecutor to pursue a case, but was told
Speaker 1: protocol required the state police to bring the case forward
Speaker 1: for prosecution, something they never did. What I said, these
Speaker 1: guys are not going to bring this case. They don't
Speaker 1: believe it. And this was the information. You don't have
Speaker 1: to believe me. Go get this information. No, I doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. Why now, I said, get a grand
Speaker 1: jury in here. I just couldn't believe it. As I
Speaker 1: began to look into every aspect of the early investigation,
Speaker 1: one of the first things I did was identify who
Speaker 1: exactly was responsible for following up on the eyewitnesses tip.
Speaker 1: Turns out it was an ISP investigator named Bill Hamill, who,
Speaker 1: like Marty, was a member of the Task Force. Folks
Speaker 1: I've spoken to describe Hamill as a respect of guy
Speaker 1: and a thorough investigator, but Marty believes Hamil dropped the
Speaker 1: ball on this one. On the official tip sheet, which
Speaker 1: I obtained from a source, there's a hand drawn star
Speaker 1: next to the eyewitness's name. It was put there, according
Speaker 1: to Marty, by an IP supervisor and was meant for Hamil.
Speaker 1: Marty claims the star in and of itself was important.
Speaker 1: Marty says. The eyewitness told him that no one reached
Speaker 1: out to her after she called in the initial tip,
Speaker 1: and that by the time investigators finally got around to
Speaker 1: interview in Lonnie Beer brought months later, he could have
Speaker 1: destroyed crucial evidence. By then. All I know is that
Speaker 1: they found the vehicle a pickup truck. It had been
Speaker 1: sold and cleaned, and they do a crime scene on that.
Speaker 1: They find his house. He has sold it, cleaned it
Speaker 1: and left. To clarify, Beer brought wife's Toyota pickup truck
Speaker 1: was blue. Still, did the ISP miss a crucial window
Speaker 1: of opportunity to connect the Lonnie Beer brought the Tammy's murder?
Speaker 1: That tip was followed up on. Every single tip is documented,
Speaker 1: every single one. Jeff Padilla, a retired ISP lieutenant who
Speaker 1: you've heard in previous episodes, is adamant at the department
Speaker 1: followed up on every credible lead that came in. They
Speaker 1: had to. It was not only part of their job
Speaker 1: but standard policy. There was a pickup truck recovered and analyzed,
Speaker 1: but the information related to the pickup truck didn't coincide,
Speaker 1: and basically it was eliminated. Padilla told me there was
Speaker 1: and still is evidence that was never publicly released, evidence
Speaker 1: that helped the ISP way how seriously they viewed Lonnie Beer,
Speaker 1: brought as a suspect, already says once he heard the
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses watch story, he sprung into action and went further
Speaker 1: up the chain of command. I called out there and
Speaker 1: talked to this guy's supervisor, Hamil supervisor. He didn't know
Speaker 1: any about the case. He's a new guy. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this woman is whitness. He hasn't been interviewed
Speaker 1: in ten goddamn years. Now there's new information. You got
Speaker 1: to send somebody out there to talk to her. I said, well,
Speaker 1: you see, okay, guess who he said, hail. So Hamil
Speaker 1: goes out there at interviews, and the whole contain already
Speaker 1: I talked to her about this. The whole thing is
Speaker 1: McCarthy should have nothing to do with this. He's he's retired,
Speaker 1: he's got don't know anything about this. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was a downer on me. What information he got, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Did she give him the watch story. I
Speaker 1: presume she did, but I never saw that report. But
Speaker 1: he's already got a blown out. It's a watch Watch.
Speaker 1: You know, he just blown this thing off, and if
Speaker 1: he wrote a report of that, I never saw it.
Speaker 1: I tracked down Bill Hamil late twenty twenty two. He's
Speaker 1: long since retired and now lives in the South with
Speaker 1: his wife. I spoke with them both and found the
Speaker 1: couple to be kind and more than willing to be
Speaker 1: on the podcast, But a medical condition prevented Bill from
Speaker 1: consenting to a formal interview with me. Because of that,
Speaker 1: I worried about his recollections and felt it would be
Speaker 1: unethical to air any part of our conversation. I've driven
Speaker 1: down highways, and I've worked over and I've seen remote
Speaker 1: canyons and places along the way where a guy could
Speaker 1: pull over his vehicle and as a right circumstance, walk
Speaker 1: out there and get rid of whatever he wanted, and
Speaker 1: get back in his vehicle and drive off. Keith Hunter Jesperson,
Speaker 1: otherwise known as as the Happy Face Killer, was a
Speaker 1: semi truck driving serial killer who bound, raped, and strangled
Speaker 1: eight women while criss crossing the country between nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety five. What was the farthest distance you
Speaker 1: ever traveled and the longest period of time you ever
Speaker 1: traveled with a body in your truck the longest period
Speaker 1: of time. Did you ever have to a body for
Speaker 1: a couple of days for example? No, No, one never did.
Speaker 1: Um maybe one hundred and fifty miles two in a
Speaker 1: mile and the body was what in the cab with you?
