Going West: True Crime - Tammy Zywicki // 199

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

In August of 1992, a 21-year-old woman left New Jersey for Iowa to begin her senior year at college. But after becoming stranded in Illinois, she went missing. The following week, her body was found 500 miles away, leaving investigators wondering who killed her and where they could be. This is the story of Tammy Zywicki. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/tammy-j.-zywicki https://people.com/crime/killing-tammy-zywicki-featured-people-magazine-investigates/ https://iowacoldcases.org/case-summaries/tammy-zywicki/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2020/05/08/illinois-police-clark-perry-baldwin-not-suspect-1992-slaying/3101500001/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/871d8b/unresolved_murder_tammy_zywicki_21_was_seen_at/ https://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/mendenhall-bruce.htm https://www.facebook.com/notes/who-killed-tammy-zywicki/case-summary/10156483640511921 https://amwfans.com/thread/901/unknown-tammy-zywicki-killer-illinois#ixzz5Ar7QwibK https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/what-to-watch/ct-ent-tammy-zywicki-murder-people-magazine-investigates-20210319-ilotp32n35dstpewbwpprrrqpy-story.html https://www.discoveryplus.com/video/people-magazine-investigates/highway-of-horrors https://www.vidocq.org/ https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/76-year-old-mother-continues-fight-justice-daughter-killed-27-n1048341 https://medium.com/the-shadow/truck-driver-is-suspected-killer-of-bitter-creek-betty-and-other-women-6324baaf4d73#:~:text=Clark%20Perry%20Baldwin%20was%20arrested%20for%20the%20murders%20of%20Sheridan,both%20women%20found%20in%20Wyoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans, I'm your host, Tee. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Thank you so much everybody for tuning in today. We are just one episode away from episode 200 and it's gonna be a good one. So I hope everybody tunes in because this is, it's true crime, but it's, it definitely is,

but it has kind of an interesting twist on it. I was specifically looking for a case like this and this is a story that Heath and I have wanted to tell for a while that we've kind of hinted at before. So I'm really excited to do that episode. So make sure everybody tunes in on Friday for that one. Yeah, 200 episodes of Going West.

Can you guys believe it? Yes, and we're doing a Q&A. So if you were listening to this on time before we record that next episode, just go ahead and email us if you have a question because we haven't done a Q&A in a while, so just kind of want to update that, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, we've gained a lot of new haven't done a Q&A in a while so just kind of want to update that, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, we've gained a lot of new listeners since our last Q&A, so I'm sure some of you guys have some questions, but yeah, we're ready to answer this for you guys. Absolutely. Also, we briefly mentioned today's case a couple months back in our episode on Reina Ryzen because a person of interest in Rena's case is also one in this case. Alright guys, this is episode 199 of Going West, so let's get into it. In August of 1992, a 21-year-old woman left New Jersey for Iowa to begin her senior year at college.

But after becoming stranded in Illinois, she went missing. The following week, her body was found 500 miles away, leaving investigators wondering who killed her and where they could be. This is the story of Tammy Zawiki. Tami Jo Zawiki was born on March 13th, 1971, to parents Joanne and Hank Zawiki, alongside her older brothers Todd and Dean, and then later they were joined by a younger brother named Darren.

Although Tammy was born in Pleasant Hill, Pennsylvania, her father Hank worked as a civil engineer, so the family moved around a lot, living in Texas, Michigan, and of course, Pennsylvania, before finally settling in Greenville, South Carolina, which is a small city pretty much smack dab between Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia, though both major cities are about two hours away on either side. The Zawikis were a very close and social family and loved being the neighborhood hangout. The Zawiki kids were gifted both academically and athletically

with all four of them playing on sports teams and excelling in school. Tammy particularly loved playing soccer, but when she started ninth grade at Eastside High School in Taylor's South Carolina, just outside of Greenville, there was no girl's soccer team, so like the absolute legend she was, she started her own, and not only was the founder, but also the captain of this team. But aside from her endeavors in class and on the field, Tammy was very artistic and she took up photography for her freshman year of high school, and she took a class at the local

library. Tammy was described by her friends as a great listener. She had a knack for brightening everyone's days, always had a smile on her face, and one friend said that she had 6 feet of personality and a 5 foot 2 body. And her friends and family often joked that she kinda had this talent for being able to take a nap anywhere and everywhere that she wanted to. She reportedly loved cats cats both the comic strip Garfield and her own cat whose name was Bob, whom she can be seen posing in many

pictures with. She was a huge fan of James Dean and Beverly Hills 90210. She graduated high school in 1989 and headed to a small private liberal arts college with just about 1600 students called Grinnell College all the way over in Grinnell, Iowa, which was pretty far from home being about four states away. Also, the town itself is much smaller than what she was used to, hosting fewer than 10,000 people, but Grinnell is nicknamed by locals the Jewel of the Prairie, so she was excited to just kind of give it a try.

