December 15, 2022 • 39 mins
Part 1. 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 Stacy Patterson, sister of Tami Jackson. They discuss how Sheryl became involved in the case, what life was like for Tami and her siblings, the events leading up to Tami’s brutal murder, and the family’s efforts to keep the murder investigation moving forward. Stacy shares how the detective assigned to the case, Detective Tarra Smith, has inspired renewed hope that after more than two decades, there will finally be justice for Tami Jackson.
Show Notes:
0:00 - Introduction to Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum
1:18 - Brief overview of the homicide case involving victim, Tami Jackson
2:28 - Introduction of Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
4:23 - Facts from the case and the approximate timetable of Tami’s last hours of life
8:15 - Sheryl describes how she became involved in the case
9:46 - Who was Tami Jackson?
12:00 - Introduction of Stacy Patterson, sister of Tami Jackson
13:56 - Stacy Patterson describes Tami and what life was like growing up with her siblings
12:08 - Events that lead to Tami moving out of the family home
26:05 - Tami Jackson’s cold case is assigned to a new detective, Detective Tarra Smith
21:53 - Sheryl and Stacy invite Carl Marino of Homicide Hunter to assist in raising funds for further testing of the crime scene evidence
31:34 - Stacy describes the efforts she and her family go to, to keep the investigation moving forward
34:08 - Officials working on the case are determined to find whoever is responsible for Tami Jackson’s murder
35:35- Facebook: Justice for Tami Jackson, and Detective Smith’s resolve
37:15 - Sheryl concludes the interview with Stacy Patterson and shares information about Zone 7 Episode: 2
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 (00:06):
There is no better sound in the world to me
than a full house with all of my family here
in the laughter, singing, cheering, stories, babies, dogs, the kitchen,
and full action, listening to all the people that love me.
In this just cocktail of energy, infusion of history of
(00:31):
our events, our ancestry, while adding simultaneously memories. If just
one of us is missing, the dynamic changes. You can
literally feel one person's absence in a room of thirty
five people. I have four sisters, and it takes all
four of them to ultimately give you that intensity, that
(00:54):
liveliness of a moment for it to exist. We recently
rented a cabin and there were rooms that were private
in the basement. There was even a detached apartment, but
I wanted the room right off the kitchen and the
living room. I'm Houston, Honey, I am command Central. I
want to be right in the middle of all the action.
(01:18):
I can only imagine how Tammy Jackson's family feels every
time they're together for a special family event or just
an average day. They have to be living with the
knowledge that Tammy is not there because of murder. She
was stabbed over a hundred and thirty times. Hog tied
(01:43):
and run over by a car. She was just seventeen
years old. She thought she was grown, y'all remember that age.
Her parents knew she wasn't, her sisters knew she wasn't.
She had the whole world ahead of her. She wanted
to live at Why open and then she's not just murdered,
(02:07):
but tortured. Is there a serial killer on the loose
or did somebody who knew her shut her up? I
ain't just hanging fire here. Let's go to work. I'm
Cheryl McCollum, and this is on seven. I started my
(02:29):
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 them all, well,
(02:50):
not all of them, but most of them. I've had
the opportunity to work on hundreds of criminal cases you've
heard of and thousands that you haven't. As a working
c S I I'm not a first responder. I'm a
last responder. The unimaginable for any family is for a
(03:10):
member to be murdered. The Jackson family had such an
unbearable event. They're sweet seventeen year old daughter and sister
was stabbed and killed on Hudchison Island, Georgia. I have
four sisters. Each one is their own person. Their likes, dislikes, humor, style, talents,
(03:31):
all very different. Even our accents are slightly different. But
I know them, possibly better than anybody else. I know
the inside jokes, shared events, secrets, life changing moments. I
can anticipate how they're going to react to certain situations
and conditions. I know absolutely which one would love a
(03:53):
surprise party and which one would not. In my business,
under standing the victimology often lead you to the suspect ology.