Speaker 1: And why did you hold on to the body for
Speaker 1: that long looking for a place to put it. That's
Speaker 1: one of hundreds of conversations I've had with jess Person
Speaker 1: while he serves three consecutive life sentences at Oregon State Penitentiary.
Speaker 1: And basically, a killer instant is based upon your comfort zone,
Speaker 1: and this is my comfort zone is a tool to
Speaker 1: use and murder. I first connected with him in twenty
Speaker 1: ten after looking into his murder cases and studying the
Speaker 1: crimes of those like him. There's been closed the area.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like my visers fell into a hole.
Speaker 1: Jesperson is not and has never been, a suspect in
Speaker 1: Tammy Ziwiki's murder. But as I continued my investigation, it
Speaker 1: was hard not to think back to the conversations I
Speaker 1: had with him. To me, it was WoT the game
Speaker 1: to the fact that I'll just see whether or not
Speaker 1: discussing get in my truck or not. How he rationalized
Speaker 1: his horrific crimes and managed to evade law enforcement for
Speaker 1: as long as he did. Nobody who I was. Nobody
Speaker 1: had an idea if I even existed in the third place.
Speaker 1: And of course, if evil happens and someone must be
Speaker 1: responsible to why not waying to go to me? I know?
Speaker 1: The trail of murder left behind by a truck driver
Speaker 1: like jesperson offers valuable insight into Tammy's case. From the start,
Speaker 1: police investigating Tammy's murder looked at the possibility that a
Speaker 1: semitruck driver killed and dumped her body somewhere along their
Speaker 1: truck route, and for what it's worth, it's a strong theory.
Speaker 1: Several well known serial killers were operating at the time.
Speaker 1: In June nineteen ninety two, just two months before Tammy
Speaker 1: was murdered, three women forty seven year old Cheryl Leavitt,
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Susie Streeter, and eighteen year old Stacy McCall,
Speaker 1: disappeared from Cheryl's home, about thirty miles from where Tammy's
Speaker 1: body was found. The women were more famously known as
Speaker 1: the Springfield Three, and to date they have not been
Speaker 1: found What's more, Susie and Stacy were young and blonde
Speaker 1: like Tammy. Were the cases connected. Here's Tammy's brother Todd's wiki.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, when you hear these stories come out,
Speaker 1: it's these interstate truckers who also kind of live on
Speaker 1: the fringe of society and move around, and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody really knows that much about them or where they
Speaker 1: go and when they go. There there were other truckers
Speaker 1: who would come up. Bruce Mendenhall was a name I recall.
Speaker 1: Bruce Mendenhall was a trucker from southern Illinois who became
Speaker 1: a solid suspect for esp investigators. Mendenhall was known as
Speaker 1: the truck stop killer because he preyed upon vulnerable women,
Speaker 1: mainly hitchhikers and women hanging around truck stops. He was
Speaker 1: arrested in Tennessee in two thousand and seven when he
Speaker 1: was fifty six, and seemed to tick many of the
Speaker 1: boxes in Tammy's case. After his arrest, Mendenhall even confessed
Speaker 1: to six murders in several states. Tammy's was not one
Speaker 1: of them. Still, with guys like Mendenhall, it's difficult to
Speaker 1: fully know how much they'rewithholding from authorities. For example, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, a decade after Mendenhall had already been
Speaker 1: convicted of murder, he was connected by DNA to another
Speaker 1: murder beyond the sixth he had been tied to. What
Speaker 1: I have kind of reconciled myself too, was the idea
Speaker 1: that if this was the typical profile of a sort
Speaker 1: of a transient trucker or somebody like that who lived
Speaker 1: on the edge of society, I've just assumed by this
Speaker 1: point the guy's probably dead or jail for something else,
Speaker 1: or died in jail for something else, or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's just not the kind of person who I would
Speaker 1: expect to have still been around and alive to be
Speaker 1: an active suspect and that sort of thing. At least
Speaker 1: that's been my working assumption. Here's former LaSalle County State's
Speaker 1: Attorney Brian Town with the state police followed a lot
Speaker 1: of lead with regard to serial killers, you know, that
Speaker 1: have been caught throughout the country that may have had
Speaker 1: ties to our area at that time frame, and all
Speaker 1: of those leads turned up nothing. Every time police thought
Speaker 1: they had a trucker who might have been responsible for
Speaker 1: Tammy's murder, the evidence wasn't there to back it up.
Speaker 1: In one instance, a forty five year old truck driver
Speaker 1: from Colorado, William James Banister, was arrested in July nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three for attempting to kill a fourteen year old girl.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement found bloody clothes, including under garments, in the
Speaker 1: cab of his truck and thought they might be Tammy's,
Speaker 1: but Banister was ultimately cleared. This scenario happened over and
Speaker 1: over again in Tammy's case. Investigators thought they had a
Speaker 1: solid lead on a trucker who fit the bill, only
Speaker 1: to rule them out be a blood, DNA or circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1: I made a point to ask Brian town about Marty
Speaker 1: McCarthy's theory on Lonnie beer Brod. It was important to
Speaker 1: me to understand what other investigators thought about Marty's dogged
Speaker 1: pursuit of the man he believed to beat Tammy's killer.
