 |
Coming up on the 30th anniversary of Tammy’s disappearance, July 21, 1994, it’s only fitting to examine a conversation Tammy’s mother Susan had with Tammy’s old friend Will (not his real name) in 2000, when he pestered Susan at work because he evidently had to get something off his chest. He told her that two of his buddies hated Tammy, and to take police suspicion off themselves, they made up a story that Tammy’s father Richard molested her and killed her to shut her up.
In the six years prior to this exchange, Susan had already thought that Will’s two friends might have had something to do with Tammy’s death. She couldn’t rule out Will, either. Sure enough, in this bizarre discussion, Will revealed that he himself had been an early police suspect—something that didn’t surprise Susan, because his speech and manner in the parking lot were odd, erratic, and somewhat self-incriminating.
Will seemed to have a guilty conscience for some reason, possibly because he didn’t tell his full story to police in 1994.
Fast forward to 2021, when he told other friends that his same two buddies not only hated Tammy, but they talked about “how they wanted to hurt her.”
Back in 2000, Richard wanted to inform the FBI about Susan’s conversation with Will. In 2023, he said he would contact the Massachusetts Attorney General regarding Will’s most recent admission about these guys’ intention to harm Tammy. But he did neither—and then died last December before he got the chance to tell a higher law enforcement authority.
However, I recently informed the Springfield Police Homicide Unit about Will’s 2021 revelations and the need for a detective to interview him. I exchanged emails with the same officer who had re-investigated the case in 2013, and he replied that he is “very familiar with all the names you have mentioned,” that he had read the blog, and would like to discuss this further at some point.
So stay tuned.
* * * * * * * *
On August 14, 2000, six years after Tammy’s death, Susan was working at Stop & Shop in East Longmeadow and getting ready to tally the day’s receipts from the cash registers when Tammy’s old friend Will, who was working for Arrow Security in the shopping center parking lot, walked in. “He kept trying to get my attention,” she later told her husband Richard.
“Can I speak to you for a minute?” Will asked her.
“I’m in the middle of something,” she told him. “Can you wait?”
“It’s only one thing and it won’t take but a minute,” Will insisted.
Susan was used to Will’s odd behavior—when he had hung around with Tammy, she was aware that he didn’t take visual and verbal cues very well, and conversations with him were often non-linear and sometimes very rambling. She didn’t want to deal with him, but he claimed that he had something important to say about a recent newspaper article on Tammy’s murder.
No, Will couldn’t wait. “I read the article in the paper at my mom’s after mom showed it to me, and the dates are wrong,” he blurted out in the store. “They made a mistake on the dates.”
“Are you sure about that?” asked Susan.
“Yes,” he said. “Very!”
She told him she would re-read the article about Tammy’s murder in the Valley Advocate newspaper to see what he was talking about, but right now she was busy. “Bye,” she said, waving her hand to make it clear she had to finish work.
“He then went into how he worked for Arrow Security and he usually works at another location, but they sent him tonight to our store,” she told Richard.
“I said, ‘That’s nice,’ and kept on walking,” she continued. “He followed me. Will then said he spent the night at my house a couple of days ago talking to Joshua until 4:00 a.m., and that Josh’s friend B.J. was there. Then he left so the guys could either go to bed or finish playing computer games—whichever they had planned. I told Will that I have work to do and really didn’t have time to talk.”
Will, who had been oblivious that she wanted him out of the store, finally took the “hint” and left.
“I then told my coworker Betty about the conversation,” she said. “She asked me if I thought he knew something—is he involved in Tammy’s murder in any way? I told her I believe he in some way has to know something. I just don’t know what. Amy, a girl in our neighborhood, knows Will and his family well, and she said he’s weird, and that she used to hang around with his sister years ago. She told me some personal things about him—some that I know of and some I didn’t—I’m not go into them now because they have nothing to do with my Tammy.”
