Did a teenager see Tammy around 9:00 p.m. on the night she disappeared? If true—and he claimed it is—Tammy was spotted in the neighborhood about two hours after her friend Will (not his real name) had walked her home from his house.
This is a “sighting” during a period that hadn’t been accounted for in her final hours, and it presents a new wrinkle in Tammy’s timeline before she vanished—if it’s true.
As far as we know, Tammy’s sister Allison was the last person to be with her before she took off into the night at around midnight on July 21,1994, never to return. Tammy’s mother Susan said good night to both girls at 11:30 p.m., but Tammy’s whereabouts in the hours after she was with Will and before she was with Allison remain unclear.
According to a homemade affidavit of sorts, Will’s sister Ann (not her real name) and his niece reported that on July 8, 1997—two years after Tammy went missing— a youth named Brian, who was a friend of the late Jason Francis (AKA “Lumpy,” a person of interest in the case) took Ann aside and told her he saw Tammy at 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. that night for about an hour:
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“My niece was a witness to what was said by Jason Francis and his friend Brian,” according to Ann in the document. There is a question mark after “Brian,” suggesting his last name was not known. “My niece [name redacted] was a witness,” she continued. “Two weeks ago is when we had seen and spoke with the boys at Jason’s house (on) Gresham Street.”
Brian said that Tammy was supposed to meet her cousin that evening, according to Ann. “Because she couldn’t go out by herself at night, that’s why she snuck out that night,” she continued, repeating Brian’s words. Which cousin? It is unlikely that it was her cousin April, because April is referred to several times in Susan’s notes as a person who was actively in contact with Susan about Tammy’s murder investigation, so she would surely had mentioned this planned meetup.
It is difficult to read this hand-written document because the text is so light, but it explains that Brian and Francis thought Tammy’s father Richard killed her “because he is so strict.”
The affidavit is signed by Ann, a Lynds family friend named Rose Busby, who died in 2020, and Tammy’s parents. It isn’t notarized, but it is a sworn statement that the conversation with Brian took place.
It’s not known if Brian’s alleged sighting of Tammy was ever investigated. It begs certain questions: Where did he see her? What was discussed? This undocumented hour was three hours after Tammy supposedly fought with her mother and three hours before she snuck out to meet someone. This possible interaction, during “missing time” in Tammy’s final night, is truly relevant.
Interestingly, according to Will, Jason had previously concocted a story that Tammy’s father had killed her because he had been molesting her and possibly she had threatened to expose him—a tale that Will said he refused to go along with. Did Jason change the story to Richard’s strictness being the “motive” because Ann, who was close to Tammy, knew the incest rumor was false?
Who is Brian? Outside of Tammy’s family, he may have been the last person to see Tammy. There isn’t a Brian listed among Francis’ Facebook friends. Did Tammy talk with him about her plans for later that evening, or was she secretive about it? What was her demeanor? This is hardly a “smoking gun” development, but I’d like to know more about the interaction. What was she doing at that time? Presumably socializing?
Was this lead ever pursued, or is this the first time the “affidavit” has seen the light of day since 1997?
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The possibility of Tammy sneaking out on a dare” the night she went missing has persisted mainly because six days earlier she went to see a boy at midnight—“something I would not have done without a dare,” she wrote in her diary. “At first he asked me what kind of dare I would do over his house with him. Then he dared me to come over this house that night.”
In his room, after unbuttoning her shirt and kissing her, “he asked me if I wanted to do the dares,” she continued. “I said, ‘No, not now.’ He said, ‘OK.’” After he took off her clothes and they were “making love,” she left at 2:00 a.m.:
In part 4 of this blog I brought up the possibility that a dare might have been Tammy and her friends playing a racy version of the old schoolgirl “chatterbox” or fortune-telling folded paper game in which a handful of boys’ names were written on the origami paper creation, and each player had to fool around with whoever’s name came up.
