Tammy Zywicki graduated from Eastside High School, but her death is still a mystery 30 years later.
Before being fatally stabbed 30 years ago, an Eastside High School alumna was en route to Iowa’s Grinnell College to begin her senior year.
Who killed her is still unknown decades later.
Tammy Zywicki, then 21 years old, was killed while driving on August 23, 1992, close to LaSalle, Illinois. Her body was discovered 200 miles away on a rural Missouri roadway.
In the years following, her family, friends, and neighbours have been left to wonder what happened.
The Who Killed Tammy Zywicki Facebook page, which has more than 4,000 members, has organised a motorcycle ride at the Pickens County Speedway on September 3 in an effort to bring attention to her killing.
The case and the enigma are explained here.
How did Tammy Zywicki fare?
According to prior reporting by The Greenville News, Tammy Zywicki and her younger brother Daren encountered car troubles while en route to their respective institutions in Illinois and Iowa in the summer of 1992.
After dropping her brother off at Northwestern University, Tammy Zywicki continued on her journey to Iowa, where she intended to meet up with her mother when she got there.
Tammy Zywicki stopped her car on an exit outside of Utica to inspect it.
Around 4 o’clock, witnesses reported seeing Zywicki with her car hood up and a man and his tractor-trailer parked behind it ostensibly attempting to assist her.
A truck with a “brownish orange, rust-colored stripe” and a faded spot in the middle was reportedly seen by some witnesses nearby.
An FBI Most Wanted poster characterised the truck’s driver as a white male between the ages of 30 and 40 with dark, bushy hair.
According to prior reporting from The News, the police did not begin looking into Zywicki’s disappearance until three days after the initial report of her missing. They then informed the family that Zywicki had likely left the house with a lover, despite the fact that she did not have one.
Zywicki’s automobile was discovered by an Illinois State Police officer on a highway. It was hauled since it was thought to be abandoned.
Days after a search for Zywicki, a trucker who was stopped along Interstate 44 in Missouri discovered her body, which had been wrapped in a red blanket and sheet and taped shut.
Tammy Zywicki was identified by dental records and was found dead in the identical clothes that she had been last seen in. Police reported that she had suffered multiple chest stab wounds as well as sexual assault.
Police identified a number of suspects, but no one was taken into custody. Neither a murder weapon nor a murder scene were discovered.
According to prior reporting by The News, at least one retired Illinois detective thought a trucker with relatives in LaSalle, Illinois, was responsible for Zywicki’s demise. Police questioned that man in 1992, but as there was no tangible proof connecting him to Tammy’s body, they let him go after obtaining hair samples and fingerprints. 2002 saw his passing.
DNA tests in 2020 linked another suspect to other women, leading police to identify him, but they disqualified him as a suspect in Zywicki’s death.
According to a 2015 investigation by the Illinois State Police, authorities consulted Philadelphia’s Vidocq Society members after receiving recommendations regarding Zywicki’s demise. A group of federal and state law enforcement, psychologists, and forensic specialists called the Vidocq Society works to solve crimes. During regular meetings between members of the society and the Illinois State Police, the locations where Zywicki’s car and corpse were located were revisited.
The FBI and Illinois State Police declined to comment since they are still looking into the issue.
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