Hell's Acres: August 2023

Friday, August 25, 2023

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 8: The Fallout

“So, why did you kill Tammy?”

“You guys would know,” he answered. “You were there when I did it.”

The party went silent. “What the hell?” someone said. “Did you hear that? That dude just…”

“Ssshhhh! He’s admitting it!”

“Go on, tell them what we did,” continued Ricky. “Come on, you were there.”

No, YOU tell US, Ricky,” said his cousin with a smile.

There was some more back-and-forth until Ricky’s cousins realized it was getting out of hand and they stopped. One girl was getting angry and another was practically in tears.

Jesus, you’re wasted,” said his other cousin. “OK, that’s enough.”

A couple of big guys got in Ricky’s face. “Can we talk to you outside?” said one of them. “No” was not an option as they pulled him past his cousins and out the door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” asked one of them as he tightened his grip on Ricky’s sleeve. The other chimed in: “What are you thinking with that shit?”

Ricky, who was 20, had become painfully accustomed to his cousins constantly joking about him supposedly killing Tammy Lynds when he was 15, but now he looks back on that party as time he had finally fought back by giving them a taste of their own medicine. “This was the first time I got drunk and first—and last—time I drank peppermint Schnapps,” he recalled. “I started crying like baby and told the two guys about my cousins picking on me about Tammy’s murder for years—saying that I got her pregnant and killed her.”

The big dudes forgave him and they shared a three-way bro-hug. “Never being drunk before or having the courage to talk shit back to my cousins was a new experience,” said Ricky. ”We walked back to the house and these guys went off on my cousins. They kept my cousins away from me for the rest of the party and wouldn’t let us drive home. We ended up sleeping there. It was an awkward ride home.”

Ricky’s way of sticking up for himself did have some consequences: a family meeting held shortly afterward that was nothing short of a shit storm. “That is when my cousins stopped joking about this—they stopped saying that I killed Tammy, who was my best friend,” he said. On one hand, the ribbing stopped—on the other, the incident caused a permanent rift in the family. To this day, he’s not on speaking terms with those cousins. And anyone within earshot of Ricky’s drunken backtalk no doubt told their friends what they had heard him say, so the murder myth continued.

Part of what made Ricky a prime suspect shortly after Tammy’s death was the Lynds family’s belief that he was her main boyfriend, so the police focused on her last diary entry, a week before her death, in which she snuck out of house at midnight, just like the night she vanished, but on this evening/early morning she went to her “boyfriend’s” house, where they fooled around on his bed:

Ricky thinks that the police narrative was that he had gotten together with Tammy by sneaking out at night, even though every time he was intimate with her it was during the daytime, when her parents weren't home.

“The detectives made me say that she snuck out one night and knocked on my window,” said Ricky. “I think the detectives had to come up with a way for Tammy to get my attention—she couldn’t call that late, and I didn’t have a beeper.”

Ricky’s bedroom was in his basement and he insisted that what the detectives coaxed him into saying was implausible. “The cellar windows were those old-style, single-pane, metal frame type, with metal flaps on each side to lock and unlock them,” he said. “They were hard to open and close, and they were loud when you did. So when police pushed me to agree that she woke me up by knocking on the window and inviting me out into the middle of the night—I thought it was totally absurd, especially considering my parents’ room was right above mine. There were no finished ceilings or sound barrier—it was a regular basement ceiling.”

Ricky had told police that he and Tammy had sex a few times in the spring and summer of 1994, “but they forced me to change my story,” he said. “They coerced me to say she knocked on my window, and they wanted me to say that she asked me to come out with her or she wanted me to invite her inside, but I didn’t agree to either in this fake story.”

In fact, Tammy had another boyfriend, named David, and she had been intimate with several boys. Police ruled out Ricky as a suspect in late November of 1994, but neighborhood rumors of his involvement persist to this day. “As much as it bothers me to hear it, I’d be stupid to think I’m not going to hear it a lot more, especially now that I have started talking about her case,” he said.

To be sure, Tammy’s murder had a profound ripple effect on all her family and friends. It is unfortunate, however, that much of what is lacking in the usual media coverage on an unsolved killing is the aftereffects of the homicide—how the tragedy ravages other lives.