Tammy decided to pursue her academic, artistic, and athletic passions, majoring in Spanish and art, while playing on both the soccer and rugby teams, and on top of all of that, she was also the photo editor for her school's paper. And during her junior year of college, she studied abroad in Madrid, Spain. So she was really making things happen for herself and she just wasn't afraid to fill up her plate. So after she graduated from high school,

Tammy's parents left South Carolina altogether and they relocated to Marlton, New Jersey. I think it's Marlton. And she began spending summers and holidays there. So she was not going back to South Carolina anymore, but now to this kind of new home of New Jersey, which is probably kind of confusing to go home, but it's in a different state that you've never lived in.

Right, you're just away at college, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, my actual home is in a completely different place. Exactly, but she did go there and visit whenever she could, because like I said earlier, she and her family were very close. So the summer before her senior year of college, 21-year-old Tammy was at home with her family in New Jersey.

And she had plans to take a road trip back to Iowa with her younger brother, Darren, stopping in Chicago to drop him off at his school before arriving at her own school a bit earlier than needed. So they were going to do this trip together, return to college together, which sounds really fun. Yeah, it makes sense.

And then she was going to just plan on getting to school a little earlier. And the reason for this is because she wanted to do this photo shoot of one of Grinnell's sports teams for the school paper. So that's why she was getting to her campus before she really needed to be there. Right. And of course the time we worked out with her brother so might as well. Now Tammy's 1985 Pontiac T1000 hatchback was known to be quite temperamental, but she and Darren were pretty optimistic for their road trip. They set out on August 21st, 1992, stopping for the night in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

to stay with family. After an eight hour drive, they finally reached Evanston, Illinois, where Darren was attending Northwestern, but it had not been smooth sailing. Tammy's car was having trouble with its brakes and engine, and it stalled twice along their way. So Tammy spent the night of August 22, 1992,

at the home of Amy Stern, a friend from her study abroad program who happened to live in Evanston. The siblings, Tammy and Deren, called home that night just as they had the night before to just let their parents know that they had arrived safely at their next destination. Because of course, their parents are concerned. These are their two half of their kids are on this road trip together in a temperamental car. One of the exactings

good. So the next day, August 23rd, 1992, after saying goodbye to Darren and his girlfriend, Tammy set out on the final leg of her trip to Grinnell, but she would be alone this time. It was supposed to be just a five-hour drive, so 293 miles or 471 kilometers, pretty much a straight shot west down I-80. And Darin had instructed Tammy to pull over and add water to the radiator if the engine overheated, and then just to wait on the shoulder until it cooled down, because when they had to stop the other couple of times, he was the one kind of helping

and then instructing her, this is what you do if this happens again. So at some point, Tammy stopped for lunch at a hearty's, which is a fast food restaurant, but other than that, it seemed to start as an uneventful trip, and a short day in comparison to the others on the drive. But then Sunday night arrived. Tammy's parents waited for a call confirming that she'd reached her school safely, but it never came.

Worried, her mother Joanne called Grinnell to ask that administration's check on her and make sure that everything was all right. Her friends even started making homemade posters to put up around campus, telling her to quote, call her mom since this is right before cell phones became popular, assuming that she would get in late that night or early the next morning. Yeah, so I think these posters were almost in a way kind of a joke, you know, but also because they really did think that she was going to eventually get there.

This wasn't like official missing posters. Right. Nobody assumed that she was just never going to show up. Yeah, absolutely. So I think this was kind of like, they were looking for her, but they kind of had this funny little, oh, call your mom, you know, but it's much more serious than that little did they know.

Yeah, and sadly, the next morning, Monday, August 24th, Joanne and Hank still hadn't heard anything from their daughter. So they decided to report her missing, especially knowing that Tammy had been driving by herself and she had car troubles, something could have happened at any point along the way. And that thought was obviously just too much to bear.

