One of the more curious claims in the Tammy Lynds murder case is that the slaying was a satanic ritual. This was perpetuated by Tammy’s friend Will (not his real name), who allegedly said “that something was found under our daughter Tammy—something satanical (sic), some sharp object.” This assertion was writeen in one of the notes that her mother, Susan, jotted down on June 3, 2003.
He also said a youth and Owen (not his real name) “used to do witchcraft a lot.”
In a note dated August 15, 2000, the day after Will had approached Susan and discussed the case with her when she was working at Stop & Shop in East Longmeadow, Susan wrote about Will telling Tammy’s brother Josh that a pentagram was found under Tammy.
I have an incredibly hard time believing this was a ritualistic slaying. I know that kids in Tammy’s circle listened to Marilyn Manson and all, and might have been amused by the whole satanism thing for its shock value, but come on!
In 2000, Susan thought that Will might have been using the pentagram claim to try to get into a closer friendship with Josh. “I didn’t know if he was out to find out if Josh knew anything about the case,” she wrote.
This was 21 years before Will revealed in an interview that he had given Tammy a knife the night she went missing. In the past few years, we learned that a knife was indeed found under (or near) Tammy—police had showed it to her father Richard, Josh, and Ricky Stebbins in 1994. Was mentioning a pentagram and “a sharp object” a way for Will to fish for information from the Lynds family about the knife? Had he heard through the grapevine about the knife being found? Or was he wondering what became of it after he supposedly handed it to her—whether it was found on her person, disarmed from her, used against her, or dropped elsewhere during a chase?
I wrote “supposedly” because Tammy’s sister Allison didn’t see a knife on Tammy when she left that night.
Will is hard to figure out. In 2000 he visited Susan to give her incriminating information on Jason Francis and Owen, but didn’t mention the knife. That might have been strategic in a way, because Susan would have undoubtedly gone to the police with the bombshell knife claim and they might have been compelled to interview Will about it.
Will told Susan at Stop and Shop that he himself was a suspect early in the investigation—yet his sister says he wasn’t interviewed in 1994. Maybe giving Susan that interesting tidbit was his way of trying to find out if she suspected him. (She did, by the way, have her suspicions.)
To be sure, the fact that Will claims he gave Tammy a knife—and a knife was found under her—alone merits a police interview in 2025. He insisted that he did this because Tammy was in danger, so he should be heard out. If it’s a fabrication, then he should be given a chance to explain why he made it up.
Will took a big step by saying all this on camera in 2021, but that doesn’t mean he’s any closer to walking into the police headquarters and spilling his guts. He needs to be invited down to Pearl Street. After all, we have these claims on video, and the police have access to a link. All they have to do is press the “play” arrow and have a listen.
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A Plot
“I heard you killed Tammy Lynds,” said Horace (not his real name).
Ricky Stebbins’ jaw dropped. He was fixing a window in a trailer and slammed it shut, almost breaking it and nearly crushing his fingers. “I was in shock,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to say, and he kept talking.”
Horace had a business proposition for Stebbins. A hit job!
“He talked about how he wanted me to rape and murder his wife and dump her body in Connecticut,” said Ricky. “He had very specific details about what he wanted done. He knew everything about her schedule and where she lived and who she talked to. He told me what to do with her personal belongings, her phone, her keys and wallet.”
It was 2003, nearly a decade after Tammy’s death, and Stebbins was all too familiar with rumors that he was a murderer, but he hadn’t heard anything in a long while.
To this day, Stebbins is still very curious who gave Horace the idea that he had anything to do with Tammy’s murder. “My name was never in the paper, we didn’t have mutual friends, and her cause of death still hasn’t been determined,” he said.
Stebbins owned a mobile home off Boston Road, which Horace had bought from him on a rent-to-own basis. Horace had an older friend from Longmeadow who was also his psychiatrist and obviously acting as his life coach—not an easy job because Horace was, as they used to say, “not all there.” The man not only helped him with the down payment, but also gave his word that if Horace stiffed Stebbins on the balance, he would cover it.
