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.”
Why were those Southwick remains worthy of a second examination and Tammy’s were not? What was the reasoning for missing the evidence the first time around to declare that case a murder right away?
ReplyDeleteThis masslive story is trash, how and when did they decide to change that Joe Doe skull case to murder?
ReplyDeleteDid they just listen to this guys story and then added facial trauma to his case file?
There are no facts in that story, just more families fighting and making up nonsense.