Yeah, because anything could have happened, like you said, at any point along the way, and that's like, how would you possibly figure out where she was? Exactly, you can't determine. I mean, there's five hours or 293 miles, like you said, yeah, of anything could happen here. And like what jurisdiction?

You know, this is like, this is trouble. Right, so the police took down as many details as they could, but because it had only been about 24 hours, they didn't take it seriously just yet, with Tammy, of course, being 21 years old, and it's still technically being her summer break. And actually Joanne recalls them saying that they guessed she had just run off with a boyfriend. But Tammy's mother objected that she wasn't seeing anyone, and wasn't interested in

seeing anyone, and that the two had just talked about it before she left to go back to school while Tammy was home in New Jersey. However, authorities still didn't seem concerned, but Joanne knew her daughter and knew that something was wrong, so she dropped everything and headed to Grinnell, Iowa to find Tammy herself. Meanwhile, on an isolated stretch of IAD near Utica, Illinois, more than a mile from any exit, business, or residence, a state trooper discovered a white car with new Jersey plates. For context, this location was just about two hours from Tammy's Brothers College town, Evanston, and it is in fact on the way to Grinnell.

So if you drive from Utica's straight west, essentially, the way to Grinnell. So if you drive from Utica straight west, essentially you will reach Grinnell in three hours time. The state trooper noticed that the car was locked and left on the side of the highway, so he ticketed it and made a note to check on it later. And he did just that the following day. And when it was still there the next day, the car was towed

to an impound lot, and the registered owners were contacted. Well guess who the registered owners were? Hank and Joanne Zawiki. Considering they had just attempted to report their daughter missing and now her car was found abandoned on the side of a highway, police finally started taking the case more seriously and they deemed it a missing person's investigation. When officers examined her car at the Toa lot, they noticed some things. So there are a few important details about the state in which her car was left, which

I will explain now. There didn't seem to be any sign of a struggle, and there was no blood or strange fingerprints. The doors were locked, indicating she was likely planning on coming back to it, especially because most of her belongings were left inside. All of her luggage lay inside, still neatly packed in the back, accompanied by her favorite stuffed animal, which her mom said she took everywhere with her. Her hearties cup, the fast food restaurant, was still in the cup holder, and the only things missing were her purse, her keys, her wallet, and her beloved Canon camera. So to me, right off the bat,

it seems like the car had broken down. She probably got out, locked the doors. Someone came by, said, hey, I can take you to a place so you can get some help or whatever. I don't even know. Right, or I'll give you ride to somewhere you can use a phone, something like that. Something like that. Absolutely.

And then she just disappeared. Yeah, because there was no sign of a struggle. So it didn't necessarily seem at this point like anybody had moved her car, like anybody had done anything to her in the car, but more so just like the situation you said. So that's what they're thinking, but then they're like, well, then why haven't we heard from her?

And it's so interesting just these little details that help with this type of investigation, just the fact that the doors were locked, the fact that things were still left in the car. Like, the fact that you can see those details and kind of... Faggot out. Faggot out.

What happened here is kind of incredible. Yeah, totally agree. So Tammy's friends and family, along with the Grinnell community, mobilized together to search for Tammy. Her college friend and soccer team teammate, Jen Dowd, set up a makeshift headquarters at her parents' home in Chicago.

Jen said that she and her dad drove up and down those roads near mile marker 83, where her car was found. And they looked for clues, circulated missing posters, and even put the word out on the CB radios of truckers, hoping that someone on the highway had seen Tammy. And they're so amazing, it's smart for doing this because obviously the police are now involved and they're doing their own investigation,

but the family is so worried knowing like, this looks really bad and she could be anywhere. So let's do everything we can. Let's get boots on the ground and let's try to find her too. Yeah, ingenious move, you know, hooking up with these truckers, with the CB radios, because they're driving those highways all the time.

