Hell's Acres

"You can't go home again," wrote Thomas Wolfe. Well, I was born and raised in the Sixteen Acres neighborhood of Springfield, MA. Then, after college, I got out of Dodge and lived in Boston for 21 years, only to return to the 413 in 2007, when my career brought me back. Although this blog isn’t exclusively about growing up—and returning to—the Springfield area, I can’t seem to escape it. Or can I? MOBILE USERS: TO VIEW A TABLE OF CONTENTS, CLICK "VIEW WEB VERSION" ON THE BOTTOM.

Monday, December 29, 2025

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 33: The Blond Rapist

Above: the corner of Fox Road and Grayson Drive in the autumn

Did more than one predator strike three separate times—including a murder—on Fox Road over the course of 12 years in the 1980s and 1990s? Or was this all this evil the work of a single person?

In Part 32 of this cold case series I recounted a rape and an attempted rape on Fox Road in the fall of 1982—across the street from where the skeleton of 15-year-old Tammy Lynds (pictured below) was found in 1994.

The individual or individuals responsible for these three attacks escaped justice. Indeed, the two Fox Road victims in 1982 described a perpetrator who looked much different than the 19-year-old who was convicted of three other rapes in the area during that summer and fall.

The fact remains that police believed there were two men responsible for a total of five rapes and two assaults in the neighborhood that year. The brunet or dark-brown-haired predator who was sentenced to 8-10 years bore no resemblance to the attacker on Fox Road, who was blond and had a stocky or muscular build.

“The suspect does not generally fit the description of the rapist we’re looking for,” said Crime Prevention Bureau Sgt. Thomas Kelly shortly after the dark-brown-haired man was arrested. Police said they were still seeking someone who was blond—or had dirty blond hair. His other physical characteristics: he stood between 5-foot-7 and six feet tall, and he was in his late teens or early 20s.

Then, a month after police released this description, a blond, stocky teen was arrested for the second attack on Fox Road. But he was never prosecuted.

It was my hope that by vividly describing the attempted rape of Rosemary (not her real name) on Fox Road in Part 32 I would prompt others to come forward with information about other possible attacks involving this dirtbag. That hasn’t happened. But a woman from the neighborhood did report a bizarre incident in the area involving a guy who was both blond and stocky.

She remembers one summer day in 1982, when she and her friend, both 17, were walking on the dirt road that connects the North Branch Parkway with the back of the Gateway Village apartments—a popular pedestrian cut-through that cars couldn’t access because its entrance at North Branch Parkway was blocked by the city with a log. It was still a convenient walking route because you could march through the woods to the Breckwood stores, including Louis & Clark and Dairy Mart, instead of going on the much longer treks on side streets or on Breckwood Boulevard.

“He drove by us going toward the log, but I don't think we were really paying attention,” she said. “Then we were sitting on the grassy side of the dirt road where the Gateway Village apartments are. He drove by again, and I remember thinking it was weird. Then, a few minutes later, he was standing at the side of the road across from us where the woods were. I don’t know where his car was. He was in his underwear.”

“What the hell?” whispered her friend. “Do you see that?”

Both girls agreed it was definitely time to leave. “He wasn't facing us, but was sideways to us. He wasn't looking at us—he was looking straight ahead. We kind of pretended we didn't see, and walked quickly back toward the stores.”

Her memory is admittedly a bit hazy. “I am not sure if we went to Louis & Clark, or where exactly. I don't remember if a police car was there or if we asked someone to call.” She recalled both of them talking to a police officer, who proceeded to drive them around to see if they could find the freak. No dice—he had disappeared. “Then he drove us toward home. We happened to see my friend’s oldest brother, who was on the police force, driving in the opposite direction. The police officer stopped and waved at him. Her brother stopped and saw us in the back seat and did not look happy seeing his sister and I in the car, but then the officer told him what happened.”

She can’t remember what his car looked like. “I knew cars back then, and I'm pretty sure I would have known the make and model, and I would have told the police,” she said. “I would say the guy had blond hair, not short, but not as long as shoulder-length. I don't think he was a teenager. I had the impression that he was older than that, maybe in his 20s. I think ‘stocky’ would be a good description. Anyway, nothing ever came of it.”

