December 15, 2022 • 37 mins
Part 2. On January 26, 1994, 17-year-old Tami Renee Jackson’s body is discovered. Port Authority workers on Hutchinson Island, near Savannah, Georgia, find Tami; she has been stabbed more than 130 times, is bound, and has been run over by a vehicle. Investigators process evidence at the scene and conduct interviews with potential witnesses, but eventually, the case goes cold.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator Sheryl McCollum talks with the Savannah Police Cold Case Unit, Detective Tarra Smith, about the details regarding the murder of young Tami Jackson. Detective Smith describes the wooded and remote landscape of Hutchinson Island, discusses how the method of murder and placement of Tami’s body may indicate an organized killing, and lays out the many complexities of Tami’s case, including her relationship with a variety of individuals. Detective Smith vows to work tirelessly and to utilize every available resource, including the advancement of forensic technologies, to identify the person(s) responsible for murdering innocent Tami Jackson.
[0:00] Introduction to Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum
[1:08] Brief overview of the homicide case involving victim, Tami Jackson
[1:10] Introduction of Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
[1:36] Victimology: Sheryl reviews Zone 7’s previous episode
[4:14] Introduction of Detective Tarra Smith
[4:53] Description of Hutchinson Island and the crime scene
[9:29] Detective Smith describes how she initially ignores the investigator’s narrative and starts from ground zero with every investigation, regardless of how old the case might be
[10:57] Overkill: the excessive manner in which Tami Jackson is murdered
[13:46] Detective Smith describes the murder scene and lists the technological limitations of the time
[16:47] How investigators identify the victim
[17:34] With an extensive list of potential suspects, Tami’s case becomes more complicated
[23:07] “Men know when other men are not on the up and up.” -Sheryl McCollum. A witness’ intuition indicates that Tami is in a bad situation
[24:58] Content in Tami’s diary confirms she is an innocent child, full of naivety, searching for love and happiness
[28:17] Examining the evidence, working the narratives, and extensively researching and sifting through the many layers and complexities of Tami’s relationships
[32:08] Calling on the expertise of others and utilizing new forensic technologies
[36:58] Sheryl concludes the interview with Detective Tarra Smith
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I started my career in the trenches, and honey, I've
stayed there for the past forty years. I've worked every
facet of the criminal justice system, police, courts, and corrections.
I've worked with law enforcement and victims of crime and
criminals to solve cold cases, and I have genuinely befriended
(00:24):
them all, well, not all of them, but most of
them i've had. I had the opportunity to work a
cold case from nineteen sixty five, and one of the
gifts of work in that case was being able to
sit with Captain Cliff Strickland, retired from the Atlanta Police Department,
who in nineteen sixty five was the lead detective on
(00:46):
the case I was working, and his recall of dates
and addresses and times and names was just extraordinary. You
would have thought that it happened a week ago, not
fifty five years ago. Tonight, we're talking about the murder
(01:08):
of seventeen year old Tammy Jackson, who was not just murdered,
but tortured, stabbed over a hundred and thirty times, hog
tiede and run over by a car. We've had the
opportunity to talk to her sister, and tonight we have
(01:30):
the opportunity to talk to the lead detective, Detective Tara Smith.
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this his own seven. Now, y'all,
let's talk a little bit about what we learned last time.
The location is so important. The killer picked it, he
(01:56):
selected when and where and how, So we're gonna start
where it ended. This case takes us to Savannah, Georgia,
deep south coastal town, Spanish moss hanging in the live oaks,
cobblestone streets that take you straight to the river front,
(02:17):
horse drawn carriages that take you past historical homes. Savannah
is known for its parties, parades, and crime. It is
a postcard town where evil lurks. Just across the river
if you are standing on River Street is Hudginson Island,
(02:38):
a river island seven miles long and a mile wide.
It serves the Port of Savannah and there's only two
ways to access it by ferry or car. You can
either go from the Talmadge Bridge or Highway seventeen. It's
a narrow, two lane roads lined with thick woods, occasional
(03:00):
open spaces, sandy ground that goes right to the river's edge.
All around. Most tourists have never heard of it and
wouldn't even know it existed. Most locals have never heard
of it or been there. So last episode we talked
(03:20):
about victimology. I'm gonna take a break right here and
discuss a little bit about what we learned. Tammy was
an eleventh grader from a strong family, loving parents, close sisters,
an older sister, Stacy, and a twin sister, Tara. She
loved to dance, hang out with friends. She was in
(03:42):
that juxtaposition where she thought she was grown, but she
was still just a kid. She and her mom budded,
heads came to a head one night, her mom made
that famous statement, my rules, my house. You can't live
here if you're not gonna follow him, and Tammy moved out,
and she moved out with a boyfriend older and she
(04:03):
was by about a decade, but she still went to
school every day. When we are talking about a homicide,
this brutal one that took multiple weapons, a lot of time,
and a little bit of skill, believe it or not,
we need to talk about the suspect geology tonight and
(04:24):
the suspect oology. We need a special guest and tonight,
it is such a gift to have Detective Tara Smith.
Tara Smith is a mom. She homeschools her children. She's
married to a firefighter. She is a detective with the
(04:45):
Savannah Police Department, but she is also a pistol and
I think personally she's the answer to this case. Detective Smith,
welcome to his own seven. Thank you, Thank you for
having me. You and I walked that crime scene together.
But I want you just to break down what that
(05:08):
scene is. Like, I mean the first thing, I mean,
you remember when when we went actually took my own
personal vehicle, which is a deep wrangler, because I knew
that one of our police cars, a low, low ride
in vehicle, would not make it to the scene without
getting stuck. And if you remember, Cheryl, do you remember
my jeep getting stuck and bogged down. So that goes
(05:28):
to tell you about the scene in and of itself. Now,
as you already explained, like Hutchison Island at its widest
point is a mile. It's not very big, so so
it's just a small stretch and it's woods. You come
off the bridge, you can turn left or right and
you're met with immediately like tall pines, dense pines, and
there's little off turns where you can go, but you
(05:50):
the only thing that you're accessing would again be the river,
so you're only there unless you're you're working with the
Georgia Port Authority. We walked the scene and it's it's
very soft dirt in any of the clear spots, it's
tall like forested areas. It's very secluded even broad daylight.
You have privacy to do whatever it is you can
(06:11):
think of. And that's what really stands out about this
this crime scene in particular. I mean, you could anything
goes at this crime scene. You're not going to be interrupted.
Did Tammy have any ties to Hudson Island, Well, we
know that, you know, just being her age. Hudgeson Island
would have been a place that teenagers in that time
(06:33):
knew about if they're gonna go drinking or smoking or
hanging out or doing anything where again they're not going
to be discovered or nobody's gonna walk up on you.
And Hutchinson Island it's probably a place that she would
have been familiar with. And I do know just from
you know, the case, reviewing her diaries and things like that,
that it is the place that she has been to before.
(06:54):
The spot is used for things that you wouldn't want
to do out in public. It's you know, he and
she and uh, some teenager stuff drinking. It is a
place where, you know, where you can innocently be drinking
some beers because you don't want mom to know. And
it's also a place where uh Mr Jones is taking prostitute.
