The Fourth and Final Trip: May 7, 2011

 After the third trip I took in March 2007, things started to change in my own life.  There were some job issues and I was not making the money I needed to make anyway.  Less money made it more difficult to continue these pursuits of playing private eye.  I started drinking which was not smart and did not help in getting into any sort of shape or helping to make good decisions.  I was NOT the FBI or police investigating Tammy Zywicki's case anyway.  

The apprehension of truck driver Mendenhall in July 2007, 15 years later, looked good at first glance.  But the more I looked at him, it seemed like he preyed on prostitutes.  That combined with everything else I had already learned about the case started to make me skeptical that it was a truck driver at all. But with the distance involved I could completely understand the theory of it being a truck driver.  

The trips were over with. It was after this point that I wanted to continue Tammy Zywicki's case, but had no idea what else to do.  That is when I came up with the idea for this blog. I had seen other people online start blogs sharing their ideas about true crime, and I figured I had an even better blog idea as I had actually investigated a case. I started this blog on February 27, 2008.  I wrote a lot of posts, but many of them were full of theories without any sort of facts behind them.  I deleted most of these posts as I hope that people that may come across my blog use it for the information that matters in helping get Tammy Zywicki's case solved.  One post I wrote was based on a trip I took on May 7, 2011 to Ottawa, IL.  I copied and pasted it, a post called "Hardees" from June 27, 2011 below:

I read two interesting items concerning Tammy Zywicki's case that I did not know before. First, before she ever broke down at MM83 near Utica, IL, her car also broke down earlier near Morris, IL. Second, supposedly she stopped at a Hardees before she broke down at MM83. A Hardee's drink cup and a napkin that had been used to check the oil were found in her car by police after she disappeared. The only Hardee's I could find is an abandoned building that used to house the restaurant. It is located off Exit 90 in Ottawa, IL although I am not sure that is the one she went to the day she disappeared. The Hardee's has a large parking lot and the restaurant has alot of windows with the drive-thru facing the parking lot. I assume she went through the drive thru because she had to keep going to school, but maybe she stopped to use the washroom. Obviously the police went there to help establish a timeline on the day of her disappearance. IF that is indeed the right restaurant, the fact it is so close to her breakdown point would be important. There is one common sense conclusion I can come to right now. Either she sat in her car at the restaurant parking lot and drank her soda or she drank it as she sat on the side of I-80. OR she was really thirsty. From the drive-thru to the breakdown point would be about 10 minutes. The police would not need this much guesswork. They would just get a copy of the receipt from the restaurant and talk to whoever might have took her order or might have seen her there. The other reason the Hardees is important is that it is a stopping point, a place she might have been seen. What is kind of interesting about the media reports in Tammy Zywicki's case is that there is alot of talk about people that might have seen her, whether at a motel in Mendota, or as they drove past in their car. There is nothing about the people that actually DID see her, like the workers at Hardees. But all of this post is based on an assumption. It could be the police giving media the wrong info so as to keep information to themselves when she actually visited a McDonalds or Burger King. Or it is a different Hardees and not the one I am writing about. One of the things I wonder about is since dogs and metal detectors were used alongside I-80 checking for traces of Tammy Zywicki, were they used at the Hardee's restaurant? The prevailing theory in this case is that her car broke down because it overheated. I do not know much about cars, but one thing I do know is that a car's engine is hottest immediately after you turn it off, especially if you have been traveling a distance in the heat. Sitting in a drive-thru with the car idling or in a parking lot with the car off I would think cause the car to have more problems if it was overheating. It's strange her car did not break down at Hardees.

Remember when I wrote that over time things change and you have to remember that?  

On May 7, 2011 there was no Hardees restaurant in Ottawa, IL that I can recall seeing.  But today in 2021 there does look to be a Hardees restaurant in Ottawa, IL.  I do not remember ever seeing an actual Hardees restaurant in May 2011.  The post I wrote above was based on this abandoned building that looked like it once used to be a fast food restaurant.  I assumed this was the old Hardees that had since closed. I do not know if that was the actual Hardees restaurant Tammy Zywicki got food from on August 23, 1992.

After visiting the abandoned glass window building, I decided to go into downtown Ottawa.  Ottawa, IL actually has a very nice downtown area.  I remember there being an orchestra along the square and how well kept the area was with lots of greenery.  I sat along a ledge in the square area just thinking about how nice the area looked, but also about whether I should go out to MM83 again.  I decided against it.  There was nothing left to do in Tammy Zywicki's case.  I had seen all the sites associated with the case.  I did not even know if I had the right old Hardee's restaurant.  

At this point in Tammy Zywicki's case, I came to realize something very important.  In order to come up with good ideas and good theories you have to have good information.  To this day I am still confused as to what Tammy Zywicki was wearing when she disappeared versus when her body was found.  Did she change out of her clothes and then was murdered?  Or was she murdered and then the killer dressed her body?  In the People magazine article, "The Long Road Back", it said she was found wearing undergarments that did not appear to be her own.  Having good information is so important instead of guessing about it.  

Reality started to set in after this point.  There was not much more to write about.  And there were other things going on in my life that were important as well.  I wanted to get out of my job and had wasted far too much time there already.  In September 2011 shortly before my cancer surgery, I decided I had enough of the case.  But I still followed Tammy Zywicki's case after this point because I wanted to see it solved.   

I became more interested in other cases, but I never forgot about this one.