The Deck - Timothy Zimmerman (8 of Spades, Indiana)

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Our card this week is Timothy Zimmerman, the 8 of Spades from Indiana. Timothy Zimmerman, an active member of his community and property owner in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was violently murdered at one of his properties in 2007. Despite several clues being left behind at the messy crime scene, Timothy’s homicide has never been solved. If you know anything about the stabbing death of Timothy Zimmerman in 2007, call the Fort Wayne Crime Stoppers at 260-436-STOP (7867) or the Fort Wayne Police Department at 260-427-1222.  In honor of National DNA Day, Ashley and audiochuck have partnered with an Indy based cidery to release a limited edition cider called Cheers For Chuck. Cheers For Chuck cider helps solve cold cases - with every purchase, a portion of proceeds goes to Season of Justice. A cider that can crack crime? We'll cheers to that! This is an extremely limited drop, so visit cheersforchuckcider.com to get your order in before it sells out.  View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/timothy-zimmermanLet us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo apply for a Cold Case Playing Card grant through Season of Justice, please visit www.seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! 

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to fill you in on something special that AudioChuck's been up to. Last Thursday was National DNA Day, and in honor of that special day, we collaborated with another female-owned Indianapolis business, Ash and Elm Cider Company, to produce our very own limited edition cider, Cheers for Chuck. Not only does it taste delicious, I actually helped pick the flavor myself, but all of AudioChuck's proceeds will be going straight to the nonprofit I founded, Season of Justice.

As many of you know by now, Season of Justice is an organization dedicated to providing funding for investigative agencies and families to help solve cold cases. But none of that is possible without your support. And what better way to support than buying cider? Help us crack cold cases by heading over to cheersforchucksider.com to order a case

of your very own limited edition Cheers for Chuck. And I say limited, there are very few packs left. And make sure while you're there, you check out Season of Justice to learn more about them and to possibly make a donation straight to them. There'll be a link on the Cheers for Chuck site, but you can also go directly to seasonofjustice.org to learn more about them or to donate.

Just one donation makes a big impact for the families that are tirelessly searching for answers, just like the family of our victim today. So our first card this week is Timothy Zimmerman, the eight of spades from Indiana. 57 year old Tim was a popular guy who was loved by many. He spent his days brightening other peoples, loving those around him and making a difference in his community. But on one cold Thursday evening in 2007, someone decided to brutally put an end to all of that. And although no one has ever been charged with his murder,

investigators have long suspected their killer has been right in front of them the entire time. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It was around 3.30 in the afternoon on April 12, 2007, and Jim Zimmerman had just gotten home from work when he got a call from his brother and business partner, Tim. Tim was calling to let him know that he was about to meet with a prospective tenant who'd expressed interest in one of the units that they owned and managed. It was a vacant one bed, one bath unit

that was part of this little fourplex in the heart of Fort Wayne, Indiana. And this specific fourplex was an old home that had been converted into four different apartments, two on the second floor and two on the first. And the vacant unit he'd been showing that day was on the second floor. But right away, something felt off to Jim. This guy, the prospective tenant, was more than interested in this unit. Tim said the man had already toured the apartment twice before. I said, well, that sounds a little fishy. What's going on?

And he says, well, he wants to show it to his girlfriend because she's going to move in there too. And he wants to make sure that she likes it before he leases it. And okay, that's fair. Probably a good idea for both tenants to take a look at the property before signing a lease. But going for three separate tours, I don't know about you, but I've never exceeded two. And one was usually plenty. So putting myself in Jim's shoes,

I would have had the same nagging feeling in that moment. But Tim assured him it was fine, so he didn't protest any further. After that call, Jim went on with his day. But when late evening rolled around, he decided to reach out to his brother to see how everything went. I called him and he didn't answer.

I thought, well, he was going to dinner with his girlfriend, so I didn't bother him. A lot of times he wouldn't answer his phone if he was busy doing something else. That's the way Tim was. Tim's longtime girlfriend was Cyndia Peterson. And it was, after all, her birthday, so it would be logical that they might have plans, so Jim didn't really worry. But the following day, as Jim continued phoning Tim and continued getting nothing but voicemail, he began to grow concerned.

Not only were Jim and Tim brothers and business partners, they were also best friends. I mean, they pretty much talked on the phone every single day, oftentimes multiple times a day. And yes, Tim was a very busy guy. Not only we see the landlord of a dozen plus units in Fort Wayne alongside Jim, but Tim was also a pretty active realtor. So he had plenty of reasonable excuses for not answering the phone. He'd pretty much spent the whole day waiting for a callback.

