The Missing Watch

they just couldn't. It wasn't usable, right, There wasn't enough of it. A lot of people were critical of the publicity that was put out the States, and well, doesn't it bother you? Yes, but I see her face, whether I see it on a picture or whether I don't. My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author more than forty true crime books. This is season three Paper Ghosts in Plain Sight. Over the past thirty years, a number of suspects have stood out in

Tammy Ziwiki's murder case. When I began my own investigation, it was apparent that the semitruck driving serial killer types who preyed upon young females in the late eighties and early nineties were at the top of the list. There was also Lonnie Dumott, the guy who found and helped move Tammy's body from the roadside in Lawrence County, Missouri. And then there was a lead that came in five days after Tammy was reported missing in August of nineteen

ninety two. That tip from an eyewitness who said she was driving eastbound on Interstate eighty when she saw a man in a blue or green pickup truck parked behind Tammy's car along the westbound side of the highway. It was a lead that former ISP investigator and Marty McCarthy believes was largely ignored. So what do we know about this man? All slender, unshaven, just kind of disheveled, I would say, And you've got to have ballpark hat, kind of a typical denizen in a home, I mean, nondescriptive

in that sense. White guy. Marty believes to this day that the guy driving that pickup truck is the best suspect in Tammy's disappearance and murder. If you look at all the details on paper, it's understandable why he appeared suspicious. All the pieces seemed to fit when you break this lead down, any investigator worth their weight would be drawn

to the guy. Still based on the sheer number of tips about a white on my truck seen park near Tammy's car, the esp was solely focused on finding an eighteen wheeler, specifically one with rust colored stripes, essentially a needle in a haystack. As the year came to an end, Tammy's case had started to run cold. Then in early January, a new call came into the tip line. Call comes to the office from this woman who I don't know if anybody recognized her or not, saying, hey, these people

they came to my office. It turned out the person on the other end of the line was the same woman who just four months earlier had called in the tip about the blue or green pickup truck. She calls back in, you know, and I gonna go out and see her, and no one talked to her an intermediate period of time. During this second call, the eyewitness claimed that the man she had seen on the side of the road with Tammy had actually shown up to her place of work along with his wife. She has an

airy feeling about him from the get go. She told me, this guy whoa I had my hair kind of went up. Guy, it looks like the guy out of the road. Looks like the guy she told me that, And I don't think he obviously wouldn't have recognized her, but she was somewhat free by that. He just kind of sits there, Marty says. The person the eyewitness identified was a thirty one year old man named Lonnie beer Brought, not to

be confused with Lonnie Dumott, the repairman who found Tammy's body. Rather, this Lonnie Lonnie beer Brought was a former semitruck driver and a convicted felon who had been ordered to serve three concurrent twenty year sentences for armed robbery. He ended up getting paroled in July nineteen ninety. Is a trucker violent felon got a green pickup truck a few miles

from the scene. Lived in Sharkozi, sal Peru. According to the esp the beer Brought family owned property about ten miles from the stretch of highway in Sarcoxi, Missouri, where Tammy's body was found. Sarcoxi wasn't a heavily traffic city at the time, still isn't today. There are only about fifteen hundred residents, and back in nineteen ninety two, the only logical route off the highway to get to the beer brought residents was Exit thirty three, the same exit

where Tammy's body was found. More importantly, Lonnie beer Brott also had family five hundred miles away in Peru, Illinois, the neighboring town from where Tammy went missing. He was from that area as well, and the ISP confirmed that on the day Tammy vanished August twenty third, nineteen ninety two, beer Brott was just minutes from the spot on I eighty where she was last seen. I've done this long time, and I just thought, whoa bingle. I can't say everybody

else did, but how many coincidences can there be? Here? So they decided to go down the whole task force to Missouri, and for whatever reason, I didn't get a signed to go down there. I don't know why. I'll take who knows. I didn't care. I had some stuff to do here, and they took as I recall, they took a lot of physical evidence out of there. Did they bring him in for questioning? They come back and they bring him in, interview him, take his blood, take

all the samples, DNA all this kind of ship. At the time, Marty was actually out in the field assigned to handle other parts of the Ziwiki investigation, so the responsibility of documenting and chasing leads fell on other members of the task force, including one of Marty's colleagues, who questioned Lonnie beer Brott at the station. So he says, yeah, I interviewed him. He's just spacing as hell. He's just like, doesn't say anything, and it was just kind of a

