Speaker 1: This series is inspired by true events. The stories you're
Speaker 1: about to hear are fictional, and so are the characters
Speaker 1: who are played by actors.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you, there are certain murders I'm
Speaker 2: scared to discuss. It's just all too ugly, and I'm
Speaker 2: scared what will happen to me if I do speak out.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old
Speaker 3: stuff again, but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't
Speaker 3: warn you.
Speaker 1: Nancy, I'm Nancy Clark. I was born and raised in
Speaker 1: the small Midwest town of Meine. It was a great
Speaker 1: place to grow up, lovely, picturesque, like right out of
Speaker 1: a movie. Still looks pretty much the same. Main street
Speaker 1: is lined with little brick storefronts built in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: A teeny limestone post office sits at the end of
Speaker 1: the oak Tree Line block. The smell of fresh bread
Speaker 1: from the bakery is always in the air. But even
Speaker 1: as a young girl, I was very aware that a
Speaker 1: lot of strange stuff seemed to happen here. I always
Speaker 1: wanted I needed to know more. At night, i'd sneak
Speaker 1: the newspaper under the covers with my dad's flashlight and
Speaker 1: read about the latest tragedy to hit our town, and
Speaker 1: I wondered, why did so many bad things keep happening?
Speaker 1: And it seemed to only get worse. When I was
Speaker 1: in high school in the mid eighties, we were losing
Speaker 1: people at an alarming rate. Horrible, violent deaths, unthinkable murders.
Speaker 1: There were so many deaths that I believed our town
Speaker 1: had to be cursed. It felt like we were being
Speaker 1: made to pay some awful price for something we'd done.
Speaker 4: But what.
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: The year after my friends and I graduated, the death
Speaker 1: seemed to just stop. I could breathe again, I could
Speaker 1: stop worrying. I went away to college, studied communications, and
Speaker 1: spent the next couple of decades writing for various publications.
Speaker 1: But life took a turn recently when I had to
Speaker 1: move back home to take care of my mom, who
Speaker 1: was sick. She passed away earlier this year. As I
Speaker 1: was packing up my childhood home, I ran across some
Speaker 1: old newspaper articles that brought back the all two vivid
Speaker 1: and tragic memories of my high school years, and later
Speaker 1: that night, on the ten o'clock news.
Speaker 3: This is just in A woman's body has been found
Speaker 3: in the woods behind Mount Pine Community College.
Speaker 5: A gruesome discovery in a north side home.
Speaker 1: Again, after thirty years of peace, Mount Pine was rocked
Speaker 1: with another murder. I tried to process this shocking news,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't help. But wonder could this be the
Speaker 1: beginning of another crime spree. As I slowly cleaned out
Speaker 1: the house, I decided to revisit the murders that happened
Speaker 1: when I was in high school. Luckily I kept detailed
Speaker 1: diaries back then. I wanted to see if there was
Speaker 1: anything that could really help me make sense of what
Speaker 1: was going on in Mount Pine today. So I decided,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to the people who were at
Speaker 1: the center of these stories, police teachers, even some of
Speaker 1: my high school friends, who may remember some really important
Speaker 1: details from those years, details I either forgot or never
Speaker 1: even knew in the first place. The stories I'm about
Speaker 1: to tell you are inspired by real people and real events.
Speaker 1: For everyone's safety, we're going to change a lot of
Speaker 1: the details and all of the names, including my own,
Speaker 1: and we're changing the name of our town. It's not
Speaker 1: really called Mount Pine. I truly hope I find some answers.
Speaker 1: At the very least it might give us all some
Speaker 1: much needed closure. This is The Murder Years, Episode one.
Speaker 6: Lisa nine, what's your emergency?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I went back behind my born too, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 7: there's a.
Speaker 6: Girl there, a young girl out there.
Speaker 2: She's dead.
Speaker 1: It all starts on May nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, hours
Speaker 1: before that horrific nine to one one call comes in.
Speaker 1: Teen life in Mount Pine is all that matters?