But around 6 p.m. when the phone rang, it wasn't Tim. It was one of their tenants, specifically one of the tenants who lived in that fourplex that Jim had been showing the day prior. We got a call from Miss Virginia. She lived in the downstairs apartment. She called me and said that his truck was there all night long and parked out front, out next to the apartment house

and didn't know what's going on. She didn't hear any noise upstairs or anything. So I says, well, I'm sure he's probably out with one of his buddies parked his truck there and went out with one of his buddies the night before drinking or something and stayed at their place. But Jim wouldn't be able to hold on to that half-baked assumption much longer, because a few moments later, Miss Virginia called right back. Then she called back and said the police were there and they wanted to get in the apartment upstairs.

They wanted the keys to it, because it was the only empty apartment. Jim wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew it couldn't be anything good. With a pit in his stomach, he and his wife Sue drove the 30-some minutes from their home to this little apartment property to unlock the door and figure out what was going on. And that had to have been one of the longest half hours of Jim's life, questions swirling in his head. But when he finally got to the fourplex, police started filling in the picture for him.

They said they'd gotten a missing persons report on him from his girlfriend, Cyndia. Now there's a discrepancy here with my sources about when she actually made that call, because Fort Wayne police detective Brian Martin, who we spoke with for this episode, said that it was earlier that same day. And there's an article from the local paper back in the day

that agrees with that timeline. But Jim told us that he recalls police saying Cyndia said that it was earlier that same day. And there's an article from the local paper back in the day that agrees with that timeline. But Jim told us that he recalls police saying Cindy had placed the call the day before, which would have been Thursday evening on her birthday. And of course, wouldn't you know it, there were actually two old newspaper reports agreeing with that narrative too.

But whether it was Thursday or Friday, the details of what Cindy had told police remain the same. She said that she was concerned because she and Tim had plans for her birthday that he had completely missed out on, without so much as a call. Cyndia and Tim had been dating for the past five or six years. They lived together. So when he didn't come home that night either, she reported him missing. And props where props are due, because instead of giving the usual, he's an adult, he can go missing if he wants to response, that we typically see in cases like this, Fort Wayne PD actually started investigating right away, starting by going around to some of his rental

properties. And that's when they found his truck at the Fourplex. Once Jim understood what was happening, he, of course, agreed to let them in and take a look around. Now, in order to get to the vacant unit upstairs, you had to use a key to unlock an exterior door on the first floor, then walk up an interior set of stairs, then open the unit door at the top of the staircase. But the weird part was, when Jim went to that first door, it was already unlocked. We got up to the apartment door upstairs and the key didn't fit. That's odd, you know, if somebody changed the keys and if he would have done it, I thought

he would have told me about it or give me a set of keys for it. He and I both had a set of keys for the whole apartment. And this one didn't fit. So I backed up, turned around and tried to kick it open. And I guess I wasn't big enough. It's one of the larger policemen. He did the same thing.

It flew right open for me. And I followed the officer in that kicked the door open. It was dark when we went in. He had his flashlight on. He turned right around and pushed me out. So this is a crime scene. You get out and everybody stay out. As Jim was ushered downstairs,

little did he know that what police were uncovering was more than just a crime scene. It was one of the most brutal homicide scenes that these officers had ever seen. Detective Brian Martin wasn't there that day, but through reading the reports of those who were, he's gotten a clear understanding of just how shocking that scene was. Tim was located on the floor.

He was covered in blood. The apartment had blood on the walls, on the furniture, on the floor, in nearly every room. A lot of it was blood spatter, which would be indicative of some kind of very intense wound that would cause blood to then come out of the body. And just like it sounds splatter, there were smudges in blood from what appeared to be arms and clothing. And it appeared that there was quite a struggle

that had happened. Tim had some pretty massive injuries to his head and neck area, as well as his torso and chest area, and what we call defensive wounds on the arms and hands. It's very common during a knife or sharp edge weapon attack that the assailant will also be cut because the nature of that kind of assault

is down and dirty, if you will. And oftentimes, blood can be very slippery and when stabbing someone, it will cause the hand on the knife, our edged weapon, to become bloody and then slip down onto the blade itself. So the perpetrator or assailant oftentimes will cut their hand.