Sindy Pabon was one of the last friends to speak with Tammy—they talked on the phone around 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. on July 21, 1994, the last day she was seen alive, and Tammy “sounded sad.” After she went missing, “her mom mentioned about her possibly being pregnant when she asked me if I knew where she was. My heart was breaking seeing her family in pain, worried, and afraid.” And then, on November 11, 1994, the skeletal remains that were found off Fox Road in Springfield a week earlier were identified as Tammy’s. “I was devastated,” said Pabon. “My mom came into the room when she heard me scream after I saw the news on TV. My boyfriend at the time was also very upset—they were in the Air Force ROTC together.”

Pabon remembers Tammy as “really smart, super sweet, and caring. She had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh and wasn’t afraid to be silly. I always thought of her as a very genuine person and a peacemaker. She was a sweetheart. I truly hope this mystery will get solved so her family can finally have much-needed closure and peace.”

Jennifer Eger, in her 1997 Central High School yearbook, wrote that Tammy “was always there for me. She recalled that Tammy loved music and “loved dance. It was her favorite thing to do. When I was around Tammy, if I was in a bad mood or not, she had something nice to say to me to put a smile on my face. She would always let people live their lives the way they wanted to, but she would always help someone through things if they were bad…Do you know how people say you never realize what you have until it is gone? That is so true. After the funeral, many people were questioned. I was also. When I talked to police, they told me how they found a lot of notes written by me sent to her, or copies of letters she had written to me. During all the time I knew Tammy I never realized how much we had talked to one another. Every day now, I wish for her to come back because she was one of a kind, and I don’t have anyone else like her.”

For the Lynds family, the murder was like an atomic bomb, and the fallout continues. Richard and Susan’s marriage had been rocky in the years before the slaying, but the grief and stress opened fissures in those rocks, things got worse, and when their children, Allison and Josh, became adults and moved out on their own, the couple divorced in 2006. Richard has cardiac problems that he attributes to aging, but it’s obvious his daughter’s murder has taken a toll on his heart—and his family. At present, the surviving members do not discuss the murder with one another.

Richard, who had been looking for answers since his daughter’s murder, approached a District Court judge in 1995 to ask if anything could be done, “and I was told not to do anything—do not do anything to upset the police, because I would not like the outcome,” he said. “That was the main reason why for years I was afraid to do anything. But in 2013, I finally decided to contact the DA’s Office.”

For a while, Richard had also been considered a prime suspect because three polygraphs he took were inconclusive, and his wife didn’t provide an alibi for him the night Tammy went missing because she didn’t verify that he was home. He said that he was watching TV and had fallen asleep in a living room chair, only to be nudged by Tammy and told to go to bed.

Richard said the DA’s office told him in 2013 he was no longer a suspect, so for the next decade, he has refused to keep quiet about the cold case. It is ironic that he and Ricky, once the prime suspects, are now the most vocal advocates in trying to solve Tammy’s murder.

Tammy’s sister Allison, in an interview with videographer Lou Rock, discussed the torment she’s had to endure because she assured her sister that she wouldn’t tell anyone she was sneaking out of the house at midnight. “I was the last person who saw her, and for years I blamed myself for her death,” she said. “It eats away at me.” Asked by Rock what message she would have for whoever is responsible for her death, she replied, “You didn’t just take her life. You took mine.”

Saturday, August 12, 2023

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 7: The Body—and the Body of Evidence

How and why did Tammy Lynds’ body end up in the woods on the side of Fox Road in Springfield? Her skeleton was found on November 4, 1994, behind a log that served as a makeshift guardrail, about 10 feet from a pathway that goes through North Branch Park.

Because Fox Road is surrounded by forest and there are no houses on either side, it was an illegal dumping spot. It’s not exactly a main thoroughfare, but it’s a convenient cut-through for motorists avoiding traffic lights in Pine Point and Sixteen Acres on both Boston Road and Parker Street. There is a lot of speculation that Tammy was dumped there from a car—hastily thrown over a log instead of being dragged into deep woods, where it would have been more difficult to find her, but this act would have required more time and effort from whoever did this.