Yeah, they see shit. Yeah, they see shit. So potential witnesses there. And more than a dozen calls came in with the same troubling story. Witnesses had seen her on the side of the road very clearly struggling with her car. Now reports indicated that she was stranded

between the hours of 3.15 and 4.10 pm. So in the middle of the day, and noted that her hood was up with some witnesses recalling her hovering over it. Which would indicate that she was having car troubles. Right. That she was maybe trying to fix something or put water in the radiator or whatever. Yeah, like her brother had instructed her to do. Exactly. And a few people had apparently also stopped to help her. But none of these people reported helping enough to get

her back on the road. So she remained there. And it's also possible that putting water in the radiator wouldn't fix this new problem. Maybe there was so much wear being put on her car, so many miles that her car just couldn't handle it. And this was a bigger issue than just, you know, adding water to the radiator. And that's why people couldn't help her. Right. But, you know, the really interesting thing here

is the fact that multiple witnesses also reported seeing a truck pulled over with Tammy. So kind of interesting here. Now the truck was described as a white semi-truck with a faded, unintelligible logo, and two brownish orange or rust-colored diagonal stripes along the side. Tammy's task force began circulating posters with the description of this truck, hoping that someone would know or work with the driver. And the problem with cases like this

that occur on a highway or in a car is that people can be taken anywhere, like we've said in this episode, but even worse, I mean, the I-80 literally crosses the entire country. It starts in San Francisco and it spans through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and finally New Jersey.

Meaning, if someone had stopped to help her and they actually abducted her, they could have escaped to anywhere with her, leaving her car on the side of the highway. And the scary thing is that if these witnesses, if what these witnesses are saying is true, then it's potentially like drivers drive all the way across country. And they're in truckers, yeah. And you don't think anything of it. Yeah. You don't think anything of a trucker driving because that's what they do.

Because that's what they do. Absolutely. They're dealt with. Right. So, you know, you would just never know. But also, just like you had mentioned, Heath, that multiple people did stop to help her, to try to really, truly help her.

So is this truck one of those people, or did this truck have something to do with her disappearance? Right, that's the question there. So efforts kept up in the search, but sadly, little progress was made toward finding Tammy, or figuring out what really happened to her. That is, until September 1st, 1992, nine days after her disappearance.

Lonnie Demote was driving down I-44 in rural Missouri, headed toward a job in Joplin, Missouri. It was raining heavily and was driving a pickup truck with his tools in the back. He pulled over at an on-ramp by mile 33 near Stotz City to pull his tools in the front of the cab of his truck since it was raining. As soon as he stepped out of the truck, he knew that there was something wrong.

He described smelling something that he thought was a dead cow. Instead, he saw what he said was clearly a human body wrapped in a red blanket and covered in bugs. Lonnie drove to the nearest telephone to report it to the police, and since he was a voluntary firefighter, he offered to help the responding officer move the body when they arrived to the scene, which some people might look at as suspicious if you're trying to move the body, but maybe he really was just trying to help here. So, they cut the blanket open, revealing a petite body wrapped in a sheet and duct taped.

The body was immediately taken a few hours drive away to the University of Missouri Medical Center in Columbia, Missouri to be examined. The coroner would not allow the family members of any missing persons to attempt to identify the body because it was so badly decomposed. And because of this detail, investigators initially thought that it may not have been Tammy, also because the person's hair was an Auburn color while Tammy was blonde. But that was eventually proven to be due to the red dirt at the Discovery site and from the die of the blanket, you know, because she was wrapped in a red blanket. Three days after the discovery,

on September 4th, 1992, dental records confirmed that the body they found was 21-year-old Tammy Zowiki. When dental records confirmed the body to be Tammy's, the news absolutely devastated her tight-knit family, friends, and the entire Grinnell community. After all, she was about to start her senior year of college, and then she would finally be free to pursue all of her dreams in the real world. Tammy was found more than 500 miles or 800 kilometers from her car, and in a different direction

than she was traveling. As we've mentioned a couple of times already, she was a straight shot west into Iowa from Illinois, as the states are right next to each other, but Missouri is the state directly south west of Illinois, and directly underneath or south of Iowa. Stutt City in particular is in the very southwestern corner of Missouri as well, making it a whole 7 hour drive from Utica, Illinois. is in the very south-western corner of Missouri as well, making it a whole seven-hour drive from Utica, Illinois. Meaning, for Tammy to get to this location, someone would have had to have hopped off of the I-80 and traveled south on numerous other highways.