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 1: That's Melanie Porter in nineteen eighty four. We are both
Speaker 1: fourteen years old and freshman at Mount Pine High School.
Speaker 1: Melanie's my best friend.
Speaker 5: May nineteen, it was a Saturday. I looked it up
Speaker 5: in my journal, and that day I had just gotten
Speaker 5: done with being grounded for spending too much money on
Speaker 5: a blouse.
Speaker 1: Today, Melanie's fifty two and owns a party planning business
Speaker 1: in Mount Pine.
Speaker 5: I got all my homework done, finished my chores, and
Speaker 5: was super excited because that night I was going to
Speaker 5: a party at Tammy's house. Her parents were going to
Speaker 5: be out of town at some Amway convention or something.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to that party, and I can't remember
Speaker 1: why exactly. But Melanie, she remembers a lot about how
Speaker 1: excited she was to go.
Speaker 5: I remember picking out what I was gonna wear took
Speaker 5: me like forever, seriously. Around seven point thirty, I heard
Speaker 5: a honk outside, so I grabbed my purse, kissed my
Speaker 5: parents good night, then I headed out to Scott, who
Speaker 5: was sitting in his dad's light blue Ford Thunderbird also
Speaker 5: known as the Blue Ballmer. Scott was two years older.
Speaker 5: He was sixteen and just got his driver's license.
Speaker 1: On the way to the party, Melanie says, she and
Speaker 1: Scott go through Danny's drive through. Scott has a fake
Speaker 1: ID which he uses to buy Melanie some peach snaps
Speaker 1: in a case of Old Milwaukee for himself. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could buy alcohol from the comfort of your own car
Speaker 1: back then and then drive.
Speaker 5: So then we drove down County Road H twenty nine
Speaker 5: on our way to the party.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four. Mount Pine has a population of
Speaker 1: around twelve thousand people, so pretty small, very rural, lots
Speaker 1: of farms and tons of lakes in town. We have
Speaker 1: one pizza joint, one bank, one supermarket, and one high school.
Speaker 1: Our school is small and unassuming, a one story brick
Speaker 1: box with narrow slit windows. It looks more like a
Speaker 1: prison than a high school.
Speaker 5: When we got to the party, Tammy's house was packed.
Speaker 5: There must have been like one hundred kids there. I
Speaker 5: remember some kids were playing pool downstairs. Some kids were
Speaker 5: drinking ever clear at the kitchen table. Some kids were
Speaker 5: smoking pot outside.
Speaker 1: Melanie says, just before midnight, the kids with curfews leave,
Speaker 1: kids like her and Scott, They're gone, I hear through
Speaker 1: the grapevine. Others stay later. The last ones leave around
Speaker 1: three am. What happens next? No one sees coming.
Speaker 6: Nine. What's your emergency?
Speaker 7: I yeah, I went back behind my barn too, and
Speaker 7: I think, oh my god, she's so young. She looks
Speaker 7: really really bad. There's a lot of blood and her
Speaker 7: head is all smashed in. Please come quick.
Speaker 6: Officers are on their way.
Speaker 1: Police are dispatched to a location about three miles away
Speaker 1: from Tammy's party.
Speaker 8: Up until that and I we really didn't have murders
Speaker 8: in Mount Pine.
Speaker 1: I tracked down the first officer who arrived on the
Speaker 1: scene that day, Officer Pat Shepherd. Back then he has
Speaker 1: two months on the job and has never been two
Speaker 1: or worked a murder scene.
Speaker 8: I mean, they've only been like four in the previous
Speaker 8: twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Today, Pat Shepherd is a sergeant with Mount Pine PD.
Speaker 1: He said he doesn't even need to check his files
Speaker 1: on the case because he remembers it so clearly.
Speaker 8: Since this was my first one, I was nervous, I remember,
Speaker 8: I felt sick to my stomach. So I arrived that
Speaker 8: day around seven am found the body of a teenage
Speaker 8: girl behind a barn. The nine one one caller had
Speaker 8: no idea who she was or how she got there.