If you can understand that victim, assess their risk factors,
understand the groups of people in their life, you can
start to narrow down the suspect pole. We must listen
(04:17):
to the people closest to them to truly understand that victim.
So our job today is not to say a seventeen
year old, but to say this seventeen year old, what
did she like, who did she love, what did she
do for fun? Why did she move out? When did
(04:41):
she go missing and did anybody report her. This is
not where we speculate. We want facts and stories. The
facts are January, construction workers found Tammy's body on Hutchinson Island,
just outside a Savanta. She had just turned seventeen a
(05:13):
month ago. She went missing at approximately ten pm. We're
not exactly sure of the actual time because this was
something fluid. A witness soar he thought something doesn't look
right about that. This is a young girl to him,
you know, even from a distance, he knew she looked young,
(05:36):
and she's leaning into a car talking to two men,
and he just felt compelled to go check on her.
So that was the first time that we know for
sure a timetable. So it's approximately ten she's last seen
on the side of the road talking to these two guys.
Then she is not seen again until workers at daybreak
(06:02):
find her body on Hudgenson Island. So from ten pm
to seven am when she has found there is a
nine hour gap that we know of where she's driven
less than seventeen miles. We know she got out of
the car on Hudgenson Island because there are footprints with
(06:25):
a natural walking gate all the way to the river's
edge and back toward the car. There's two sets of footprints.
One we know is Tammy's because she's still wearing her
shoes when she's found and it matches the impression. The
other we don't know who that belongs to. We're assuming,
(06:46):
of course, obviously the killer. There's no running footsteps like
a wide gate. There's no scuff marks, there's no drag marks,
so it would appear that she was blitz attacked at
some point. We know there were two weapons used. One
(07:08):
was a straight edge weapon, one was another type of weapon.
We know rope was used, and then we know a
vehicle was used, and that is all we really know
right now. Tammy didn't have a car, so we gotta
figure out how she got there. She didn't have a
purse or i D. We gotta figure out how this
(07:32):
crime occurred. It's important to start with the victim again,
an eleventh grader, strong family, loving parents, close sisters. She's
in a juxtaposition of being a child and a woman.
(07:52):
We've all been there, we understand. It's also important to
understand where she came from. Savannah his star at Coastal Town,
deep South Georgia. It's star at Holmes towering Live Oaks,
a river city. It's small town life with major tourism.
(08:15):
How I got this case? You might be wondering how
I got it. So I'm scrolling one night and this
little paragraph pops up and it says, seventeen year old
stabbed a hundred thirty times hudgetson Island, Georgia, and I'm like,
Hudginson Island. And I'm immediately thinking the ocean. And I'm like,
(08:37):
I've never heard of Hudgenson Island. I knew Jekyll, I
know sex Simons, etcetera. Never heard of this island. As
I read further, it said right across the Savannah River,
and I'm like, oh, it's a river island. Still hadn't
heard of it. So I looked up her grave. On
(08:59):
her gray her sister's names were listed. I had never
seen siblings names added to a gravestone. So when I
saw Stacy and Tara Jackson, it was so simple and
so sweet, but it just said beloved sister of you know,
(09:21):
Stacy and Tara, and I thought that's such a compelling
thing to have on there. And for us it turned
out to be a godsend because we were able to
locate them on social media and then offer our help,
and shockingly, I did not hear back. So I reached
out again, and her older sister, Stacy called me back.
(09:46):
We're talking about the brutal murder of Tammy Jackson, who
was stabbed, hog tied, and run over by a car. Y'all,
if you were to look at the details of this
case and the facts of this case just on paper,
and I did not tell you the age of this victim,
(10:08):
her actions, you would think she was older than she was.
She was going to bars, she was living in an apartment.
She was kind of doing as she pleased, you know,
going here and there. She knew different people, some married,
some single. She was alone with these people. She had
relationships with these men. And if you factor in a
(10:33):
month before she was murdered, she was sixteen. She had
no money, she had no car, she had no job,
she had no fake idea that anybody knew. But she
kept a diary like a child. And in that diary,
you know, she had these just idyllic dreams of this
white pick of fence was a man. She loved this child.