Susan was referring to common neighborhood knowledge—but rarely spoken about—that years ago Will and his sister had been molested by their stepfather. It made her even more leery of Will—how could he grow up to be normal after experiencing that?
“When I got out of work I was still bothered a bit by Will’s adamant behavior,” Susan told Richard. She was annoyed that Will had been trying to get into a closer friendship her son Josh all of a sudden. “I didn’t know if he was out to find out if Josh knew anything about the case,” she said. She had her suspicions about Will’s possible involvement in the murder—or at least knew more than he was letting on. She flat out didn’t want Will in her home. “I really don’t trust him a whole lot,” she told Richard. “Put it down to a mother’s intuition.”
Richard agreed. “We definitely have to keep an eye on him,” he said. “I wonder what he knows? Has he held onto it for six years? Or did he hear something recently? We have to tell that Valley Advocate reporter that we talked to. Not only that—we have to talk to the FBI. They’re the only ones that can help us at this point.”
At the supermarket, after Susan cashed out, she headed toward her van, and came across co-workers Lindsay Kelly and Alex Gomez, and told them about Will badgering her, along with his assertion that the article supposedly had wrong dates. They wanted a copy of the article to read, so Lindsay suggested going over to the nearby Emporium newsstand to get one. However, the store had run out of the newspaper. “I told them the last chance was to look in my vehicle,” she told Richard. “We did find part of a Valley Advocate. I handed it to them and told them they could join me in my vehicle to sit and read it—all the more comfortable and private. So they did. We started to discuss the article and looked to see where the discrepancy was, when we saw that Will was observing us from the Arrow Security car. It going around in circles. Alex and Lindsay asked why he was keeping a close eye on my vehicle.”
Like a shark sizing up its prey, Will continued to circle Susan’s van.
“Knowing Will, he wants to know what we’re doing,” she told Alex and Lindsay, “and he’ll be coming over to talk to us. I just know it.”
Sure enough, within minutes he did come over. “I had hoped I would be wrong, for a change,” she said.
Will walked up to Susan’s open window, leaned in, and repeated again about the dates being wrong. “But it was a real nice story about Tammy—well done,” said Will, adding that a good point was made by the writer—that the recent disappearance of 16-year-old Molly Bish in Warren, MA, had received plenty of publicity, but Tammy’s case hadn’t. “Tammy should have received the same coverage,” said Will. He paused, his eyes scanning the parking lot—after all, he was supposed to be working, and he didn’t want someone from Arrow catching him not doing his rounds. “You know, I thought of Tammy as a sister…and I loved her as one,” he said. It was such a poignant statement, but he didn’t look her in the eye when he said this. She thought that was weird.
“Again, he repeated that the dates are wrong,” she told Richard. “I asked him to show me where the wrong dates are, because the whole time the paper was open to the article on my passenger seat. Will had been trying to pretend he didn’t notice it sitting there as soon as he came over.”
The mistake Will was talking about was indeed the article (below) having the wrong month listed—June instead of July when the date of Tammy’s disappearance was mentioned the second time. It was a small error that barely mattered, especially considering the fact that the writer, Tom Vannah, had come to the Lynds home, interviewed Richard and Susan for nearly four hours, and published a fairly long story when the rest of the media had long forgotten about Tammy. Will’s apparent obsession with the wrong month was just a way to get Susan to listen to him.
Will’s monologue went all over the place. “One minute he’d go into how he liked his job as a guard—that he now had his license where he didn’t have one until a short while ago,” said Susan, rolling her eyes. “So now he can drive his cool car for Arrow—it drives great, and so on.”
Lindsay excused herself to go to the bathroom, and called her family to pick her up. After she left the van, Will started talking about Tammy’s friend Owen (not his real name), and how this boy had wanted Tammy to go roller skating with him at Interskate 91 in Wilbraham around the time she disappeared—but not really. “Owen’s sole purpose was to get Tammy…you know…fuck her. Lay her,” said Will. “Sorry, Sue, I don’t mean to use that word, but Owen had no intention of taking your Tammy roller skating. He had only one thing in mind and that’s it—nothing else. Taking Tammy roller skating was the excuse to get her out of the house. But Sue, you stopped that—you changed that—when you would not let Tammy out. That made Owen mad—really mad.”