Speaker 8: She had been severely beaten.
Speaker 3: In the head and face.
Speaker 8: Her jeans and pink tank top were soaked blood. We
Speaker 8: didn't know with what though, because there was no weapon nearby.
Speaker 8: It appeared she'd been killed somewhere else and dumped there,
Speaker 8: and it seemed like she hadt met dead for more
Speaker 8: than a few hours. Then more officers arrived and searched
Speaker 8: the surrounding area. About two hundred yards from the body,
Speaker 8: in the woods behind the barn, an officer found a
Speaker 8: white purse in it, where a set of keys on
Speaker 8: a Duran Duran keychain, bublgum, flared lipsmackers, a wallet with
Speaker 8: six dollars and a driver's license. That's when we were
Speaker 8: able to identify.
Speaker 1: Our victim, Seventeen year old Lisa Anderson, was a senior
Speaker 1: at Mount Pine High School. She ran track and worked
Speaker 1: at Buddy's, the local ice cream shop. She was nice
Speaker 1: to everyone. Back in nineteen eighty four, Detective Tom Wallace
Speaker 1: is the lead investigator on the case. Today, he's in
Speaker 1: his seventies and retired. Wallace agrees to talk with me
Speaker 1: about the case.
Speaker 3: This one, this one was hard. I knew the family.
Speaker 3: They were a good family, and they'd already been through
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 1: Detective Wallace is talking about what happened to Lisa's younger
Speaker 1: brother only a year before, he dove headfirst into Owl Lake,
Speaker 1: breaking his neck. He became paralyzed and eventually moved into
Speaker 1: a home where to this day he's still getting round
Speaker 1: the clock care. Their mom, Mary is now in her
Speaker 1: mid seventies. I asked if she'd be willing to speak
Speaker 1: with me, and she says yes, even though it's still painful.
Speaker 1: She feels like she doesn't get the chance to talk
Speaker 1: about her daughter, Lisa enough.
Speaker 9: So I remember that day unfortunately, like it was yesterday.
Speaker 9: I was cooking scramble that haggs with graft singles and
Speaker 9: oh and sausage links and then there was someone at
Speaker 9: the front door knocking. I was thinking, why was someone
Speaker 9: at the front door this early on a weekend? So
Speaker 9: I put the Spachela down and walked towards the front door.
Speaker 9: But before I even got there, I saw Tom Wallace, well,
Speaker 9: detective Tom Wallace through the beveled glass. You see, we
Speaker 9: went to Mount Pine High School together. But but I
Speaker 9: couldn't imagine why he was at the house. We sat
Speaker 9: down in the living room. His corduroy jacket stunk from cigarettes. Well,
Speaker 9: then Wallace said the word's eye I will never forget.
Speaker 9: He said, I'm so sorry, but we found Lisa today,
Speaker 9: and she said.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 9: Wallace kept talking, but I couldn't hear him. He was talking,
Speaker 9: but my eyes were scanning our living room instead.
Speaker 5: I was fixating on the things.
Speaker 9: In the living room that were Lisa's, like, like there
Speaker 9: was a pair of Lisa's white kids by the front door,
Speaker 9: in her blue jean booked bag with buttons all over it,
Speaker 9: that was right next to the TV trade where she
Speaker 9: always did her homework. Then Wallace asked me when I
Speaker 9: saw Lisa last, and I told him it was around
Speaker 9: eight o'clock the night before. She said she was going
Speaker 9: to a party with a best friend, Tiffany, and then
Speaker 9: she was going to spend the night at Tiffany's.
Speaker 1: Detective Wallace learns the party was at the house of
Speaker 1: some girl, naw Tammy.
Speaker 3: I remember I hugged Mary goodbye, and as it walked
Speaker 3: to my car, I could hear her wailing. It was
Speaker 3: pretty brutal.