(10:56):
I mean, it kind of reminds me of that old
show let's make a deal where they would sometimes offer
a contestant a bicycle. I mean, it was a guarantee.
Here's a brand new bicycle. You could have this, or
you could have what's behind this shiny curtain. And Tammy
seems like the type of person to me that is
(11:17):
never going for the real deal. I don't want to bike,
I want whatever is behind that shiny curtain. It was
just too intriguing to her. And that's how I see her,
a child that's playing these adult games and the rules
are getting changed on her. Now again, I'm just saying
how I feel Tammy is coming off how I see her.
(11:42):
But there is somebody that can tell us much better
than I ever could, and I think it's time for
us to bring her sister Stacy. Stacy, welcome to Zone Heaven.
(12:03):
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. All right,
let's just start beginning. What did you think when you
got my message? Well, you can tell the truth. Tara
and I definitely collaborated behind the scenes because you know
that this You weren't the first, and since it had
been gosh well over twenty years, the case had been cold.
(12:25):
We were used to different people getting in touch with
us from time to time, and some of them were genuine,
some of them really did want to help, Others were
just looking for a story. Others were a little crazy
and just you know, putting their nose where they didn't
(12:45):
need to put it. So, yeah, we were skeptical when
we got your message and we discussed it and did
a little googling on Cheryl McCullum, and I was like, well,
I don't know, she might be somebody we want to
talk to, so so I appreciate you calling me back. Well, yes,
(13:05):
we do too, for sure. Definitely there were even times
just because you just it's with such a terrible thing
that happened and so mysterious that we were afraid to
talk to strangers to a point because even when you
and I started talking again, people came and asked me
the question that was in my mind all the time,
(13:28):
which was are you putting yourself in danger? What if
the person that came after her, because they're still out
there somewhere, I know they know who we are, are
they going to come hurt you too? But that's a
valid question, And that's a valid question for you as
a young mom and having a young child through all
(13:48):
those years. Absolutely, that's valid, and like you said, factually
the killer is still out there. Right, all, Let's talk
about your mom and dad, your church, her school. Just
tell us about Tammy. Well. Tammy is a fraternal twin.
She's three years younger than me. Born and raised in Savannah.
(14:09):
It's the only place she ever lived. You know. We
grew up in a strong Christian home, fairly uneventful. You know,
we were all good kids. We didn't really cause a
lot of trouble. And you know, other than just normal
sisters stuff, my sisters did tended getting up on me
from time to time, so there was that whole element.
(14:31):
My mom was a full time teacher. She taught math,
and my mom was a rock star to be honest,
and I, like, I didn't learn to appreciate her until
I became an adult and a mother myself, because I
was a single mom for to just one. She raised
(14:51):
three of us. My dad was still around, but he
worked on the road, so he was hardly ever home.
But she worked full time as a teacher. She raised
three girls by herself, made sure we all had meals
every single night, we all had extracurricular activities, and we
were all completely different, and my mom made it happen.
(15:15):
She was awesome. My mom used to say, if you
could raise children and they're all different, that's just good
parenting because you let them be who they are. Yeah,
Tammy was the girliest of the three of us. Tammy
was the dancer. She was you know, tiny and petite
and just cute and she had great tone and she
(15:40):
just excelled everything she did and dance that was her thing.
She loved it. She had a ton of friends. She
did she did always and you know, she was always
really good about including Tara. Know they she loved Tara.
They were just you know, obviously it's their twins. It's
a connection that I would never be able to understand.