However, Stebbins made the mistake of doing Horace another favor. Horace used to complain about his ex-wife physically abusing his son, specifically citing an incident at a youth soccer game at the Jewish Community Center in Springfield. So, Stebbins called DSS anonymously from a pay phone on Boston Road and reported seeing Horace’s ex getting rough with their son at the soccer field. “I remembered playing there as a kid, so I was able to describe it easy enough, and I figured an anonymous call would just help start an investigation,” said Stebbins. “His son told me his mother hit him, so why wouldn’t I believe it?”
But that just emboldened Horace all the more.
“Horace was the cheapest, laziest bastard,” said Stebbins. “He drove me absolutely nuts. At first it was stupid stuff, like the time he left the window open during a storm and didn’t know what to do. I told him to get some towels and soak up the water! Then the furnace breaker popped and I had to drive over to press the reset button. He couldn’t find it on the burner. He even tried to get me to pay for the propane for the gas stove when he ran out. He used to nag me all the time to come over, complaining about this or that, saying that the window had a leak, or some siding was getting loose, just to try to lure me into conversations to persuade me to murder his ex-wife.”
For the dirty deed, Horace offered Stebbins $20,000 from the life insurance policy had taken out on her. “He said the policy is why she had to die the way he described. He had a plan to take his son to Israel because he said there is no extradition treaty there,” said Stebbins. “He actually said he would send me the money from Israel.”
Stebbins tried to ignore him or change the subject whenever he started talking crazy. But Horace persisted. At the time, Stebbins had hyperthyroidism, which prompted numerous anxiety attacks. He was also dealing with physical and other psychological issues. “I was so sick at the time I felt trapped,” he said. “I didn’t know what to say to this guy. I just let him vent. I think at this point he owed me like $12,000.”
Then Horace was constantly late with rent, and Stebbins got stuck listening to his stories about his ex-wife and the business he lost after his divorce. “I always felt like he was trying to lure me over to trap me into conversations I didn’t want to have,” said Stebbins.
Stebbins called Horace’s psychiatrist friend and told him his buddy wasn’t well—and hinted at how much Horace said he hated his ex. “Thankfully this guy paid off the balance of the mobile home, so I didn’t have to deal with Horace ever again,” said Stebbins. “This man has no conscience. I don’t think he loved his son. I think this was all about child support. I also had a friend anonymously call Springfield Police and report that Horace was looking for someone to kill his ex, on the off chance he was serious.”
* * * * * * * * * *
It turned out that Horace wasn’t kidding around, according to prosecutors, who pointed to wiretaps in 2005, when he tried to get someone else to kill her. He knew exactly how it should go down: “If he grabbed her with the freakin’ car and dumped her in Hartford where they found the body a few hours later, and she was raped and brutalized and all that, and they stripped the car down, that’s a carjacking,” said Horace. “It’d never come back to me. Never.”
But the diabolical plan ended up coming back to him in a big way, because the man he talked to, his friend, was a federal confidential informant and he was wearing a wire. When the informant had told Horace that he knew a contract killer who would murder his ex-wife, Horace was game, and it was all on tape. The reward was the same as the offer to Stebbins: $20,000 from the life insurance policy—within 90 days.
Horace’s attorney mocked the notion that he truly wanted to go through with it. “Murder on the payment plan? That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
His lawyer also pointed out that Horace knew his friend had worked as an informant for law enforcement before (albeit mostly on drug busts)—so there was no way he was serious—and that they had also discussed the plot at a restaurant in front of a woman Horace brought. She was from Columbia and didn’t understand a word of English, Horace assured the informant, so they went ahead and ironed out the details of the plan, including drawing a map. Still, argued Horace’s attorney, it was ludicrous to conclude that he actually wanted the plan carried out. “Did he really mean for this to happen, or was he blowing off steam?” he asked. “I submit to you he was blowing off steam.” He said that it was his client who was the victim—of entrapment.