Speaker 1: Detective Wallace tells me that next he goes to talk
Speaker 1: with the host of the party, Tammy, who happens to
Speaker 1: be in big trouble with her parents for having the
Speaker 1: blowout while they were away. Tammy tells Wallace she saw
Speaker 1: Lisa at the party, but all seem fine with her.
Speaker 1: Tammy agrees to write down the names of everyone at
Speaker 1: our house with her parents' permission. Detective Wallace looks around
Speaker 1: the home and property. A few red plastic cups still
Speaker 1: litter the floor, but much of the party has been
Speaker 1: cleaned up. He doesn't see anything suspicious. Within a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, the lobby at the police station is packed
Speaker 1: with really shaking up teens.
Speaker 3: These kids looked nervous. I reassured them they wouldn't get
Speaker 3: in trouble for drinking or smoking pot. We just wanted
Speaker 3: to ask some questions, try to find out what they
Speaker 3: saw or heard and if they knew what may have
Speaker 3: happened to Lisa. We audio taped these interviews.
Speaker 1: After a lot of digging, Detective Wallace is able to
Speaker 1: track down some of those recordings.
Speaker 10: I don't want to get in trouble, okay, but Lisa
Speaker 10: gave me one of her one of her California coolers,
Speaker 10: and she seemed like she was in a good mood.
Speaker 5: She kept asking me what time it was I saw
Speaker 5: her outside. She let me use her lipsmackers. We talked
Speaker 5: about chemistry class and how mister Kober gave me attention
Speaker 5: for talking too much.
Speaker 1: A few hours later, it's fifteen year old Bobby McCabe's turn,
Speaker 1: a tall and lanky kid with jet black hair.
Speaker 4: I saw Lisa plainpool with a guy had never seen before.
Speaker 4: They were like, they're having fun.
Speaker 2: With Then.
Speaker 4: I heard him assports go upstairs.
Speaker 8: With him and.
Speaker 4: That's why all the kids were making out, were having
Speaker 4: sex or whatever, and she said no, I have a boyfriend,
Speaker 4: and the guy got.
Speaker 5: Mad, like really mad.
Speaker 4: I mean he threw down his pool stick and said,
Speaker 4: you're a fucking Copti's and a fucking bitch.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the mount Pine Peades interviews with the
Speaker 1: kids who were at the party the night before where
Speaker 1: Lisa Anderson was last seen alive, and investigators may have
Speaker 1: gotten their first real lead from fifteen year old Bobby McCabe.
Speaker 1: He just told detectives he saw some guy get really
Speaker 1: angry at Lisa when she turned him down for sex,
Speaker 1: and there's more.
Speaker 4: On his way out. I heard him say he was
Speaker 4: going to get hurt back for this. She will pay
Speaker 4: for this.
Speaker 3: So Bobby described the guy as late teen's tall, brown,
Speaker 3: shaggy hair, and he was wearing a concert t shirt,
Speaker 3: but he couldn't remember which one. The interviews with the
Speaker 3: partygoers lasted into the early morning hours, but none of
Speaker 3: the other kids reported seeing anything strange or any of
Speaker 3: that exchange between Lisa and the angry guy. In fact,
Speaker 3: none of them even knew who that guy.
Speaker 1: Could be, including my friend Melanie, who calls me completely
Speaker 1: freaked out after being interviewed by police.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe any of it. I was in shock.
Speaker 5: I went back to my journal to see what I
Speaker 5: wrote about about my interview with the police. This is
Speaker 5: what I wrote. I told the detective I saw Lisa
Speaker 5: at the party, and at one point she was behind
Speaker 5: me in line waiting for the bathroom. I told her
Speaker 5: I liked her charm bracelet, and she pointed out her
Speaker 5: face charm, which was a running shoe, which made sense.
Speaker 5: Lisa ran cross country in track. But yeah, I told
Speaker 5: the detective there was nothing weird about her or anything
Speaker 5: else that night.
Speaker 2: Good morning, students, it's Monday, May twenty first tickets to
Speaker 2: the spring dance go on sale today.
