Paper Ghosts is a production of iHeartRadio. Throughout the decades I've been covering true crime, I've looked into more than a hundred missing persons and murder cases. I've interviewed scores of law enforcement victims, families, even killers themselves, all to gain a better understanding of how investigations are handled and the tools law enforcement used to develop information and solve crimes. Much has changed over the years, but in the past decade or so, I've witnessed a major shift, one that I hadn't anticipated, the emergence of a new group of investigators, citizens, sleuths. And nowhere is that phenomenon more obvious than in Tammy Zuwiki's case. Oh there was all kinds of stories, you know, You'd read that she was picked up by a stranger, some guy in a truck stopped to help her, another guy in a pickup truck. Patrick Jones is the founder of the Who Killed Tammy's a Wicki Facebook group, a passionate collection of Tammy's friends, family members, true crime buffs, and citizen investigators. Well, the Facebook page it grew like you wouldn't believe. I mean, I was just hoping, Oh, maybe we'll get one hundred people, two hundred people, and I think today I'm trying to look at it right now, We've got over four thousand members on there. Patrick started the Facebook group in two thousand and nine. He didn't know Tammy, but was drawn to her story and sometimes had a picture of Tammy on the front page. And I looked at her and I was thinking, I got a daughter about the same age. While working my way through Tammy's case, I felt that the group warranted a closer look. For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of online sleuthing. Citizen sleuths have the power to shift the narrative in a case. They can interfere with investigations accused innocent people of a crime. More than anything, though, they can inject themselves into someone else's story, and for better or worse, some members of the who Killed Tammy Ziwiki Facebook group have succeeded in doing just that. Another article came out like thirteen, fourteen years ago whatever it was about Tammy's case, and I was reading it and then I said, you know what, maybe I'll put something on Facebook. I'll offer a reward, you know, I think I put a thousand dollars reward or something. Today Patrick works as a firearms instructor and an engineer at the Forest Preserves. Before that, he worked part time as a police lieutenant in a village outside Chicago. We had like four or five members, which they were all police officers. All the guys at the police department jumped down right away, you know, as a favorite, so I could build it a little and then alone came Robert. Robert was hugely instrumental in developing the website with Me or Facebook page. Robert cut Lark is someone I met in the earliest days of my investigation. You might remember him from the first episode. He's the archaeologist who grew up a town over from Tammy in New Jersey and has developed a close friendship with Joanne Ziwiki over the years. Like Patrick, he's also an administrator of the Facebook group. He's dug up so much stuff it's unbelievable. On our Facebook page, We've got a file section that's just phenomenal. You could go through there and read everything about who they've investigated over the years, who they've ruled out. And Robert's been in contact with the all the various agencies that have been helping out FBI, State Police and what have you. A lot of good has come from the Facebook group. Several of Tammy's old friends and peers are members, which made it easy to reach out to them for this podcast. Patrick and Robert were also immensely helpful in the earliest days of my research, provided me with documents and valuable contacts. More than anything, the Who Killed Tammy Zowiki Facebook group provides a real sense of community for those morning Tammy time and again. I was struck by the effort folks like Robert and Patrick put into keeping Tammy's story alive and finding ways to honor her memory. Mostly, we're talking about decent people with good intentions. They want to help and they genuinely care about the Ziwiki family. But good intentions are often not enough, and in this case, the Facebook group can sometimes become a place where speculation and conspiracy is allowed to exist and ultimately cast out on innocent people. When you started the page, were you getting tips? Yeah? We actually we were getting What was the first big major tip that you got? The biggest thing we ever got was that what the hell's his name? The guy didn't find a body? Uh Lonnie Dumot Lonnie Damot previously on Paper Ghosts. He came in. He was posting like a son of a bitch, and then people were all of a sudden, everybody was asking questions like you wouldn't believe. I think he wanted to confess to something. In my opinion that he wants to say, Hey, here's what happened. Do you remember the type of watch she was wearing? And did the watch play that song ranging Jane Jobs came falling on my head she was wearing that watch. Yeah, I've done this long time, and I just thought, well, bingle, how many coincidence gonna be here? My name MM William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist an author of more than forty true crime books. This is season three of Paper Ghosts In plain Sight. There has been a cloud of suspicion lingering over Lonnie Dumont since the day he discovered Tammy's body. Lonnie, you may recall, is the repairman from Missouri who stopped his truck to cover his tools back in September of nineteen ninety two and stumbled upon Tammy's body. Like many of those interested in Tammy's case, Lonnie joined the Facebook group in twenty twenty and began answering questions from its members. Lonnie dum he got on and he just started acting goofy, putting all kinds of stuff out, and we've got screenshots of everything that he put out, and he's just to me, it seems a little weird with him. Like Patrick, Robert Cutlaric is suspicious of Lonnie Dumot, though for different reasons. In his view, Lonnie has given varying accounts of how and why he came upon Tammy's body. The reasons given for him coming off the highway depends on what source you read. The earliest reference was that he had stopped to relieve himself. Later, in nineteen ninety three, with the publication of the People magazine article, it says that, and this is coming from the man himself, Lonnie Dumot, that he pulled over because he wanted to cover up the tools in the back of his vehicle. Now fast forward to twenty twenty one. People May Magazine did a television production on Tammy's case. They interviewed mister Dumont, and mister Dumott said that he got out of his vehicle to move his tools into the cabin the vehicle, so we have some discrepancies as to what actually was going on there. Robert says he doesn't know the origin of the story about Lonnie Dumot's stopping to relieve himself. Neither did Lonnie when I asked him about it last summer. There's another report of you said you stopped to take a piss, did you, No, I stopped to get my tools out of the back of the truck. There has been a lot of energy focused on Lonnie Dumont's recollections from that day, some of which were made nearly thirty years after the fact, among them the order in which Lonnie and the state trooper handled Tammy's body. The original story, as heard from mister Dumot, was that the police officer was squeamish and was nervous about cutting open the blanket, and Lonnie volunteered to do it for him, and he says that he cut the blanket open and the officer was the one who cut the sheet. However, he posted on Facebook in a comment the opposite that the officer cut the blanket and he cut the sheet. I mentioned all this not to discredit anyone, but rather to show the ways in which cybersleuthing can become problematic. You can't speculate that a guy might be guilty of murder because of a spotty