It's very private and secluded. I know when we were
(07:18):
driving following you, there were these little cutoffs where you
could just maybe park one car and like you said,
you could be there in complete privacy. But then when
you got to the clearing where the murder occurred, I mean,
you could part thirty cars out there and have the
greatest graduation night ever. It's kind of like what you
(07:39):
would see in the movies when you're having like a
teen bonfire. Like I mean, it's I can name a
few movies where we've seen that scene, just as secluded
at in the forest clear lot and uh exactly where
her body was found was a clear lot, completely surrounded
by woods. There was only one way to, which would
have been a little inlet, a little dirt road where
(08:01):
the people that found her would come and go. You
have privacy you have openness, and the only people out
there to bother you aren't people. They are huge mosquitoes,
all right. So when you and I were also there,
the thing that struck me is if they had just
thrown her in the river, or they had just tossed
her twenty yards into the wounds, she would have never
(08:24):
been found. Does this person want to be found? They
do this on purpose and leave this body discoverable for somebody,
or is it somebody that was interrupted, or is it
someone that just is really stupid? And like you said,
I mean, you're literally ten ft from the river. If
you if you wanted to hide her, you all you
(08:44):
needed to do was walk ten feet with her soaking.
What she isn't but a hundred pounds, I mean, she's
very little. You could have easily picked her up, could
have obviously pulled her into the woodline. Again in this place,
I'm very familiar where it used to be in one
of my beats when I was in control. I guess
I'm I'm gonna say. Quarterly we would find a body
(09:05):
out there that had been dumped out there, and it
was typically a prostitution type thing. And when we would
find these bodies, they were always attempted to be concealed
in the woodline. Tammy's case doesn't fit that she's just
out in the open in this perfect, pristine soft dirt
which leads lots of tracks, entire prints and footprints. So
I know that Tammy was walking around on this crime scene.
(09:27):
I do know that at some point in time she's
walking around there. Because she was walking around there, then
you know that the case that it must have happened there,
that she was not done. You know one thing that
struck me the very first time you and I spoke
on the phone was how deliberately you thought of this
case like you did a three sixty the first time
(09:48):
you ever opened that file. So you were never single
focused on any one thing. You didn't have blinders own.
You were completely open to if there's something new to try,
I'm going to try it. And I personally think that
was pretty incredible as old as this case is, that
you don't open it up and all of a sudden,
(10:08):
just zero, you know somebody and that's it. I was
really impressed with your We're gonna start from ground zero
and I'm working everything like it happened yesterday. I like
to do that if any case. Really, I don't like
to read the investigator's narrative until I've looked at the scene,
I've researched how you investigate things, and it's really how
was their last day? I like to get it from
(10:30):
the nine on one call what I know took place
in those few hours, and then just work it as
though I'm the one on the case that day obviously,
you know, and we can get into it in a
little bit, like as far as how in depth the
suspect list on this case is, and how how this
is not a simple case. It's probably one of the
most complex cases I've ever worked. And I mean, really,
(10:53):
if it wasn't for you and obviously her family, like
her sister, pushing this case, I would have been stuck,
because in a case like this, you really need science
to narrow it down for you. I agree, And to me,
I mean I have a mantra every tool on every case,
every time period, whatever it needs to be thrown at
(11:13):
that case, you need to do it. Anything in the toolbox,
use it. And I think it's really important here too,
just to remind people that when you are dissecting a murder,
especially one that involves overkill, in a remote place, already
in a small town. I think it is imperative to
(11:33):
go step by step. So at this point, we've talked
about she was stabbed over a hundred thirty times, and
some publications have used the term hog tide and then
run over by a car. So at this point, detective,
why don't you tell us what all was done to
(11:53):
that child? I probably know a little bit more than
what I can discuss right now before we take the
case in the court. But what we do know, and
also what was released in the papers. I mean, she
was found in an open area. She was I wouldn't
call it hog tied, but she was tied up in
a very well dressed knot. She was not able to
(12:16):
move or defend herself in any way, shape or form.
She was stabbed at least a hundred and thirty times,
and at some point in time a car ran over her.
We know that there was probably other things that took
place as far as her injuries are concerned. And I
feel like calling it overkill. That's not even a good
(12:38):
word adequately describe this. It's more than overkill. It is.
It's just so excessive. When you see cases that are
overkilled you're thinking like, oh, you know, I I emptied
my magazine on you, or I I shot you several times,
or maybe I maybe I stabbed you ten times. To
try to picture a hundred and thirty times, if if
(12:59):
you've ever done workouts or hurts anything, you don't have
to get a hundred of three steps or whatever. So
I took a button knife to my couch to just
count out what it would take to get to a
hundred and thirty. I don't want to be gross about it,
but like, I'm not going through the couch like somebody
went through Tammy. So I'm not even requiring the pressure
(13:20):
that it would have taken for whoever did this to Tammy.
And I was still wounded, I was still tired. It
was still excessive. It took extreme effort and focus, and
I had to have all right, I gotta get to
a hundred thirty. So if you can imagine what that
was like for somebody who's doing that at the time,
it's just more than excessive. It took effort. It's very
rare in law enforcement that we see anything like this.
(13:43):
You see anger, you see revenge, you see accidents. I
can't find anything to fit this category. It's it's more
than excessive, truly, So wonk us through the morning that
she's owned, give us the day, the time, wherever you
(14:03):
think is imperative, start and just tell us the story
to set the background for is the O. J. Simpson trial?
Is Nancy Carrigan getting hit in the knee? I believe
Forrest Gump was filmed, So that's what's going on in
So we don't have cell phones, we have pages. And
(14:26):
it's pre d n A, so I know that my
suspects probably not wearing gloves. Why would you. We wouldn't
know anything about DNA because we didn't until the O. J.
Simpson trial happened in that June of that year of
And this is before Google, so I know that whoever
did this had actually had been taught this or practice this.
(14:46):
They didn't just google it like we would do nowadays.
And then yes, I'm talking about the not the rope.
It would have not been something that you could have
just looked up on the Internet at all. You would
have had to have been taught it, which tells me
a lot if if we're going through the suspect or
who this could have been. And this is also and
(15:08):
I also need to familiarize myself with what Hutchinson Island
and what Savannah looked like at the time of At
that time, you have no reason to be at Hudgson that.
Now there's a hotel, so you could say that, oh,
if I turned, you know, right off the bridge, there's
a hotel there. At that time, there's a water tower
and and there's support authority and that's who it's owned by.
(15:29):
And so before math Quest, you know when we used
to download, you know, like pirates, swee sit download our
directions in the math Quest and follow them on our
on our little paper where we were going. You know,
this is before even that, So she would have had
to have known. The suspect would have had to have
known and been there and had directions at some point
in time. That comes into play when you're thinking about
(15:51):
a serial killer or somebody going up and down ninety
five or something like that. This is somebody would have
had to have been there before I had knowledge of it.
It's January. It's January in Georgia. We don't have all
four seasons. We have hot at haiades and then and
then we have a little bit of cold for like
(16:11):
ten days and that's about it. It was cold this morning.
She has found a break of daylight, so she was
there and as soon as the daylight came up, the
construction I don't want to say that they were construction workers.
They worked for the port and they were clearing land
in that area they discovered her. They called the police.
(16:33):
The police arrived on the scene, and I think everybody
was flabbergasted. They'd never seen something like that her age.
