My apologies for letting more than four months go by without an explanation for the gap. Indeed, I’ve had a couple of long “vacations” without posting before (including a two-year one!), but those had been due to job layoffs, when I spent much of my free time on job searches instead of blogging.
This recent break is due more to
the fact that I had been getting kind of burned out with the constant writing
about Tammy’s murder. It’s a case that really grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.
And it’s still got a grip on me!
I want to assure faithful Hell’s
Acres readers that yes, I’m still here, and the usual blog contents—the stuff
that doesn’t involve true crime—will resume in due time. I know full well that
I inevitably lose readers when there are long interludes between posts, but
please bear with me. Also, I’ll notify you of new posts on my Facebook page.
I first wrote about the Tammy Lynds case in 2012, when there was renewed interest after a Boston TV news station aired a lengthy story on Tammy’s death. This was the same year that the Hampden County DA came out with a web page of unsolved homicides, and Tammy’s case was listed even though the cause of death was never determined—as far as we know.
But I vowed that I wouldn’t write
about it again unless I received new information. I finally did—last year, 11
years after my original post.
Actually, the murder popped up on
my radar when Tammy’s friend Ricky S. had left a comment on the blog in 2019 (much
of it I didn’t print) referring to Tammy Lynds’ father, Richard Lynds,
contacting Ricky on Facebook messenger. This is what Richard wrote:
“Hi RS, there has been new information that has been brought to my attention. There is a place that you, your cousins and [name redacted] used to hang out at a lot. It was a very well-hidden place. It is what is known as the pit. This is where Tammy said she was going the night she disappeared, 25 years ago, a week from now. She was going to meet you there instead of at your parents’ home, which she did the week before.
“I have been told that Tammy did meet you at this pit and that is where she was killed. Her body was dragged out of the pit, up the bank, to the spot behind the log where she was finally found in November. My plan is to contact the news media with all this info before I go to the DA'S office. The reason why: I have been told that you and your family still have strong connections in the police department and my efforts to get help would get me nowhere. So I will leave it up to the news media to do my digging. Good luck and don't cross my path ever again.”
However, Richard was reacting to rumors, not fact. Ricky hadn't known about The Pit until last year. It was assumed that the last
sentence referred to the time Richard gave Ricky dirty looks and tried to
intimidate him at Mingles, a bar in West Springfield, where Ricky and his
friends used to sing karaoke.
Ricky S. first emailed me
directly in early April of 2023, stating that he had a story to tell—about a
2013 case involving him being the victim in a pedestrian accident at Walmart on
Boston Road, and how the Springfield Police screwed it up when they arrived and
ended up arresting him instead of the driver.
However, in the same email, Ricky
S. wrote that had also been in contact with Tammy’s sister Allison, who was
previously exchanging texts with him because she was pursuing leads in the
murder, and the Lynds family had obviously long believed Tammy was supposed to
meet Ricky S. the night she disappeared. Much of this theory is based on the
fact that Ricky S. and Tammy had been sexual partners—or shall we say friends
with benefits, and there was also a notation from Tammy’s mother, Susan, who
had hand-written in her detailed chronicles of her family’s investigation that
a friend of Tammy told her that she was meeting a “Ricky” that night:
Interestingly, during the course of my writing about Tammy’s murder in 2023, it was discovered that Tammy was also intimate with another Ricky, who lived on Carew Street.
But Tammy’s friend—the one that
Susan listed as the source of what this “Ricky” had “admitted” about their
planned meeting—told me that, despite what Susan wrote, he does not remember
talking to Ricky D. from Carew Street about Tammy back in 1994. “And I have a
great memory,” he added. Moreover, he certainly didn’t talk to Ricky S.
about her.
So who was a supposedly pregnant Tammy
supposed to meet the night of July 21, 1994? David B, according to notations
from Tammy’s parents below, “saw Tammy in spring 1994.” Did they end their
relationship before the summer, or was he seeing her at the time of her death?
And then there’s the notion that
Tammy had an abusive boyfriend, according to a 12-year-old girlfriend of
Tammy’s. In this revelation, six months into this blog’s coverage of the
murder, her girlfriend said that when Tammy was late meeting her un-named
boyfriend, he would hit her. In fact, the last thing Tammy said to her the
night she went missing was that she would be late again, and her boyfriend
would “act out.”
Again, I ask, who was Tammy
planning to get together with that fateful night? It’s the key question that
this blog hasn’t been able to answer, because no one has supplied this crucial
information.
When Ricky S. first contacted me,
he said that once “his face gets out there” as he publicized his own story
about his accident in the Walmart parking lot—and the police allegedly altering
evidence about it, along with denying him medical attention—he was certain that
Allison would contact him again about her sister’s murder.
And Ricky S. was still eager to
talk about Tammy’s case, because even though he was cleared by police less than
a month after Tammy was found, he remains the main suspect in many people’s minds
because of gossip. He is at a self-professed transformational stage in his life
in which he would like to exorcise some demons—of which he has many. Because of
years of a non-diagnosed overactive thyroid, he had experienced mental health
issues and several suicide attempts.
So how better, by his reasoning,
to set the record straight regarding his perceived involvement in Tammy’s
murder than to have a blogger help solve the case—or at least make progress,
and give it enough exposure to regenerate public and police interest in the
homicide?
And I was more than willing to
oblige. “Holy shit!” I said. “This is actually R.S., who Richard suspects
killed his daughter!” I had wondered for four years who this was. Ricky was
willing to let me use his full name in the blog, but I told him I was inclined
not to, because in the eyes of some he was still a main suspect.