Sue didn’t like Will, but she disliked Owen even more, recalling Owen’s one visit to the Lynds home, when the underage driver had “borrowed” his mother’s car and roared down the street and into the driveway while drinking a beer. “My husband and I had no intention of letting her go anywhere with Owen or anyone else we don’t know anything about, especially when Owen left our driveway with a beer can in his hand, speeding down the street, hanging his body out of the driver’s side of the vehicle. That topped our decision off. And I told Tammy, along with her dad what we saw. We said, ‘No way. We’re not risking your life for anyone.’ I asked her what she knew about Owen. Will broke into what I was saying and told me Tammy met Owen at Will’s house once because Tammy had gone down there to visit his family.”
Then Will’s mind began to wander, forgetting that he was having a very serious conversation with Susan about her daughter. “With a smile on his face, went into his own story about his friendship with Owen—how they partied together at Owen’s house, drinking, smoking weed, etc. with Owen, Owen’s mom, and Owen’s friends: Jay Francis—I believe he mentioned a guy named Chris and some Black young man—can’t remember his name—and others,” said Susan. “Will mentioned how they hung around Jay Francis’s house a lot—and how Jay really hated Tammy and so did Owen. That’s when Will would say again what Owen intended to do to Tammy sexually.”
“I loved Tammy like a sister, said Will again. “She was like family to me.”
“He kept repeating this in the conversation, never looking at me during three-quarters of our talk,” said Susan.
Will grinned again when he discussed going to the skating rink around Christmas—about a month after Tammy was found murdered. “I believe that 18th of December 1994, or around there,” said Susan. “It was the weekend—a Friday or a Saturday night. We took Josh, Allison, and Allison’s friend J.R. Steele, and I remember taking photos of the kids roller skating. Will went into how Owen, Jay, and their friends, along with Will himself, were coming up with a story about how Rich did something to our Tammy, and that’s why she ran away, and to stop her from saying anything, Richie is supposed to have killed our daughter. That was their story. Will also said Owen and his friends wanted Will to go along with this story.”
Will said he refused, which was strange, because at first he had helped concoct the story. “I told them, ‘No. No way,” he said. “I stuck my middle finger up at them, and walked away.” Did Will forget that a moment ago he told Susan he was helping them dream up the tale? Maybe.
“How did you get to the rink in the first place?” Susan asked Will.
“Owen and Jay gave me a ride”
“Did you go home with them later?”
“No, because they were mad at me.”
“How did you get home?”
“Someone else.”
“He was very elusive in many of his answers,” said Susan. “It turned out that the ‘someone else’ was my family—he never mentioned this. But he still had spent most of his evening with those kids—with them giving us the evil eye and talking about us. They kept looking at us that evening—my husband and I—talking between them. Will said that Richie confronted the boys outside that night, which I know was an out-and-out lie because Rich never left the building until we took the kids home. So I knew Will made that nonsense up. Then he said Ricky usually showed up roller skating—but not that night—with Tim Gilmartin, Ricky’s cousin Joey, and Will’s friend. I believe his name was Chris. And David B. would show up there.”
Will said Owen apparently thought that Allison had long suspected Owen had murdered her sister, and was either trying to get Allison “to change her mind about him having any involvement in what happened to our Tammy,” or to intimidate her to keep quiet. “I think that’s why Owen kept following Allison around the rink—to scare her,” said Susan. “This didn’t seem to bother Will one bit as we were talking. There was no remorse through the conversation about everything that had been happening.”
Then Will started talking about the murder scene. “The first thing he said was there was a metal object found under Tammy—what I believe is called a pentagram,” said Susan. Will also mentioned that police had found a cat dead hanging, or as he put it, a cat “bagged” in a tree.