They knew immediately that how young she was, without even
knowing who she was. They knew the excessiveness of just
the brutality of what happened to her is more than
just a dumped body that we sometimes see. And then
(16:54):
the manner of which she was tied. So the detectives,
their first ask is to identify this person. They found
that she had a ring that looked like a classroom,
and they found with school it was at, and they
went to that school. They looked through the yearbook and
they found her mother's initials. When learning who was probably
at that time, they weren't sure, but who was probably
(17:16):
her mother, they looked at what church she went to,
and they went and talked to that pastor. That pastor
came out to the scene and identified her, knowing he'd
seeing her before and knew that who she was. And
so now they have a name, they have Tammy Renee Jackson.
They know that she just turned seventeen. So now they've
got to track her last hours of what happened. And
(17:40):
that's really right there, that's when the case gets really complicated.
And I think it's, you know, one of these cases
for all of us listening to you talk. So she's
doing things we all did. We all wanted to hang
out with friends, we all thought we were grown, we
all wanted to be alone with somebody we cared about.
So you know, as you are talking, I'm thinking, gosh,
(18:04):
when I was seventeen, I would have been the first
one on hutcheson Iswa. I would have been the first
one saying, y'all, we have found the mother load of
places to go and celebrate being seventeen, sixteen, eighteen. And
then when you start thinking about Savannah as this gorgeous
city full of history, I mean there's a reason it's
(18:25):
one of the tourist hotspots. I mean it's got everything.
It's got great music, it's got great food, it's got
great homes, it's got ghost stories, you know, and now
you've got this horrible event that you're having to walk through,
and the list of suspects. I mean, let's just start
your list. I mean you've got the boyfriend. I mean,
(18:46):
that's an obvious place to start. Yeah, you got we
got boyfriend, me and my me and my coworker. We
we we pulled out a good old fashioned lined paper
and when he started putting names on it, and he
by the end of the page, he goes, my goodness,
well this is this is a needle and a stack
of needles, and and that was the best way to
(19:09):
put this. It's more complex than any case I've ever worked,
because typically you have what two people that you might suspect.
Fortunately I am fortunate enough to have her diary because
now she personally is adding more people into it. And
then I've got what I know, what witnesses say, and
then I've got her family and what they say, and
then I've got her friends and what they say. And
(19:33):
by the end of the day, it's a chunky, soupy mess.
It's a suspect soup. And I don't know what else
to call it. I could probably talk about her last
week it'd probably taken two hours ago. Over all of it. Well,
we have the boyfriend. Was he in town out of town,
(19:54):
We'll start there. We'll start with her boyfriend. We know
she's got a boyfriend. He's in the military, and he's
not in town, but he is within driving distance. We
have a boyfriend before this boyfriend that she was seeing
when she got kicked out of her home. So that's
the different boyfriend. And I think what happened with her
(20:14):
family is her family noted that she was starting to
make her own choices. It went against what her parents set,
the guidelines and the rules. You know, as parents we
set those rules and guidelines to keep our children safe.
But as a child, you don't viewed as that. You
viewed as an oppression, I guess. But she was told
(20:36):
if you if you're gonna behave that way, you can't
do it here. So she moves on from that person
she's dating to another person. He calls up, this friend,
can you stay with Can can my girlfriend stay at
your house? So then this guy starts dating her. I
know from a friend's account that for a week prior
to her being found, she's at a birthday party. She
(20:59):
meet this other girl who's in the same exact scenario.
She's in she same age, just been kicked out, seeing
adult men living the life, thinking they've got it all
figured out. They go to a birthday party of friends.
And when we get into groups that we get into
it and can influence you in a good way or
(21:19):
influence you in a bad way, and this friend influenced
her in a bad way. They end up downtown. They
end up on River Street, which if you've ever been
to River Street, it's a lot like New Orleans Bourbon Street.
It's you're there to drink. Some men find her there
that night, they feed her and her friend alcoholic beverages.
They take her back to where they live. Something happened
(21:43):
that night. I know that her friend is a witness
and knows that, and so we have to Those guys
are also in the suspect list because something happened and
it wasn't. It was consensual, and then it wasn't, and
we know that much. She calls her boyfriend. She says,
something happened with these guys. I don't feel car dorble
at this apartment complex anymore. Her her boyfriend's is no problem.
(22:03):
Let me call my other adult man you know in
the military to come pick you up. So here's another
man comes and picks her up. She goes and stays
with him. I know through her diary that she's not
having a great time at this person's house, and she's
writing about the boyfriend before the other boyfriend she so
she's still in contact with these people. And then there's
(22:24):
the two guys at the apartment complex that she went
to what Willie's and had the big call a cab
slushy vodka drink her last days. We know that she
was in me staying with a man because she was
uncomfortable about the other two men. She was staying with
a man at his home. She made a phone call
(22:45):
from witnesses say like again, you have to you can
only take them at face value. But there was two
younger much younger than her girls staying in this home
that she was staying at, and they told police that
they heard her say Kael, see you outside. And that
was the last phone call that she made. And we
have witnesses that we know are credible that saw her
(23:07):
walking down h Rude in Savannah from there, the last
place she's known as she's walking down the road in Savannash.
Her body is discovered the next morning. The police broadcast
what happened on the news, and that night generated a
call from another witness. He said he saw her walking
down the road, that she was stopped by two men
(23:31):
in a car, that it kind of didn't sit well
in his stomach whatsoever. He turned around, he said, hey,
are you okay? He said, it just bothered him and
he felt horrible that he didn't do anything about it.
But she said, yeah, I'm okay, like she knew them
or something, and so he turned back around. He said,
it still didn't sit well with him, so he didn't
(23:52):
back around, and her in the car are gone. And
then the next morning she's found on hutcheson island. And
that's the last thing that we know happened to her.
You and I have talked about that, because one thing
that I've told my daughter over and over and over,
men know when other men are not on the up
and up. We don't know it. We just think he's cute,
(24:14):
he's got a nice smile. But your dad, your brother,
your cousins, your uncle's they're gonna know almost instantly if
this guy is up to no good. So for that man,
to get that feeling just seeing her. That's a pretty
significant red flag for me. It's a fantastic observation. I mean, truly,
(24:38):
if if that man that doesn't even know her, he's
obviously picking up on body language, facial expressions, he knows
exactly what they're doing. If he felt that's it to
his stomach that he turned around and asked her if
she was okay. I mean, we all drive by things
all the time, we don't stop. And he felt that
bad about it. His intuition was on point. I do
(24:59):
believe that that's the last people that saw her. I
don't think that anything happened between that car and her
being found That was not a good situation. Now, her diary,
that's pretty incredible because she's basically a witness from the
grave for you. She's able to talk directly to you
the best she can. That's kind of a money tree.
(25:23):
We don't always get there, no, and it's wonderful in
in even though you know it sometimes leaves you more
questions because you don't know what she's referencing when she's
saying certain things. But it's just a treasure trove of
information about her and about her psyche at the time.
Does she feel threatened, is she uncomfortable? Is she happy?
(25:43):
What's going on in her life? And she's I mean,
the biggest thing that I take from her diary is
how naive she is. She's not someone who is out
looking for this search, trying to get into this. A
lot of people would read this and say, oh, a
body dumping hutches, And I don't know she's a prostitute.
