Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. September one began like any other day for Lonnie Dumont. I worked for a company in Ingle Rock, Massouri at the time, and I was going to Joblin to do service calls. Lonnie was a former truck driver turned repairman who fixed wood stoves, pellets, stoves, and hot tubs. He says he was on his way to his first job of the day, about five miles west of where Tammy Ziwiki went missing nine days earlier. It was a Tuesday, around nine am.
Lonnie was driving his boss's pickup truck along in the state forty four when it started to rain, so it started franklin. I pulled off an exit ramp and got out and got my tools and set them in the front of the truck. And I can smell something real d I mean it was funky, and it uh was. I shut the truck door. When I turned to walk around the front of the truck, I've seen it. Laying there roughly twelve ft from where Lonnie stood was a
shocking sight. A bulky red blanket rolled up like a big cigar duct taped on both ends usual till it was a body laying there with this bunk and everything. I figured it was either that or somebody had an old dick now for cat and they just wrapped it up and throw it off alongside the road, so they didn't have disposed of it. Lonnie knew something was off.
What he didn't know was what to do next. I went I hadn't got in the truck and started down the road, and I kept thinking, you know, I really ought to call the highway troll and turn again, and you know, we think, no, I'm not gonna call the highway troll turned in because it's not my business. What Lonnie Dumott chose to do act would leave him with a cloud of suspicion that lingers to this very day, thirty years later. Previously on paper ghosts, people started buying phones.
Guys and tasks are running out by the phone. They saw, whoa, it's good, my wife got my daughter. I took a phone call in the kitchen and he said, Jen, don't say anything, I just want you to listen. They found a body in Missouri. Tammy is a very young girl on our way to college. Who would she willingly go with? On a sunny afternoon in the summer when her car broke down. Now we have a crime sneed. Now I have a place to start looking. Before we had nothing.
My name is m William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than forty true crime blows. This is season three of paper Ghosts in Plain Sight. Vehicles are trucks. Yeah, thirty thirty years ago thereyone near this made cars out here. You can stand along this highway thirty minutes sometimes now see anything, just truck, just just trucks. I first met Lonnie Dumott during a trip I took
to Missouri last year. He's a good natured, heavy set guy with cropped hair, a long, square shaped goatee, and a somber looking, slow moving dog that tags along wherever he goes. We met a long Interstate forty four at the exact location where he found Tammy's a Wicky's body in described to me what happened. It out. I was going to Joplin, and I had my boss's truck and and he was at the time he was a deputy sheriff and the fire ju so he had radio in
his truck. And when I pulled off the rampstar raining and I come across the crossroad just about where that guardrail starts up there, and it uh, there was a body laying off in the DearS. I got out to put my tools in the front of the truck because it was raining. So you stop up at the guardrail, Yeah, well almost to the guard not like to the guardrail like before it or after this this side of it.
And I walked around the truck and get my tools out of back, and then I went to the right door and opened the door and was set them in the foreboard because I carried two trays. I should know there are people who don't believe Lonnie's account of what happened, That he's given varying accounts as to why he pulled over in the first place, and that the decisions he made after finding Tammy's body seems suspicious. He was laying right there. And there's another report to you said you
stopped to take a piss. Did you know you never said that I stopped to get my jewels out of the the back of the truck. I don't know where that came from. Well, I sort of figured, you know, just like you, you're gonna try to to make a a sort of a report out of this, and there's things that get bobbled around. But this is your voice. This is your story, not mine. You're telling your story to me, and I'm gonna tell it for you, and I want to get it right. So you pull off that ramp.
You're heading west, okay, So you pull over, you get out, and I walk around. The truck smells something funky, but you know, alongside the road, you don't don't really know, So did describe the odor to me? And if you've ever found a dead body, it's it's undescribable, you know what I mean. It's a smell, it just all my he turns your stomach. I looked at there and seen it laying there, and I thought where, And then on the side of the road, drive here, up here? So
was up here? How far off the road? And she was probably I don't bous far from here to that piece of plastic right there ten twelve ft And Lonnie said he saw what appeared to be a body wrapped in a red blanket with silver duct tape sealing both ends. He could tell it was a body just by the way it was laying, which is why knowing what he did immediately after seeing the blanket seems so strange. Lannie hopped back into his truck and drove away. I thought, well,
it's not my problem. At the time, I didn't have a driver's license. Uh. And then I thought, I'm just gonna going down the road my own business and going down the highway between here and the next exit. I talked myself in and out of calling the police about a hundred times, and the last thought I had was, if it was my daughter, I'd want to know. I shared this last detail with the source, someone close to this wiki case with access to the autopsy and crime
scene reports, and they found his comments troubling. Why would Lonnie Dumott say daughter if he didn't know the gender or age of the person and the blanket. It's small details like these that can be so easily twisted into a conspiracy theory and make someone like Lonnie an easy target. But what Lonnie said didn't strike me as strange. It was apparent he was recalling what happened from a contemporary mindset. In other words, he already knew who the victim was
as he retold his story. Minor discrepancies in anyone's recollections are understandable. Thirty years is a long time. The truth is inherent, sure, but time can affect memory. Besides line, he did end up calling the police. So I pulled off and called the state how I tolled and they said would you meet us there? And I said yes, and they said what are you driving? I said, white three quarter tons should be pick up. So take me back. I mean, see, have you have all these cops here?