Speaker 10: You could purchase them in the cafeteria during a lunch period.
Speaker 1: Less than twenty four hours after being interviewed by police,
Speaker 1: the kids are back in school. News of Lisa Anderson's
Speaker 1: murder fills the halls. It's the only thing anyone's talking about,
Speaker 1: especially one of my friends, Tatiana Campbell. She's a freshman
Speaker 1: like me.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I knew Lisa. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: not well because she was older than us, but still,
Speaker 2: oh god, I remember this so clearly. When the bell rang,
Speaker 2: I ran to meet my friends at my locker.
Speaker 1: In the three minutes we have between classes. Tatiana, Melanie
Speaker 1: and I are trying to truly process what happened to Lisa.
Speaker 1: Here's Melanie.
Speaker 5: I was telling them about the party since neither of
Speaker 5: them were there, and I told them what I told
Speaker 5: the police that Lisa seemed, I don't know normal. I
Speaker 5: told them about seeing her while waiting for the bathroom
Speaker 5: and us talking about her charm bracelet and stuff. That
Speaker 5: was the last time I saw her. Ever.
Speaker 1: Detective Wallace tells me that when the autopsy results come in,
Speaker 1: they confirm her cause of death is blunt force trauma.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of pressure to say of this
Speaker 3: horrible crime. I wondered, was it a crime of passion
Speaker 3: at the hands of a boyfriend or was it completely random?
Speaker 3: Could the kids be covering up for one of their
Speaker 3: own and then just like that we got a break.
Speaker 3: Someone called in a tip about the guy who got
Speaker 3: maddedly said the party when she turned him down for sex.
Speaker 1: His name is Nick Kerr, an eighteen year old kid
Speaker 1: from Northgate, the next town over.
Speaker 3: When he came in for questioning, he looked really stressed
Speaker 3: out and wouldn't make eye contact with me. I asked him,
Speaker 3: since he was from Northgate, who did he know at
Speaker 3: the party. He said he didn't know anyone there. He
Speaker 3: and his friend had hurt there was going to be
Speaker 3: a big party at this house in Mount Pine. Then
Speaker 3: I asked him about Lisa. He said that he'd been
Speaker 3: playing pool with some other guy when she came up
Speaker 3: and asked if she could play. The winner, which turned
Speaker 3: out to be him, played a few games and he
Speaker 3: thought she was flirting with him, so when he suggested
Speaker 3: they go upstairs and she said she had a boyfriend,
Speaker 3: he felt dumb and embarrassed and that's why he got angry.
Speaker 3: He also admitted he was drinking, but said he would
Speaker 3: never do anything to hurt her. It was all talk.
Speaker 3: I then asked him where he went after the party,
Speaker 3: and he said he went back to his house and
Speaker 3: his dad was still up so he could verify his whereabouts.
Speaker 1: Police asked Nick to take a polygraph. He does and
Speaker 1: he passes, although Nick's dad will still need to verify
Speaker 1: his son was at home at the time of the murder.
Speaker 1: It seems like Nick's not their guy.
Speaker 3: So he were thinking if Nick Kerr didn't murder Lisa,
Speaker 3: and who did. Lisa told Kerr well, allegedly told him
Speaker 3: she had a boyfriend. Her mom didn't know of any boyfriend,
Speaker 3: we thought, but the person who know best would be
Speaker 3: her best friend. Tiffany Mack.
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old Tiffany Mack is a senior at Mount
Speaker 1: Pine High School. I didn't really know her, but she
Speaker 1: was one of the popular girls. She had a reputation
Speaker 1: for dating a lot of boys. Anyway, Detective Wallace says
Speaker 1: he contacts Tiffany's parents and asks them to bring her
Speaker 1: in for an interview. Late Monday, Tiffany and her parents
Speaker 1: go down to the station together.
Speaker 3: When Tiffany and her parents arrived, she looked very upset.
Speaker 3: She went on to tell me how on Saturday night,
Speaker 3: Lisa walked over to her house and then Tiffany drove
Speaker 3: them to get pizza, then they went to the party.