(26:07):
She knows exactly what she's doing. I don't think so.
And I know that from her her diaries. I know
for a fact that she's not. If she's doing that,
she doesn't know she's doing. She is so naive, and
I think her end game is to get married and
fall in love and have a white picket fence and
all's good in the world, rose colored glasses. I know
(26:29):
through her diary that she has absolutely no idea the
realm that she has found herself in with these men.
And to your point, even though she's no longer living
in her parents house, she calls her mom every day,
she goes to school every day, she still wants to
be around, you know, her friends and her sisters. So again,
(26:51):
it's not like she's living this life of this worldly
woman all about town. No, I think it's important that
anyone who's sees this case knows that in every way,
shape and form, she is a is a little girl.
She's a child. She is not some red light district
(27:12):
girl making money. She has no idea what that is about.
She is looking for love. What got her there? And
what how she met these people and got her in
this environment? I'm not sure, but I do know that
the extent of her naivety, I do know that she
had no idea what she was in And she is
(27:34):
doodling in her notebooks, little hearts and little houses and
everything I remember doing as a as a girl in
high school. I mean, she reminds me of me, like
she's just living being a girl. She went to school,
she was in the good crowd. She wasn't doing anything wrong.
(27:55):
And it goes to show you, like even now that
I'm a parent, it goes to show you how quick
something can turn from innocent too darkness really quick. And
I think we both remember exactly how we felt when
we were her age. She is a girl. She is
not mature. She's not out there working them, She's not
doing anything. She's not doing drugs. There's nothing in her
(28:16):
system because we do toxicologies of the autopsies. There's nothing
in her system. She's a child, and I think that's
very important in this case. Well, let's talk specifically about
the killers. We know they had a car, we know
(28:38):
they used rope, they had knowledge of whatever this sophisticated
not system is. She was fully clothed, so if you
look at you know, was it disorganized or organized? I
mean she was disfigured when she was run over, she
was tortured. She wasn't hidden, and that's disorganized and then organized.
(28:59):
They brought the weapons with them, they had a car,
they had sophistication of something you know a little different.
I mean, you're not going to see somebody tied up
with rope every day. I mean, that's an unusual part
of this case that I think, again, you've done the
right thing zero in on, because that alone is going
(29:20):
to narrow your suspect pool. I did a lot of
research on the BTK killer and a few other ones,
and we use different databases that show us crimes. I've
heard no middle ground. I've heard polar opposite of pains
on this case. I've heard that this is disorganized because
(29:42):
the reason I'm going to say disorganized is because perhaps
the rope was already in the car and they just
happened to have knowledge of tying it because of their
past that the tools that they used to stab her
with are perhaps things that were just in their car
and they just kind of stabbed with no purpose, just
(30:04):
stabbed and they thought she was dead and then left,
and then you've got somebody pulled her ups to that
that says this is very sophisticated. This is someone who
knew exactly where to stab her missing vital organs, knowing
exactly how long it would take to bleed out, intentionally
not putting her in the river that is ten ft
(30:26):
away from her. This is somebody who knew the nodding
like system and has probably done this before and we'll
do it again. This is someone who wanted her to
be found, like we find that a lot of serial
killers love to have their victims be found. The autopsy report,
the the corner wrote, this was a slow death that
(30:48):
she bled out but very slowly, that this was long,
it was not quick, and so is that intentional or
is that just happenstance? Just some he just stabbing you know,
at will and back to the suspects to like to
make the chunky suspect suit chunkier. I didn't even mention
(31:11):
that at the time. They're about a year after the
original detective. He found that there's some murderers in Florida
who tied up their victims and they very much honed
in on these two individuals in Florida, and the lead
detective on the case originally he still believes to this
(31:33):
day that it was them. I'm not going to rule
anyone out. We've discussed this like I won't take anything
off the table. You're all on the table and you're
all in my soup. Anyone who had any contact with
her live. Is that because you don't want to be
associated with somebody just murder? Or is that because he
murdered her? And so it gets cloudy, and so as
a cold case detective, I'm working on your narratives and
(31:56):
then I have to work it backwards as though I'm
working it originally. At the same time, I'm going with
what I have. And that's why when it gets this
chunky and deluded, I call the expertise of other people
because science and that's where you come in I really
wouldn't be able to push this any further and speculation
really if if it weren't for you. Well, that's nice
(32:19):
of you to say, but you know, I often tell people,
you know, when you see a lake, like maybe first
thing in the morning, and it's just still, like the
water is not even moving, but you have no idea
what's going on underneath. You know, the catfish will doing
their thing, the bass, the turtles, you know, some snakes.
All this stuff is alive and happening just below the surface,
(32:43):
but you would never know it. That's how I sometimes
see these cold cases. You go to Savannah and you're
standing on River Street and you're looking across that river
of this beautiful piece of land. It just looks pristine,
happy and fun. You have no idea the underbelly, you
(33:05):
just don't, and just below the surface sometimes will blow
your mind. So now you're telling us it could be
serial killers working in tandem. It could be a police officer.
It could be a boyfriend. It could be another boyfriend.
It could be a married boyfriend. It could be somebody
in the service. It could be somebody that she knew
(33:26):
and trusted. It could be somebody she just met at
a bar. You've got a lot of work you gotta do,
and that's a lot of people you gotta weed through
again amongst all, this just perfect area because Savannah, for
all purposes, is a small town. Everybody kind of knows everybody.
(33:47):
They get a ton of tourism obviously, so there's some
strangers there. But you know, the toxicology is negative. She's
fully dressed. I mean, there's some things that just kind
of throw you on this case. You're not expecting necessarily here.
So you know, you've been connected with some pretty significant people.
(34:09):
So hopefully this case is at a different place for
you now, absolutely through you and what you've connected me to.
Because the department can only do what we have. I
mean we all states to deal with their state lab.
And their state lab is always underfunded, understaffed, I mean
just overworked. And so when you ask them, hey, I
(34:32):
have a case from nine, they say yeah, no and
point to the door. It comes down to people pushing
it and be in the squeaky wheel and thank and
it's like Tammy has several squeaky wheels and we can
push this. And I told before I even spoke to
Tammy's family, I said, I will not whether I'm investigating
or still working in homicide or not, Like I will
(34:56):
never stop working this case because there's an answer. I mean,
I have my theories, and I know that I know
the science is caught up. I know that I hope
that the suspects are listening. I hope the hose suspect
comes across this being aired and they can hear me,
because I know that you know that I'm coming for you.
That there's so much physical evidence that I have from
(35:18):
this case because we did not have d NA. We
didn't do that. I think they did blood typing and
then hair typing. Science Now, I mean, it's blown my mind.
Even the people that you've put me in touch with
over the past year, they've been able to take DNA
mixes from where there's seven mixes. They can go through
(35:38):
seven mixes. That's that's incredible. And so I know that
this will be solved, no doubt in my mind. And
fortunately with this case, I found all the physical evidence,
like we have everything. They weren't wearing gloves. They weren't.