space cadet type of thing which happened. Meantime, while he is there at the State Police, incomes his brother and makes a big scene saying, hey, where's you got my brother? What are you doing? What are you making a big scene in the State Police about where he's supposed to be, which always interesting. Newspapers reported that beer Brott's wife and d laws were interviewed. Investigators searched through the beer Brott's

trash and reviewed their phone records. But before anyone on the task force could further pursue their strongest lead yet, Marty and his colleague were hit with a surprising development all of a sudden in February, they walk in were dissolving the task force fifteen sixteen. Guy. They had been taken from other districts. There's other cases building up. Commanders are saying blah blah, blah blah. I can understand that,

and we've been there for a number of months. But here, in my view, we get the best lead we've ever had. By early nineteen ninety three, the fourteen member task force investigating Tammy's murder had completely disbanded, citing a lack of progress as the main reason. Investigators vowed to follow any additional leads as they came in, but the number of law enforcement working the case was significantly cut. To me, it's a clear example of the department's mismanagement early in

this investigation. Why take a team of seasoned investigators chasing a lead their supervisor deemed one of the most relevant off the case. This always bugged me, but I'm told no one in certain terms to stay out of this case, and I do because I know what those will do. By May of nineteen ninety three, eight months after Tammy Ziwiki's murder, police said they had followed up on more than six hundred and fifty leads and twenty five hundred truck sightings to no avail. A police spokesperson at the

time said they just ran out of leads. Because of this, the Illinois State Police did something it hadn't yet done. Investigators publicly released a list of items belonging to Tammy that were missing from her car and person when her

body was found. Among them Tammy's pair of round, wire framed eyeglasses, a woman's watch that played rain drops keep falling on My head, a pair of gray A six running shoes, a large brown faux alligator skin purse, Tammy's driver's license, and her cannon EOS thirty five millimeter camera and lens. The spokesperson noted that the ISP had been aware of the missing items all long, but quote, we have no new suspects and no new leads, so it

doesn't matter anymore. Quote their hope that someone had purchased one of the items at a pawn shop or would see one of them and call in. After Marty McCarthy was removed from the task force in nineteen ninety three, he eventually became the commander of the ISP's the vision of internal investigations for all state employees in the Chicago area. All along he never stopped thinking about what happened the

Tammy's at wiki. When he retired in two thousand and one, he amped up his involvement in the case and became determined to find out more about the man in the pickup truck. He believes that Lonnie beer Brott was that man and had something to do with Tammy's murder. Marty eventually connected with Tammy's mom to share his theory and discuss the investigation. For him, it was about getting this Ziwicki family the answers they deserved and following evidence he

believed had been overlooked. I'm up in Michigan on vacation. I'm playing tennis with my wife and I stopped. I said, God, damn it, I just can't live with this. So what are you doing? We're playing tennis? I cannot live with this bad. I gotta do something. I gotta call missus Wickie, just driving me crazy. I go call her and I said, Hello,

it was Morney McCarthy. Blah blah blah. I said, I said, have you ever heard of Lonnie beer brod No, although she wasn't happy with the investigation at that time, I said, well, Lonnie beer rot was a suspect in this case, a very strong suspect in this case. I just wanted to know if you knew, and if you didn't know, I wonder why. And I personally believe he should be pursued. And she said, I agree with you. I'm on your side.

And we took off for like twenty years together. And as talking to people as part of his own investigation, Marty made a point of reaching out to the eyewitness who led investigators to beer Brought in the first place. He trusted her account and deemed her to be extremely credible because her husband was a prominent member of the

law enforcement community. It was during one of their meetings in the early two thousands that Marty claims the eyewitness revealed new details to him about her encounter with the beer Brought family a decade earlier, details which shifted his investigation into high gear. As he explains it, the eyewitness said she found herself engaged in conversation with Lonnie beer Brott's wife on the day they came into her workplay

in nineteen ninety three. Missus bear Rock is talking. Lonnie's sitting there morrows and the wife is rattling on and she starts talking about Lonnie gave me this watch. It plays a musical tune, and she kind of showed it to me, and and you were seeing it, and I couldn't see it on it like that. She didn't play a tune for me, so I go, holy shit, Holy shit. It's important to note that the eyewitness did not mention

a watch in her statement to the police. It wasn't until nearly a decade later, during her meeting with Marty, and long after it was publicized that Tammy's watch was missing, that she told the story of Lonnie's wife wearing one. How many fucking watches play a tune. I want to know what that tune is. Let's find out. If that is rain drops, that's the killer to me. Just that's it. And all we gotta do is find that out. Here's Tammy's mom, Joanne. Do you remember the type of watch