Technicians collected numerous samples to be sent off for testing. Meanwhile, investigators were looking at another piece of evidence, something they don't usually get in cases like this. One thing that was very noticeable to us, next to Tim's body, where he had been bleeding, somebody had stepped and left a shoe impression. They later learned that the shoe was a size 12 Nike Pump-style shoe.

And in addition to the print, investigators were also able to find some helpful context clues. We saw that Tim's glasses appeared to be on a table. There was an ink pen laying on the table in close proximity to the glasses, and there was a rental agreement that was laying right there as well. The glasses were laid on the table in such a way that it didn't appear that they were knocked off of Tim or thrown down from Tim. It appeared that they were sat there. And with blood spatter that was on them, it appeared the glasses were sitting on the table prior to the attack taking place. I know what you're wondering, and no, the rental agreement had not been filled in or even signed.

There was no tenant name on it at all. Would have been nice though, right? Though in all likelihood, any name on it might not have been real. Because this whole thing seemed planned. Like Tim had sat down with the rental agreement, taken off his glasses, then been attacked from behind. Investigators could tell that the assault that ensued was not only violent, but would have been long and loud. Meaning someone had to have heard it, especially considering the apartment was surrounded by three other

occupied units. But when police went and talked to those tenants in those occupied units, no one had heard a peep, which to investigators meant that none of them could have been home at the time of the attack. Which also draws your mind to wonder, is that a coincidence that no one else was home? Is it just dumb luck for the perpetrator? Because an assault like this had to have been very noisy, very violent, a lot of yelling, a lot of slamming around on walls and furniture being knocked over.

So it makes your detective brain wonder, was this somebody who knew well enough that no one else would be home when they scheduled this time to go look at the apartment, you know, to be a potential renter? Was this a ploy to draw Tim into the apartment knowing that no one else would be around to hear and see what was happening?

It makes you think about a lot of different things and a lot of different things and a lot of different possibilities. Was it coincidence? Absolutely, it could have been coincidence. Was it planned? Well, if it was planned, somebody had to have known schedules

or at least been doing a little bit of surveillance and homework of their own to know that the other occupants of the home were gone. Because no one had witnessed or heard anything, police couldn't know for sure when exactly the attack took place. But pulling from the account of a next-door neighbor, who said she saw Tim outside Thursday morning doing artwork, and Jim's knowledge of when Tim was meeting with that prospective

tenant, and presumably when other tenants arrived home, investigators estimated Tim's murder occurred between 5 and 7 p.m. on Thursday. But that wasn't the only info that they gleaned from talking with tenants, neighbors, and Jim. Investigators quickly found themselves a person of interest too, one tenant in particular who had been feuding with Tim. Detective Martin said the tenant in question

had been late on rent a few times, and that's what caused the rift. But Jim told us that their issues ran even deeper than that. Apparently, this tenant's boyfriend — let's call him Corey — had been living at the fourplex with the tenant. But about a month before all of this, Tim and Jim found out that Corey had had some run-ins with the law, and the dude was actually dealing drugs out of the apartment. So naturally, Jim and Tim wanted him out of there. So I went up there with Tim and Tim told him he had to leave and he started getting smart.

So I said something to him. I said, you better get your butt out of here. I said, you're not missing Tim. Jim said the guy didn't move out right away. And when he eventually did, he didn't wind up far, maybe a mile, mile and a half away. Now whether or not police knew about that specific run-in at this point, I don't know. But what I do know is that they zeroed in on this guy, Corey, quickly. So quickly, in fact, that before the night was over, investigators had a search warrant for his place, and they were sitting down to speak with him face to face. He couldn't provide a whole lot of information.

He wasn't there at the time when it happened, and he had heard through the grapevine, through his girlfriend, that police were investigating Tim's murder, and that's all he really knew. They didn't end up finding anything incriminating at his place either. So police were back to square one, or what probably should have been square one, trying to identify that prospective tenant who was meeting with Tim. Jim told investigators that when he'd spoken to Tim on the phone Thursday, Tim had given him a name. But now, for the life of him, Jim couldn't remember the name.

But investigators weren't too worried, because they were sure that Tim must have written the guy's name or number down somewhere, especially since the guy had viewed this place two times before. Detectives tried to go through his calendar in his books, but found nothing indicating who he was meeting or a time and date of a meeting. They turned to Tim's cell phone next. Whether they retrieved that from the apartment or his truck is a little unclear, but they were able to pull a full list of the numbers that he'd interacted with leading up to his death. I know that the numbers that were located were thoroughly vetted and those individuals are talked to and no information came from the numbers.