Why would you Why would you have gloves on? You
would not have gloves on, you wouldn't. Only after O. J. Simpson,
(35:59):
you may think to put gloves on. I know that
it took you a considerable amount of time to tie
this knot. I know that it took you considerable amount
of time to stab her a thirty times. I know
that it did that that is excessive, and that you
touched her. You had to have tied her up, You
had to have touched her. You had to have worked
(36:21):
that long to even have stabbed her that long. So
whether you wanted her body to be found because you're
a six serial killer, or is revenge killing, or you're
mad because you're married, whatever, I will get you. Science
will get you. My bread and butter is interviews and interrogations,
and all I need is just a little bit. The
(36:46):
suspect is going to be done. I mean, there's no
way unless they're dead. I'm coming for you a needle
in a stack of needles. They were counting on, no
new evidence, no new witnesses that they weren't counting on.
Detective Taras Smith, I'll tell you that the white hats
(37:08):
are coming, honey, and we're gonna end Zone seven the
way we always do. For a quote from somebody I've
worked with, and tonight it comes from Atlanta homicide detective
David Quinn, and David says the main thing to remember
when entering the world of criminal homicide investigations is faith.
(37:31):
Faith in your common sense. Every person that ever wondered
who killed the victim is a homicide detective. Detective Smith,
thank you for your time. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this
is Zone seven.
I started my career in the trenches, and honey, I've
stayed there for the past forty years. I've worked every
facet of the criminal justice system, police, courts, and corrections.
I've worked with law enforcement and victims of crime and
criminals to solve cold cases, and I have genuinely befriended
(00:24):
them all, well, not all of them, but most of
them i've had. I had the opportunity to work a
cold case from nineteen sixty five, and one of the
gifts of work in that case was being able to
sit with Captain Cliff Strickland, retired from the Atlanta Police Department,
who in nineteen sixty five was the lead detective on
(00:46):
the case I was working, and his recall of dates
and addresses and times and names was just extraordinary. You
would have thought that it happened a week ago, not
fifty five years ago. Tonight, we're talking about the murder
(01:08):
of seventeen year old Tammy Jackson, who was not just murdered,
but tortured, stabbed over a hundred and thirty times, hog
tiede and run over by a car. We've had the
opportunity to talk to her sister, and tonight we have
(01:30):
the opportunity to talk to the lead detective, Detective Tara Smith.
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this his own seven. Now, y'all,
let's talk a little bit about what we learned last time.
The location is so important. The killer picked it, he
(01:56):
selected when and where and how, So we're gonna start
where it ended. This case takes us to Savannah, Georgia,
deep south coastal town, Spanish moss hanging in the live oaks,
cobblestone streets that take you straight to the river front,
(02:17):
horse drawn carriages that take you past historical homes. Savannah
is known for its parties, parades, and crime. It is
a postcard town where evil lurks. Just across the river
if you are standing on River Street is Hudginson Island,
(02:38):
a river island seven miles long and a mile wide.
It serves the Port of Savannah and there's only two
ways to access it by ferry or car. You can
either go from the Talmadge Bridge or Highway seventeen. It's
a narrow, two lane roads lined with thick woods, occasional
(03:00):
open spaces, sandy ground that goes right to the river's edge.
All around. Most tourists have never heard of it and
wouldn't even know it existed. Most locals have never heard
of it or been there. So last episode we talked
(03:20):
about victimology. I'm gonna take a break right here and
discuss a little bit about what we learned. Tammy was
an eleventh grader from a strong family, loving parents, close sisters,
an older sister, Stacy, and a twin sister, Tara. She
loved to dance, hang out with friends. She was in
(03:42):
that juxtaposition where she thought she was grown, but she
was still just a kid. She and her mom budded,
heads came to a head one night, her mom made
that famous statement, my rules, my house. You can't live
here if you're not gonna follow him, and Tammy moved out,
and she moved out with a boyfriend older and she
(04:03):
was by about a decade, but she still went to
school every day. When we are talking about a homicide,
this brutal one that took multiple weapons, a lot of time,
and a little bit of skill, believe it or not,
we need to talk about the suspect geology tonight and
(04:24):
the suspect oology. We need a special guest and tonight,
it is such a gift to have Detective Tara Smith.
Tara Smith is a mom. She homeschools her children. She's
married to a firefighter. She is a detective with the
(04:45):
Savannah Police Department, but she is also a pistol and
I think personally she's the answer to this case. Detective Smith,
welcome to his own seven. Thank you, Thank you for
having me. You and I walked that crime scene together.
But I want you just to break down what that
(05:08):
scene is. Like, I mean the first thing, I mean,
you remember when when we went actually took my own
personal vehicle, which is a deep wrangler, because I knew
that one of our police cars, a low, low ride
in vehicle, would not make it to the scene without
getting stuck. And if you remember, Cheryl, do you remember
my jeep getting stuck and bogged down. So that goes
(05:28):
to tell you about the scene in and of itself. Now,
as you already explained, like Hutchison Island at its widest
point is a mile. It's not very big, so so
it's just a small stretch and it's woods. You come
off the bridge, you can turn left or right and
you're met with immediately like tall pines, dense pines, and
there's little off turns where you can go, but you
(05:50):
the only thing that you're accessing would again be the river,
so you're only there unless you're you're working with the
Georgia Port Authority. We walked the scene and it's it's
very soft dirt in any of the clear spots, it's
tall like forested areas. It's very secluded even broad daylight.
You have privacy to do whatever it is you can
(06:11):
think of. And that's what really stands out about this
this crime scene in particular. I mean, you could anything
goes at this crime scene. You're not going to be interrupted.
Did Tammy have any ties to Hudson Island, Well, we
know that, you know, just being her age. Hudgeson Island
would have been a place that teenagers in that time
(06:33):
knew about if they're gonna go drinking or smoking or
hanging out or doing anything where again they're not going
to be discovered or nobody's gonna walk up on you.
And Hutchinson Island it's probably a place that she would
have been familiar with. And I do know just from
you know, the case, reviewing her diaries and things like that,
that it is the place that she has been to before.
(06:54):
The spot is used for things that you wouldn't want
to do out in public. It's you know, he and
she and uh, some teenager stuff drinking. It is a
place where, you know, where you can innocently be drinking
some beers because you don't want mom to know. And
it's also a place where uh Mr Jones is taking prostitute.
It's very private and secluded. I know when we were
(07:18):
driving following you, there were these little cutoffs where you
could just maybe park one car and like you said,
you could be there in complete privacy. But then when
you got to the clearing where the murder occurred, I mean,
you could part thirty cars out there and have the
greatest graduation night ever. It's kind of like what you
(07:39):
would see in the movies when you're having like a
teen bonfire. Like I mean, it's I can name a
few movies where we've seen that scene, just as secluded
at in the forest clear lot and uh exactly where
her body was found was a clear lot, completely surrounded
by woods. There was only one way to, which would
have been a little inlet, a little dirt road where
(08:01):
the people that found her would come and go. You
have privacy you have openness, and the only people out
there to bother you aren't people. They are huge mosquitoes,
all right. So when you and I were also there,
the thing that struck me is if they had just
thrown her in the river, or they had just tossed
her twenty yards into the wounds, she would have never
(08:24):
been found. Does this person want to be found? They
do this on purpose and leave this body discoverable for somebody,
or is it somebody that was interrupted, or is it
someone that just is really stupid? And like you said,
I mean, you're literally ten ft from the river. If
you if you wanted to hide her, you all you
(08:44):
needed to do was walk ten feet with her soaking.