(16:02):
But they had some friends that were separate, but for
the most part, their friends were the same. They celebrated
birthdays together and had parties together. And she was just
always funny and laughing and making jokes and making fun
of herself and um, just she was great. That's the
(16:26):
part about her that just it's so hard to reconcile
in my mind. Somebody would find something in her that
was a threat or was negative or anything like that,
because she was just always so upbeat and positive, and
everybody loved Hammy. Everybody loved Hammy. Let's talk about her
(16:47):
moving out. How did that come about? We grew up
in a strong Christian, very sheltered home. There was not
a lot of communication between our parents and us about life,
and you know what to expect, and so, you know,
(17:08):
we were going to this private Christian school and it
was awful, very cliquish, and there were the popular kids
and they were the not popular kids. And and I
wasn't a popular kid. Tary and Tammy weren't popular kids.
We didn't wear all the latest fashions and stuff. Anyway,
it kind of messes with you. And so when I
(17:30):
started high school, my mom and dad let me go
to a public school. And that was the most liberating
experience of my life. But I went crazy. I went
from one side of the spectrum to the other. And
I was like, this is awesome, you know, just I
I did it all. I did it all. And I
(17:53):
caused a lot of grief for my parents during that
period of time, but I was having a great time.
And Done or Me looked up to me, almost to
a fault, because she she copied me if I did something.
She did it. If I liked to be and she
liked to be, And if I wore a certain kind
of clothes, she wore a certain kind of clothes. If
(18:15):
I wore my hair curly, she wore her hair, you know,
that whole thing. And while I should have considered it flattering,
it annoyed me to no end. But that was just
that was what she did, and it lasted for years
and years and years. So I say all that to
say that when Tammy got to that same age, when
(18:38):
she was in high school, she also transition from that
very private, very suffocating environment, judgmental to a public school,
and she was like, hey, I see it. Now she's on,
(18:58):
you know, fixus is on to something. So she proceeded
to as usual, you know, following my footsteps. But the
thing about me and Tammy that was very different is
I was always very I had a lot of common sense.
I had a lot of street smarts. Tammy wasn't. Tammy
(19:21):
was very spontaneous. Tammy was very in the moment, and
it's like, this is great, this feels good. Let's just
do this. I'm not gonna think about what happens next.
Tammy's family lived on the outskirts of town and a beautiful,
modest neighborhood. Lots of friends. You know, they had barbecues,
(19:42):
they just had a great time. Her mom was a
geometry teacher that had just recently turned bank teller, so
she was, you know, switching jobs a little bit. Their
dad was an engineer that worked for Western House. He
was on the road all the time. Their entire childhood.
He was basically gone. And you know, Tammy's life was
(20:05):
in Middle America. Mom and dad her home. Mom and
dad stayed together. Mom and dad love each other. They're
a solid family. They go to church, they go to school,
they hang out with each other. The three siblings were very,
very close. As we know. Tammy had a twin sister, Tara,
and then an older sister, Stacy. But the three of them,
(20:28):
I mean they would seeing they were dads, you know,
just sibling stuff. There was a little bit of a
rivalry maybe sometimes with sharing clothes, and you know, I
think Stacy pretty so cute when she talked about how
Tammy wanted to be just like her um. But that's
the deal. I mean, they were just that solid family.
Every single person that knew them loved them and cared
(20:50):
about him and had nothing but wonderful things to say
about all of them. So she started to meet these
bad choices. She met a guy who was in the army.
Of course, she's young, she's only seventeen mh. And he's
(21:10):
in his twenties in the military. He's an adult. And
she starts seeing him, and like I've always said this before,
she was just a little kid trying to play grown
up games. But she didn't know the rules and she
didn't know how to play. I think she just kind
of felt like she was being pulled in different directions.
(21:31):
It was this life that she was living now versus
the life that she was raised in, and it was
just conflicting. I think it is so important for y'all
to remember this was not a bad kid. This was
(21:51):
a kid making bad choices. This boyfriend was much older
than Tammy, and he had been in the military, and
he had about a decade on her, so you know,
he had more life experience than she did. That girl
was sheltered, she was smothered, she was cared for. She
(22:13):
did not have freedom like a lot of folks. So again,
this seems to be where Tammy's life took such a turn.
She started making decisions that weren't just poor, you know,
poor choices, they were pitiful choices. She put herself at
(22:34):
risk by some of the things she started to do.