Being from the neighborhood, she knew what the dark-brown-haired rapist looked like—she had a friend who knew him. So did Rosemary. Both said it wasn't him. They didn't recognize this blond dude at all.

The dirt road behind Gateway Village facing North Branch Parkway (above)

Stripping himself down to his underwear wasn’t exactly the MO of the Fox Road rapist, who had been fully clothed in his assaults and therefore better equipped to make a clean getaway. But who can predict what a pervert is going to do? Maybe it was the same guy, and he knew that if he attacked two girls simultaneously he would have been taking the obvious chance that one of them could escape and run for help, so he decided to just freak them out? He was certainly not averse to risk-taking behavior—dragging victims into the Fox Road woods in broad daylight was an incredibly bold move, but it’s possible he chose his targets somewhat carefully.

However, Rosemary, the victim of the second Fox Road attack on November 28, 1982, thinks her ordeal might have been a spontaneous act. I had mentioned to her that it was odd he wore such identifiable clothing as matching camouflage jacket and pants—which the police ended up finding in his room—and that he kept his glasses on knowing that they could be knocked off during a struggle. “It was probably not a planned event for him,” she reasoned. “The opportunity presented itself.”

Perhaps. But if I were a betting man, I’d wager all of it was premeditated—that he went out on both those days with the intention of victimizing a woman, or a girl, at the corner of Grayson Drive and Fox Road. Methuen Street, where the blond guy in the second attack was walking from, is surrounded by woods, which is an ideal place to observe the intersection unnoticed, especially if one is dressed in camouflage.

Strolling from Methuen Street, he crossed Grayson Drive onto Fox Road and pulled Rosemary into the woods on the corner about 10 feet from where the Tammy Lynds banner is now.

When two Good Samaritans stopped his assault on her, he ran through the woods up Fox Road toward North Branch Parkway. Rosemary thought he could have been heading toward the Colonial Estates apartments because she later learned that his family apparently had once lived there, so he might have known the layout of the buildings and grounds well. Beacon Terrace is the road that leads into the apartments, but to get to it, the route along the North Branch Parkway would have left him exposed. On the other hand, there are other ways to access the complex, which is next to Mary Lynch School.

“I do not know if he crossed at North Branch Parkway and continued through the Mary Lynch schoolyard and into the woods there on the side of the school that leads to the apartments, or if he crossed further up the road,” she said. “If it were me and I was trying to run and hide, it would have been the first way. He could have gone behind the school and no one would have seen him go to the apartments that way. He wouldn’t have had to run to Beacon at all that way.”

* * * * * * *

After Rosemary’s incident, the rapes suddenly ceased. Maybe the blond rapist was “scared straight,” but we often hear that’s not usually how it works with sex offenders. It’s presumed that these folks are difficult to treat and likely to reoffend—society has a long-held assumption that their recidivism is inevitable. That’s why there are sex offender registries. The truth is that the recidivism of sex offenders is difficult to measure. Can a leopard change its spots? Estimates of rapists’ recidivism rates are 14 percent at five years after a conviction, 20 percent at 10 years, and 24 percent at 15 years. Nevertheless, these numbers are undoubtedly low because relatively few sexual offenses are reported to authorities (20 to 30 percent of them). And for every 100 rapes and assaults of women and girls reported to police, just 18 lead to an arrest, and fewer than 7 percent of them lead to convictions, according to a UMass Lowell study.

With that being said, the guy who was arrested for the second Fox Road assault, judging by his Facebook profile, seems like a normal, loving family man. And maybe he is: “desistance” is a relatively new term to those who study sexual aggression, and it refers to a former predator “aging out” of offending. Stable jobs and relationships will do that to sex offenders—sometimes even without therapeutic assistance. Lo and behold, they finally figure out on their own that rape and molestation are not good things to do, or if they lack a moral compass, they are dissuaded from such behavior because it could land them in prison.