What she isn't but a hundred pounds, I mean, she's
very little. You could have easily picked her up, could
have obviously pulled her into the woodline. Again in this place,
I'm very familiar where it used to be in one
of my beats when I was in control. I guess
I'm I'm gonna say. Quarterly we would find a body
(09:05):
out there that had been dumped out there, and it
was typically a prostitution type thing. And when we would
find these bodies, they were always attempted to be concealed
in the woodline. Tammy's case doesn't fit that she's just
out in the open in this perfect, pristine soft dirt
which leads lots of tracks, entire prints and footprints. So
I know that Tammy was walking around on this crime scene.
(09:27):
I do know that at some point in time she's
walking around there. Because she was walking around there, then
you know that the case that it must have happened there,
that she was not done. You know one thing that
struck me the very first time you and I spoke
on the phone was how deliberately you thought of this
case like you did a three sixty the first time
(09:48):
you ever opened that file. So you were never single
focused on any one thing. You didn't have blinders own.
You were completely open to if there's something new to try,
I'm going to try it. And I personally think that
was pretty incredible as old as this case is, that
you don't open it up and all of a sudden,
(10:08):
just zero, you know somebody and that's it. I was
really impressed with your We're gonna start from ground zero
and I'm working everything like it happened yesterday. I like
to do that if any case. Really, I don't like
to read the investigator's narrative until I've looked at the scene,
I've researched how you investigate things, and it's really how
was their last day? I like to get it from
(10:30):
the nine on one call what I know took place
in those few hours, and then just work it as
though I'm the one on the case that day obviously,
you know, and we can get into it in a
little bit, like as far as how in depth the
suspect list on this case is, and how how this
is not a simple case. It's probably one of the
most complex cases I've ever worked. And I mean, really,
(10:53):
if it wasn't for you and obviously her family, like
her sister, pushing this case, I would have been stuck,
because in a case like this, you really need science
to narrow it down for you. I agree, And to me,
I mean I have a mantra every tool on every case,
every time period, whatever it needs to be thrown at
(11:13):
that case, you need to do it. Anything in the toolbox,
use it. And I think it's really important here too,
just to remind people that when you are dissecting a murder,
especially one that involves overkill, in a remote place, already
in a small town. I think it is imperative to
(11:33):
go step by step. So at this point, we've talked
about she was stabbed over a hundred thirty times, and
some publications have used the term hog tide and then
run over by a car. So at this point, detective,
why don't you tell us what all was done to
(11:53):
that child? I probably know a little bit more than
what I can discuss right now before we take the
case in the court. But what we do know, and
also what was released in the papers. I mean, she
was found in an open area. She was I wouldn't
call it hog tied, but she was tied up in
a very well dressed knot. She was not able to
(12:16):
move or defend herself in any way, shape or form.
She was stabbed at least a hundred and thirty times,
and at some point in time a car ran over her.
We know that there was probably other things that took
place as far as her injuries are concerned. And I
feel like calling it overkill. That's not even a good
(12:38):
word adequately describe this. It's more than overkill. It is.
It's just so excessive. When you see cases that are
overkilled you're thinking like, oh, you know, I I emptied
my magazine on you, or I I shot you several times,
or maybe I maybe I stabbed you ten times. To
try to picture a hundred and thirty times, if if
(12:59):
you've ever done workouts or hurts anything, you don't have
to get a hundred of three steps or whatever. So
I took a button knife to my couch to just
count out what it would take to get to a
hundred and thirty. I don't want to be gross about it,
but like, I'm not going through the couch like somebody
went through Tammy. So I'm not even requiring the pressure
(13:20):
that it would have taken for whoever did this to Tammy.
And I was still wounded, I was still tired. It
was still excessive. It took extreme effort and focus, and
I had to have all right, I gotta get to
a hundred thirty. So if you can imagine what that
was like for somebody who's doing that at the time,
it's just more than excessive. It took effort. It's very
rare in law enforcement that we see anything like this.
(13:43):
You see anger, you see revenge, you see accidents. I
can't find anything to fit this category. It's it's more
than excessive, truly, So wonk us through the morning that
she's owned, give us the day, the time, wherever you
(14:03):
think is imperative, start and just tell us the story
to set the background for is the O. J. Simpson trial?
Is Nancy Carrigan getting hit in the knee? I believe
Forrest Gump was filmed, So that's what's going on in
So we don't have cell phones, we have pages. And
(14:26):
it's pre d n A, so I know that my
suspects probably not wearing gloves. Why would you. We wouldn't
know anything about DNA because we didn't until the O. J.
Simpson trial happened in that June of that year of
And this is before Google, so I know that whoever
did this had actually had been taught this or practice this.
(14:46):
They didn't just google it like we would do nowadays.
And then yes, I'm talking about the not the rope.
It would have not been something that you could have
just looked up on the Internet at all. You would
have had to have been taught it, which tells me
a lot if if we're going through the suspect or
who this could have been. And this is also and
(15:08):
I also need to familiarize myself with what Hutchinson Island
and what Savannah looked like at the time of At
that time, you have no reason to be at Hudgson that.
Now there's a hotel, so you could say that, oh,
if I turned, you know, right off the bridge, there's
a hotel there. At that time, there's a water tower
and and there's support authority and that's who it's owned by.
(15:29):
And so before math Quest, you know when we used
to download, you know, like pirates, swee sit download our
directions in the math Quest and follow them on our
on our little paper where we were going. You know,
this is before even that, So she would have had
to have known. The suspect would have had to have
known and been there and had directions at some point
in time. That comes into play when you're thinking about
(15:51):
a serial killer or somebody going up and down ninety
five or something like that. This is somebody would have
had to have been there before I had knowledge of it.
It's January. It's January in Georgia. We don't have all
four seasons. We have hot at haiades and then and
then we have a little bit of cold for like
(16:11):
ten days and that's about it. It was cold this morning.
She has found a break of daylight, so she was
there and as soon as the daylight came up, the
construction I don't want to say that they were construction workers.
They worked for the port and they were clearing land
in that area they discovered her. They called the police.
(16:33):
The police arrived on the scene, and I think everybody
was flabbergasted. They'd never seen something like that her age.
They knew immediately that how young she was, without even
knowing who she was. They knew the excessiveness of just
the brutality of what happened to her is more than
just a dumped body that we sometimes see. And then
(16:54):
the manner of which she was tied. So the detectives,
their first ask is to identify this person. They found
that she had a ring that looked like a classroom,
and they found with school it was at, and they
went to that school. They looked through the yearbook and
they found her mother's initials. When learning who was probably
at that time, they weren't sure, but who was probably
(17:16):
her mother, they looked at what church she went to,
and they went and talked to that pastor. That pastor
came out to the scene and identified her, knowing he'd
seeing her before and knew that who she was. And
so now they have a name, they have Tammy Renee Jackson.
They know that she just turned seventeen. So now they've
got to track her last hours of what happened. And
(17:40):
that's really right there, that's when the case gets really complicated.
And I think it's, you know, one of these cases
for all of us listening to you talk. So she's
doing things we all did. We all wanted to hang
out with friends, we all thought we were grown, we
all wanted to be alone with somebody we cared about.