Right, so this is a, I mean, this is a, this is very far away, which it kind of makes you think maybe it was a trucker because drivers do drive on the highways mile after mile hundreds of miles Because 500 miles for a regular person is very far and I would see why somebody would do this if they're trying to hide a body But the fact that it was found so quickly that she was found so quickly is very alarming too. Yeah, and off the side of a road Yeah, so it's safe to say that the tech dives really had detectives It's safe to say that detectives really had their work cut out for them They had no leads no murder weapon and no evidence plus a nine-day window for the crime to have occurred

Illinois State Police special agent Martin McCarthy wondered if she may have been dead for four or five days already by the time she was found, and as we said, she was already badly decomposed. It was late summer in southwest Missouri, known to be sweltering and humid. Yeah, very humid. So this would make sense with her surroundings. And with the possibility of her body having been in the sun for days, who knows how far her killer could have gotten,

or how much the decomposition could affect evidence that they would be able to obtain from the autopsy. Tammy was recovered wearing a t-shirt and cut off sweatshorts with a sizeable piece missing. Her hair was pulled back and she was believed to have been wearing her contacts instead of her glasses. She was also wearing a green watch with an umbrella on the face that played raindrops

keep falling on my head. A blue jacket with red riding that belonged to her brother, Darren, was also missing from the car, and to believe that Tammy may have taken it with her wherever she went, although it was never recovered. Her camera, person, contents, and green watch were not discarded with the body. And the whole cutout of the shorts that she was found wearing was confirmed by her family to be a patch for the St. Giles soccer club that she belonged to in her hometown of Greenville, South Carolina that had been taken from the shorts. So I really wonder why this happened.

It could have happened in a struggle like maybe it ripped off in a struggle and their her killer got rid of it alongside her other belongings, discarding them God knows where, potentially along that 500 mile route. Yeah, well, police also believe that it's possibly like a trophy or a souvenir from her killer. Right, definitely possible. Or also just a way for her to go unidentified for longer. Right. Like, no identifiable pieces of clothing or something like that. I don't know. Yeah, it makes sense. So while an autopsy was underway and please continue their

investigation, Tammy's family and loved ones focused on celebrating her life and honoring her memory with various memorials, including one at her high school, East Side High School, and one in the town of Grinnell, Iowa where she had been attending college. Then when her remains were released to the Zwicky family, she was buried in her home state of Pennsylvania to be buried by her grandmother and cousin who had passed away before her. Alongside this burial, there was a funeral held for Tammy at the same Catholic church where her parents were married, so obviously this was a very, for Tammy at the same Catholic church where her parents were married. So obviously this was a very, very emotional thing for them.

So on to the autopsy, which unfortunately seemed to bring more questions than answers. Tammy had been sexually assaulted before her death, and her official cause of death was internal bleeding due to eight stab wounds, no more than half an inch wide to her chest circulating around her heart like almost in a ritualistic fashion. Like it was like a circle of stab wounds. It's so creepy. Very creepy. She also had a gash on her right bicep, which was probably a defense wound from a struggle, but there was little blood on her clothes and the blankets that she had been wrapped in, which led investigators to believe that she had been transported from somewhere else, meaning she was not killed where she was found.

Something that aided in her death as well was blunt force trauma to her head. Officer McCarthy and his team pleaded with the public for more information, and hundreds of calls began to flood in. Now as we mentioned earlier, witnesses did see someone with a truck or a semi-truck, more specifically, helping Timmy on the side of the road, and this guy was described as a white man between the ages of 30 and 45, standing at 6 feet tall with a bushy shoulder length hair. But with all these similar calls coming in, one in particular became an important lead for investigators.

A woman called and reported seeing a tall and scraggly haired man in a baseball hat driving a green pickup truck. And she said that he had positioned his truck to face her Pontiac as if he was giving her a jump. So this is like a different, same kind of description for the guy, but different description for the truck. But as we mentioned, there seemed to be multiple people stopping.

Right. The woman was in the car with her kids at the time, so she wasn't able to stop but she told detectives later that she had a bad feeling about this guy and later regretted not stopping to help Tammy. A few months later the woman who was a nurse had an appointment with a patient and his wife and as soon as she saw him she knew it was the man that she had seen that day with Tammy. Wow, that's true. So crazy. What are the chances? So she called police

right away and divulged what she knew. And thus police officially had their first suspect. This man was 32-year-old Lonnie Beerbrote. Born on June 29th, 1960 in Orlando, Florida, Lonnie was primarily raised in La Salle, Illinois, which is only a few miles away from where Tammy's car was found, and he and his wife lived in Sarcoxie, Missouri, only a few miles away from where Tammy's body was found. Which means that he is familiar with both the area her car was found and where her body was. Exactly. Exactly.