she was wearing. Did the watch play that song rain gain drops keep falling on my head? She was wearing that watch for sure? Yeah. And did it have a green watch band? Do you remember? I don't remember for sure. Grein was her favorite color, so I'm sure it was a green watch band. It was just a simple watch. It wasn't anything fancy. If I remember her saying she needed a watch to keep todd because she had to move from one place to another set but you recall

it playing rain drops keep falling on your head. During the latter part of twenty twenty one and throughout twenty twenty two, I made repeated attempts to reach out to the eyewitness to verify Marty's story about the watch. She never re bonded. What worries me about her information is that I'm hearing its secondhand and have no convincing way

to corroborate it. She seems credible, but it's important to note that the beer brought identification, the watch story, and the sighting of the pickup truck all come from her and her alone. What I have been able to verify through police documents is that the eyewitness did call the IP Task Force in January nineteen ninety three. She said the Beer Brought's visit to her workplace occurred the previous month in December, and that Lonnie's wife did most of

the talking for him. That the couple was originally from the LaSalle County area of Illinois, but as of December nineteen ninety two, had still maintained property in Lawrence County, Missouri. Here's Tammy's brother, Todd Zuwiki. Obviously, over time, we've had some people who look like plausible suspects. You know, there was the whole story with Lonnie beer Brought and the

watch in the life. You know, kind of not quite clear what that evident, you know, where that all led, but that was who a lot of people thought was the most pausible suspect. Marty says. The witness also told him something he'd never heard before. That after the esp paid a visit to the Beer brought residence and brought Lonnie in for questioning, Lonnie and one of his brothers showed up to the witness's place of work upset. The next day or very soon after that, they both show

up unannounced. She's scared. Who called the police? Who called? Who told us son of my brother? You know, it made a big scene there, and that kind of thing to me. Oh shit, Now, I'm not even sure the state police knows that second part. But my view was, I I haven't I can't write a police report. I'm retired. I called the States Attorney and he said, oh yes, sah but I said, I'll be right, I'll come done her right now. So I sit out there in his waiting room for an hour, about an hour, and I'm

being blown off. So I go to the sectarise, Hey, look here's the deal. Well he's in there with a meeting. I gotta say, yeah, okay, fine, I'm gonna go over to the newspaper with this information. I'm gonna give this something. He didn't want to talk to. Be fine, I'll be over the newspaper he comes out. Marty's next move would turn him into a polarizing figure. He made good on his promise to contact the media. If you google Tammy's case, you'll see his name all over it. He's been very

critical of how the ISP handled the investigation. Unfortunately, I can't interview Lonnie beer Abrod. He died in two thousand and two while serving time in prison on unrelated charges. When Marty sought out Lonnie in the years after he retired, the state's attorney explained that Lonnie had passed away and that interest in him as a suspect fizzle. Marty told me he didn't understand why investigators had not pursued beer

Brott more aggressively even after his death. He even pleaded with the prosecutor to pursue a case, but was told protocol required the state police to bring the case forward for prosecution, something they never did. What I said, these guys are not going to bring this case. They don't believe it. And this was the information. You don't have to believe me. Go get this information. No, I doesn't work that way. Why now, I said, get a grand

jury in here. I just couldn't believe it. As I began to look into every aspect of the early investigation, one of the first things I did was identify who exactly was responsible for following up on the eyewitnesses tip. Turns out it was an ISP investigator named Bill Hamill, who, like Marty, was a member of the Task Force. Folks I've spoken to describe Hamill as a respect of guy and a thorough investigator, but Marty believes Hamil dropped the

ball on this one. On the official tip sheet, which I obtained from a source, there's a hand drawn star next to the eyewitness's name. It was put there, according to Marty, by an IP supervisor and was meant for Hamil. Marty claims the star in and of itself was important. Marty says. The eyewitness told him that no one reached out to her after she called in the initial tip, and that by the time investigators finally got around to interview in Lonnie Beer brought months later, he could have

destroyed crucial evidence. By then. All I know is that they found the vehicle a pickup truck. It had been sold and cleaned, and they do a crime scene on that. They find his house. He has sold it, cleaned it and left. To clarify, Beer brought wife's Toyota pickup truck was blue. Still, did the ISP miss a crucial window of opportunity to connect the Lonnie Beer brought the Tammy's murder? That tip was followed up on. Every single tip is documented,

every single one. Jeff Padilla, a retired ISP lieutenant who you've heard in previous episodes, is adamant at the department followed up on every credible lead that came in. They had to. It was not only part of their job but standard policy. There was a pickup truck recovered and analyzed, but the information related to the pickup truck didn't coincide,