For all we know this guy reformed. He even has a decent career, according to his LinkedIn profile, and obviously being busy with a job, wife, and kids would make it difficult, but not impossible, to go out and victimize women and girls—although he didn’t get married until a few years after the Tammy Lynds murder, so I guess it’s plausible he might have acted out his dark side on Fox Road again in 1994.

A true psychopath can certainly appear normal, lead a double life, and return to the scene of his crime(s), reminisce, and strike again. Tammy’s skull wasn’t fractured, so she might have been stabbed or strangled, and let’s not forget that in 1982 the man held a knife to Rosemary’s throat to get her to stop struggling.

Still, it’s important to remember that this man’s guilt was never proven in court, and it’s possible he wasn’t responsible for the other Fox Road attack either. But I don’t believe in coincidences, especially since the incidents occurred two months apart, and there was also the guy in his underwear behind Gateway Village who also matched his general description.

* * * * * * *

I still think it was someone in Tammy’s orbit of friends and acquaintances who killed her and not a stranger. I have absolutely no evidence linking the blond rapist to Tammy’s murder. So I’m afraid I jumped into a rabbit hole and I brought you in with me, but I just can’t seem to get this blond guy out of my mind. The chance that he graduated from molestation to murder certainly can’t be ignored—yes, even 12 years later. I stare at his yearbook and Facebook photos and try to imagine what went on in his head to commit such savagery as an adolescent—and wonder if he had truly gotten the evil out of his system in 1982.

An FBI study revealed that 10-15 percent of the serial rapists they interviewed admitted to revisiting their crime scenes. Did he do this more than a decade later on a summer night and happened to see Tammy walking by? After all, it looks like he returned to Fox Road to brutalize someone again two months after the first rape there.

We’ll probably never know the answer, but I would love to see the case file of the attack on Rosemary to see why police immediately fingered this guy—and if it’s truly farfetched to think that a teen using a knife to quiet a victim during a rape attempt might, as an adult, be capable of killing a girl a dozen years later on the same road.

Rosemary stopped going to court back then—and the charges were dropped—because she was traumatized by describing her experience in detail. She didn’t want to relive the incident. Did HE? That’s the question.

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 32: A Dozen Years Earlier

On September 17, 1982, a 27-year-old woman on a morning walk gave little thought to a jogger at the corner of Grayson Drive and Fox Road. It was mid-morning, so who expects to be grabbed by a complete stranger in broad daylight in the suburbs?

But the man, wearing a gray track suit, pulled her into the woods across the street from where the skeleton of Tammy Lynds, 15, was found 12 years later behind a log. The “jogger,” described as husky, medium height, with blond hair, raped and robbed the woman before she finally ran to a house and 10:07 a.m. and called the police, who responded with several squad cars but couldn’t find the perpetrator. She was treated in Wesson Hospital’s emergency room.

Residents of the nearby Partridge Drive/Finch Road neighborhood wondered if this was the work of the notorious rapist who had been preying on women and teens (five rapes and two assaults since June 1982) in wooded areas, including a place known as “the pit” off Finch. But the Fox Road attacker didn’t fit the description of the dark brown-haired 19-year-old who was arrested on October 29, 1982, pleaded guilty, and sentenced to 8-10 years for three of the rapes.

Was there another predator out there? Police believed there were “one or more” rapists. The question was answered a little more than two months later.

* * * * * * *

Rosemary (not her real name), who lived down the street from the Fox Road woods, was supposed to meet a friend, who was late, so the 14-year-old was walking alone. It was 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, so she paid little attention to the youth walking toward her from Methuen Street, across from the intersection of Grayson Drive and Fox Road. After all, it was widely publicized that the area rapist had been caught. Moreover, this was her neighborhood, and she had walked there hundreds of times. It was November 28, 1982, and the guy who was strolling by asked her for the time. When she looked down at her watch, he stepped behind her, put his arm around her neck, dragged her into the woods, and put a knife to her throat.

“I struggled to get away, and he told me to stop or he would kill me,” she said. “Once in the woods, he pushed me down and jumped on top of me and straddled me. I was unable to get him off. I was very small—I don’t think I even weighed 100 pounds.”