What are you thinking? I'm thinking I want to go to jail because I don't have a license. They asked me to see my idea and I give it to him, which it was expired or wasn't expired. He was revoked, but he didn't say that, and they they just wrote my name down and stuff. And when we after the corner got there and we'd picked her up and put her in the down are the cops there when the corner comes? Yes? Okay, So the corner comes and you say we picked her up, you helped? Yes? Yes? How
how did that happen? The state trooper that was there, he got out and got a pair of gloves and he walked down there and looked at it and sort of walked around, and he come back to get his pocket and I file the car and he said, I hope you know you made my day. And I said, well, if you got another pair of gloves, I'll help you. Because at that time I was part of the fire department where I live at and it, uh, there was just massively covered with bug you can't imagine. I mean
bugs were on this. We cut the blanket, and once we cut the blanket, we had to cut a lot more because she was wrapped in a sheet. We had to get down in there with all in bugs. And what did you see when they when you cut that blanket open? We've seen that it was a body. You could tell it was a body. Could you see the face? No, now we didn't didn't open the end of it. And and uh, we've seen a femur in her leg and it was exposed. It was rothered enough that it was fallen.
And he said, that's all I need to see. And at that time we didn't even know it was a girl. Uh. And at that time we had two girls and a lady in Springfield that went missing right the Springfield three three. I thought that may have been one of them. Ah Lonnie said, he helped carry Tammy's body up the embankment and placed it next to a body bag that was
along the side of the road. This may sound odd to many, and multiple law enforcement sources, including one from Missouri, told me this would not have happened, that the person who found a body would never be asked to help move it, and under modern day police policy, they're absolutely right. Today, Tammy's body would have remained in that gulch for hours, so the entire crime scene could be processed for evidence, but cold cases need to be looked at within the
context of the time and place this was in. In rural Missouri, the Lawrence County Sheriff's office, which initially took the call, only had about twelve officers on staff at the time, and some of them worked part time. Brad
Delay is the current Lawrence County Sheriff. I'm not saying that the body wasn't moved, but that is probably an unlikely thing unless they were to the point for two reasons, one being that all the evidence that they needed to collected was collected, and the corner was on scene and was able to or was ready to remove the body, or there was sometimes of extended circumstance that would have
necessitated the body being moved immediately. Uh. In something like that would have been you know, all of a sudden, there was gonna be this downpour that was gonna cause flooding that may have damaged the body or the crime scene or something. As the person who found Tammy's body, Lonnie DeMott, was, by mere happenstance, the first suspect, they said. Before they got down with me, he said, I got one more question for you. And I said, what's that? And he said, I know this goes sound like a
stupid question. Do you know how the body got there? I said no, sir, But I said I can tell you one thing. I used to drive of a truck. And from what I see, most truck drivers have a sheet in their bed, and most truck drivers have a blanket in their bed, and almost all truck drivers have an uptape. And if you retch up in the sleep, open the door and the sleeper and retch up and grabbed her and pulled her out, that's about where she'd live.
Why do you say that, Well, I drove a truck for years, and and uh, if you got ahold of her and drug her out the sleeper, that's about where she'd lit was where she was at, and right here there's nothing around. And you know, we look too, We look to the north of where her body was and we see nothing but acres of farm land, not even a farmhouse. You see nothing, nothing. You look west, nothing, you see nothing. You look south, you see that old truck stop. But you say that old truck stop is
really small. Yeah, it was small. It It mainly was the fuel stop. Truckers would often pull off here to do the log book. All the time. Truckers pull off extra amps to do the log books basically when they know that there's a scale at Joplin and they're real known to be real stickier about your log book. So that would answer the question of why a truck was parked there. So if the cop is driving by, there's no way he'd stopped following. Absolutely, they wouldn't bother you.