recollection from thirty years ago. Lonnie has a vested interest in the case, and his presence in the Facebook group does not strike me as suspicious in any way. Whatsoever he found Tammy's body, it makes sense why he'd want to see what was going on with the case. Regardless, there are those who continue to believe that Lonnie's involvement at the crime scene was intentional, a stealthy way to account for his DNA being left at the scene. So your gut is that he's got something to do with it. I honestly think that. Yes, I don't think that he's been rolled out, you know, by the law enforcement, but I think he's got something to do it. It's just too coincidental. As it turns out, law enforcement would make an effort to rule Lonnie Dumot out as a suspect. Hi, mister Dumont money and is with the FBI at a job in Missouri. And when you have an opportunity that you please Lonnie, says a case agent from one of the FBI's Missouri field offices reached out in twenty twenty one to get his version of events and also request a sample of his DNA. He says, the first time he listened to that voicemail, he thought it was a joke. I thought that this guy was one of my buddies calling me doing a prank. But it wasn't. It actually was. When I called him back, he said, I'm I'm out at the FBI at Joplin. There's a guy, an investigator doing an investigation out of Chicago. And he said, I'm doing this interview for him. And then when I met him, I met him in a little restaurant and there was two of them come out and I'm sitting there and they come in and he said that that he was gonna talk to me, and this other guy sat right by us, and all he did was watched me. He must have been a profiler. And they sat there and talked to me for all quite a while and asked me different questions and like what what kind of question? Well, they asked me about just pretty much about what you've asked me. And he said that anything that I if I remembering thing, call him and that would relay the message to the guy in Chicago. I've spoken to Lonnie on several occasions, mainly to hear him tell his story multiple times. Time and again. I found his version of events to be consistent and entirely plausible. I also learned from the Lawrence County Sheriff's office that Lonnie was mentioned in their crime scene report. It noted that he was a volunteer fireman at the time, which makes sense why he would have been asked to assist in moving Tammy's body out of the gulch. That same report, however, did not mention that Lonnie helped carry the body. This doesn't mean he didn't help, only that there's no record of it. Lonnie maintains that up until the fall of twenty twenty one, when the FBI called him, no one from law enforcement had spoke to him since the day he found Tammy's body. What did they want from you? They just wanted to interview me and talk to me and blood. They took us DNA sample And how did they do that? Dwamam mouth and why did they say they needed that? They said they're trying to eliminate everybody from being a suspect. And he said, we know that she touched the blanket. We know that. But he said that any DNA that would be found on her body or her clothes, they would be tested against. And since that day, I've never heard anything Roman. The fact that this meeting between Lonnie and the FBI occurred relatively recently says so much. For one, the FBI took Linny's DNA because they believe his story or like me, couldn't rule out the possibility that he helped move Tammy's body. Also that the Bureau is making another run at testing old DNA from Tammy's clothing, her body, the blanket, or any additional evidence found at the scene and collected throughout the investigation. They said, we've done got stuff from their families, so DNA from their families. So they when they'd come and talk to me, he is probably on you on the list of people to talk to. And they said that it that's all they really needed. It seems to me that law enforcement is trying to produce a match, rule out anyone who could have inadvertently left DNA at the scene, or potentially build a genealogy database. What's more, the FBI has had Lonnie Dumott's DNA for a year and a half and has not made any moves to arrest him. The FBI and ISP won't comment on an active investigation, but likely if Lonnie was their guy, he'd be locked up by now. And so they took to DNA And how did you feel about that? Oh, it didn't bother me because I mean, I know I wasn't part of it, but they got eliminate everybody. And I figured that, you know, I could have been a crap head and said no, I'm not gonna do it, you know. But like I told him this, he's just way to just involve me from what you're doing is to give you a DNA sample. Like many others in this story, Lonnie Dumont's integrity has been questioned. I spoke to a source who claimed Lonnie once gave an interview to a major media outlet and scared the reporter so much that they wondered if he was confessing to Tammy's murder. It makes sense to be initially suspicious of Lonnie Dumont. He found the body, and he hesitated about calling it in. He then offered to help move it, almost guaranteeing some of his DNA would be left at the scene. But in the end, as far as Lonnie Dumott is concerned, I have found zero evidence that he had anything to do with Tammy's a wiki's abduction or murder. Two thousand and two marked the tenth anniversary of Tammy's death. The FBI offered a fifty thousand dollars reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction and Tammy's kidnapping and murder. The milestone also led to an onslaught of media coverage, which in turn provided newly retired ISP investigator Marty McCarthy a platform to voice his opinions. All the airtime in print space that the media gave to Marty's theories about the eyewitnesses claims regarding Lonnie beer Brod were hard to ignore, which is why I think the IP and FBI decided to make a few moves. As the agent in charge, this was, you know, this case kind of came to me with the press guy saying, hey, you know, the news media wants to do something on this thing. Thomas Kanner was the special Agent in charge of one of the FBI's Southern field offices. He was tasked with interviewing Lonnie beer Brodd's ex wife. At that ten year mark, he still seemed to be the most logical guy, you know, And so I said, get her an interviewer again. You know, I know she's probably been interviewed multiple times for interviewer again, and then CF she'll submit to a polygraphingstanding Lonnie beer Brott had died by the time as ex wife to the polygraph. If she had ever been afraid to speak up before his death, there was no reason to protect him any longer. And if anybody could get a confession or do a polygraph, I mean I would put I would put my money on this guy. All the places I've been and all the polygraphers that I've had that worked, you know, for me, this guy was by far the dog best. Many might know that polygraphs are not allowed as evidence in court, but the beauty of polygraphing beer Brott's ex wife was that it wasn't for any sort of court proceeding. It was to gauge whether she was telling the truth about not having the green musical watch and not having any knowledge of her ex husband's involvement in Tammy's murder. The pre polygraph interview, which can be far more in depth than the actual polygraph, also gave the interviewer an opportunity to check her story for inconsistencies. So I was waiting and waiting and waiting and and and you know, when he does a polygraph, it's a it's not a twenty minute operation. So he called me later in the day and he said, well, it's probably not what you want to hear. But I ran her three times. I changed up the questions, you know, we taught him. We spent hours on you know, the pretests and just like I would on anything else. And my estimation as she's telling the truth. Beer Brotzeck's wife also spoke to the media around