Her father, Richard, was told that Tammy’s sneaker-clad feet were right against the log when she was found. Had she been hoisted over the log after she was dead, or was she sitting on the log and knocked off of it with blunt force? Only the murderer knows for sure.

Was she there for all the nearly four months after she went missing? The medical examiner thought so. Tammy’s mother Susan didn’t. “I have a very hard time accepting the fact that Tammy wasn’t ever seen or found, being so close to the road behind the logs,” she wrote in her notes she kept after the slaying. She pointed out that since the murder, she had photographed kids sitting on the logs. How, she wondered, could she have been left unnoticed in such a well-trafficked spot?

In comments on this blog, people noted that there was a terrible smell on Fox Road that summer. After Tammy disappeared, a family that was friends of the Lynds searched all over the neighborhood, including all the woods off Grayson Drive, without finding anything. These were not incredibly thorough expeditions, like the systematic grid searches you hear about in other cases, so it’s doubtful they went far off established trails. Richard, in his explorations, also looked in the woods along Grayson—including behind the woods behind what is new Walmart, which connects to the Fox Road woods—but he didn’t go all the way to Fox Road. Looking back, he figures he came within 300 feet of the site where Tammy was found, a fact he notes with much chagrin, because there would have been much more forensic evidence had she been discovered much earlier.

Like his ex-wife, Richard has suspicions that Tammy was at this site the entire time she was gone, especially after their family friends revealed the extent of their searching. “They searched from late July into August, including the woods, so that means Tammy was not at the location found at since she went missing,” said Richard. “What is going on?”

“Undetermined” or Homicide?

It’s also important to note that Tammy’s death was never officially termed a homicide. Medical Examiner Dr. Loren Mednick initially eliminated foul play, saying that it appeared “not to be a homicide.” This was the same Dr. Mednick (pictured below) who in 1992 at first ruled out foul play after a body was found in a wooded area in Southwick. However, the case was later ruled a homicide, according to a website devoted to unsolved homicides that was launched in 2012 by then-District Attorney Mark Mastroianni, which noted that the victim in Southwick had suffered facial trauma.

Richard points out that because some of Tammy’s teeth were dislodged, according to the autopsy report, he believes that her face suffered blunt trauma. Indeed, after humans die, our teeth typically stay in place, which gives skeletons their infamous creepy, toothy grin. After death, teeth become the most durable part of the body and are often found with ancient skeletons because teeth roots are anchored by ligaments and dental tissue called cementum. After other body parts rot away, ligaments and cementum calcify and harden, fusing teeth to the bone.

In 2012, Mastroianni wrote to Richard Lynds, informing him that he would include his daughter’s case on his unsolved homicides website, hoping that “the dissemination of this material will lead to information that will help to bring those responsible to justice.” It’s unclear if new information was uncovered that would cause Tammy’s death to be listed on that website.

A knife had been found under Tammy’s body, but it’s unknown if it was tested for DNA—or even if the knife still exists, because on February 19, 2013, Richard met with Assistant District Attorney Jane Montori, who told him that the case files and evidence were lost.

“They told me that everything was missing, and they had no idea about how or where it all went to,” said Richard. “I gave them my three-ring binders of information my family had collected on the case for them to look through and make copies for their records to maybe start something. Also, on that first visit, I asked about the autopsy report. They said that I would get a copy of it when I got the binders back, and I did. On the second visit, when I asked if I was still their prime suspect, they said no, I was not.”

Are there any other records of the case out there? “During the 106 days that Tammy was missing, I was working with Officer Robert Taylor of the Youth Aid Bureau,” said Richard. “He was the one that had created the missing person file on Tammy, which included all of her original diaries. I do not know if that department did any interviews with kids who knew Tammy. Only they would have those records.”

As far as Richard knows, a cause of death was never determined. “They have never classified it as a homicide case,” said Richard. “No homicide number was ever created.”