One or two of the numbers were actually written on like scratch paper or post a note that we were able to investigate and they didn't come back to anything. Just business dealings from other parts of Tim's life. This is one of those times in a case where I tend to spiral because the answer feels like it has to be right there, right in front of our faces, right? Because whoever this prospective tenant was, they had to have been communicating with Tim somehow. If it wasn't through phone calls or text messages, maybe email? But that also would have been an easy thing to track down. I mean, maybe they had a verbal agreement to do this third tour at the time of the previous

tour, but even still, wouldn't there be some digital record of their communication at some point? We tried to follow up with Detective Martin after our interview to get a more clear understanding of what had been done back then versus recently to track down any digital communications, but he declined to comment on that. So back then, desperate for leads, in the following days, police did more interviews

with those closest to the case. And Tim's girlfriend, Cyndia, in particular, noted something odd that had been happening to her the day that Tim went missing. She stated that on Thursday she had received numerous hang up calls. Like somebody had been calling her phone and then not speaking, but as soon as she would answer they would just hang up. She said it happened a crazy amount of times. It came up private on caller ID. So therefore we don't know who that number is."

Detective Martin said that these calls were happening throughout the day Thursday. He didn't know specific times, so I don't know if the calls started happening after Tim was believed to have been killed or if they were truly going on all throughout the day Thursday. Detective Martin also wouldn't comment on whether or not there were private numbers on Tim's phone, either incoming or outgoing. Now, if this kind of thing were to happen today, police would likely be able to track down the caller. But with this being 2007, Detective Martin said that that just wasn't an option. So all investigators could do was document it and then move on. Cyndia didn't get any more calls like that, and while these could have been just innocent

prank calls, the timing was eerie. Especially when you consider what the implication is. If it was Tim's killer, and that's a big if, but if, then they knew Tim well enough to have his girlfriend's phone number. Not something I assume you normally pass out to every future tenant. While police were continuing on with their investigation, Jim was doing his own asking around and growing suspicious of one person in particular. 18-year-old Destin Taylor, who just happened to be Cyndia's son.

Now, Jim knew that Tim and Destin had a rocky relationship, to say the least. Destin didn't live with, to say the least. Destin didn't live with Cyndia and Tim at this point, but that didn't ease the tension between the two of them. Their fighting went further than the usual father-figure-and-teenage-son bickering, though. Jim told us that things had escalated to a scary level. He threatened Tim several times. He was gonna kill Tim while he's sleeping, slash his throat.

He took all the knives out of the house and hit him. And the kid says, well, that's okay, I'll just take a ball bat and beat you to death when you're sleeping." What exactly they were fighting over when those threats occurred, Jim didn't know. He told us that they'd fought at least once over how Destin treated his mother, and I know Destin did have frequent run-ins with the law, so maybe that had something to do with it. But standing out in Jim's mind more than the threats at this point was something that happened the night that Tim's body was found, something he couldn't shake. Jim said that he was standing outside the fourplex that night, behind the yellow tape,

waiting for an update from law enforcement, when all of a sudden, Destin showed up. He was all scratched up in his face. And then I started thinking, well, wonder why his face looks like that. Jim confronted Destin about his injuries, and Destin just brushed him off. He said that the scratches were from a slap fight with a friend, which, as I understand it,

a slap fight is where you take turns slapping each other across the face with an open hand, so I don't really understand how you get scratches doing that. Unless Destin was being sarcastic, like maybe he was implying that he and a friend had a full-on brawl and he was just joking, labeling it a slap fight. Who knows. But obviously, those scratches could have been from something much more sinister. And that's exactly what was going through Jim's head, especially now that he had had time to process something else

that wasn't quite adding up. Jim told our reporting team that Cynthia and Tim didn't have the healthiest relationship. Like I mentioned earlier, they'd been together for the past five or six years and they lived together, though it wasn't unheard of for Tim to not come home for days at a time because they'd gotten into a fight