this time. In an interview with the Courier Post newspaper, she stated that her husband had never given her a musical watch and that she was puzzled by the origin of the story. What's more, she said, if she thought for one minute that he had been involved in Tammy's abduction and murder, quote, I would have gone straight to the police. Well I think, you know, I mean, it's always easy to tell the truth, right when you start making up stories, it'll change over time. I mean, if you know, if I told you'll lie today and you came back to me five years later and asked me, Hey, you know, Tom, you know you know ask me the same question, I may not respond the same way. Right, you might change one little thing. How often do people get interviewed by either the Illinois State Please, the Missouri the Highway Patrol world it was investigetting down there, or the FBI. I mean, that's probably for most people. Unless you're just a criminal, it's probably a one time event in your life. You would think that story would be easy to recite over and over and over again, much like the ESP and FBI. Back in two thousand and two, I felt I needed to speak to Lonnie beer Brott's ex wife, but all my attempts, calls, messages, even doorknocks went unanswered. My associate producer did manage to make contact in late twenty twenty two. Lonnie beer Brottzeck's wife wasn't in a hurry to get off the phone, though she did ultimately decline to be interviewed for the podcast. I have no reason not to believe her. It's also not her obligation to make anyone believe her. She's a private citizen who's already spoken to police and the media about what she knows. As for Tammy's watch, the watch is still missing. The watches is still out there. It's still among the list of items that would connect someone to this investigation. Jeff Padilla was a young detective with the Illinois State Police in nineteen ninety two, the year Tammy was murdered. He was familiar with the case, but wouldn't get involved until twenty twelve, when he became squad supervisor over a group of detectives working missing persons and murder cases in the region. That time, the case was a bit installed and there hadn't been what I thought was an appropriate amount of movement on it. So I assigned myself in a number of other of my detectives to go back and look at the investigation from the very beginning. That meant reinterviewing old witnesses and reviewing the many theories that had gotten attention over the years. There was a time where in the heart of this second like real push in this investigation, where we were getting a lot of mediate inquiries and there was a lot of physical evidence that had never been analyzed. As for Marty's eyewitness, the woman whose claims fueled rampant speculation about Annie beer Brot and created a narrative about the whereabouts of Tammy's watch. Padilla says her story never passed the smell test. Yeah, that was completely false. And the way that she identified Lonnie beer Brod was she was going by on the interstate in the opposite direction while doing seventy five miles an hour, which I take witness identification with a huge grain of salt, and it has to be backed up with evidence. Even more important is the fact that her story about seeing Lonnie bear Brott's wife wearing a watch similar to Tammy's was nowhere in her initial statements the police. By the time she had told Marty McCarthy her version of events ten years later, the information about Tammy's watch had already been made public. So then Lonnie beer Brod suddenly became a very heavy focus of the investigation. You know, he voluntarily came in and gave blood and DNA samples, and since then we know that he was not our offender in this case. Lonnie beer Brot was eliminated from our investigation as a suspect. Padilla says, that Lonnie beer Brott had been ruled out through DNA and blood analysis as early as nineteen ninety three. How did Marty not know about this? He wasn't working the case, but as an ISP investigator, it's surprising he'd be completely kept out of the loop. He was not was not involved in overall investigative decisions or command decisions with regard to the investigation. He alone perpetuated the Lonnie beer Brot sort of fantasy as a suspect because he was not aware of and rightfully so, he was no longer part of the investigation, so he wasn't aware that Lonnie had been eliminated. I respect Marty McCarthy's public service and his work as a active His many achievements speak for themselves. But I was going to have to go back to him at some point, provide him with what I had developed, and allow him a chance to speak to it. Jeff Padilla and the Illinois State Police bear some responsibility. More than twenty years after clearing Lonnie bear Brought as a suspect in Tammy Ziwiki's murder, he was quoted in a news article describing beer Brought as quote someone who remains a person of interest because of some of the circumstantial information surrounding him end quote. Why did investigators allow Lonnie's name to be dragged through the mud for decades? I mean he remained at an option because the DNA. Certainly that was when DNA was in infancy. Many of the tests were entrusted. As Padilla explained, even with his new team of investigators re examining the case files, not much progress was made in the investigation. So in twenty fourteen, law enforcement decided to try a different approach. We weren't going to narrow our investigation based on our preconceived notions, and that's why, you know, ultimately it was really really beneficial to us to take the investigation to the VDOX Society in Philadelphia. The VDOX Society is an elite group of experts in the criminology field, ranging from federal agents to forensic pathologists. Their work is pro bono, so there's a limited number of cases they can take on each year. Tammy's was one of them. We got a lot from them, and in fact, the direction we went thereafter was because of the information we had received from the VDOX Society. Eugene Francois Vidac was a nineteenth century Frenchman and world renowned detective. He got a start as a criminal before becoming an informant and eventually an agent. His admirers included three forensic experts who founded the VDC Society in nineteen ninety and named it in his honor. Each month, experts from all fields of criminology meet to go through cases presented by police departments from across the country. The VDC Society agreeing to look at your case is a huge deal and requires lengthy preparation. Investigators need to go through every element of the case file, follow up on outstanding leads, and make sure they're ready to present and defend their work to VDC members. We were only the second group from the Illinis State Police to ever presented to the VDAX Society. Jeff Paedia says the group helped change the IPS approach to Tammy's case. We were had a number of dead ends until we we spoke to the VDOC Society. They provided us with insight into, for example, the wound pattern and evidence that were in the crime, the autopsy photos, the group's theory about the nature of tammy Stab wounds, piqued my interest. Several members of law enforcement have told me the seven stab wounds around Tammy's heart were not methodical. Members of the VDOX Society had a different opinion, and sitting in a room with you know, one hundred highly experienced scientists, forensic scientists, corners, detectives, and psychiatrists and psychologists involved in criminal investigations, so that that was pointed out to us that that was likely there was a pattern to the stab wounds. The group also had a different opinion about how long Tammy's body had been out on the roadside before it was discovered. Two people, Lonnie Dumott and a police source who helped move Tammy's body back in nineteen ninety two, both claimed that she appeared to be in an advanced