I've slept on this ramp before, used to be in Missouri, and well the whole country you can pull off on extra ram, go to sleep and no one bothers you. What's most troubling to me is what Linnie said happened after the body was recovered. Do they call you in for a report or you go down there. No, they never never ever talk to me at all outside of the scene. I think shortly after they figured out that she was here and she was from up north and out the east. I don't believe that once they run
all their leads they had. I believe they's done with it. I believe it's set for thirty years or close to it. With the exception of a brief and formal call later that day in Lonnie claims that no one, not Lawrence County, not Missouri State Highway Patrol, not the Illinois State Police, no one contacted him for a formal interview after he found Tammy's a Wicki's body. Lonnie told me he had no idea the body was part of a multi state investigation.
He had no clue that it was a young woman who had been abducted five miles away, or that her case would go on to become a national news story. After he drove away from the scene that day, Lonnie said that nobody from law enforcement ever spoke to him again until twenty eight years later in two thousand twenty. Almost everyone involved in the discovery of Tammy Ziwiki's body had no idea that the young woman they'd found in Missouri was a missing college student whose case had started
to attract national attention. How could they Tammy's disappearance was being handled by a different law enforcement agency in Illinois. This event took place in District seventeen, which is our neighboring district. And my boss, my captain, called me into the office and said, um, you're going over seventeen. A girl disappeared on the interstate and you're gonna help the p i O over there run the media and all
that good stuff. Jeff Hanford was a public information officer or p i O with the Illinois State Police at the time. At District seventeen, he worked alongside another p i O, Jerry Myers. Jerry and I were sitting there in the phone ring, and you know, I mean, we had been a fielding media calls and it was a media outlet, I believe in Missouri, and they said, hey, you know, this is so and so from channel such and such, and we're trying to verify that the body
that was found here was Tammy Zwicky. And I said, what body? And they said, well, we found a body rolled in a carpet and the clothing matches. Tammy was found wearing a blue T shirt from her high school soccer team, along with sweatshorts adorned with soccer patches from various leagues she played in. So I went over and knocked on the door, and the vest one of guests there came. I said, they found a body in Missouri and the clothing matches Tammy Zwicky. You need to talk
to the guy. So you know, they basically I think they talked to him briefly and then they called the sheriff. The closed. Tammy it was found wearing were her own, but it was later discovered that the items she had on were not the same ones she was wearing when she said goodbye to her brother hours earlier. According to her brother, Tammy was wearing a white T shirt and dark shorts. Here's Jeff Padilla, a retired lieutenant from the
Illinois State Police. She was wearing a pair of shorts from a soccer club that she played for, but was what was very important to us was that the patch from that soccer club was cut off the leg of those shorts, notably one circular white patch with red stitching that read St. Giles Soccer Club. Had been torn off the shorts Tammy was wearing. Why would her killer cut off that patch? We thought it possibly that it was a souvenir. According to Padilla, Tammy's killer took the patch
as a trophy. It's an interesting idea since serial killers can sometimes be prone to exhibit that kind of behavior, and in theory, there is no other reason beyond maybe the killer wanting to remove evidence from the scene if some of their own DNA got on the patch. As for the change of clothes, it's possible Tammy changed when she picked up lunch at Hearty's or later after her car broke down on the side of a hot highway.
She had bags of clothes packed in the car. Still, what is the likelihood she needed to switch out of everything she was wearing. Authorities kept a number of details surrounding Tammy's death private, but Lawrence County corner Don Laken spoke to a reporter shortly after the body was found and revealed this She was fabbed seven times in the chest and one time in the right arm. To those stab wounds puncture her long and one punctured her labor.
In an interview with another reporter, Laken noted that Tammy's body didn't appear to have any blood quote, just some body fluids on the sheet and blanket from the decomposition end quote. Law enforcement never publicly released the official cause of death. What we do know is that Tammy died from those stab wounds which were caused by a short blade like a Swiss army or pocket knife. Here's Marty McCarthy, one of the members from the I s P Task Force.
