LAWRENCE COUNTY, Mo. — It’s been 30 years since college student Tammy J. Zywicki was found dead more than 500 miles from her hometown. Many questions still remain but the most important — who killed her?
“We received a call that there was a, something wrapped up in a blanket or a rug, or some type of bed covering, alongside the road. When officers arrived there they, unfortunately, discovered the body of this young female,” said Brad A. DeLay, Lawrence County Sheriff.
The body was later identified as 21-year-old college student Tammy J. Zywicki. To this date, the kidnapping and murder of Zywicki remains a mystery.
“Over 30 plus years we have been working with, still, other agencies, like the highway patrol, I believe the Illinois state police, and several different agencies, trying to figure out what exactly happened,” said Delay.
Her body was found on the side of a rural section of I-44 in Lawrence County — less than two weeks after she was last seen alongside her vehicle, which had broken down in Central Illinois.
“It’s certainly been one of the harder ones because it may have occurred over multiple states and that is something that makes it really hard. It wasn’t just something that happened just here in Lawrence County but again it could have been Illinois, it could have been any of a number of states and the area that we have to look through is just so vast,” said Delay.
Delay says if the agency had the proper technology at the time things could have been different in solving this case.
“And of course during that time we didn’t have the technology that we have now to help solve crimes, some of what we call “rapid fire DNA testing” and a lot of different things that could have been used back then had we had it, it may have helped us, but then again it may not. So, there are just a lot of things that we simply just don’t have the answer for yet,” he added.
The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office still receives information on the case and urges the public to continue speaking up.
“Somebody else has heard something that we already knew about but they felt the need, and we are grateful that they felt the need to pass that on to us because that’s right now probably about the only thing that is going to solve this case is somebody, somewhere, driving down the road at that time saw something, saw that semi-truck, saw a guy unloading some unusual package on the side of the road and that’s probably the only way at this point we are going to be able to solve this,” said Delay.