state of decomposition. The officer I spoke with even said that when he went to help pick up the body bag, Tammy's body nearly came apart. I mean that may have been his impression, but she was not. No, she was not that decomposed. Like that's some of the misinformation that's out there. One of the real stumpers in the investigation was that, you know, she was missing for all that time, but she was not that decomposed. She was certainly recognizable. Padilla says he and other investigators can't be exactly sure how long Tammy was dead before she was discovered, nor can he officially rule out one of the more wild theories in the case, the idea that her body was kept in a refrigerated truck. What he and many of his colleagues who are actively working the case are an agreement about is that it's unlikely that Tammy was on the roadway for days on end. That remains an open question and something that we've struggled with throughout the investigation. They did bring into the famous forensic entomologists from Believe he's from the University of Indiana and he went through He's the one that gave the age of the of the of the flies to be able to give us an idea how long she had been out there, which also supported the fact that she was not had not been out there very long. Based on the life of a flight the blue bottle fly cycle, it may have been a day or a day and a half. Taking into account what the VDOC experts found. One theory is that Tammy may have been kept a life at least a week after her abduction. I never mentioned that to missus Zwicky because I never wanted, you know, my supposition. You know, it's bad enough what she had gone through, and for me to suppose something like that just because it's a possibility that didn't you know, I never wanted to say that her until one hundred percent knew that may have been the case. It's a deeply troubling idea, though other evidence in the case does seem to support the theory. You know, there was an analysis of the food that was in her stomach, so we know that she had a meal which we had the receipts for, just before she broke down. Padilla is referring to the Hearty's fast food chain where Tammy picked up some lunch. Many have thought the fact that she had undigested food in her stomach was a clear indicator she'd been killed right away, but scientists who looked at the case think it's possible that her parasympathetic system, the part of the nervous system that controls things like rest and digestion, was overwhelmed by the stress of the situation. More simply put, her body was stuck in flight mode and unable to do much else. Those same scientists also said they couldn't rule out the possibility that Tammy's killer kept her somewhere and fed her during that time period. So one of the aspects was the food that had remained in her stomach when her body was recovered. So you would think a meal that you ate today is going to be completely digested nine days from hour seven days from hour five days, really, you know within you would think within twenty four hours. However, we debated the timeline based on when her body was recovered there was still undigested food in her stomach, and so how to explain that. Investigators like Padia have pushed back against the theory that Tammy's body was in an advanced state of decomposition, but she had been outside for a significant amount of time that it was difficult to know exactly what happened. For example, Padilla says it was almost impossible to tell whether Tammy was sexually assaulted. It was something the esp did initially look into in the nine but the technology wasn't as advanced then as it is today, and there was an initial positive positive indication for DNA on a vaginal swab that was later determined to be a false positive. There was never any seaman collected. There was never any seminal fluid connected. I mean she was fully clothed, her T shirt was on, her braws on, her panties were on correctly, her shorts were on. There was no appearance of sexual assault. Not that doesn't mean that there wasn't sexual activity. To me, the question of whether or not Tammy's murder was a sex crime could play a vital role in searching for viable suspects. Quite often for the offender, sex crimes have very little to do with our own ideas of traditional sexual acts, and so we always had the potential that this was a sex related and so that's always been you know, been out there and then that, to my knowledge, that remains possibility. The VDOX Society floated the theory that Tammy could have been unconscious when she was stabbed, and that the act of stabbing her was a way to wake her up, like a sternam rub. And then and then the one is the one is deep enough where it's not in her sternum. It goes between between the ribs and punctures her pericardial sack and she ends up dying from that, And was there a toxicology report done, any presence of any type of drugs in her system that he could have used. Yeah, I mean we thought about like if he used chloroform or something like that. I believe we were told at the time that nothing like that would have remained in her system. And it's not like today's roof and all or or something more powerful where it would stay in her system. Basically, the chloroform was used through you know, through a soaked rag. She would be knocked unconscious and then by the time she woke up, all of that would be the chloroform would be out of her system. A forensic psychiatrist told me years ago that a knife can be what he called a surrogate penis to compensate for sexual dysfunction. Yes, we we also thought that the puncture that killed Tammy may have been inadvertent in the process, so that the series of stab wounds in the center of her chest, which were all very close. It was the size of a pipe plate. So if somebody's fighting, you're not going to get you know, shallow depth stab wounds in a pipe plate, right, you know, if I'm trying to stab you. You're gonna be fighting back. You're gonna get stabbed in the hand, in the arm and the forearm and the elbow and the you know, in the your bicep, your trisep I'm maybe going to get you in the chest. But these were, you know, so these were very different. Padia says. The information from the Vdox Society changed the ISP's direction of the case. The group helped them identify new pools of suspects and more importantly, potential new sources of DNA which they could go on to test and use to create genealogical profiles, and as often as the case with active investigations, new developments are ongoing for the ISP and for myself. After hearing the first couple episodes from this season, a detective from a neighboring town from where Tammy went missing contacted me with information if you had heard along with a new suspect, someone who checked nearly every box and Tammy's a Wiki's murder and was found in possession of what some may call a trophy. On the next episode of Paper Ghosts, the body was it's obviously signs of you know, just brutal almost like a tortuous saying that he had did her. It was she was bound in duct tape. A couple of local FBI agents came to my house and took a DNA swab for me. I first called Joanne and we have this discussion about this is our one shot. You know, we may not get it again if we agree to do this. If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, please listen to my other podcast, Crossing the Line with m William Phelps, where I use the same storytelling elements you've heard in Paper Ghosts and cover missing person and murder cases. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and William Phelps and iHeart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer is Darby Masters, Audio editing and mixing by Christian Bowman and Abu Zafar. Our series theme number four four two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mullen. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Paper Ghosts is a production of iHeartRadio. Throughout the decades I've been covering true crime, I've looked into more than a hundred missing persons and murder cases. I've interviewed scores of law enforcement victims, families, even killers themselves, all to gain a better understanding of how investigations are handled and the tools law enforcement used to develop information and solve crimes. Much has changed over the years, but in the past decade or so, I've witnessed a major shift, one that I hadn't anticipated, the emergence of a new group of investigators, citizens, sleuths. And nowhere is that phenomenon more obvious than in Tammy Zuwiki's case. Oh there was all kinds of stories, you know, You'd read that she was picked up by a stranger, some guy in a truck stopped to help her, another guy in a pickup truck. Patrick Jones is the founder of the Who Killed Tammy's a Wicki Facebook group, a passionate collection of Tammy's friends, family members, true crime buffs, and citizen investigators. Well, the Facebook page it grew like you wouldn't believe. I mean, I was just hoping, Oh, maybe we'll get one hundred people, two hundred people, and I think today I'm trying to look at it right now, We've got over four thousand members on there. Patrick started the Facebook group in two thousand and nine. He didn't know Tammy, but was drawn to her story and sometimes had a picture of Tammy on the front page. And I looked at her and I was thinking, I got a daughter about the same age. While working my way through Tammy's case, I felt that the group warranted a closer look. For what it's worth, I'm not a fan of online sleuthing. Citizen sleuths have the power to shift the narrative in a case. They can interfere with investigations accused innocent people of a crime. More than anything, though, they can inject themselves into someone else's story, and for better or worse, some members of the who Killed Tammy Ziwiki Facebook group have succeeded in doing just that. Another article came out like thirteen, fourteen years ago whatever it was about Tammy's case, and I was reading it and then I said, you know what, maybe I'll put something on Facebook. I'll offer a reward, you know, I think I put a thousand dollars reward or something. Today Patrick works as a firearms instructor and an engineer at the Forest Preserves. Before that, he worked part time as a police lieutenant in a village outside Chicago. We had like four or five members, which they were all police officers. All the guys at the police department jumped down right away, you know, as a favorite, so I could build it a little and then alone came Robert. Robert was hugely instrumental in developing the website with Me or Facebook page. Robert cut Lark is someone I met in the earliest days of my investigation. You might remember him from the first episode. He's the archaeologist who grew up a town over from Tammy in New Jersey and has developed a close friendship with Joanne Ziwiki over the years. Like Patrick, he's also an administrator of the Facebook group. He's dug up so much stuff it's unbelievable. On our Facebook page, We've got a file section that's just phenomenal. You could go through there and read everything about who they've investigated over the years, who they've ruled out. And Robert's been in contact with the all the various agencies that have been helping out FBI, State Police and what have you. A lot of good has come from the Facebook group. Several of Tammy's old friends and peers are members, which made it easy to reach out to them for this podcast. Patrick and Robert were also immensely helpful in the earliest days of my research, provided me with documents and valuable contacts. More than anything, the Who Killed Tammy Zowiki Facebook group provides a real sense of community for those morning Tammy time and again. I was struck by the effort folks like Robert and Patrick put into keeping Tammy's story alive and finding ways to honor her memory. Mostly, we're talking about decent people with good intentions. They want to help and they genuinely care about the Ziwiki family. But good intentions are often not enough, and in this case, the Facebook group can sometimes become a place where speculation and conspiracy is allowed to exist and ultimately cast out on innocent people. When you started the page, were you getting tips? Yeah? We actually we were getting What was the first big major tip that you got? The biggest thing we ever got was that what the hell's his name? The guy didn't find a body? Uh Lonnie Dumot Lonnie Damot previously on Paper Ghosts. He came in. He was posting like a son of a bitch, and then people were all of a sudden, everybody was asking questions like you wouldn't believe. I think he wanted to confess to something. In my opinion that he wants to say, Hey, here's what happened. Do you remember the type of watch she was wearing? And did the watch play that song ranging Jane Jobs came falling on my head she was wearing that watch. Yeah, I've done this long time, and I just thought, well, bingle, how many coincidence gonna be here? My name MM William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist an author of more than forty true crime books. This is season three of Paper Ghosts In plain Sight. There has been a cloud of suspicion lingering over Lonnie Dumont since the day he discovered Tammy's body. Lonnie, you may recall, is the repairman from Missouri who stopped his truck to cover his tools back in September of nineteen ninety two and stumbled upon Tammy's body. Like many of those interested in Tammy's case, Lonnie joined the Facebook group in twenty twenty and began answering questions from its members. Lonnie dum he got on and he just started acting goofy, putting all kinds of stuff out, and we've got screenshots of everything that he put out, and he's just to me, it seems a little weird with him. Like Patrick, Robert Cutlaric is suspicious of Lonnie Dumot, though for different reasons. In his view, Lonnie has given varying accounts of how and why he came upon Tammy's body. The reasons given for him coming off the highway depends on what source you read. The earliest reference was that he had stopped to relieve himself. Later, in nineteen ninety three, with the publication of the People magazine article, it says that, and this is coming from the man himself, Lonnie Dumot, that he pulled over because he wanted to cover up the tools in the back of his vehicle. Now fast forward to twenty twenty one. People May Magazine did a television production on Tammy's case. They interviewed mister Dumont, and mister Dumott said that he got out of his vehicle to move his tools into the cabin the vehicle, so we have some discrepancies as to what actually was going on there. Robert says he doesn't know the origin of the story about Lonnie Dumot's stopping to relieve himself. Neither did Lonnie when I asked him about it last summer. There's another report of you said you stopped to take a piss, did you, No, I stopped to get my tools out of the back of the truck. There has been a lot of energy focused on Lonnie Dumont's recollections from that day, some of which were made nearly thirty years after the fact, among them the order in which Lonnie and the state trooper handled Tammy's body. The original story, as heard from mister Dumot, was that the police officer was squeamish and was nervous about cutting open the blanket, and Lonnie volunteered to do it for him, and he says that he cut the blanket open and the officer was the one who cut the sheet. However, he posted on Facebook in a comment the opposite that the officer cut the blanket and he cut the sheet. I mentioned all this not to discredit anyone, but rather to show the ways in which cybersleuthing can become problematic. You can't speculate that a guy might be guilty of murder because of a spotty recollection