What was unusual. It was a pen knife no more than that seven times around the heart and one is on scrapes the side of the of the arm. So she had to be unconscious when that. No one's going to sit there and take that kind of Some including Marty, have speculated over the years that there was a pattern to Tammy's wounds, one that circles her heart. Those with direct knowledge of the autopsy report, however, have told me
there was never any indication of this. From what I have learned so far, I can speculate confidently that Tammy's killer was likely positioned on top of her, straddling her body, stabbing in a frenzied outburst. That this was not some sort of ritualistic, methodical placement of wounds. It's just strangest murder I ever saw. Why would someone stab somebody seven
times around the heart. Is that saying something? It would indicate to me that it wasn't necessarily gonna kill her, that I better get rid of her, and all I got this little pen knife, and there's no preparation for it. I'm not gonna let his road. I can't do that. I don't know. This is just my speculation. I've never seen a murder like this. Ever, it's hard for me to understand how that happened, other than in fact, it seems to me she has to have been unconscious, has
to them. I don't think you could find someone and there would be marks on her wrist. If there weren't any as far as on it, they could have ye, and no continusion is on the head As far as I don't know. It took some time. Where in the hell is she? What you're doing with you know? It's just strange as hell? And where's the blood? Where's the you know? These are questions I have. I don't know
the answer. While I was in Missouri, I was able to track down one of the first officers on the scene, There's been plenty of misinformation spread over the course of thirty years regarding that day, so I was eager for this source to help clear up any doubt about Lonnie Dumott's story and what the crime scene itself can clarify. Unfortunately, my source just wasn't comfortable being on the podcast. What
I can say about our conversation is this. The source told me that the first cop on the scene wasn't a big guy, so it made sense to him that Lonnie would have been asked to help carry Tammy's body up the embankment. Why was there a rush to get her out of the gulch and not wait for backup. It's tough to say. As Sheriff Delay mentioned earlier, weather concerns could have been a factor. After all, Lonnie does maintain that he pulled over to cover his tools when
it began to rain. Plus there were two agencies at play, Lawrence County and the Highway Patrol. In my opinion, however, it boils down to inexperience with major crime scenes. Here's Jeff Padilla. He has a bad idea. It's it's a bad idea. I don't know why that was allowed to happen, that she never should have been allowed to happen. Another point of contention I sought to clear up was how long Tammy's body had been left out next to the
roadside in Missouri. Asked one of the many online sluice, and they'll tell you she was likely dumped the night before she was found, that she had been held captive some where. One of the more popular theories is that her body had been kept in a refrigerated truck for most of the time she was missing. My crime scene source actually carried Tammy's body, which was now in a body bag, from the roadside into the corner suburban. He says that the smell was so bad the officers needed
to apply Vicks vapor rub under their noses. The source also said that Tammy's body and head appeared to be swollen, that her face had a bluish purple color, and that blood had pooled in the upper part of her body. The body was in a state of decomposition, which makes it difficult to for example, identify you know, decom as as opposed to bruising or abrasions. Um that was you know, very some some things that could provide us with some more information, but h so, there was a number of
things that were recovered from the crime scene. Later on, we were able to try to go through and analyze items such as the blanket that her body was wrapped in, the clothing that she was found in, the there was duct tape that was used to secure the ends of the blanket that she was wrapped in, and so um, all of those items and those physical items are available to us. The origin of the blanket has been a source of misinformation that's been spread around the Internet for years.
It's unclear even how the rumors started, but message boards and blogs claim Tammy was found wrapped in a red blanket made by Kenworth Trucking Company, something that was often used by truckers on the road. I have learned this is simply not true. In fact, I was told that law enforcement at the time looked into the Kenworth detail and discovered that the blanket was nothing more than a
common product sold at kmart stores nationwide. Still, the handling of Tammy's body, in particular the initial testing and autopsy reports, would become a point of frustration for investigators like Jeff Dilla. I know that the Missouri State Police were there for the autopsy. In my opinion, the autopsy was less than I would have expected in regards to detail and analysis. But unfortunately, at the time that you had an autopsy
conducted in a jurisdiction that that's all they had. And the elected corner was also the local funeral director, and so he's not seeing the volume of suspicious debts that say somebody in a in a more urban area, a medical examiner or a corner and in a more urban area is seen. I would have loved to have a lot more photos taken, a lot more testing done once once you're done with the autopsy. If you don't, if you didn't take enough photographs, then there's no coming back
from that. While investigators were just starting to piece together what happened, the Ziwicki family was really the worst possible outcome was now their reality. Any hope of Tammy returning home safe and alive was now shattered. Hank and Joeann Ziwicki's little girl was gone, murdered. It's unfathomable. You guys had like a memorial service for at the college. Tell me about that. How was that? It was very nice
They had more students that they could handle. I wanted to speak because she's she was just an all around purpose on our person on campus because of her working with the paper and everything she knew from there. Does law enforcement want to hold onto her body for a little bit to examine Frenzy? They did have it for a while. Yeah, and then they finally released the body to you And what do you what do you do?