“How would he know that?” Susan wondered. “We never told him any of this. When I would ask Will how he came by this or that info, he would not look at me.”
“I can’t remember,” Will answered Susan. “That happens sometimes.” He expressed his frustration at his forgetfulness. “I hate when that happens,” he said.
“What the fuck?” thought Susan.
“Will kept repeating that Satanism was involved in Tammy’s murder,” she said. “He mentioned Ricky, Owen, David B., Joey, I believe Jay, and some Black guy. Then he went into how some of these kids went to school with him—Owen, Ricky, Joey, Jay Francis—I believe those were the names he mentioned.” Will asserted that they were the ones who penciled a drawing of Tammy’s gravestone and put it on his desk at Putnam High School to scare him.
“Will said Tammy was pregnant, and that someone also put a drawing on his desk that had something relating to a baby,” said Susan. “Will mentioned how he called the police about the threat to him, and they ignored his calls when he phoned them.”
Will was all over the place. “He went from one thing to another,” recalled Susan. “He said the Springfield Police Department had him and his stepfather for quite a while as suspects in Tammy’s murder, but not anymore, and how his ex-brother-in-law had connections in the Department and that the detectives on our Tammy’s case were fired.” Susan knew for a fact they weren’t fired. “I never said ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to Will about that info,” she said. “I knew he was giving me baloney.”
Susan then had to put up with a small racist rant. “Will said some remarks about Blacks that I tried to ignore, because my one of my best friends for 18 years is Black,” she said. Will switched subjects, not because he could sense her discomfort—he lacked the ability to read social cues—but because he was compelled to jump around again. “He said at one point the police were paid off to drop the case, and that’s why Tammy’s death has been shelved—ignored.”
“Paid off?” wondered Susan. “What the hell is he talking about?”
The conversation continued on its wandering path. “We were at one point discussing my children Josh and Allison, and the tough decision we had to make by leaving Springfield and moving the kids to Florence to keep them safe, giving them a chance at growing up without some gang or kook trying to hurt them,” said Susan.
“I refuse to have my kids live in fear,” she told Will. “My kids are my life—I refuse to lose another of my kids to anyone or anything. We’ve had a hard enough time dealing with the loss of our Tammy. It’s been sheer hell never knowing what happened to her and why. Tammy never intentionally hurt any kids. She wasn’t mean like that.”
Will agreed, but he still had problems with eye contact. He picked up the newspaper article and started reading it again. He didn’t look up when Susan barely choked back a sob.
“I won’t lose another one of my kids, Will,” she said. “No one better mess with my kids again or God help them. My kids are my life. They’ll not put us through hell again. Once was bad enough. I won’t lose another one.”
“If anything happens to the other kids, tell me,” said Will.
Oh my God, she thought. “What a cruel and thoughtless thing to say,” she later told Richard.
She was officially done with this exchange with Will. “A few times during our conversation I had told Will I need to go—or I had to go talk to Lindsay and Alex about a few things at work,” she said. “Finally, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Will got back into the Arrow Security car to do his job. I quickly talked to Lindsay and Alex so they could get on their way.”
* * * * * * * *
Richard emailed the reporter, Tom Vannah, about his wife’s conversation with Will, who he felt knew a lot—more than he was letting on. He wanted to contact the FBI. “We feel that he was there when it happened,” Richard wrote. Vannah replied that he would be in touch, but he never followed up (below).
However, it turns out that in 2021, Will was chatty again, telling told friends a few other details about the night Tammy disappeared, including a detailed description of the possible murder weapon.
Again, Stay tuned.
* * * * * * * *
In case you’re wondering if I might have taken too many liberties in reconstructing this conversation, Alex Gomez confirmed everything that was said in the exchange:
Moreover, the following is Susan’s description of their talk, in her own handwriting. (You’ll see I added a few flourishes to keep their talk resembling a dialogue, but it’s mostly verbatim.)