Speaker 3: The plan was that Lisa was going to sleep over
Speaker 3: at Tiffany's house that night, but the sleepover never happened.
Speaker 3: I wanted to note why not. Tiffany looked at her
Speaker 3: mom and started to cry again. Then she said, Lisa
Speaker 3: just started seeing someone secretly, someone her parents would not
Speaker 3: want her to be with because he's not a good guy.
Speaker 3: I asked if he was at the party that night.
Speaker 3: Tiffany said she'd never met him, so she didn't know
Speaker 3: what he looked like, but Lisa told her she was
Speaker 3: going outside to meet him, and this was around one am.
Speaker 3: Then I asked if she knew his name, and she
Speaker 3: said she only knows him by his last name, Zimmer.
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old Tiffany Mack is at the Mount Pine
Speaker 1: Police station with her parents. She's just revealed the name
Speaker 1: of her best friend, Lisa's secret boyfriend, Zimmer. Although she's
Speaker 1: never met him, she thinks he's white and in his twenties.
Speaker 3: So the interview room and entered the name Zimmer into
Speaker 3: the system. There was only one guy who seemed to
Speaker 3: fit the description of Lisa's secret boyfriend, and that was
Speaker 3: Tom Zimmer. He was white and twenty five years old
Speaker 3: and from Tucker's City, a town about six miles away.
Speaker 3: He had a lot of priors. But then I saw
Speaker 3: something that stopped me cold. He was currently in prison
Speaker 3: for breaking into a woman's home and killing her over
Speaker 3: her silver coin collection. So it couldn't have been that Zimmer.
Speaker 3: If Lisa didn't leave with Tom Zimmer that night, I
Speaker 3: was thinking, who the hell did she leave with.
Speaker 1: It's now been seven day since Lisa Anderson was found
Speaker 1: brutally murdered. Her funeral is held at first Presbyterian church
Speaker 1: and it's packed. Almost the whole town turned out to
Speaker 1: pay the respects. We're all there.
Speaker 5: It was my first funeral and it was so sad. God,
Speaker 5: poor Lisa's mother Mary. You could tell how much she
Speaker 5: was hurting.
Speaker 9: It was just the most devastating day. I just couldn't believe.
Speaker 5: What Lisa, What was it good?
Speaker 1: After the funeral? Most go home, some go for pizza,
Speaker 1: That's what we did, and others they choose to drown
Speaker 1: their sorrows at the quarter Horse Saloon. What happens there?
Speaker 1: Change everything?
Speaker 6: Nine one? What's your emergency?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 10: I probably shouldn't be calling, but I'm the bartender at
Speaker 10: the Quarterhouse, and I just overheard something about that Lisa
Speaker 10: Anderson murder. I think there are two guys in here
Speaker 10: who know something about it. Can you send someone over
Speaker 10: here like soon?
Speaker 1: Detective Wallace says he gets the call and heads right
Speaker 1: over with backup just in case pulls up without lights
Speaker 1: or sirens. He doesn't want to give anyone the chance
Speaker 1: or time to run.
Speaker 3: Once we got inside, the bartender subtly waved us over
Speaker 3: to the end of the bar. She said, these two
Speaker 3: guys walked in she'd never seen them before. They ordered beers,
Speaker 3: She carded them, and then they went to playpool, and
Speaker 3: that's when the bartender indicated with her eyes the two
Speaker 3: guys were still there, back behind her and to the right.
Speaker 3: She said. When they sat down at the bar, there
Speaker 3: was a program from Lisa Anderson's memorial service nearby. She
Speaker 3: heard one of the guys say, what a fucking night
Speaker 3: that was. She barely put up a fight. Then they
Speaker 3: both laughed. She said her gun told her she had
Speaker 3: to call nine to one one and report it. These
Speaker 3: guys looked rough. One had a long scar under his
Speaker 3: left eye. I noticed specks of dark brown and the
Speaker 3: one guy's iron Maiden T shirt. My gut was telling
Speaker 3: me it was blood. So I identified myself and asked
Speaker 3: him his name. He said, my name is Joe Zimmer.
