Who killed Tammy Zywicki? 30 years later, the death of the former SC woman remains unsolved
When the Florida heat abates and night rolls in, Joann Zywicki sits in her driveway with the five others at the end of her street who live alone to talk about the events of the day.
They help one another. All have faced sadness, disappointment, none more so than Zywicki, who just turned 80.
Thirty years ago next week Zywicki’s daughter Tammy was murdered. Her killer has never been found. She was 21.
On her way back to Grinnell College for her senior year, Tammy left her Pontiac T1000 on Interstate 80 in Illinois 100 or so miles from her destination. She’d been having trouble with the car overheating.
The high-spirited young athlete who grew up in Greenville just seemed to disappear.
Nine days later, her body was found wrapped in a sheet and a blanket, whose ends were sealed with duct tape, beside Interstate 44 in Missouri, 500 miles from where her car was found.
Tammy had been stabbed seven times in a circular pattern on her chest, piercing her lung, pericardial sac and liver. She had been sexually assaulted,
No fewer than 50 investigators have worked to find Tammy’s killer. Dozens of suspects have been considered, interviewed.
Ryan Kaney with the Illinois State Police said this week he and his investigators work on the case daily. He wouldn’t give a lot of information about the investigation and declined to say what has made it so difficult to solve.
His agency is working with the FBI. Three or four DNA tests have been run, he said.
A sample was recently submitted to a lab in California.
Robert Kotlarek, who has run a Facebook page advocating for Tammy, said, “It’s always been a difficult case.”
So many challenges, he said.
“It was likely a stranger-on-stranger crime, and the killer had about 24 hours of lead time before anyone even knew that Tammy was missing,” he said. “She wasn’t located for nine days, and by then she was badly decomposed.”
Heat and humidity likely caused degradation of DNA.
“I do believe that the technology has finally advanced to a point where it is highly likely that we will be able to identify her killer, but it’s still an uphill battle,” he said.
The case has been featured on television crime shows and in newspapers around the country. The Facebook group, Who Killed Tammy Zywicki?, has grown to more than 4,000 members.
Journalist M. William Phelps is going to feature the case on his Paper Ghosts podcast.
Kotlarek cautions against pinning hope on DNA.
“There are other descriptions of trucks that were reported by eyewitnesses and never released to the public. It’s possible the descriptions of those trucks are pretty generic, but then what is the harm in releasing that information?”
Passersby saw a young blond woman outside the car between 3:15 p.m. and 4:10 p.m. Aug. 23, 1992. They said the hood was up. Others saw a tractor-trailer truck pulled up behind and a white man in his 30s, possibly mid-40s standing with a woman. He had long, dark hair and was 6 feet tall.
Another motorist saw a man walking from a pickup truck toward Tammy’s car as she stood in front of it.
As the case reaches the 30 year mark, Patrick Jones, who started the Who KIlled Tammy Zywicki Facebook group in 2009, is planning the yearly motorcycle ride in Illinois to honor Tammy.
New this year is a companion ride in South Carolina, starting at 9 a.m. Sept. 3, from Greenville Pickens Speedway to Cherokee, North Carolina.
Mari Fox, a friend of Tammy’s who is planning the ride, said, “The route will have certain stops that we’re going to be hitting so everybody has an opportunity to fill up, take bathroom breaks, get drinks or whatever is needed.”
Joann Zywicki, meanwhile, said she has become “a little more laid back” with regard to pushing investigators for answers. She has good days and bad, she said. She tries to remain calm. Her group of friends watch out for each other.
“I can’t live with it every day,” she said.
This story was originally published August 18, 2022 at 9:53 AM.