from thirty years ago. Lonnie has a vested interest in the case, and his presence in the Facebook group does not strike me as suspicious in any way. Whatsoever he found Tammy's body, it makes sense why he'd want to see what was going on with the case. Regardless, there are those who continue to believe that Lonnie's involvement at the crime scene was intentional, a stealthy way to account for his DNA being left at the scene. So your gut is that he's got something to do with it. I honestly think that. Yes, I don't think that he's been rolled out, you know, by the law enforcement, but I think he's got something to do it. It's just too coincidental. As it turns out, law enforcement would make an effort to rule Lonnie Dumot out as a suspect. Hi, mister Dumont money and is with the FBI at a job in Missouri. And when you have an opportunity that you please Lonnie, says a case agent from one of the FBI's Missouri field offices reached out in twenty twenty one to get his version of events and also request a sample of his DNA. He says, the first time he listened to that voicemail, he thought it was a joke. I thought that this guy was one of my buddies calling me doing a prank. But it wasn't. It actually was. When I called him back, he said, I'm I'm out at the FBI at Joplin. There's a guy, an investigator doing an investigation out of Chicago. And he said, I'm doing this interview for him. And then when I met him, I met him in a little restaurant and there was two of them come out and I'm sitting there and they come in and he said that that he was gonna talk to me, and this other guy sat right by us, and all he did was watched me. He must have been a profiler. And they sat there and talked to me for all quite a while and asked me different questions and like what what kind of question? Well, they asked me about just pretty much about what you've asked me. And he said that anything that I if I remembering thing, call him and that would relay the message to the guy in Chicago. I've spoken to Lonnie on several occasions, mainly to hear him tell his story multiple times. Time and again. I found his version of events to be consistent and entirely plausible. I also learned from the Lawrence County Sheriff's office that Lonnie was mentioned in their crime scene report. It noted that he was a volunteer fireman at the time, which makes sense why he would have been asked to assist in moving Tammy's body out of the gulch. That same report, however, did not mention that Lonnie helped carry the body. This doesn't mean he didn't help, only that there's no record of it. Lonnie maintains that up until the fall of twenty twenty one, when the FBI called him, no one from law enforcement had spoke to him since the day he found Tammy's body. What did they want from you? They just wanted to interview me and talk to me and blood. They took us DNA sample And how did they do that? Dwamam mouth and why did they say they needed that? They said they're trying to eliminate everybody from being a suspect. And he said, we know that she touched the blanket. We know that. But he said that any DNA that would be found on her body or her clothes, they would be tested against. And since that day, I've never heard anything Roman. The fact that this meeting between Lonnie and the FBI occurred relatively recently says so much. For one, the FBI took Linny's DNA because they believe his story or like me, couldn't rule out the possibility that he helped move Tammy's body. Also that the Bureau is making another run at testing old DNA from Tammy's clothing, her body, the blanket, or any additional evidence found at the scene and collected throughout the investigation. They said, we've done got stuff from their families, so DNA from their families. So they when they'd come and talk to me, he is probably on you on the list of people to talk to. And they said that it that's all they really needed. It seems to me that law enforcement is trying to produce a match, rule out anyone who could have inadvertently left DNA at the scene, or potentially build a genealogy database. What's more, the FBI has had Lonnie Dumott's DNA for a year and a half and has not made any moves to arrest him. The FBI and ISP won't comment on an active investigation, but likely if Lonnie was their guy, he'd be locked up by now. And so they took to DNA And how did you feel about that? Oh, it didn't bother me because I mean, I know I wasn't part of it, but they got eliminate everybody. And I figured that, you know, I could have been a crap head and said no, I'm not gonna do it, you know. But like I told him this, he's just way to just involve me from what you're doing is to give you a DNA sample. Like many others in this story, Lonnie Dumont's integrity has been questioned. I spoke to a source who claimed Lonnie once gave an interview to a major media outlet and scared the reporter so much that they wondered if he was confessing to Tammy's murder. It makes sense to be initially suspicious of Lonnie Dumont. He found the body, and he hesitated about calling it in. He then offered to help move it, almost guaranteeing some of his DNA would be left at the scene. But in the end, as far as Lonnie Dumott is concerned, I have found zero evidence that he had anything to do with Tammy's a wiki's abduction or murder. Two thousand and two marked the tenth anniversary of Tammy's death. The FBI offered a fifty thousand dollars reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction and Tammy's kidnapping and murder. The milestone also led to an onslaught of media coverage, which in turn provided newly retired ISP investigator Marty McCarthy a platform to voice his opinions. All the airtime in print space that the media gave to Marty's theories about the eyewitnesses claims regarding Lonnie beer Brod were hard to ignore, which is why I think the IP and FBI decided to make a few moves. As the agent in charge, this was, you know, this case kind of came to me with the press guy saying, hey, you know, the news media wants to do something on this thing. Thomas Kanner was the special Agent in charge of one of the FBI's Southern field offices. He was tasked with interviewing Lonnie beer Brodd's ex wife. At that ten year mark, he still seemed to be the most logical guy, you know, And so I said, get her an interviewer again. You know, I know she's probably been interviewed multiple times for interviewer again, and then CF she'll submit to a polygraphingstanding Lonnie beer Brott had died by the time as ex wife to the polygraph. If she had ever been afraid to speak up before his death, there was no reason to protect him any longer. And if anybody could get a confession or do a polygraph, I mean I would put I would put my money on this guy. All the places I've been and all the polygraphers that I've had that worked, you know, for me, this guy was by far the dog best. Many might know that polygraphs are not allowed as evidence in court, but the beauty of polygraphing beer Brott's ex wife was that it wasn't for any sort of court proceeding. It was to gauge whether she was telling the truth about not having the green musical watch and not having any knowledge of her ex husband's involvement in Tammy's murder. The pre polygraph interview, which can be far more in depth than the actual polygraph, also gave the interviewer an opportunity to check her story for inconsistencies. So I was waiting and waiting and waiting and and and you know, when he does a polygraph, it's a it's not a twenty minute operation. So he called me later in the day and he said, well, it's probably not what you want to hear. But I ran her three times. I changed up the questions, you know, we taught him. We spent hours on you know, the pretests and just like I would on anything else. And my estimation as she's telling the truth. Beer Brotzeck's wife also spoke to the media around this