and basically it was eliminated. Padilla told me there was and still is evidence that was never publicly released, evidence that helped the ISP way how seriously they viewed Lonnie Beer, brought as a suspect, already says once he heard the eyewitnesses watch story, he sprung into action and went further up the chain of command. I called out there and talked to this guy's supervisor, Hamil supervisor. He didn't know any about the case. He's a new guy. I said, hey,

you know, this woman is whitness. He hasn't been interviewed in ten goddamn years. Now there's new information. You got to send somebody out there to talk to her. I said, well, you see, okay, guess who he said, hail. So Hamil goes out there at interviews, and the whole contain already I talked to her about this. The whole thing is McCarthy should have nothing to do with this. He's he's retired, he's got don't know anything about this. The whole thing

was a downer on me. What information he got, I don't know. Did she give him the watch story. I presume she did, but I never saw that report. But he's already got a blown out. It's a watch Watch. You know, he just blown this thing off, and if he wrote a report of that, I never saw it. I tracked down Bill Hamil late twenty twenty two. He's long since retired and now lives in the South with

his wife. I spoke with them both and found the couple to be kind and more than willing to be on the podcast, But a medical condition prevented Bill from consenting to a formal interview with me. Because of that, I worried about his recollections and felt it would be

unethical to air any part of our conversation. I've driven down highways, and I've worked over and I've seen remote canyons and places along the way where a guy could pull over his vehicle and as a right circumstance, walk out there and get rid of whatever he wanted, and

get back in his vehicle and drive off. Keith Hunter Jesperson, otherwise known as as the Happy Face Killer, was a semi truck driving serial killer who bound, raped, and strangled eight women while criss crossing the country between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety five. What was the farthest distance you ever traveled and the longest period of time you ever traveled with a body in your truck the longest period of time. Did you ever have to a body for

a couple of days for example? No, No, one never did. Um maybe one hundred and fifty miles two in a mile and the body was what in the cab with you? And why did you hold on to the body for that long looking for a place to put it. That's one of hundreds of conversations I've had with jess Person while he serves three consecutive life sentences at Oregon State Penitentiary. And basically, a killer instant is based upon your comfort zone, and this is my comfort zone is a tool to

use and murder. I first connected with him in twenty ten after looking into his murder cases and studying the crimes of those like him. There's been closed the area. It's like it's like my visers fell into a hole. Jesperson is not and has never been, a suspect in Tammy Ziwiki's murder. But as I continued my investigation, it was hard not to think back to the conversations I had with him. To me, it was WoT the game to the fact that I'll just see whether or not

discussing get in my truck or not. How he rationalized his horrific crimes and managed to evade law enforcement for as long as he did. Nobody who I was. Nobody had an idea if I even existed in the third place. And of course, if evil happens and someone must be responsible to why not waying to go to me? I know? The trail of murder left behind by a truck driver

like jesperson offers valuable insight into Tammy's case. From the start, police investigating Tammy's murder looked at the possibility that a semitruck driver killed and dumped her body somewhere along their truck route, and for what it's worth, it's a strong theory. Several well known serial killers were operating at the time.

In June nineteen ninety two, just two months before Tammy was murdered, three women forty seven year old Cheryl Leavitt, nineteen year old Susie Streeter, and eighteen year old Stacy McCall, disappeared from Cheryl's home, about thirty miles from where Tammy's body was found. The women were more famously known as the Springfield Three, and to date they have not been found What's more, Susie and Stacy were young and blonde like Tammy. Were the cases connected. Here's Tammy's brother Todd's wiki.

Most of the time, when you hear these stories come out, it's these interstate truckers who also kind of live on the fringe of society and move around, and you know, nobody really knows that much about them or where they go and when they go. There there were other truckers who would come up. Bruce Mendenhall was a name I recall. Bruce Mendenhall was a trucker from southern Illinois who became

a solid suspect for esp investigators. Mendenhall was known as the truck stop killer because he preyed upon vulnerable women, mainly hitchhikers and women hanging around truck stops. He was arrested in Tennessee in two thousand and seven when he was fifty six, and seemed to tick many of the boxes in Tammy's case. After his arrest, Mendenhall even confessed to six murders in several states. Tammy's was not one of them. Still, with guys like Mendenhall, it's difficult to

fully know how much they'rewithholding from authorities. For example, in twenty twenty one, a decade after Mendenhall had already been convicted of murder, he was connected by DNA to another