Tammy's life goes from her making poor choices to others
helping her make dangerous decisions. You know, my parents are saying, no,
(22:55):
you have to live like this, you have to do
these things, and her friends are saying, no, you should
do it like this. And eventually it all kind of
came to a head where after weeks of rebelling and
lying to my parents and refusing to come home, and
you know, they finally gave her the ultimatum and said, look,
(23:17):
our house, our rules. If you don't want to live
by our rules, then you can't live in our house.
You can't drive our cars. It was the ultimate example
of tough love. I remember my mom giving her the
ultimatum over the phone, and we were all like, she's
going to come home. She's not stupid. She didn't come home.
(23:40):
Even the next day, my dad changed the lots on
the front door. We're like, well, you know, mom didn't
scare her. Dad's gonna scare her for sure. The next
day he's changing a lot she showed up at the
house and he's like, give me your keys. If you're
not gonna live byur rules, then get your stuff and
get out. And she did. But Damny also felt like
(24:03):
she had somewhere to go, right, yeah, because she had
this boyfriend in her ear, just come stay with me.
All your parents there, this, you're there, that, your sister,
she's this, she's that, So you can just come stay
with me. He had his own place, you know. For her,
it was it was you know, she I'm sure she
romanticized the entire idea because it was like, oh, I
(24:24):
can go live with my boyfriend and I can you know,
play house and pretend like I'm the little wife and
and you know the part of that that blows my
mind because in my head, I'm thinking, man, you bust
out at seventeen, you're living with your boyfriend in this apartment.
You are as free as you're ever gonna be. But
she went to school every single dance. That blows my
(24:48):
mind because for me, the kind of student I was, Honey,
that'd be the last building I darkened ever again. I
would be like, I'm out, I'm free. You think I'm
gonna do a you know, geometry problem. Ever, it's not
gonna happen, I know. And here she's going to school
(25:08):
every day, every day. And I think that too, was
just like that, you know, that warring that was going
on inside of her because she knew, like in her
deep down places, she knew what she was doing was wrong.
She knew, you know, the rebellion was wrong and her
choices were wrong. But she was like, but this one
(25:29):
thing I can continue to do right, So I'm gonna
do it at m Granted she rebelled. She loved my
mom and dad dearly so much that even during that
month that she was out of the house, she would
call my mom. They would Mom would take her to lunch.
You know. She was like always trying to like soothe
(25:53):
things with her and feel her out. And she told
my mom, I know I need to come home. I
know what I'm doing is wrong, but I need a
little bit more time, is what she told her. All right,
let's talk a little bit about When you and I
did talk finally on the phone, I thought there might
be a couple of things on this case we could
try that maybe the detective was not aware of that
(26:17):
was work in the case. I talked to one detective
didn't really get anywhere. And then you got a new detective. Yeah,
you called me. I'll never forget you called me and
he said we got a new detective. And I'm like,
who is it? And you said, Terra Smia. And the
(26:38):
first thing that crossed my mind is she's a mama.
She might see this whole thing a little differently. So
what did you think? So actually, the detective Smith called
me and she asked me. She told me she they
had a new cold case unit with the police department,
and she asked me some questions, and then I never
heard from her again. So I was like, well, you know,
(26:59):
I'm used to this is what I told you in
the beginning, Like we're just used to people disappointed, you know.
I mean, they try and then nothing happens. But one
day I get a phone call from my friend Lisa
and she said her granddaughter was taken some class by
another home school mom about criminal justice. Turns out it
(27:21):
was Tara. We call her detective Tara. They got to
talk in because Lisa's granddaughter said, mom my g has
a friend who's had a person, you know, her sister
was murdered. And then they got to talk in and
realized that Lisa's friend was me, and that Detective Tara
(27:43):
was the one that was actually on Tammy's case, and
that she hadn't She had been doing work on her own.
One night, she was at work and like a breeze
or something. She was standing next to somebody else's desk
and a breeze came by and like not some papers
off the desk and whatever it knocked off right there
(28:04):
underneath it was the stuff that I had given to
the other guy. And she's like, this is my case.