time. In an interview with the Courier Post newspaper, she stated that her husband had never given her a musical watch and that she was puzzled by the origin of the story. What's more, she said, if she thought for one minute that he had been involved in Tammy's abduction and murder, quote, I would have gone straight to the police. Well I think, you know, I mean, it's always easy to tell the truth, right when you start making up stories, it'll change over time. I mean, if you know, if I told you'll lie today and you came back to me five years later and asked me, Hey, you know, Tom, you know you know ask me the same question, I may not respond the same way. Right, you might change one little thing. How often do people get interviewed by either the Illinois State Please, the Missouri the Highway Patrol world it was investigetting down there, or the FBI. I mean, that's probably for most people. Unless you're just a criminal, it's probably a one time event in your life. You would think that story would be easy to recite over and over and over again, much like the ESP and FBI. Back in two thousand and two, I felt I needed to speak to Lonnie beer Brott's ex wife, but all my attempts, calls, messages, even doorknocks went unanswered. My associate producer did manage to make contact in late twenty twenty two. Lonnie beer Brottzeck's wife wasn't in a hurry to get off the phone, though she did ultimately decline to be interviewed for the podcast. I have no reason not to believe her. It's also not her obligation to make anyone believe her. She's a private citizen who's already spoken to police and the media about what she knows. As for Tammy's watch, the watch is still missing. The watches is still out there. It's still among the list of items that would connect someone to this investigation. Jeff Padilla was a young detective with the Illinois State Police in nineteen ninety two, the year Tammy was murdered. He was familiar with the case, but wouldn't get involved until twenty twelve, when he became squad supervisor over a group of detectives working missing persons and murder cases in the region. That time, the case was a bit installed and there hadn't been what I thought was an appropriate amount of movement on it. So I assigned myself in a number of other of my detectives to go back and look at the investigation from the very beginning. That meant reinterviewing old witnesses and reviewing the many theories that had gotten attention over the years. There was a time where in the heart of this second like real push in this investigation, where we were getting a lot of mediate inquiries and there was a lot of physical evidence that had never been analyzed. As for Marty's eyewitness, the woman whose claims fueled rampant speculation about Annie beer Brot and created a narrative about the whereabouts of Tammy's watch. Padilla says her story never passed the smell test. Yeah, that was completely false. And the way that she identified Lonnie beer Brod was she was going by on the interstate in the opposite direction while doing seventy five miles an hour, which I take witness identification with a huge grain of salt, and it has to be backed up with evidence. Even more important is the fact that her story about seeing Lonnie bear Brott's wife wearing a watch similar to Tammy's was nowhere in her initial statements the police. By the time she had told Marty McCarthy her version of events ten years later, the information about Tammy's watch had already been made public. So then Lonnie beer Brod suddenly became a very heavy focus of the investigation. You know, he voluntarily came in and gave blood and DNA samples, and since then we know that he was not our offender in this case. Lonnie beer Brot was eliminated from our investigation as a suspect. Padilla says, that Lonnie beer Brott had been ruled out through DNA and blood analysis as early as nineteen ninety three. How did Marty not know about this? He wasn't working the case, but as an ISP investigator, it's surprising he'd be completely kept out of the loop. He was not was not involved in overall investigative decisions or command decisions with regard to the investigation. He alone perpetuated the Lonnie beer Brot sort of fantasy as a suspect because he was not aware of and rightfully so, he was no longer part of the investigation, so he wasn't aware that Lonnie had been eliminated. I respect Marty McCarthy's public service and his work as a active His many achievements speak for themselves. But I was going to have to go back to him at some point, provide him with what I had developed, and allow him a chance to speak to it. Jeff Padilla and the Illinois State Police bear some responsibility. More than twenty years after clearing Lonnie bear Brought as a suspect in Tammy Ziwiki's murder, he was quoted in a news article describing beer Brought as quote someone who remains a person of interest because of some of the circumstantial information surrounding him end quote. Why did investigators allow Lonnie's name to be dragged through the mud for decades? I mean he remained at an option because the DNA. Certainly that was when DNA was in infancy. Many of the tests were entrusted. As Padilla explained, even with his new team of investigators re examining the case files, not much progress was made in the investigation. So in twenty fourteen, law enforcement decided to try a different approach. We weren't going to narrow our investigation based on our preconceived notions, and that's why, you know, ultimately it was really really beneficial to us to take the investigation to the VDOX Society in Philadelphia. The VDOX Society is an elite group of experts in the criminology field, ranging from federal agents to forensic pathologists. Their work is pro bono, so there's a limited number of cases they can take on each year. Tammy's was one of them. We got a lot from them, and in fact, the direction we went thereafter was because of the information we had received from the VDOX Society. Eugene Francois Vidac was a nineteenth century Frenchman and world renowned detective. He got a start as a criminal before becoming an informant and eventually an agent. His admirers included three forensic experts who founded the VDC Society in nineteen ninety and named it in his honor. Each month, experts from all fields of criminology meet to go through cases presented by police departments from across the country. The VDC Society agreeing to look at your case is a huge deal and requires lengthy preparation. Investigators need to go through every element of the case file, follow up on outstanding leads, and make sure they're ready to present and defend their work to VDC members. We were only the second group from the Illinis State Police to ever presented to the VDAX Society. Jeff Paedia says the group helped change the IPS approach to Tammy's case. We were had a number of dead ends until we we spoke to the VDOC Society. They provided us with insight into, for example, the wound pattern and evidence that were in the crime, the autopsy photos, the group's theory about the nature of tammy Stab wounds, piqued my interest. Several members of law enforcement have told me the seven stab wounds around Tammy's heart were not methodical. Members of the VDOX Society had a different opinion, and sitting in a room with you know, one hundred highly experienced scientists, forensic scientists, corners, detectives, and psychiatrists and psychologists involved in criminal investigations, so that that was pointed out to us that that was likely there was a pattern to the stab wounds. The group also had a different opinion about how long Tammy's body had been out on the roadside before it was discovered. Two people, Lonnie Dumott and a police source who helped move Tammy's body back in nineteen ninety two, both claimed that she appeared to be in an advanced state of