You have a service in Pennsylvania funeral service she had a lot of our college friends did come for the services. Dammy got along with everybody. She was very well liked, and it it was hard on the the not only the girls, but the boys too. It was hard on all of them. And how are your son's coping with all of this? Well, they did well with it. We didn't make more out of it than we should have. You know, it's happened. It's happened. The police are looking
into what they're looking into. We're not going to make it a big thing and keep it over the family. It's something that's happened that we've got to get through it. Darren is the only one that really I think still it's been hard for him to let go of everything. A common complaint I heard from where the Ziwikis were concerned was how little the Illinois State Police seemed to be doing, or I should say how little they were
telling the family what they were doing. In the I s p S defense, there's only so much you can tell the family of a victim during an active murder investigation. Early on, everyone is a suspect. That includes Tammy's brothers, her father, friends, and other family members. Still, the lack of communication with the Ziwiki family caused a great deal of frustration and anger, all of which I think could
have been avoided. They were grieving and desperate to find out anything, but the state police were just not giving them any information. So did the Illinois State Police update you each day or well? I always made a point to try to be stay in touch with one person as far as them update me they were doing. They were just stuff. I'll tell you what what you need
to know when you need to know it. It was not a very good relationship with the Illinois Date place, but I usually found someone that I could communicate with and get information, So I did stay up. One things, how does the investigation progress from here? As best that you could? I mean, it just was to look into everything and publicity. A lot of a lot of people were critical of the publicity that was put out. They said,
why did you put, you know, publicity out? The picture appeared in some newspapers and things like that, and we said, because we wanted to try to get information. I mean, how do you get information? Well, doesn't it bother you? Yes, but I see her face, whether I see it on a picture or whether I don't. You know, it's in your mind. It's in your mind, it's there. Here's Tammy's
eldest brother, Todd. Early on, we were getting pretty regular updates, and those kind of telled alf over time as people retired, as FBI agents changed over time, as when I state police people changed over time. In the beginning, did they mention anything about the type of DNA they had what they found forensics? Yeah, early on. The only thing they had for a long time that I was aware of, was they said they had found the beer can near her,
and that the beer can had something on it. They had no idea whether the beer can was just there coincidentally or was somehow related, or whether the case would be you know, they kept all the physical of it end. But back then my understanding was that to the extent that there were any traces of d n A on anything like the blanket or clothes or anything like that,
the technology was such that they just couldn't. It wasn't usable, right, There wasn't enough of it um And so my understanding had always been that they had this beer can and that maybe they could do something with d n A off of the beer can, but that that was all they had in terms of physical evidence to go on. After Tammy's body was found so far away alongside a popular trucking route in Missouri, the I s P and
FBI's focus narrowed even more. A truck driver became their most likely suspect, and much of their investigative attention now shifted to reflect that. As former I s P investigator Marty McCarthy told me in the last episode, at one tip from a woman who saw a man with a blue or green pickup truck parked behind Tammy's car just didn't get the attention it deserved, but it could have. Now.
Whoever assigned this to this agent, the supervisor recognizes from the get go hey, look at this, he says, look at it. When looking back at the I s P s tip sheet that I obtained. It's hard to miss a hand drawn star and the word possible written beside the tipster's name. This tells me that someone on the task force saw the value and following up. Marty's theory is that that never happened. So what happened was there
was no follow up on this. He blows it off, and when they when we have a timeline to help the investigators, he doesn't even put it on there. What's even more significant about the eye witness who saw the man with the pickup truck is that she calls the I s P tip line a second time. Now. She says that she had just had an encounter her at her place of work with the same guy. As it turns out, the guy was not only in the area where Tammy disappeared in Illinois, but his family owned property
in Missouri, only fourteen miles from where Tammy's body was found. So, um, we go back, We look him up two times, fell him. Here's a trucker. Violent felon got a green pickup trucks a few miles from the scene. It's like bingo on the next episode of Paper Ghosts. Obviously, over time, we've had some people who look like plausible suspects. I didn't know why there was so much focus put on that truck. There was also claims that there was a pickup truck.
This always bugged me, but I'm no one certain terms to stay out of this occasion. To me, it was I don't want the game to the factor. I'll just see whether or not to sated my track or not. I'd wait till further down the road, whether or not I even wanted to do it in kilm or not. If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, please listen to my other podcast, Crossing the Line with em William Phelps, where I used 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 I Heart 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 Abou Zafar. Our series theme number four four two is written and
performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts for My Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.