Speaker 1: Now you know Marty McCarthy correct, Oh, yes, how would
Speaker 1: you describe Marty enthusiastic? I would dedicated, always pursuing the truth,
Speaker 1: but you know, at times maybe a little bit too
Speaker 1: talkative during the course of a bending investigation. I mean
Speaker 1: Marty blamed Bill Hamill for a lot of the problems
Speaker 1: early on in this investigation when you look at some
Speaker 1: of the mistakes that were made, and mistakes are made
Speaker 1: in every investigation. I'm not trying to hammer anybody here.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that, you know, and I know that
Speaker 1: mistakes are made and every investigation. It's just a nature
Speaker 1: of human beings. Sure, and he blamed Hamil for a
Speaker 1: lot of that. What would you say to that, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Master Sergeant McCarty was he was very interested
Speaker 1: in this case. He was very almost consumed by this case.
Speaker 1: He was revealing information to the family and to the
Speaker 1: public that really hurt law enforcement's efforts to maintain a
Speaker 1: proper investigation and the integrity the investigation. And I can't
Speaker 1: speak to his motives. I sincerely don't know what the
Speaker 1: grudge was between McCarty and Hamil, except to say that
Speaker 1: in thirty years in law enforcement, I can say that
Speaker 1: you know, every police department, and including the State police,
Speaker 1: they have their their moments where you know, one person
Speaker 1: isn't too happy with another and and they're they're very
Speaker 1: critical of one another. It's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very emotional profession, and you know, sometimes you know, those
Speaker 1: emotions get in the way. I'm solely focused on the truth.
Speaker 1: There's been too much misinformation within Tammy's a wiki's case.
Speaker 1: Part of the process included running down any holes in
Speaker 1: Marty's narrative. For me, anything and everything I could learn
Speaker 1: about Lonnie beer Brought felt important, if for no other
Speaker 1: reason than to finally clear his name in the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion. If beer Brought was a noteworthy suspect
Speaker 1: and could be circumstantially connected to Tammy's case, I needed
Speaker 1: to understand how it fit and why the guy was
Speaker 1: never charged. And for that I needed to find and
Speaker 1: interview one person, Lonnie beer Brott's ex wife. So I
Speaker 1: made calls, sent emails, left messages, and even knocked on
Speaker 1: her door. And while I waited for her to respond,
Speaker 1: another name kept nagging at me. One that came up
Speaker 1: again and again as I spoke to members of law
Speaker 1: enforcement and others who closely watched Tammy's case. Lonnie Demot
Speaker 1: the other Lonnie, the guy who found Tammy's body and
Speaker 1: claimed that he had helped police carry it from the
Speaker 1: ditch to the roadside. Some were skeptical of Lonnie's narrative,
Speaker 1: including the administrators of the who Killed Tammy ziwiki Facebook group.
Speaker 1: The first post he made was in September of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: says I'm Lonnie Dumot. I'm the one who found Tammy.
Speaker 1: Patrick Jones, the creator of the Facebook group, says Lonnie
Speaker 1: Dumot's online behavior in recent years has raised a number
Speaker 1: of red flags. He came in, he was posting like
Speaker 1: a son of a bitch, and then people were all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, everybody was asking the questions like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe, and he's answering them. I asked them. A
Speaker 1: million questions come to mind. How did you see anything
Speaker 1: strange or out of place? Was there any tire tracks?
Speaker 1: How was it lighting at the scene? Just curious, and
Speaker 1: he just disappeared. I think he wanted to confess to something.
Speaker 1: In my opinion that he wants to say, Hey, here's
Speaker 1: what happened. As it turned out, armchair sluice weren't the
Speaker 1: only people interested in Lonnie Damot's version of events that day. Hi,
Speaker 1: mister Damot, money and there's with the FBI at a
Speaker 1: job in Missouri. And when you have an opportunity, did
Speaker 1: you please give me a call back. Thank you, mister
Speaker 1: Damont on the next episode of Paper Ghosts. The reasons
Speaker 1: given for him coming off the highway depends on what
Speaker 1: source you read, so we have some discrepancies as to
Speaker 1: what actually was going on there. Well, I think you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always easy to tell the truth right
Speaker 1: when you start making up stories. It'll change over time.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you know, if I told you'll lie
Speaker 1: today and you came back to me five years later,
Speaker 1: I'm asking the same question, I may not respond the
Speaker 1: same way. The direction we went thereafter was because of
Speaker 1: the information we had received. I don't think that he's
Speaker 1: been rolled out by the law enforcement, but I think
Speaker 1: he's got something to do with it. It's just too coincidental.
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 use 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 iHeart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by our
Speaker 1: supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our Associate producer is Darby Masters,
Speaker 1: audio editing and mixing by Christian Bowman and Abu zafar Our.
Speaker 1: Series theme number four four two is written and performed
Speaker 1: by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.