So you know, as you are talking, I'm thinking, gosh,
(18:04):
when I was seventeen, I would have been the first
one on hutcheson Iswa. I would have been the first
one saying, y'all, we have found the mother load of
places to go and celebrate being seventeen, sixteen, eighteen. And
then when you start thinking about Savannah as this gorgeous
city full of history, I mean there's a reason it's
(18:25):
one of the tourist hotspots. I mean it's got everything.
It's got great music, it's got great food, it's got
great homes, it's got ghost stories, you know, and now
you've got this horrible event that you're having to walk through,
and the list of suspects. I mean, let's just start
your list. I mean you've got the boyfriend. I mean,
(18:46):
that's an obvious place to start. Yeah, you got we
got boyfriend, me and my me and my coworker. We
we we pulled out a good old fashioned lined paper
and when he started putting names on it, and he
by the end of the page, he goes, my goodness,
well this is this is a needle and a stack
of needles, and and that was the best way to
(19:09):
put this. It's more complex than any case I've ever worked,
because typically you have what two people that you might suspect.
Fortunately I am fortunate enough to have her diary because
now she personally is adding more people into it. And
then I've got what I know, what witnesses say, and
then I've got her family and what they say, and
then I've got her friends and what they say. And
(19:33):
by the end of the day, it's a chunky, soupy mess.
It's a suspect soup. And I don't know what else
to call it. I could probably talk about her last
week it'd probably taken two hours ago. Over all of it. Well,
we have the boyfriend. Was he in town out of town,
(19:54):
We'll start there. We'll start with her boyfriend. We know
she's got a boyfriend. He's in the military, and he's
not in town, but he is within driving distance. We
have a boyfriend before this boyfriend that she was seeing
when she got kicked out of her home. So that's
the different boyfriend. And I think what happened with her
(20:14):
family is her family noted that she was starting to
make her own choices. It went against what her parents set,
the guidelines and the rules. You know, as parents we
set those rules and guidelines to keep our children safe.
But as a child, you don't viewed as that. You
viewed as an oppression, I guess. But she was told
(20:36):
if you if you're gonna behave that way, you can't
do it here. So she moves on from that person
she's dating to another person. He calls up, this friend,
can you stay with Can can my girlfriend stay at
your house? So then this guy starts dating her. I
know from a friend's account that for a week prior
to her being found, she's at a birthday party. She
(20:59):
meet this other girl who's in the same exact scenario.
She's in she same age, just been kicked out, seeing
adult men living the life, thinking they've got it all
figured out. They go to a birthday party of friends.
And when we get into groups that we get into
it and can influence you in a good way or
(21:19):
influence you in a bad way, and this friend influenced
her in a bad way. They end up downtown. They
end up on River Street, which if you've ever been
to River Street, it's a lot like New Orleans Bourbon Street.
It's you're there to drink. Some men find her there
that night, they feed her and her friend alcoholic beverages.
They take her back to where they live. Something happened
(21:43):
that night. I know that her friend is a witness
and knows that, and so we have to Those guys
are also in the suspect list because something happened and
it wasn't. It was consensual, and then it wasn't, and
we know that much. She calls her boyfriend. She says,
something happened with these guys. I don't feel car dorble
at this apartment complex anymore. Her her boyfriend's is no problem.
(22:03):
Let me call my other adult man you know in
the military to come pick you up. So here's another
man comes and picks her up. She goes and stays
with him. I know through her diary that she's not
having a great time at this person's house, and she's
writing about the boyfriend before the other boyfriend she so
she's still in contact with these people. And then there's
(22:24):
the two guys at the apartment complex that she went
to what Willie's and had the big call a cab
slushy vodka drink her last days. We know that she
was in me staying with a man because she was
uncomfortable about the other two men. She was staying with
a man at his home. She made a phone call
(22:45):
from witnesses say like again, you have to you can
only take them at face value. But there was two
younger much younger than her girls staying in this home
that she was staying at, and they told police that
they heard her say Kael, see you outside. And that
was the last phone call that she made. And we
have witnesses that we know are credible that saw her
(23:07):
walking down h Rude in Savannah from there, the last
place she's known as she's walking down the road in Savannash.
Her body is discovered the next morning. The police broadcast
what happened on the news, and that night generated a
call from another witness. He said he saw her walking
down the road, that she was stopped by two men
(23:31):
in a car, that it kind of didn't sit well
in his stomach whatsoever. He turned around, he said, hey,
are you okay? He said, it just bothered him and
he felt horrible that he didn't do anything about it.
But she said, yeah, I'm okay, like she knew them
or something, and so he turned back around. He said,
it still didn't sit well with him, so he didn't
(23:52):
back around, and her in the car are gone. And
then the next morning she's found on hutcheson island. And
that's the last thing that we know happened to her.
You and I have talked about that, because one thing
that I've told my daughter over and over and over,
men know when other men are not on the up
and up. We don't know it. We just think he's cute,
(24:14):
he's got a nice smile. But your dad, your brother,
your cousins, your uncle's they're gonna know almost instantly if
this guy is up to no good. So for that man,
to get that feeling just seeing her. That's a pretty
significant red flag for me. It's a fantastic observation. I mean, truly,
(24:38):
if if that man that doesn't even know her, he's
obviously picking up on body language, facial expressions, he knows
exactly what they're doing. If he felt that's it to
his stomach that he turned around and asked her if
she was okay. I mean, we all drive by things
all the time, we don't stop. And he felt that
bad about it. His intuition was on point. I do
(24:59):
believe that that's the last people that saw her. I
don't think that anything happened between that car and her
being found That was not a good situation. Now, her diary,
that's pretty incredible because she's basically a witness from the
grave for you. She's able to talk directly to you
the best she can. That's kind of a money tree.
(25:23):
We don't always get there, no, and it's wonderful in
in even though you know it sometimes leaves you more
questions because you don't know what she's referencing when she's
saying certain things. But it's just a treasure trove of
information about her and about her psyche at the time.
Does she feel threatened, is she uncomfortable? Is she happy?
(25:43):
What's going on in her life? And she's I mean,
the biggest thing that I take from her diary is
how naive she is. She's not someone who is out
looking for this search, trying to get into this. A
lot of people would read this and say, oh, a
body dumping hutches, And I don't know she's a prostitute.
(26:07):
She knows exactly what she's doing. I don't think so.
And I know that from her her diaries. I know
for a fact that she's not. If she's doing that,
she doesn't know she's doing. She is so naive, and
I think her end game is to get married and
fall in love and have a white picket fence and
all's good in the world, rose colored glasses. I know
(26:29):
through her diary that she has absolutely no idea the
realm that she has found herself in with these men.
And to your point, even though she's no longer living
in her parents house, she calls her mom every day,
she goes to school every day, she still wants to
be around, you know, her friends and her sisters. So again,
(26:51):
it's not like she's living this life of this worldly
woman all about town. No, I think it's important that
anyone who's sees this case knows that in every way,
shape and form, she is a is a little girl.
She's a child. She is not some red light district
(27:12):
girl making money. She has no idea what that is about.
She is looking for love. What got her there? And
what how she met these people and got her in
this environment? I'm not sure, but I do know that
the extent of her naivety, I do know that she
had no idea what she was in And she is
(27:34):
doodling in her notebooks, little hearts and little houses and
everything I remember doing as a as a girl in
high school. I mean, she reminds me of me, like
she's just living being a girl. She went to school,
she was in the good crowd. She wasn't doing anything wrong.