As he was inappropriately touching her, a car stopped and two men chased him, but he was able to disappear quickly. The good Samaritans brought her home and they called the police.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Police had someone in mind: a high school student, and the composite drawing based on her description matched his face. He was blond, stocky, and had wire-rimmed glasses. She was brought to his high school by police the following week and there he was—she identified him in the hallway for the detective assigned to the case. “It was very scary for me to see him there,” she recalled. “When he saw us, he started to quickly try to leave the school, but they arrested him.”

She went to court hearings, which dragged on for several months. “I was young and scared to keep going so all the charges were dropped,” she said. “I remember being terrified to get on the witness stand and tell everyone what he did—where he touched and groped me. They made me say it very explicitly, and I was mortified and embarrassed. After that, I refused to go up and speak again.”

The assailant was wearing camouflage-style pants and jacket during the attack, and police found these clothes when they searched the student's room. He claimed he was at church at the time, but his alibi’s time frame didn’t match up with the Mass schedule.

“I will never forget what he looked like,” she said. When I showed her photos of him from his high school yearbook, she said the guy definitely looked like her attacker—the same facial features, face shape, hairline, the same part in his hair, glasses, and all. She had gotten a good look at him before he accosted her. “I saw his face all of 5-10 seconds as he walked past me and turned around behind me,” she said.

Today, when Rosemary sees photos of Tammy Lynds, she thinks it’s remarkable how much the murder victim resembled herself at that age.

“I always wondered what would have happened to me if the car didn’t drive by,” she said. But she tries not to think about it too much, because she shudders at the possibilities: rape? Murder? She has been thinking about it more lately, though, whenever she drives by the Tammy Lynds memorial flag on Fox Road, which has been up since April.

“I am still torn about not following through with possible prosecution,” she said. “I have felt that if I had followed through, maybe Tammy would still be alive. But I have no way of knowing for sure if it was him in either event. And even if it was, he would have done his time and been back out by then.”

Rosemary has never been a pushover despite her size. “I’ve always been a scrappy person—strong-willed and in control no matter how small I was,” she said. “I’ve always been so mad at myself that I couldn’t do more to stop him. I feel blessed that those guys went by when they did. I feel sad that I was so young and didn’t have the emotional strength to see it through in court. I do, however, wish I had more physical strength to have hurt him, maimed him, or given him some sort of permanent injury that he would never fully recover from. Then there would have been no question of his innocence or guilt. Then he would have to think about the pain forever.”

* * * * * * *

What’s particularly interesting about the 1982 attacks on Fox Road is not only the similar description of the assailant(s) and the fact that they were daytime assaults. There were also the “uniform-like” outfits in the encounters: both predators wore matching pants and jackets (a track suit in one, military fatigues in the other). In addition, there is a ruse involved: supposed “jogging” in the first incident (and dressing the part), and asking what time it was in the second. And get this: the suspect in the latter ambush was on his high school track team.

Before the Finch Road rapist was caught, police believed one of the attackers in the rash of rapes and assaults was a white male who had dirty blond (also described as “sandy blond”) hair, was between 5-foot-7 and six feet tall, and was in his late teens or early 20s. Several people in the North Branch Parkway area who resembled the description cooperated with police, went to department headquarters to be photographed, and they were later cleared. One officer conceded, “There are 500 people who look like that.”

Over the years it somehow became suburban legend that the youth who was arrested for “the pit” rapes was responsible for ALL the attacks. He wasn’t. There was/is another guy out there.

* * * * * * *

Is it a stretch to think that the sex offender on Fox Road in 1982 might have had something to do with Tammy’s death? A dozen years later is a long time, even if you believe that a rapist might return to the scene of the crime to relive the moment.

At present, there is no way of knowing if all this brutality on Fox Road was committed by the same person. Nonetheless, there are times when Rosemary can’t help linking the attack on her and Tammy’s murder. “Something in my gut keeps me thinking there is some connection,” she mused. “Maybe I just want there to be justice.”

Friday, December 5, 2025

The 1994 Fox Road Murder Mystery, Part 31: More Ricky

“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.