10 years later

 It is sort of strange sometimes that I can actually remember where I was 10 years later.  Ten years ago I was out at the beach thinking.  I had some cancer surgery coming up and I was thinking about that a lot.  Sometime I think our experiences shape our taste in music and movies.  I like the music videos for the songs Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and Cells by The Servant because I wondered if they are about that cancer.  I think the answer is no, but I like the songs anyway.  This is one example of how each of us perceives information differently.   

In cases like Tammy Zywicki and really any case where a long period of time has passed, memories matter.  They matter because people change, but so do landscapes and locations.  My opinion is that the longer a case goes on the harder it is to solve.  Every case is framed within its relationship to time.  And if your best suspect at the time is a guy who was a trucker who lived near Sarcoxie, MO, and was possibly seen talking to Tammy Zywicki next to her car on August 23, 1992, that is what you go with.

I cannot stress this next point enough.  People that send in tips or are sure about some information they think they know is correct are mostly genuine in nature.  The woman who reported Lonnie Beirbrodt as a possible suspect was genuine.  All the people that have probably reported seeing the person who they think killed Abigail Williams and Liberty German are also genuine. That is another post for another time, but I could go on on on.  When people have theories and ideas or tips they think the police should know about, they are trying to help.  Unfortunately though, our memories are not always accurate.  

In the first 6 or 7 months of the Tammy Zywicki case, I was thinking about it so much that I literally started to dream about it. From August 2003 until March 2004, I was all in about solving Tammy Zywicki's case.  But reality slow set in that there are other cases.  There are other things going on.  I dreamt about this case in March 2004 and after that I realized it was time to step back and look at other cases. 

But I never stopped completely thinking about Tammy Zywicki's case.  And even though I came across Amanda Tusing's case and a few others, I always came back to this one.  So it was inevitable that when I had some vacation time from work in March 2007, I wanted to actually see the area where Tammy Zywicki's body was eventually found.  I thought it was probably Exit 33 along I-44 after studying topographical maps I saw at the bookstore.  And I thought it was most likely an entrance ramp from the slope of the road that I saw in some old news coverage of the case. 

There was one problem with the truck driver theory that I thought about even before I took the drive.  I could not get over all the other exits that a truck driver would pass that would be so much better than the one where Tammy Zywicki's body was eventually found.  In order to really understand a case you have to actually see an area to try to get into the mindset of why that particular exit.  Maybe there was no other reason but that it was familiar to that person because it is where they might usually get off to go home.  I wanted to see the exit for myself.  And on a March weekend in 2007, that is what I did.