Speaker 3: Joe Zimmer. I asked them if he and his friend,
Speaker 3: who'd ideed himself as Mark Tolman, would be willing to
Speaker 3: come to the station with me and answer some questions.
Speaker 3: So we were at the station and I asked Zimmer
Speaker 3: some basic questions about himself. He said he came from
Speaker 3: a broken family. His dad basically was never around. He
Speaker 3: dropped out of Tucker City High School a few years
Speaker 3: before to work construction. Oh when he said his brother
Speaker 3: Tom Zimmer was in prison for the murder of some lady,
Speaker 3: but he didn't do it. Then I asked him about
Speaker 3: the stains on his shirt and shoes, and he stopped
Speaker 3: and said it was blood, his blood. He said it
Speaker 3: happened on the job. I then asked him if he
Speaker 3: knew Lisa Anderson, and to my surprise, he said yes.
Speaker 3: He said he and Lisa started hanging out a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago and they were having fun. It wasn't
Speaker 3: anything serious. I asked him if he heard about Lisa
Speaker 3: Anderson's murder, and again he said yes. Zimmer said he
Speaker 3: even saw her that night. He said he picked Lisa
Speaker 3: up from the party and they went to his house.
Speaker 3: They were fooling around and he wanted to do more
Speaker 3: than she did, so they stopped and he drove her
Speaker 3: to Tiffany's. I drove off. He said, he pulled away
Speaker 3: before she got inside, so someone probably abducted her from
Speaker 3: Tiffany's front steps and then killed her.
Speaker 1: Disgusted and not buying one ounce of Zimmer's story, Detective
Speaker 1: Wallace says he goes into Interrogation Room three to see
Speaker 1: what Zimmer's friend Mark Tolman may know.
Speaker 3: I came right out and asked him what happened to
Speaker 3: Lisa Anderson. I was fully expecting him to say he
Speaker 3: didn't know, but that was not what happened. Tolman asked
Speaker 3: if he could get some sort of plea deal if
Speaker 3: he talked, and I told him, just talk and sort
Speaker 3: that stuff out later, he said. Late Saturday night, Zimmer
Speaker 3: met Lisa outside the party and drove her to his
Speaker 3: house for They drank some beer and pooled around he sat.
Speaker 3: Around four am. Lisa asked Zimber to take her to
Speaker 3: Tiffany's house, but he didn't want her to leave. Zimer
Speaker 3: talked her into going for a romantic walk with him
Speaker 3: in the woods behind his house before he'd take her
Speaker 3: to Tiffany's, and when she wasn't looking, he picked up
Speaker 3: a brick and hit her in the head from behind.
Speaker 3: She fell down, and then he smashed her head and
Speaker 3: face in with the bricks several times until she stopped moving.
Speaker 3: Zimmer then called him to come over. When he got
Speaker 3: to Zimmer's house, Zimmer confessed Tolman asked him why he
Speaker 3: did it, and Zimmer said because he wanted to see
Speaker 3: what it was like to watch someone die. Then Zimmer
Speaker 3: made Tolman help him clean up. They wrapped Lisa's body
Speaker 3: in a tar and drove her to where they jumped her,
Speaker 3: not far from the party.
Speaker 1: So if Tolman's account is to be believed, it seems
Speaker 1: like it was a senseless thrill kill. But Detective Wallace
Speaker 1: knows they'll need more. They will need physical evidence to
Speaker 1: tie Joe Zimmer to Lisa's murder. They get it when
Speaker 1: they search Zimmer's car and find blood in the trunk
Speaker 1: that will come back to match Lisa Anderson's blood type.
Speaker 1: Joe Zimmer is arrested in charge with first degree murder.