It was a moronic scheme, but nonetheless Horace and the informant sealed the deal with a handshake, and that probably swayed the jury to convict him—in just three hours—not to mention the fact that Horace told him that at one point he had cut the brake lines in his ex’s car. This sabotage was verified by the woman. Horace meant business, and so did the judge at the sentencing hearing: a whopping 20 years in prison.
* * * * * * * * * *
The strange thing is that the two friends of Horace who testified about his murderous intent in the federal trial were family members of Will—you know, WILL—the guy who loved Tammy enough to allegedly give her a knife to protect herself on the final night of her life.
Stebbins always wondered why Horace singled him out as a potential hitman, and now he is nearly positive that one or more members of Will’s family was his source of the information that he killed Tammy Lynds. How can they not be? Stebbins doesn’t believe in coincidences.
Stebbins never spread the word that Horace talked to him about any of the plot. “I didn’t want him going crazy on anyone I cared about,” he said. “Thankfully it was taken seriously and it got to the right people.” He also wonders if directing his friend to notify the Springfield Police about Horace might have put the man on law enforcement’s radar.
“This whole thing still bothers me more than I can express and it’s almost 20 years later,” said Stebbins. “I try to laugh when I ask this, but where did that fucking psycho get the idea I would rape and kill his wife for him and by offering me an IOU of all the craziest shit? Totally mind boggling. You have to laugh at this or you’ll go insane.”
When Stebbins’ thyroid was off and he was having uncontrollable anxiety attacks for no reason at all, this Horace experience made him feel like he was totally losing his mind. “I’ve talked about this for years at therapy,” he said. “My marriage was falling apart, and I was also working at a nursing home, which was a super-depressing job. I thought helping people would make me feel better, but that job was like prison. It all added up and broke me down.”
The story of Horace’s two inept attempts at a contract murder could be viewed as apropos of nothing—a sideshow of the Tammy Lynds murder mystery that sheds no light on the case. Indeed, we already know full well from past blog posts that Stebbins was distressed at being a suspect in some people’s eyes—it really did a number on him psychologically. Still, the fallout from the murder is part of its legacy, and so I think it’s also part of the narrative. It also reveals what conclusions some people were drawing about the murder nine years later: that Stebbins was the killer.
We don’t know for sure if Horace heard the Ricky rumor from Will or his family members. “I never asked him who told him that,” said Stebbins. But it’s obvious that over the years Will had been pointing fingers at others—mostly Jason Francis and Owen—saying that they hated Tammy, they wanted to hurt her, and that they made up a story to police that Tammy’s father was molesting her and therefore might have killed her. He also tied in Stebbins and others to the whole satanism angle, as well as to a drawing of Tammy’s gravestone on Will’s school desk:
Conversely, Will portrays himself in a semi-heroic light: giving Tammy the knife, warning her about Jason and Owen, and flipping the bird to his two friends when they asked him to go along with the father molestation story. And what a great guy—Will leaking all this stuff to Tammy’s mom is certainly a good start. Too bad he has yet to be a real standup guy and tell the police.
Will might feel that this kind of deflection—let’s just call it strategic spin—is in his best interest, especially since Tammy’s parents always suspected he was at the murder scene.
Yes, how…convenient…for him to mention the other guys, even though he was technically Tammy’s last friend to see her alive as far as we know, and that night she rebuffed his romantic notions. Does Tammy’s brush-off give him a motive? Hard to say. She was gentle with her rejection, and she gave him a kiss, but he acknowledged that the turndown was “a little bit” hurtful.
As for his knife story, it could be true—or it could be a way to explain his DNA or fingerprints being on the “carpet cutter” in case any evidence was found on a tool that could very well have been the murder weapon, by the way.
Why did Will make himself a key player in this mystery, only to back off and then take off to Florida? Will we EVER know, Will?
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