decomposition. The officer I spoke with even said that when he went to help pick up the body bag, Tammy's body nearly came apart. I mean that may have been his impression, but she was not. No, she was not that decomposed. Like that's some of the misinformation that's out there. One of the real stumpers in the investigation was that, you know, she was missing for all that time, but she was not that decomposed. She was certainly recognizable. Padilla says he and other investigators can't be exactly sure how long Tammy was dead before she was discovered, nor can he officially rule out one of the more wild theories in the case, the idea that her body was kept in a refrigerated truck. What he and many of his colleagues who are actively working the case are an agreement about is that it's unlikely that Tammy was on the roadway for days on end. That remains an open question and something that we've struggled with throughout the investigation. They did bring into the famous forensic entomologists from Believe he's from the University of Indiana and he went through He's the one that gave the age of the of the of the flies to be able to give us an idea how long she had been out there, which also supported the fact that she was not had not been out there very long. Based on the life of a flight the blue bottle fly cycle, it may have been a day or a day and a half. Taking into account what the VDOC experts found. One theory is that Tammy may have been kept a life at least a week after her abduction. I never mentioned that to missus Zwicky because I never wanted, you know, my supposition. You know, it's bad enough what she had gone through, and for me to suppose something like that just because it's a possibility that didn't you know, I never wanted to say that her until one hundred percent knew that may have been the case. It's a deeply troubling idea, though other evidence in the case does seem to support the theory. You know, there was an analysis of the food that was in her stomach, so we know that she had a meal which we had the receipts for, just before she broke down. Padilla is referring to the Hearty's fast food chain where Tammy picked up some lunch. Many have thought the fact that she had undigested food in her stomach was a clear indicator she'd been killed right away, but scientists who looked at the case think it's possible that her parasympathetic system, the part of the nervous system that controls things like rest and digestion, was overwhelmed by the stress of the situation. More simply put, her body was stuck in flight mode and unable to do much else. Those same scientists also said they couldn't rule out the possibility that Tammy's killer kept her somewhere and fed her during that time period. So one of the aspects was the food that had remained in her stomach when her body was recovered. So you would think a meal that you ate today is going to be completely digested nine days from hour seven days from hour five days, really, you know within you would think within twenty four hours. However, we debated the timeline based on when her body was recovered there was still undigested food in her stomach, and so how to explain that. Investigators like Padia have pushed back against the theory that Tammy's body was in an advanced state of decomposition, but she had been outside for a significant amount of time that it was difficult to know exactly what happened. For example, Padilla says it was almost impossible to tell whether Tammy was sexually assaulted. It was something the esp did initially look into in the nine but the technology wasn't as advanced then as it is today, and there was an initial positive positive indication for DNA on a vaginal swab that was later determined to be a false positive. There was never any seaman collected. There was never any seminal fluid connected. I mean she was fully clothed, her T shirt was on, her braws on, her panties were on correctly, her shorts were on. There was no appearance of sexual assault. Not that doesn't mean that there wasn't sexual activity. To me, the question of whether or not Tammy's murder was a sex crime could play a vital role in searching for viable suspects. Quite often for the offender, sex crimes have very little to do with our own ideas of traditional sexual acts, and so we always had the potential that this was a sex related and so that's always been you know, been out there and then that, to my knowledge, that remains possibility. The VDOX Society floated the theory that Tammy could have been unconscious when she was stabbed, and that the act of stabbing her was a way to wake her up, like a sternam rub. And then and then the one is the one is deep enough where it's not in her sternum. It goes between between the ribs and punctures her pericardial sack and she ends up dying from that, And was there a toxicology report done, any presence of any type of drugs in her system that he could have used. Yeah, I mean we thought about like if he used chloroform or something like that. I believe we were told at the time that nothing like that would have remained in her system. And it's not like today's roof and all or or something more powerful where it would stay in her system. Basically, the chloroform was used through you know, through a soaked rag. She would be knocked unconscious and then by the time she woke up, all of that would be the chloroform would be out of her system. A forensic psychiatrist told me years ago that a knife can be what he called a surrogate penis to compensate for sexual dysfunction. Yes, we we also thought that the puncture that killed Tammy may have been inadvertent in the process, so that the series of stab wounds in the center of her chest, which were all very close. It was the size of a pipe plate. So if somebody's fighting, you're not going to get you know, shallow depth stab wounds in a pipe plate, right, you know, if I'm trying to stab you. You're gonna be fighting back. You're gonna get stabbed in the hand, in the arm and the forearm and the elbow and the you know, in the your bicep, your trisep I'm maybe going to get you in the chest. But these were, you know, so these were very different. Padia says. The information from the Vdox Society changed the ISP's direction of the case. The group helped them identify new pools of suspects and more importantly, potential new sources of DNA which they could go on to test and use to create genealogical profiles, and as often as the case with active investigations, new developments are ongoing for the ISP and for myself. After hearing the first couple episodes from this season, a detective from a neighboring town from where Tammy went missing contacted me with information if you had heard along with a new suspect, someone who checked nearly every box and Tammy's a Wiki's murder and was found in possession of what some may call a trophy. On the next episode of Paper Ghosts, the body was it's obviously signs of you know, just brutal almost like a tortuous saying that he had did her. It was she was bound in duct tape. A couple of local FBI agents came to my house and took a DNA swab for me. I first called Joanne and we have this discussion about this is our one shot. You know, we may not get it again if we agree to do this. If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, please listen to my other podcast, Crossing the Line with m William Phelps, where I use the same storytelling elements you've heard in Paper Ghosts and cover missing person and murder cases. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and William Phelps and iHeart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer is Darby Masters, Audio editing and mixing by Christian Bowman and Abu Zafar. Our series theme number four four two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mullen. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.