murder beyond the sixth he had been tied to. What I have kind of reconciled myself too, was the idea that if this was the typical profile of a sort of a transient trucker or somebody like that who lived on the edge of society, I've just assumed by this point the guy's probably dead or jail for something else, or died in jail for something else, or something like that. It's just not the kind of person who I would expect to have still been around and alive to be

an active suspect and that sort of thing. At least that's been my working assumption. Here's former LaSalle County State's Attorney Brian Town with the state police followed a lot of lead with regard to serial killers, you know, that have been caught throughout the country that may have had ties to our area at that time frame, and all

of those leads turned up nothing. Every time police thought they had a trucker who might have been responsible for Tammy's murder, the evidence wasn't there to back it up. In one instance, a forty five year old truck driver from Colorado, William James Banister, was arrested in July nineteen ninety three for attempting to kill a fourteen year old girl. Law enforcement found bloody clothes, including under garments, in the cab of his truck and thought they might be Tammy's,

but Banister was ultimately cleared. This scenario happened over and over again in Tammy's case. Investigators thought they had a solid lead on a trucker who fit the bill, only to rule them out be a blood, DNA or circumstantial evidence. I made a point to ask Brian town about Marty McCarthy's theory on Lonnie beer Brod. It was important to me to understand what other investigators thought about Marty's dogged pursuit of the man he believed to beat Tammy's killer.

Now you know Marty McCarthy correct, Oh, yes, how would you describe Marty enthusiastic? I would dedicated, always pursuing the truth, but you know, at times maybe a little bit too talkative during the course of a bending investigation. I mean Marty blamed Bill Hamill for a lot of the problems early on in this investigation when you look at some of the mistakes that were made, and mistakes are made in every investigation. I'm not trying to hammer anybody here.

I'm just saying that, you know, and I know that mistakes are made and every investigation. It's just a nature of human beings. Sure, and he blamed Hamil for a lot of that. What would you say to that, Well, you know, Master Sergeant McCarty was he was very interested in this case. He was very almost consumed by this case. He was revealing information to the family and to the public that really hurt law enforcement's efforts to maintain a

proper investigation and the integrity the investigation. And I can't speak to his motives. I sincerely don't know what the grudge was between McCarty and Hamil, except to say that in thirty years in law enforcement, I can say that you know, every police department, and including the State police, they have their their moments where you know, one person isn't too happy with another and and they're they're very

critical of one another. It's a it's a it's a very emotional profession, and you know, sometimes you know, those emotions get in the way. I'm solely focused on the truth. There's been too much misinformation within Tammy's a wiki's case. Part of the process included running down any holes in Marty's narrative. For me, anything and everything I could learn about Lonnie beer Brought felt important, if for no other reason than to finally clear his name in the court

of public opinion. If beer Brought was a noteworthy suspect and could be circumstantially connected to Tammy's case, I needed to understand how it fit and why the guy was never charged. And for that I needed to find and interview one person, Lonnie beer Brott's ex wife. So I made calls, sent emails, left messages, and even knocked on her door. And while I waited for her to respond, another name kept nagging at me. One that came up again and again as I spoke to members of law

enforcement and others who closely watched Tammy's case. Lonnie Demot the other Lonnie, the guy who found Tammy's body and claimed that he had helped police carry it from the ditch to the roadside. Some were skeptical of Lonnie's narrative, including the administrators of the who Killed Tammy ziwiki Facebook group. The first post he made was in September of twenty twenty, says I'm Lonnie Dumot. I'm the one who found Tammy.

Patrick Jones, the creator of the Facebook group, says Lonnie Dumot's online behavior in recent years has raised a number of red flags. He came in, he was posting like a son of a bitch, and then people were all of a sudden, everybody was asking the questions like you wouldn't believe, and he's answering them. I asked them. A million questions come to mind. How did you see anything strange or out of place? Was there any tire tracks? How was it lighting at the scene? Just curious, and

he just disappeared. I think he wanted to confess to something. In my opinion that he wants to say, Hey, here's what happened. As it turned out, armchair sluice weren't the only people interested in Lonnie Damot's version of events that day. Hi, mister Damot, money and there's with the FBI at a job in Missouri. And when you have an opportunity, did you please give me a call back. Thank you, mister

Damont on the next episode of Paper Ghosts. The reasons given for him coming off the highway depends on what source you read, so we have some discrepancies as to what actually was going on there. 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, I'm asking the same question, I may not respond the

same way. The direction we went thereafter was because of the information we had received. I don't think that he's been rolled out by the law enforcement, but I think he's got something to do with it. It's just too coincidental. If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, please listen to my other podcast, Crossing the Line with em 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 Mooney. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.