Richard has quite a few questions about the autopsy report, including the possibility that Tammy was strangled. There were no skull fractures, and if Tammy were choked, it wouldn’t leave any damage to the soft hard tissues of the throat because of the elasticity of the neck cartilage of adolescents:

Richard also noted other curious autopsy findings: missing from Tammy’s body was a segment of the sternum, the left patella (or kneecap), and “several distal phalanges of the hands” (fingertips). In the inventory below, the hand bones and sternum are listed as “incomplete” and the patella “absent.” He wonders what happened to the missing bones, even though, especially with the missing fingertips, animals could have scavenged these parts—with exposed human bodies, raccoons and rodents in particular have been known to bite off the distal ends of fingers.

Although there were several missing fingertips, some were intact, and the possibility of a murderer’s skin or blood under Tammy’s remaining fingernails was certainly not lost on Susan. In her letter to Debbie Wikczewski, the medical examiner who looked at Tammy’s remains, she was hoping the hands would be scrutinized thoroughly before the body was released for burial, because both Susan and Tammy were happy that she overcame her habit of biting her nails, and the result was lengthy fingernails. “Our daughter Tammy would have fought for her life if given a chance,” she wrote. “She finally grew her nails long enough so she could use them if ever necessary to protect herself after what she went through in school.” This was in reference to a prior attack she suffered at the hands—and feet—of several Central High students. “She had begun to grow her nails for about one year—maybe a little longer,” she wrote. “Tammy had told me once she was glad I kept after her about this. She liked having long nails.”

Could this evidence still exist if Tammy's remains were exhumed? Richard thinks it's worth a shot.

Further complicating things is the possibility of the Lynds’ dog having contact with Tammy’s body: according to Tammy’s brother Josh, their dog Sandy got out of their yard a lot after Tammy went missing, and when she came home, she reeked of a rotten odor and Josh and Allison would have to give her a bath. Did the dog track down Tammy by following her scent? If so, it’s regrettable that Sandy didn’t lead a family member to Tammy’s body earlier, when the crime scene could have been processed with fewer effects from insects, weather, etc.

Personal Effects

When Tammy’s friend Ricky was brought down to the station for questioning in 1994, he was shown several items, including the knife, and several rings police took from her finger bones, although rings aren’t listed among Tammy’s personal effects in the autopsy report, and police didn’t mention them to Richard. “I knew of no rings on Tammy,” said Richard. “I did not know what she wore for jewelry. Her personal effects are part of what is missing.”

This is unfortunate, because if Tammy had defended herself vigorously from an attack, the murderer’s DNA could have been on one or more of the rings—maybe even trapped between the finger and the inside of the ring, and this tissue might not have been washed away by rain.

To be sure, it is truly lamentable that the evidence and the case files are missing, especially because in the first three weeks of the investigation, police had interviewed two dozen of Tammy’s friends, and all that information is lost. This vanishing added fuel to the rumor that someone close to law enforcement, or an officer himself, was involved in the murder. It has been up to the Lynds to talk to people, who are much less willing to speak about the murder today. In fact, 29 years later, in the age of social media and instant digital communication, it is astounding how much people from the Lynds’ old neighborhood avoid discussing this case.

“No one wants to talk about Tammy,” said Ricky. “It’s almost like she was my imaginary friend. I keep getting the sense that a lot of people in that neighborhood had their own demons to hide. They probably also knew a little of what other people were up to as well. Mass paranoia set in—all these guys are worried someone is going to go down for killing Tammy, and that person is going to rat other people out in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence. So everyone acts stupid and no one knows anything.”

Saturday, August 5, 2023

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 6: Even More Questions

“I thought the case was closed,” asserted one of her friends while being questioned by police on January 23, 1995. He had also heard gossip that detectives had gotten nowhere in the investigation. But the detective told him he was wrong—that the case was still very much alive, that police were going through names in her phone ledger, and kids were still being interviewed. Then his grin turned into a frown, and with a sigh, he quickly took a seat.

He slumped in the chair and wondered if he was mentioned in Tammy’s diary, one of the main pieces of evidence that people were whispering about. One of his legs was trembling, and then his knee began bouncing like a kangaroo.