(27:55):
And it goes to show you, like even now that
I'm a parent, it goes to show you how quick
something can turn from innocent too darkness really quick. And
I think we both remember exactly how we felt when
we were her age. She is a girl. She is
not mature. She's not out there working them, She's not
doing anything. She's not doing drugs. There's nothing in her
(28:16):
system because we do toxicologies of the autopsies. There's nothing
in her system. She's a child, and I think that's
very important in this case. Well, let's talk specifically about
the killers. We know they had a car, we know
(28:38):
they used rope, they had knowledge of whatever this sophisticated
not system is. She was fully clothed, so if you
look at you know, was it disorganized or organized? I
mean she was disfigured when she was run over, she
was tortured. She wasn't hidden, and that's disorganized and then organized.
(28:59):
They brought the weapons with them, they had a car,
they had sophistication of something you know a little different.
I mean, you're not going to see somebody tied up
with rope every day. I mean, that's an unusual part
of this case that I think, again, you've done the
right thing zero in on, because that alone is going
(29:20):
to narrow your suspect pool. I did a lot of
research on the BTK killer and a few other ones,
and we use different databases that show us crimes. I've
heard no middle ground. I've heard polar opposite of pains
on this case. I've heard that this is disorganized because
(29:42):
the reason I'm going to say disorganized is because perhaps
the rope was already in the car and they just
happened to have knowledge of tying it because of their
past that the tools that they used to stab her
with are perhaps things that were just in their car
and they just kind of stabbed with no purpose, just
(30:04):
stabbed and they thought she was dead and then left,
and then you've got somebody pulled her ups to that
that says this is very sophisticated. This is someone who
knew exactly where to stab her missing vital organs, knowing
exactly how long it would take to bleed out, intentionally
not putting her in the river that is ten ft
(30:26):
away from her. This is somebody who knew the nodding
like system and has probably done this before and we'll
do it again. This is someone who wanted her to
be found, like we find that a lot of serial
killers love to have their victims be found. The autopsy report,
the the corner wrote, this was a slow death that
(30:48):
she bled out but very slowly, that this was long,
it was not quick, and so is that intentional or
is that just happenstance? Just some he just stabbing you know,
at will and back to the suspects to like to
make the chunky suspect suit chunkier. I didn't even mention
(31:11):
that at the time. They're about a year after the
original detective. He found that there's some murderers in Florida
who tied up their victims and they very much honed
in on these two individuals in Florida, and the lead
detective on the case originally he still believes to this
(31:33):
day that it was them. I'm not going to rule
anyone out. We've discussed this like I won't take anything
off the table. You're all on the table and you're
all in my soup. Anyone who had any contact with
her live. Is that because you don't want to be
associated with somebody just murder? Or is that because he
murdered her? And so it gets cloudy, and so as
a cold case detective, I'm working on your narratives and
(31:56):
then I have to work it backwards as though I'm
working it originally. At the same time, I'm going with
what I have. And that's why when it gets this
chunky and deluded, I call the expertise of other people
because science and that's where you come in I really
wouldn't be able to push this any further and speculation
really if if it weren't for you. Well, that's nice
(32:19):
of you to say, but you know, I often tell people,
you know, when you see a lake, like maybe first
thing in the morning, and it's just still, like the
water is not even moving, but you have no idea
what's going on underneath. You know, the catfish will doing
their thing, the bass, the turtles, you know, some snakes.
All this stuff is alive and happening just below the surface,
(32:43):
but you would never know it. That's how I sometimes
see these cold cases. You go to Savannah and you're
standing on River Street and you're looking across that river
of this beautiful piece of land. It just looks pristine,
happy and fun. You have no idea the underbelly, you
(33:05):
just don't, and just below the surface sometimes will blow
your mind. So now you're telling us it could be
serial killers working in tandem. It could be a police officer.
It could be a boyfriend. It could be another boyfriend.
It could be a married boyfriend. It could be somebody
in the service. It could be somebody that she knew
(33:26):
and trusted. It could be somebody she just met at
a bar. You've got a lot of work you gotta do,
and that's a lot of people you gotta weed through
again amongst all, this just perfect area because Savannah, for
all purposes, is a small town. Everybody kind of knows everybody.
(33:47):
They get a ton of tourism obviously, so there's some
strangers there. But you know, the toxicology is negative. She's
fully dressed. I mean, there's some things that just kind
of throw you on this case. You're not expecting necessarily here.
So you know, you've been connected with some pretty significant people.
(34:09):
So hopefully this case is at a different place for
you now, absolutely through you and what you've connected me to.
Because the department can only do what we have. I
mean we all states to deal with their state lab.
And their state lab is always underfunded, understaffed, I mean
just overworked. And so when you ask them, hey, I
(34:32):
have a case from nine, they say yeah, no and
point to the door. It comes down to people pushing
it and be in the squeaky wheel and thank and
it's like Tammy has several squeaky wheels and we can
push this. And I told before I even spoke to
Tammy's family, I said, I will not whether I'm investigating
or still working in homicide or not, Like I will
(34:56):
never stop working this case because there's an answer. I mean,
I have my theories, and I know that I know
the science is caught up. I know that I hope
that the suspects are listening. I hope the hose suspect
comes across this being aired and they can hear me,
because I know that you know that I'm coming for you.
That there's so much physical evidence that I have from
(35:18):
this case because we did not have d NA. We
didn't do that. I think they did blood typing and
then hair typing. Science Now, I mean, it's blown my mind.
Even the people that you've put me in touch with
over the past year, they've been able to take DNA
mixes from where there's seven mixes. They can go through
(35:38):
seven mixes. That's that's incredible. And so I know that
this will be solved, no doubt in my mind. And
fortunately with this case, I found all the physical evidence,
like we have everything. They weren't wearing gloves. They weren't.
Why would you Why would you have gloves on? You
would not have gloves on, you wouldn't. Only after O. J. Simpson,
(35:59):
you may think to put gloves on. I know that
it took you a considerable amount of time to tie
this knot. I know that it took you considerable amount
of time to stab her a thirty times. I know
that it did that that is excessive, and that you
touched her. You had to have tied her up, You
had to have touched her. You had to have worked
(36:21):
that long to even have stabbed her that long. So
whether you wanted her body to be found because you're
a six serial killer, or is revenge killing, or you're
mad because you're married, whatever, I will get you. Science
will get you. My bread and butter is interviews and interrogations,
and all I need is just a little bit. The
(36:46):
suspect is going to be done. I mean, there's no
way unless they're dead. I'm coming for you a needle
in a stack of needles. They were counting on, no
new evidence, no new witnesses that they weren't counting on.
Detective Taras Smith, I'll tell you that the white hats
(37:08):
are coming, honey, and we're gonna end Zone seven the
way we always do. For a quote from somebody I've
worked with, and tonight it comes from Atlanta homicide detective
David Quinn, and David says the main thing to remember
when entering the world of criminal homicide investigations is faith.
(37:31):
Faith in your common sense. Every person that ever wondered
who killed the victim is a homicide detective. Detective Smith,
thank you for your time. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this
is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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