and Cynthia had locked him out of the house. In fact, he always carried a pillow and a blanket in his vehicle because he wanted to be prepared in case he couldn't go home. And in all those instances of Tim being gone for days, not once had Cindy reported him missing. But, remember this time, she reported him missing within hours, or at least within 24 hours, depending on which timeline is true. And now that Jim was really thinking about it, why hadn't Cindy had taken the most basic step of calling him to see if he knew where his brother was before reporting him missing to police? I mean, she knew that Tim and Jim were almost always together, or at the very least, Jim

almost always knew Tim's whereabouts. Now, to be fair, as far as we know, they weren't in a fight that night. And they did have birthday plans, so maybe this time was different from all the rest. But it left Jim wondering if Cindy just had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Or maybe she knew something was. Even weirder than all of that, though, was what one of the tenants told Jim they saw a few hours after Tim's body was found. They claimed to have seen Destin and one of his friends prowling around the fourplex and

attempting to get into the vacant unit. You know, the crime scene. Supposedly, the tenant confronted Destin about this this and Destin claimed that he was just investigating. Also, Jim told us that police said the shoe print found at the crime scene was size 15, which he says is Destin's shoe size. But again, I do want to point out, Detective Martin told us the shoe print was size 12.

And then Detective Martin wouldn't confirm for us what Destin's actual shoe size was. So I don't know. Regardless, Jim wasn't the only one growing suspicious of Destin. Police were onto him too. His mother provided an alibi for him on the night of the homicide or the day of the homicide,

but also indicated after further questioning that she couldn't say 100% that he was there at her house the entire timeframe of the homicide, that he could have left for a period within there and she would not have known Which happens a lot of times we'll have somebody say nope. They were here. I know they were here Well, how do you know they were here? Well, they were they were here when I left And they were here when I woke up or they were here at this point and they were here at this point So they were here the whole time and then obviously we'll do further questioning and try to get a little bit more specific and time. And then obviously we'll do further questioning and try to get a little bit more specific. And it was during that more directed questioning when his mother, Dustin's mother, advised that

there was a period of time that he could have very easily left and she would not have known. Suspicions and a shaky alibi aren't usually enough to pin a murder on someone. Or at least they shouldn't be. I know we've seen it all in true crime at this point. But it wouldn't be long before investigators had a little more. By now, they were starting to get some DNA results back from items tested at the crime scene. And on one of Tim's socks,

they had been able to pull a male DNA profile. Now, Detective Martin said that he's pretty sure that didn't come from blood, but he didn't know what kind of biological material provided it. Either way, when they compared the profile to Destin, it was a match. Now, don't get me wrong, this was a huge development, but it still wasn't quite the clear-cut proof police were hoping for. If it had come from blood, I mean, I think that would have been one thing. Or if Destin was a complete stranger and his DNA was found at the scene, that's a thing too.

But Destin was essentially family with Tim. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, even though they didn't live in the same house at this point in Destin's life, they had before. And his mom still lived with Tim, so it's not totally far-fetched that some of his DNA could have somehow ended up on that sock in an innocent way. For example, did Destin do his laundry at Tim and Cyndia's? I don't know, but those are the types of innocent explanations that we should be considering, certainly ones that a defense attorney would be considering.

Now police tried to talk with Destin and confront him about their suspicions. Basically, they cornered him at Cyndia's place trying to get some information out of him, but their timing was bad. He didn't want to chat with police because he claimed he was trying to sleep. Investigators did eventually get their timing right. At a later date, they caught Destin when he wasn't sleeping and they chatted a little with him. But Detective Martin didn't want to talk about that interview.

He wouldn't even say whether or not anything incriminating was uncovered during the conversation. This is all he would say about the information that was learned. Could have made you say, hmm, interesting. Whatever investigators learned in that interview wasn't enough to lock Dustin up. So they continued on with the investigation, chasing down every viable lead that came in. This is a case where a lot of people provided information and had theories as to what could have happened.

But the initial detectives in this case did their due diligence. They were all over. They were in Indianapolis. They were at the different prison systems interviewing individuals who couldn't possibly have knowledge, only to keep coming up kind of dry, so to speak, with no real solid information. It was dead end after dead end. And before anyone knew it, sadly, Tim's case went cold. But that didn't mean Tim was forgotten.