He knows these areas. Not only that, but Lonnie was a convicted felon who had just come off of serving a 20-year sentence. And what was he in prison for you ask? Well, he committed multiple armed robberies and was considered a violent felon so he received concurrent 20-year sentences for these crimes. But he was released on parole in 1990,

just two years before Tammy's murder, and after being released from prison, Lonnie began working as a trucker. And this is a completely different person than the other Lonnie who found Tammy's body. You know, just funny enough, they happened to have the same first name. Yeah, funny enough.

So this Lonnie that we're talking about was looking like a pretty good suspect and police zeroed in on him. The first thing they wanted to do was comb his car for DNA, of course, because if that was the truck that he had been driving the day of Tammy's supposed abduction, she would have been in that car with him.

Unfortunately, it turns out that he had just sold his car. How convenient and not suspicious at all, right? We always talk about this too. Well, I mean, come on, like you can't all do that. Yeah. That is so suspicious. Right. And also, it had been deep cleaned, likely wiping any trace of

evidence. So you might say, well, of course, it was clean if it was sold. Yeah, I get that. But, you know, this is very unfortunate because if he if he is the guy, now how can we know? Yeah, true. But a bit surprisingly, Lonnie agreed to give a DNA sample, but police didn't have much of a sample from her body to go off of to compare his two. So get this, he was just released from questioning. Like, they were like, we can't use this. There's like, there's nothing else we can do. Yeah, there's nothing else we can do.

So the search seemed to turn cold once again, and police circled back to the white semi truck since it made sense that a trucker had taken her as she was found so far from where she was abducted from. But this is what's annoying, is like because Lonnie Beerbroe was a trucker too and he was familiar with both areas that happened to be 500 miles apart, like how do you happen to have knowledge

of both of these areas, you know? And you're being looked at for this case. It's just really a bummer that they just let them go because they didn't know what else to do with them. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of red flags, but what, I mean, really, what can they do? I know, but he could be the guy like, it's just frustrating. So less than a year after Tammy was killed, a 16 year old girl named Raina Ryson was murdered in Laport, Indiana, and we covered her case in episode 170 of Going West just a couple months ago.

Someone who is briefly considered a person of interest in her case was a man named Larry D. Hall, who is a horrible man who is believed to have murdered up to 45 women in the Midwest. And in 1994, he had confessed to murdering at least four. Due to him being an active serial killer in the Midwest at the time Tammy went missing, he was believed to have possibly been involved. But Larry never admitted to killing her and there was absolutely no evidence to tie him to her murder, especially without his cooperation, though it's definitely still possible, but this is just, this is totally speculation. There's no evidence. Yeah, so broad. Yeah, it's like, it's like, oh yeah, he killed a bunch of women in the Midwest.

But who knows how many other serial killers or killers are lurking the Midwest in 1992? Probably a good amount. Yeah, and I'm not trying to like stick up for this piece of shit in any way, but it's like, oh, I'll double do it. But it's like, they don't really have any other, anything else to really go off of there. Right, well that's why he, you know, he was never charged or he, he was in a question because he wouldn't cooperate. Exactly. So it's like, nothing was done with him, but yeah, just total speculation here.

But interesting thought from investigators. Yeah, I mean, it's fair because he was a serial killer, but yeah, carrying on. So two years after Tammy's body was found, another suspect emerged. 38-year-old James Mackie, a truck driver from Tampa, Florida, who was convicted of a rape nearby. On March 31, 1994, James was arrested by mall security officers after a woman explained that James tried to assault her in a payphone booth. Luckily, police were hot on his trail and found him hiding under a parked car, thus resulting in his arrest.