“What’s wrong?” the detective asked. “Are you nervous? Why is your leg shaking?”

“I always do that with my leg,” he insisted.

“Where have I heard that before?” he commented. The detective was accustomed to his nervous tic, because he had been in legal trouble in the past.

He didn’t answer.

That’s how Tammy’s case went in the early days, and that’s how it has been going for 29 years. Rumors. Second- and third-hand information. Innuendo. Stories from friends and acquaintances about suspicious people like the one above.

And there are still no answers.

With a lack of solid leads, and the investigation fading with every month passing, since 1995 it has been up to the Lynds family to ask around the neighborhood and see what they could come up with. They didn’t get much progress. In fact, the answers they received led to even more questions about what happened to their 15-year-old daughter, who snuck out one summer night, was missing for more than three months, and was found as a skeleton in the woods off Fox Road in Springfield. They entered the world no family wants a part of: an unsolved murder mystery.

And in this journey, the Lynds family talked to a lot of people and took many notes. They soon came to realize, like many cold case investigators, that sifting through information in these cases was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle that was bought at a tag sale—one that has been mixed up with other puzzles. As renowned investigative crime journalist Michelle McNamara pointed out, you have to investigate each puzzle piece, and you can immediately discard some of the pieces that obviously will never fit, but there are other pieces you set aside to reinvestigate. And, unfortunately, there will always be missing pieces.

The Lynds are still plodding along, putting together the puzzle. Here are some of the odd-fitting pieces that have led to even more questions.

The Threatened “Suspect”

One of Tammy’s friends, who had told Tammy's mother Susan about supposed teenage satanic rituals taking place in the woods at the end of Lamont Street—and that Tammy may have been sacrificed in one of these ceremonies—had also informed her that a couple of his friends, who “hated Tammy,” had concocted a rumor that Tammy’s father Richard was the murderer, and they wanted him to go along with the story. But he said, “No way,” gave them the middle finger, and walked away.

In the same bizarre conversation, he further told Sue that he himself and his stepfather were early suspects in the investigation, but that was no longer the case, and that it was ridiculous he had ever been a suspect because he “loved Tammy like a sister.” He went on to mention that drawings about the murder were penned by students on his desk at Putnam High School, which he took as a threat, including the one below.

A student also allegedly wrote something about a baby on his desk because Tammy was pregnant. The harassed student insisted to Sue that he “told the cops about things on his desk, about the threat to him,” she wrote, “and they ignored his calls when he phoned them.”

Sue felt that this youth was attempting to gain the trust of her family by telling these stories and trying to impress them with information about the case. But the effect was just the opposite: she didn’t want her surviving children to have anything to do with this guy. “Call it mother’s intuition,” she wrote.

Gang Initiation?

On February 3, 1995, a teen from the neighborhood told the Lynds family of a Pine Point street gang called the Young Crazy Kings who hung out and played basketball at the Balliet School’s outdoor courts off Breckwood Boulevard, and as Latin Kings wannabes, they might have adopted the Latin Kings’ supposed initiation requirement of killing someone, placing “a rose in the victim’s mouth as a calling card,” and placing black and gold beads on or near the body.

Among the personal effects found on Tammy, according to the autopsy report, were multicolored “love beads,” but it didn’t note which colors they were. Richard doesn’t remember if his daughter owned any beaded necklaces. Even though the brother of Tammy’s old boyfriend confirmed to the Lynds family the existence of this very gang on April 19, 1995, let’s face it: the possibility of a gang of 13- and 14-year-olds killing a girl is remote. They’re simply too young to perform an execution-style initiation slaying, and we would have heard more about this gang as its members got older and committed more crimes. But the Lynds were open to ANY leads at that point. And when you think about it, many people believe that at least one 15-year-old friend or enemy of Tammy killed her, so age was no object in considering who might have done this deed.

There is also the youth who “couldn’t hold it all in anymore,” according to Susan’s notes, and told friends that “four to five people were involved in her death.” Another teen, on December 9, 1994, told Tammy’s cousin that someone said his best friend killed Tammy, and if the investigation gets “out of control, he would get rid of the evidence.”

It’s unknown what Tammy’s friends and acquaintances shared with police, and who they considered strong suspects. We do know from notes in Richard Lynds’ binder, that Ricky (last name withheld), who was seeing Tammy, was eliminated as a suspect, as well as the girl who had attacked her in Central High School, according to a note from November 28, 1994–less than a month into the investigation, when detectives had already interviewed “a couple dozen people.” Were the other attackers in the Central High School incidents eventually crossed off the suspect list? The Lynds’ notes and records don’t say—they never found out.

The Knife

This unsolved murder is frustrating not only because of the lack of cooperation from individuals in Tammy’s neighborhood, but also because of the lack of evidence. All the physical evidence we know of is a knife, a fingernail that wasn’t Tammy’s, and, lately, a pair of nail clippers.

Indeed, objects found at the scene of the murder have been a source of contention and confusion since 1994. This year, Ricky said that at the police station shortly after Tammy was found he was shown a pair of nail clippers—they were medium-sized and didn’t include an attached nail file.

Tammy’s father Richard, however, was surprised to learn of the nail clippers when I told him this summer. “That’s the first I’ve heard of this,” he said incredulously.

It’s strange that the father of the murder victim didn’t know until 2023 of this find. It doesn’t smack of conspiracy or anything—just a weird oversight.

On November 7, 1994, Richard and Sue went down to the police station and Richard was shown a knife that police said was found under Tammy.

At home, right after the interview, Richard drew the knife, which was in a plastic bag, for his wife, describing it as something of a utility knife with a wooden handle:

Richard, who recently looked on the internet for the object similar to the one he was shown that day, found this razor knife scraper:

On January 23, 1995, Tammy’s sister Allison and her brother Josh were taken to the police station by their grandmother for interviews. Josh was shown a photo of the knife and drew a picture similar to his father’s:

Richard said that Josh described its shape and look as something like a “modified machete,” and that it looked like the following photo of a knife he found on the internet:

Allison, however, was shown the actual knife in the plastic bag and she drew this likeness:

“This was different from the one Richie was shown,” noted Sue. There was also a discrepancy about where the knife was found. Allison “said the detective said it was near the body,” wrote Sue. “But when she first said it to us, she said it was under her body.”

Ricky remembers being shown a knife like the one he found after an online image search:

“This is basic shape of the knife I recall seeing,” said Ricky. “The tip was a little more rounded, but it had a wooden handle and I thought screws or some sort of rivets. The blade looked flimsy like this one—this one has a flex to it. When I saw it, it reminded me of a knife you’d use at a steak house.”

But Ricky said he believes he was told that the knife was found near—not under—Tammy’s skeleton. “That had always been my understanding,” he said, until a few years ago.

So which knife is most like the one at the scene? Maybe it looks like a combination of all of them. Memory is a tricky thing—not always completely accurate. “Mine could be the wrong knife,” said Richard. “It has been 29 years.” He conceded it could have been like the one his son described. “I only had about five to ten seconds of seeing it, and it was covered in dirt and grass,” he said.

Why obsess about the appearance of the knife? Well, maybe someone saw a similar knife on the work bench of a neighbor or friend’s father. Maybe a teen shoplifted one from a store and bragged about it. And it may have been the murder weapon.

Richard Lynds doesn’t know if the knife was ever tested for DNA traces. In fact, he doesn’t even know if the tool still exists. Such is life with the Tammy Lynds murder mystery—so many questions. Maybe some answers will come with renewed interest in the case. To be sure, it’s unlikely to be solved by an armchair detective such as Hell’s Acres, but publicity and new revelations could prompt someone to come forward with information, and investigators can put together enough pieces of the puzzle to get a satisfactorily complete picture of what happened, with findings conclusive enough to finally charge a suspect.

“Maybe now people will feel more comfortable sharing anything they know or anything they’ve heard,” said Richard. He’s optimistic, but not blind to the challenge of solving a 29-year-old murder case. However, in rooting out fact from fiction, one of these stories might lead somewhere. Older and seemingly more impossible cases have been solved—all it takes is one promising lead to blow it wide open.