He was well known in the community, so it seemed like the entire city of Fort Wayne and beyond was mourning. A friend told the Journal Gazette, quote, "...everyone knew Tim, and Tim knew everyone. That's why this whole city will miss him." We'd go to Canada fishing, and he'd run into people he knew up there and down in Florida we'd be walking around and he'd say, hey, Joe, you know, there's this guy named Joe. He's right there, one of Tim's friends and just wherever we were, it seemed like he ran

into somebody that he knew. Aside from being one of the friendliest people you could ever meet, Tim was also generous with his time. He did a lot of volunteer work around Fort Wayne and he was always willing to help support anyone who needed it. The saying goes, taking in stray dogs. He was very generous to anybody that was down under luck. You know, he was just that type of guy. For all the people who cared so much about Tim,

the wait for answers was agonizing. And month after month, year after year, their hope of closure dwindled. And then on December 3rd, 2010, more than three years since Tim's murder, investigators' hopes took a nosedive when their lead suspect Destin passed away in a motorcycle crash.

If he was their guy, it was very possible that all the answers died with him. With the silence that followed in the months and years afterward, that seemed like the case. Until one random day in 2015, when police got a tip. Hey, there's bloody clothes that belong to the perpetrator in the attic of 427 Green Lawn. Somebody got after the assault, they got into the attic, they ditched their bloody clothes, and you guys need to go in there and find it."

427 Green Lawn is the address of the Fourplex where Tim was killed. There's no information today on who this tipster was or if they ever identified themselves at all. And Detective Martin doesn't know if the attic of the Fourplex was ever searched back in 2007. But investigators in 2015 weren't passing up on one of the Fourplex was ever searched back in 2007. But investigators in 2015 weren't passing up on one of the only solid tips to come across their desks in years. By that point, Jim no longer owned the building, so police had to get a warrant to conduct the search. And that warrant paid off big time. When they finally got up there, sitting there in the middle of the attic, just like the tipster said, were clothes with suspicious stains.

Investigators collected the clothes as evidence and sent them off for testing, but the results turned out to be less exciting. Whatever the stain was in those clothes wasn't blood. In fact, I don't know if they ever determined what the stains were, but I know that after those results, they quickly dismissed this whole tip entirely. And since then, things have been quiet in Tim's case.

In 2021, Destin's mother, Cyndia, passed away and his sibling passed in 2009. So again, if Destin was their guy, figuring that out now is a million times harder than it was in 2007. I think the largest challenge in solving Tim's case is the fact that so many individuals who were either witnesses or persons of interest are now deceased. And those challenges are just, that's what they are. Some of our information is simply not there. There's not follow-up to be done because those people are no longer with us.

But that doesn't mean Detective Martin is ready to give up. For you, what do you think the next steps are in the investigation? Just to continue evaluating evidence, to see if there's any of the blood that was within that apartment that can be tested or retested to see if we can pick up a perpetrator profile mixed in with the victims. Our reporting team asked Detective Martin that if that should happen, and if they come back with some of the blood

being destines, would that be enough for them to close this case by death of offender? It would definitely put us in a unique situation where we would want to sit down with the prosecutor's office and do a review and get a second set of eyes or someone else to look at the case to give their opinion and for us to sit down and have a serious conversation

with our local prosecutor's office. But for the time being, Detective Martin is trying to keep an open mind. I feel that Destin is a very strong suspect, but I also have to, as an investigator, keep an open mind and not become so focused on one individual that I overlook something else. Now I don't know about you, but I still have a million questions. There are so many loose ends here. Like for one, why wouldn't the key work when Jim was trying to open the unit door?

Had Tim changed the locks and not told him? If so, why? Or was Jim nervous and his hands shaking so he just couldn't get the key to work? And who in the world was that prospective tenant Tim was supposed to be meeting with? If the whole Destin angle holds any water, how does this guy tie in? Was it some kind of accomplice? Was Destin the prospective client? Was that why there's no record of a mystery person contacting Tim? Like, I just can't wrap my head around it. And investigators can't either. So they're kind of stuck. And they'll continue being stuck if someone doesn't speak up. Detective Martin says he hasn't gotten any tips recently at all, but he's hoping

that this episode will change that. We would love to have somebody come forward that was obviously an eye witness or who observed something that day that they forgot to or just haven't told law enforcement. Anybody who's had a conversation with someone who has direct knowledge of this case or scene, somebody who knows more than what you would think the common or average person would know, that would be huge for us. It would maybe point us in the right direction.

If you know anything about the brutal murder of Timothy Zimmerman in 2007, now is the time to come forward and say something. Call the Fort Wayne Crime Stoppers at 260-436-STOP. That's 260-436-7867. You will remain completely anonymous. The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve? Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo