Lately, I have made much of Will (not his real name) and the need for police to interview him about the Tammy Lynds murder, especially since he was one of the last people to see her alive. And Will’s sister agrees—because she has her own suspicions about him.
Tammy’s sister, Allison, has been attempting
to contact Will for years to ask him questions concerning what he remembered about
the circumstances leading up to the slaying. “If he cared so much for Tammy,
why won’t he help Allison?” Will’s sister asked. “She’s been trying to get in
touch with him.”
Indeed, Will claimed he loved Tammy like a
sister, and gave her a knife to protect herself on the night she went missing—when
he told Tammy he wanted to be more than just friends with her. But he has
clammed up since that 2021 video interview, in which he asserted that other
friends wanted to harm Tammy.
However, Will’s sister, Ann (not her real
name) said that unlike his calm demeanor in the video, Will has a mean streak. In
recent years he has attacked her twice. “He slammed me to the floor, and I had
bruises,” she said. One assault was an argument over a TV remote control, of all things.
“That’s what I’m saying,” she continued. “If he could do that over something
small…”
Neither Will nor Ann were interviewed by
police back in 1994, even though Ann considered herself Tammy’s best friend,
and Will had himself complained to police about high school classmates writing
messages on his desk about the murder. Not only that, but Tammy had also spent
a great deal of time at Will and Ann’s house swimming and hanging out. “The
police didn’t talk to us,” she said. “It’s weird.”
Ann also said Will told her in 1994 that when
Tammy was at Will’s house earlier on the night she disappeared that she planned
to run away from home. Ann said that Will, their sister, and their sister’s
husband “told Tammy it was a bad idea.” But Allison has always scoffed at
the notion that Tammy ran away. “She wanted to spend the night at
Pam’s house, not run away,” said Allison, referring to her mother’s friend visiting the Lynds family with her kids that evening, but Pam was living with her
sister, who didn’t allow overnight guests. Regardless, it was clear Tammy
wanted to stay elsewhere that night.
* * * * * * * * * *
I’ve postulated in the past, “Who would have
wanted to hurt Tammy?” And the question simply won’t go away. There was the
girl who beat her up at Central High School and slapped her on the bus, but she
had been eliminated as a suspect, according to Tammy’s mother Susan in her
notation on November 28, 1994, less than a month into the investigation. That
same note also said “Ricky” was “ruled out,” but police hadn’t interviewed
Tammy’s boyfriend David yet. It turned out, according to David’s brother, that
they never did.
A youth who had threatened Tammy and a couple of her friends with a knife in 1993 lived on the same Pine Point street as the girl who assaulted her. There was talk among Tammy’s friends of the Latin Kings gang perhaps killed her in an initiation rite, especially because there was a “Young Crazy Kings” gang that hung out at the old Balliet School basketball courts. Indeed, that same youth went on to rack up numerous busts, including arrests for violent crimes, and he was identified in the newspaper as a Latin Kings member in 1998 and 1999. But nothing came of the rumor. Below are Susan’s notes trying to make sense of the gang landscape in Springfield, as well as a note from Tammy’s old boyfriend citing the “Young Crazy Boys” in Pine Point.
Over the years there had been additional rumors
that Tammy also got in a fight with another girl in her immediate neighborhood,
even though none of this violence, including the school hallway assault, was in
the diary pages that were provided by her father.
The neighborhood “fight,” according to the
other combatant, who was asked about it recently, entailed Tammy yelling at her
in front of her house, and the argument escalated into a couple of slaps, along
with some hair pulling, “and then Tammy went home,” she said. “I don’t know if
she thought we were talking shit about her. It was kind of a mild fight. I
think I tried to punch her. Maybe I did. I honestly don’t remember.”
Needless to say, it’s hardly likely there was
some sort of vendetta after this scuffle.
* * * * * * * * * *
Did someone have something against the Lynds
family in general? Allison pointed out a playhouse (pictured above) that her
father Richard had built for their kids that was burned one night around 1993.
And then in April of 1994, while the family was on vacation, someone put the
Lynds’ outdoor grill on their deck right next to the house and turned it up
full blast. “When we came back, we could smell something, but we couldn’t
figure out what it was,” she said. “We walked around the house, and that’s when
we found it. They were trying to burn our house down. The side of our house was
as hot as hell—right outside our parents’ bedroom.”
The Lynds family chalked this up to
misbehaving teenagers—even though arson is not exactly schoolboy hijinks. There
had been talk of Richard’s presidency of the Pine Point Neighborhood
Council—and him being vocal about fighting crime and drug dealing, which may
have annoyed hoods in the neighborhood, but probably not enough to target his
daughter for assassination, for God’s sake.
“We have a tape of a guy threatening Tammy
over the phone,” wrote Susan in her notes on the murder. By the time I was able
to interview the family, however, they no longer had the tape. So what gives?
Is there something to it? Doubtful. Then again, who am I to doubt?
* * * * * * * * * *
It’s no secret that Ricky Stebbins, who was originally a suspect in many people’s eyes, is quite determined to solve this murder, although he has stepped on toes in blog and social media comments—so much so that on October 8, 2023—his birthday—someone placed a mini-log on his doorstep:
It’s unclear what the birthday present
meant—either “I know you did it,” referring to the large log that Tammy’s
skeleton was found behind (below) —or “you could end up like her if you don’t keep your
mouth shut.”
“Fucking with me is one thing, but leaving
shit on my steps, just a few feet away from where my nephew was sleeping is
taking it to a whole new level,” said Ricky. It was the day after he shared the
account of Pam’s son visiting the Lynds home with his family the night Tammy
went missing—one that described Richard as being stumbling drunk—so Ricky felt safe to assume the little firewood log was related to Tammy. “I just happened
to get it on my birthday,” he said. “It was someone letting me know that he
knows where I live. My mother came over and moved it before anyone got up, then
my nephew was playing with it and handed it to me, asking where it came from.
It wasn’t until someone from across the street asked what was left on
my steps, and I asked my nephew where it was found, that I realized
it was a message.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Not that this blog is becoming “The Life and Times of Ricky” or anything—or is it? Look, the fact remains that he has always been a big part of the resurgence of the interest in Tammy’s cold case. So I’ll indulge some of his “observations,” including his insistence that years ago, someone zip-tied a baby doll to a branch where Tammy was found—which could be symbolic of Tammy’s supposed pregnancy at the time of her death. People shrugged off his claim, so he captured it on video:
* * * * * * * * * *
Ricky has also gone to great lengths to
publicize the unsolved murder, including having the following flag made. Ever
the superhero fan, it took on the Batman theme:
On April 18, he put it up near the site where
Tammy was found, and I thought for sure someone would immediately remove it,
especially because it was placed on city parkland, but a week later it was
still there. In fact, someone decorated it with Christmas ornaments:
I don’t know how long it will stay up there. The city takes a dim view of roadside memorials, but no one has ripped it down yet.
* * * * * * * * * *
In January, Ricky reached out to Susan with a card and a letter—ever hopeful that she might discuss the case after she broke her silence when she talked to a newspaper reporter last August. He wants her to help sort fact from rumor. “Maybe these corrections will lead to some answers,” he wrote. He floated the possibility of her contacting Hell’s Acres. “I know he’ll listen to your side of the story,” he continued.
Susan’s cooperation would be great, but I’m not holding my breath. I have invited her input before—to no avail. I know that she does not like this blog at all. And after all, survivors have a right to grieve in peace and not talk. I have to understand that.
But you never know. This past winter, on Fox
Road, a few months after Ricky shot a video about Tammy, a hawk took flight, and he
wondered if it was a good omen.
The same thing happened when he was putting up the flag—a hawk flew from the ground into a tree—so perhaps it’s a sign that something will happen in this case. I’m not superstitious, but it’s certainly time to escalate this investigation with both Will and Susan—or someone else—coming forward with new information. If not now—when?
