“Fuck this,” thought Ricky. “I’m not ready to die.” He stepped forward and went at the man. “It was like he was moving in slow motion and I closed the distance,” recalled Ricky. “I went to stab him in the neck. We locked eyes.”
As we know from Part 30, until that
moment, Ricky had been backing up and yelling “stop!” at a guy who was
threatening him and pointing a laser in his eyes in front of the Fox Road Woods,
where Ricky’s friend Tammy Lynds was murdered 31 years ago. In a
life-threatening situation, Ricky knew he had to lunge at him, even if it was
just a bluff, to stop the attack. Sometimes offense is the best defense—it certainly
seemed that way at this stage of their encounter on the evening of April 4,
2025.
“He pulled
whatever he was holding into his sleeve from the way the light was reflecting
inside,” recalled Ricky. “I couldn’t see what it was, but I didn’t see a muzzle
sticking out. I feel like he was just as shocked as I was that I didn’t stab
him. Thankfully, he bobbed away and gave me enough distance that I was able to
pull my phone out and saw the 911 call had gone through, and I shouted the cops
were coming. He took off across Grayson Drive and headed towards Duffy Lane
down the sidewalk, yelling nonsense as he left.”
Ricky told the
911 operator what happened, and she responded that they were sending officers
to Fox Road. After a few seconds, Ricky realized she didn’t say what he should
do, so he said, “Fuck it,” hopped on his bike, and raced home. He didn’t know
when the police would arrive and he didn’t want the man changing his mind and
coming back for round two.
“The cops
showed up at my house 15 minutes later,” he said. “The officer I spoke to said
the guy is known to the Springfield Police Department and they haven’t been
able to do anything about him. I had been warned about him by my neighbor, but
it was only about the guy running his mouth. He’s said a lot of perverted
things to women and children in the neighborhood. He’s usually harmless—just
yelling and continuing to walk on his way.”
Here is a photo
from the officer’s bodycam footage when she answered the call:
Ricky later learned that the police held the man for the Fox Road incident but he was released on his own recognizance. It turned out that the assailant might have had a knife or another object, because it appears that a serrated edge grazed Ricky’s hand:
“What he did was totally batshit crazy,” said Ricky. “Waiting for a gun to pop was fucking mind boggling. Even if he didn’t have a gun or it was fake, who the fuck says that shit charging out of the woods in the dark? A few cars drove by too, and no one stopped to shine their lights or honk at what was happening.”
* * * * * * *
Two weeks
later, Ricky still had a lot of anxiety about the prospect of going to Fox Road
alone and hanging up the Tammy Lynds flag, so I offered to watch his back while
I was armed with my softball bat: The Hammer.
On April 18, I
met him on Fox Road. I didn’t take The Hammer out, but it was in my car ready
to be grabbed if necessary. Ricky’s eyes were still bothered by the laser, and
it was comedy of errors as he tried and tried again to throw the roll of twine
over a branch to hoist the flag up. It was really a two-man job, but I had leave
him on his own and stand guard in case we had a certain visitor. I joked that
we should have done this during one of the dude’s many Facebook Live sessions
he has in his house—then we would know he wasn’t lurking in the woods!
Ricky managed
to hang the flag up, and miraculously it’s still there. The dream of Tammy’s
father Richard to have a memorial bench dedicated to her on Fox Road or on some
other parkland never materialized, but I think the flag is serving its purpose
in the publicity department, because it’s very visible when you round the
corner.
In fact, the flag prompted a woman to come forward with an account of being grabbed at knifepoint and dragged into the Fox Road woods in an attempted rape on November 28, 1982, when she was a teenager. It was the second violent crime there in a little more than two months—a 27-year-old woman was raped at the same spot on September 17, 1982. However, these two attacks weren’t perpetrated by the rapist who had terrorized the nearby Finch Road area that fall and was arrested on October 29, 1982. Instead, the Fox Road assailant was a stocky blond fellow according to the victims, and the target of the second ambush said police had identified a separate suspect in her incident—a person other than the notorious Finch Road predator.
Sex attacks at
the same site where a 15-year-old girl was murdered 12 years later? Maybe all
this has nothing to do with Tammy’s death. Maybe it does. Maybe it will prompt
others to come forward.
Yes, it took an
unorthodox move from Ricky to ultimately bring this new account to light. Ricky
has reached the point in his life where he knows he will ruffle feathers with
his passion and persistence, but he soldiers on because sometimes it produces
results.
Another
example: Ricky messaging the brother of David B., Tammy’s last boyfriend. Ricky
suggested I call him myself, because David B. so far has refused to comment on
the murder, and Ricky couldn’t get any useful information from his brother. I
phoned the guy, who said he was really annoyed by Ricky’s questions, and he had
saved the messages in case he had to eventually file a complaint. I apologized
to him, but in the course of the conversation he told me that his brother was
never interviewed by police. So Ricky’s antics at least produced the unknown
fact that David B., who some believe might have gotten Tammy pregnant, wasn’t
questioned by investigators.
* * * * * * *
Ricky’s obstinance and history of mental health issues are no secret in this
blog. Years of a non-diagnosed overactive thyroid had given him anxiety and
caused mood swings. With some people, hyperthyroidism can also result in
depression and even psychosis, and apparently this was the case with Ricky, who
had attempted suicide three times. When he purposely overdosed on medications
10 years ago, before his thyroid condition was discovered, a hospital report
mentioned that this was the second time he had tried to kill himself in a few
months:
Finding this medical document didn’t take much investigative work on the part of Hell’s Acres, folks. Ricky readily puts these kinds of records online in his own blog, The AI Memory Ark, in which he details his life from childhood to present and how the legal, medical, political, insurance and educational system failed him, from misdiagnoses by doctors to false arrests to incompetent and dishonest lawyers and judges. He is using AI as a whistleblower to try to hold people in positions of power accountable, and he is encouraging others to document their challenges to do the same. Ricky’s Facebook profile says, “Out here trying to save the world. Together we can accomplish anything,” and he means it. “These records serve as a testament to the real human cost of this broken system,” he explained.
Ricky’s zeal to
make things right even extends to the man who charged at him on Fox Road.
Despite being shaken up by the incident, he is somewhat empathetic when it
comes to the attacker’s obvious psychological problems, having dealt with his
own. In fact, he called the guy’s mother a few months ago to inform her that
her son needs professional help—because that’s what Ricky does; he’s not shy
about contacting people. They talked for a minute before she asked him to call
her back. But she never answered his calls again, so he left her two messages.
“He still walks
around my neighborhood, and in September I called him over to me when I was
getting the mail,” said Ricky.
“We talked for
a few minutes. He remembered attacking me and said he was going through some
things. I asked him if he wanted to contribute more to society and be part of a
team again.”
“Of course,” answered
the former high school basketball player.
“I tried
calling your mom, but she didn’t call back.”
At that moment
he seemed pretty normal to Ricky, but in a nanosecond he had that familiar psychotic
look in his eyes.
“I’m in a
gang!” he blurted. “You don’t know me!”
“Um…thanks. You
were a lot of help.”
With a look of
utter confusion the man yelled, “She’s not my mom!”
He kept staring
at Ricky while walking away.
“Thanks your
help!” hollered Ricky. “I really appreciate it!”
He looked even
more confused after that, and then he walked past a house and out of
view.
Maybe he was
heading back home. Maybe he was going to the Salvation Army parking lot on
Boston Road, where he sometimes does Facebook Live videos of shadow boxing and
martial arts moves. Or maybe he was walking over to the Fox Road woods, where
strange things continue to happen three decades after a 15-year-old girl’s
skeleton was found there.
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