Speaker 1: His friend, Mark Tolman is charged with being an accessory
Speaker 1: after the fact. He accepts to reduce sentence in exchange
Speaker 1: for his testimony. The trial begins on December third, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four. Joe Zimmer never takes the stand. On the
Speaker 1: sixth day, the case goes to the jury. They come
Speaker 1: back in one hour in seventeen minutes with a verdict guilty.
Speaker 1: Joe Zimmer is sentenced to life without parole. You could
Speaker 1: almost hear the collective sigh of relief reverberate from the
Speaker 1: ice cream shop to the public library.
Speaker 5: We felt like maybe we didn't have to be so
Speaker 5: on edge anymore now that he was going away. But
Speaker 5: still her poor mom.
Speaker 9: Sure he was going to be locked up forever, but
Speaker 9: that wasn't going to bring my baby back.
Speaker 5: Ever, that can never bring my baby back.
Speaker 1: It's true, Lisa Anderson is gone, and her murder, that
Speaker 1: first murder in May of nineteen eighty four, changes us.
Speaker 5: So why did it happen?
Speaker 1: I mean, the Zimmer family produced two brothers who both
Speaker 1: became killers. It be chalked up to one messed up family.
Speaker 1: But if that was the case, those brothers were behind bars.
Speaker 1: So why did the murders still keep coming?
Speaker 5: Coming up?
Speaker 1: This season? On The Murder Years.
Speaker 6: Nine one one, What's your emergency?
Speaker 4: There are lots of gunshots, but I think I just
Speaker 4: oh my god.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 11: I mean, it was like how many more of us
Speaker 11: were going to die?
Speaker 5: And who would be next? I was scared. I mean
Speaker 5: I just kept feeling it and saying it. I don't know,
Speaker 5: I'm sure I was a broken record, but I was
Speaker 5: really scared.
Speaker 11: They knew we had been through so much shit, so
Speaker 11: much death those last couple of years, and so many
Speaker 11: of us were really screwed up in the head trying
Speaker 11: to process it all.
Speaker 3: I was starting to come around to thinking maybe Mount
Speaker 3: Pyne was cursed.
Speaker 12: Somehow we managed to survive the Murder Years. Not everyone
Speaker 12: was as lucky.
Speaker 1: The Murder Years is a production of AYR Media and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media, co executive producer
Speaker 1: Paulina Williams. Written by Leah Rothman, directed by Michael Selditch.
Speaker 1: Original concept developed in partnership with Anne, Margaret Johns and
Speaker 1: Greg Spring. Casting by Eisenberg Beans Casting Senior Associate producer
Speaker 1: Eric Newman, Associate producer Jill Pushesnik. Editing in sound as
Speaker 1: by Tristan Bankston, mastering by Cameron Taggie, Audio engineering by
Speaker 1: Matt Jacobson, Studio engineering by Jay Brannan. Legal counsel for
Speaker 1: a y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: Maya Howard. Performances for this episode by Gabrielle Carteris as
Speaker 1: Nancy Clark, Kelly Deadman as Tatiana, Orla Cassidy as Melanie
Speaker 1: Maricilda Garcia as Carla beau Kine as Officer Shephard. Annie
Speaker 1: Abbott is Mary Anderson, Carolyn Jania as nine one one caller,
Speaker 1: Carolyn Jania as voicemail caller number two. Charles Carroll as
Speaker 1: Prosecutor Blythe Desiree Rodriguez is nine one one operator H.
Speaker 1: Richard Greene as Detective Wallace, James B. Kennedy as Young
Speaker 1: Principal Palumbo, Joe Pachico as nine one caller Number one,
Speaker 1: John Ralston Craig as Reporter Number one. John Ralston Craig
Speaker 1: as voicemail caller Number one. Sarah Alasco as girl in
Speaker 1: police Interview Number one. Sarah Alasco as girl in Police
Speaker 1: Interview Number two, you Donna Daniels as Reporter number two.
Speaker 1: Zakma is Bobby McCabe Zakma as boy in police Interview.
Speaker 1: Additional voices by Alex Salem.