But in the spirit of more disclosure
now, and with his OK, here’s his full name: Ricky Stebbins. He’s the one who
connected me with Richard Lynds when my writing about Tammy resumed. Richard
and Ricky at that stage seemed to get along, however awkwardly, which still marked a departure because they were
both initially suspects and had been leery of one another: Ricky was taken from
class, brought to the police station, and had photos of Tammy’s skeleton shoved
in his face during questioning. Richard took a couple of polygraphs, which were
deemed “inconclusive,” said Richard, who in 2013 was told by the DA’s Office he
was no longer a suspect.
Now here were two initial
suspects that were not exactly working together, but at least communicating
about the case. Unfortunately, that relationship eventually soured, partially
because they both have strong personalities.
Richard at first was hesitant to
talk to Hell’s Acres because I am an anonymous blogger and he didn’t know me.
But then he had a change of heart and eventually trusted me. The first theory
that he revealed was that Susan, his wife, was high on his list of suspects,
and not just because she and Tammy verbally and physically fought frequently.
“One of the unusual things that has had me confused is, the morning that Susan reported Tammy was missing started off as a normal day for me,” said Richard. “I got up to get ready for work, eating breakfast, getting dressed, making my, lunch and leaving. But that morning, Susan was completely dressed. Normally, as I would get ready for work, she would get out of bed in her nightgown.”
Richard was also suspicious of
Susan taking such detailed notes and of her talks with kids in the neighborhood
during her own investigation. “She has too much info written down—having
meetings and conversations with a few people high on my list,” he said. “Plus, there were problems that were happening between Tammy and her before Tammy was
missing. There are a few other factors that I know of that just does not add up
right. Remember, I lived through everything firsthand.”
I found this difficult to swallow
because in going through Susan’s files, her notes have been a great help to me
in sorting out the early months of the investigation. They documented what was
going on, possible leads, and who the main players were. Her notes are
especially important nowadays, because the original police investigative files
were lost. But Richard didn’t see it that way. I asked him if he had told
police about this hunch.
“My feelings about Sue—no I have
not reported this to anyone,” he said. “Who would I tell and who would listen?”
I guess this is the part where I
invite Susan to weigh in, because I’ve gotten only one side of the family story
before Richard died last year. I had heard through the grapevine that Susan
doesn’t want to get involved at this point—and hasn’t for a while—but I can’t
fathom the idea that she’d want to stay on the sidelines forever. She might
have accumulated useful information over the years. And after all, the threat
of a public pissing contest with Richard is gone now. So the invitation is out
there. Plus, her voice, whether she likes it or not, is already all over this
series through her notes. I’m happy to report that Allison is starting to
become engaged in this blog—minimally—but she is interested in helping me, and
that is a big step forward.
Still, I thought we would have
made more progress in a year since I began to explore this murder in depth.
Because we’re in a period of inertia, I’m taking the liberty of publishing the
names of people who had befriended Tammy (compiled by the Lynds family), as well
as names from Tammy’s address book. In doing this, I know full well that I run
the risk of some getting of her friends and associates angry, and because of
this, giving them an excuse not to talk to me—even off the record, or under
pseudonyms, because I supposedly violated their privacy. But so be it. This
cold case has reached the stage where very few of her friends have responded to
my direct requests to ask them questions, so they aren’t likely to talk to me
in the future anyway.
Or are they?
Look, my hope is that putting
these names out there might get people communicating. My only request is that
readers don’t send in comments claiming certain people from these lists likely
killed Tammy. I will not publish these accusations. If you have suspicions
about specific associates of hers, just send an email to hellsacres@gmail.com.
This is a list Tammy’s parents had compiled of people Tammy knew—they sought out these students' photos in the Kiley and Kennedy Junior High yearbooks:
Yes, it says next to one kid’s name, “used to harass our Tammy.” April Brueno, who is Tammy’s cousin, is on this page.
Below are the pages are from
Tammy’s phone ledger and the address portion of her diary. The phone numbers
and addresses are redacted. I also cut out the last names of the Ricky D. and
“David B,” who was her boyfriend, in the hope that they’re not contacted by
trolls.
You’ll see that there are some
comments that Susan had written in the phone ledger, such as “talked to his
mom” and “phone always busy.”
Eric “Surge” is actually Eric
Surridge, who had several arrests, including grand larceny and DUI drugs, and
died by suicide in 2016.
These Susan comments above
include the notion that Central High School students have the ability to get
“abortions without notice to parents.” Richard had mentioned to me the
possibility that Tammy once had an abortion.
A commenter in Part 14 of this
blog series about Tammy listed some of her from Central High School: Kelly
Hooper, Kristy Gzimalowski, Melanie Glynn, Virginia Hudson, Aiden Kelly, Anna
Leilien, Mike Edgett, Joe Morrissey, Michael Rabbit, and Dominique Potter. I
Facebook messaged a couple of them without responses. Tragically, Mike Edgett
died in a car crash in 2022.
Surely, SOMEONE has SOMETHING to
say 30 years after Tammy’s death. I know there is a hero out there—someone who
can connect Tammy’s whereabouts from the time she snuck out of her house to the
place she was found off Fox Road. It may be some small fact that may lead to
another…and another…
I’m going to end this post with a
quote from author James A. Autry that I had included at the end of one of my
posts on the Danny Croteau cold case, which ended up being solved, to the
surprise of many:
“I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given the chance.”