This was merely a rumor, but we don’t know the origin of it. The rumor could be completely false and may have been spread to illustrate Tammy’s promiscuity. Or maybe it’s based on truth. Richard, in one of videographer Lou Rock’s interviews, referred to Tammy “playing a game” between two boys, a Ricky and a David—maybe that’s the source of the rumor, but I always took the quote as Tammy playing mind games with them and their interest in her, not a chatterbox game. Richard, who died in 2023, had never heard of the rumor when I asked him.
It turns out that there are variations of this chatterbox game similar to “spin the bottle”—but instead of fortunes, the flaps contain “truth or dare”-type prompts. Girls may play it innocently to determine who in class they’re most likely to marry, for example, but it can also be used for a titillation or sex game:
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So I guess it’s not out of the question that 15-year-old girls would play a game in which they had to “do” whoever’s name was under the flap. But one has to remember that Tammy’s “boyfriend,” according to her diary, asked her about doing the “dares.” It seems hardly likely that the options involved having sex with others. Wouldn’t he want her all to himself? Maybe the dares involved various sexual acts or positions?
If there were names of potential sex partners under the chatterbox’s eight flaps, one must remember that according to her friend Will, there were four guys out that night who were interested in Tammy: Will himself, Jason Francis, Owen (not his real name, and “Roach,” and the latter three were going to a “party.” And just think: if one of the flaps involved having sex with multiple partners, maybe Tammy was put in a situation she didn’t want to be in.
In an interview in 2021, shortly before his overdose death, Jason Francis was asked if he knew about any “dares” teens were doing in the neighborhood, and he said he hadn’t heard of any.
Susan, in a note (above) dated November 11, 1994–a week after Tammy was found, reminded herself to call a police officer and ask him if he had talked to a woman named Dawn Staples, who worked in an East Springfield video store, about information she has “on a dare in our area with teenagers.”
There are a couple of sobering notations under this, including a reminder to confirm Tammy’s death with the family’s insurance company. “Oh! Our baby!!!” wrote Susan. It’s clear her grief is fresh and her pain is raw. And then there’s another task: pick out her daughter’s plot at the cemetery—something no parent would think they would ever have on their to-do list. But that was what she was facing in November of 1994: burying her daughter and at the same time trying to find out what had happened to her. She couldn’t move forward without looking back to try to find an answer.
It’s difficult to believe that some time ago she stopped revisiting the past and seeking justice, but maybe she came to the conclusion that it’s destined not to be found.
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It’s no secret that Jason Francis had a robust laundry list of charges on his record before his death in 2021. Of course, this goes with the territory with addiction, a problem he admitted to on his Facebook page—and somewhat acknowledged by his sister:
His arrests include the usual drug busts, traffic offenses, and shoplifting charges racked up by a habitual user, but there are also at least three arrests for assault and battery, as well as one for an assault on a family member. One doesn’t usually see that many violent offenses by heroin addicts—they tend to be not as aggressive as meth and cocaine users, but I suppose anything is possible once they get desperate for money.
One of his more interesting charges was a “failure to provide DNA database sample” out of the New Bedford District Court in 2020. State law dictates that anyone convicted of a felony must submit their DNA to the state so it can then be compared to DNA from crime scenes. It’s hardly earth shattering that Francis didn’t make this requirement a priority in his life—indeed, a couple of years ago an investigative report revealed that our state has failed to collect DNA from between 10,000 and 15,000 felons. It’s quite a backlog and I understand why criminals aren’t dying to give authorities their DNA if it’s not actively pursued by law enforcement, but I’d think it would have been in Francis’ best interest to submit his sample, because a warrant arrest would have taken him off the streets and drastically interrupted his heroin habit.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this. After all, he also had a "failure to appear upon recognizance" charge the previous year, and that kind of no-show is par for the course with people who have substance use disorder. Still, I have to wonder why he chose to defy the DNA order. Not showing up for a hearing is one thing—he might have been put in jail depending on the outcome. But not complying with a simple mouth swab—and risking being separated from his precious heroin because of it—doesn’t make much sense.
Then again, there is little about this murder that makes much sense at all. I know that all cold cases are perplexing, but this one is particularly frustrating because there aren’t many people coming forward—or even talking about it, for that matter. Every year it sinks lower and lower into the dustbin of history.
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