And under the car, they found the woman's bra that James had taken as well as pornographic material, so it was very clear that the attempted assault had taken place. So because of this attack, police began looking at him for multiple other sexual attacks, and even murders in the Midwest, including Tammy's case, because the day she went missing, James Mackey had traveled on I-80 for his trucking job. However, James cooperated with police and this theory that he was involved in Tammy's case was short-lived as his work travel logs put him more than 100 miles away at the time of her disappearance. So, you know, unfortunately, this was kind of out the window. Yeah, and again, the trail did go cold here. In 2001, you know, years later,

Officer Michael McCarthy retired, and it seemed like almost 10 years later, Tammy's loved ones, you know, may never have the closure that they deserve because all this time is passing and there's all these potential suspects who are just being let go because there's not enough on them. But on July 12th, 2007, so another handful of years later, almost 15 years after Tammy's death, a serial killer named Bruce Mendenhall was apprehended at a truck stop in Nashville, Tennessee. He had been a trucker for 20 years and has believed to have victims all across the US, which is really scary to think. I mean, there's a lot of truck driver killers.

What's up with that? I mean, we've got like Keith Jesperson up here in the Pacific Northwest. I know, but even Justin is case alone. There's so many. There's just so many. It's horrifying. So his truck had contained the blood and DNA

of multiple women. So that's why it's believed that he has all these victims across the US. And he was also known to wrap them in plastic and duct tape after he killed them, which is the state that Tammy was was found in. Yeah. Bruce was convicted of killing four young women, but is believed to have as many as nine victims across eight different states.

Now, while it's still possible that Bruce could have been Tammy's killer, it's kind of unlikely because all of his other victims were sex workers that he solicited before trapping, assaulting, and killing them. And he's currently serving a life sentence in prison, and at the time that he was out killing people and these young women, he had a wife and two daughters at home.

Right, so the MO just kind of doesn't really match up with him. But again, it's like any of these are technically possible because all of these men were truckers in the area, but that's not enough to point to somebody being the murderer of a specific person. Absolutely. So, in 2012, Lieutenant Jeffrey Padilla was appointed to head up a special task force to

focus on Tammy's murder. He started fresh from day one of the 1992 investigation. He also submitted a request to the prestigious Vidydox Society for help with Tammy's case. The Vydox Society is a members-only organization of current and former police officers, forensic investigators, psychologists, FBI agents, and more. They accept very few cases, and those have to be submitted for careful consideration by law enforcement. They were able to retest DNA samples to attempt to find another lead in Tammy's case, but

what ended up happening is that it officially cleared one of their former suspects, Lonnie Beerbrout, who by this point had passed away in 2002. And this is great because in my head, he had been very suspicious, the fact that he had known both of these areas and that he was a truck driver and that he was a criminal. So it's good that they at least could knock him off since he's the one who sold his car. Like he was looking very suspicious.

So the fact that they could say, due to DNA evidence, we are ruling him out. That is fantastic. That's the amazing thing about DNA. Absolutely. Well, another new suspect emerged in 2020, when 59-year-old Clark Perry Baldwin, a long-haul trucker from Iowa, was arrested for the murders of three young women in the Midwest that took place in 1991 and 1992.

However, DNA evidence eventually cleared him from any involvement in Tammy's case as well, although police will not publicly release why. And since then, there have been no public leads. Tragically, Tammy's dad Hank passed away in 2015, never able to see justice served for his daughter. But the rest of the family is still holding out for answers. So if you want to join in on the conversation, you can join the Facebook group called Who Killed Tammy's Wiki with almost 4,000 members.

And if you have any information, please call the Illinois State Police Tip Line at 815-726-6377. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and on Friday we'll have the 200th episode of Going West. Yes, please, please again, if you have any questions for Heath and I it feels so weird to be like Oh, what do you have to ask us like is it so important but we're not important We have gotten a bunch of requests for for another Q&A and we figured we might as well update it

With the biggest question so far being why do you guys move so much so find out that answer and more on Friday But remember please it's not just a Q&A We're actually gonna be releasing these two kind please, it's not just a Q&A we're actually gonna be releasing these two kind of separate episodes, if you will. The Q&A, and then we're also going to have episode 200, which is crazy and I can't wait to talk about it. Yeah, it's a really, really interesting case. And very historic too.

A lot of people know, a lot of people know like the story of it, but they don't know the truth behind it. Yes, oh my God, you guys are really like, what is it? But please tune in, it's going to be a very, I don't wanna say fun case, cause obviously it is true crime,

it's a tragic thing that happened, but again, there is this different spin on it, that kind of, oh God, I can't say it without giving it away. Anyway, you're just gonna have to tune in. Yeah, so thank you guys so much for listening. And if you want more episodes going west, head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast. All right guys, so for everybody out there in the world,

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