So when she saw my friend Lisa, she was like,
tell her to call me. So I did, and she
tells me this story and I'm like, wow, that's insane.
And then I was like, well, I've been talking to
(28:25):
this lady, and I said, why don't I uh put
you two together? Because I really wanted to see what happened,
because I was like, you know, I was getting a
good feeling, but I felt like if you could validate that.
And when you called me back and said she's awesome
and that she was all about all of the stuff
(28:48):
that you were wanting to do, the first thing she
said to me was what do you got? What can
we do. I mean, it's just been amazing since then
because she's an amazing person. I just love her. She's
an amazing person, and she's smart. She walts to do
everything she can on a case. And one of the
first things she said to me was, I'm not sure
(29:10):
how this is going to play out with our budget,
and so I got to thinking about that, and I
thought that that's gonna be our only roadblock. We gotta
move that. And that's when you and I talked, and
we reached out to Carl Marino. And I want people
to know how awesome this guy is because those of
you that are fans with Homicide Hunter, Carl Marino plays
(29:33):
the young Joe Kenda. Well, I called him and I
told him about Tammy, and I said, I've got an
idea about raising some money. His wife is also an actress.
They just make a beautiful couple. They're a sweet, dynamic,
engaging couple. And I said, if y'all come to Atlanta
(29:54):
and we do a fun thing about kind of behind
the scenes of Homicide Hunter, think people would be interested
in that, right and we could raise some money. Well,
sure enough, we did, and we raise enough money to
start the process of testing some of the things that
the scene, and again, all these things kind of lined
up because you again put yourself out there, Stacy, and
(30:17):
you call somebody you don't know. Then you call another
detective that you're not sure if they're gonna let you
down again as well. But you kept doing that, and
I think this fight that you've been in and it
is a fight to one keep the case alive because
I'm gonna tell you, for those in my world to
(30:38):
have a case that somebody seventeen years old has done
to her, what Tammy Jackson had done to her, and
I've never heard of the case, that shouldn't be. We
should all know about her. We should all be looking
around saying, hey, what can we maybe think of to
help put this case where it needs to be. And
that's in the solved column. I get asked all the time,
(31:02):
what would it mean to you for this case to
be solved? Well, I'm gonna tell you about now. It
ain't about me, but it would mean after thirty years,
Tammy Jackson finally has justice. It means after thirty years,
her family has answers, and it means, after thirty years,
(31:27):
the people of Savannah have got a killer off the street,
Why don't you talk a little bit about some of
the things that you've had to do to keep this
thing alive. When it first happened, there was a lot
of information that was coming almost on a daily basis.
You know, the detectives kept in touch with us and
(31:50):
they would say, well, we have this, and we have this,
and you know, they always sounded very hopeful. And that
went on for I don't know, two or three months,
I think, and then all of a sudden, they just
stopped calling us. We learned pretty early on that if
we were going to try to find out anything about
Tammy or keep her name at the top of people's lists,
(32:14):
that we were going to have to be the ones
to instigate and you know, ask the questions and be present,
make the appointment, show up at the police you know.
Um My mom and Tara used to go a lot.
They would go up there to see the lieutenant just
(32:34):
to say do you have anything and he would always
say no, or he would say well we're still looking
at this lead, but these are the issues or this
is where we are with it. And I couldn't even
tell you how long they did that for, but it
was always us, always here's the thing. Even when you
(32:58):
and I did the event with Carl Marino, you looked
at me at one point and you're like, this is
just so hard, Like this just takes it out of me.
So it's not like it's enjoyable for you. It's not
like you even tonight when you get off this podcast,
it's not like you're gonna go, WHOA, that was awesome. No,
I had so much fun. A matter of fact, I
(33:20):
don't want to do this. I hate doing this stuff.
I don't want to do it, and I know you
hate it. I know you hate it. And for me,
you know, it's so important that people know her. It's
important that people connect with her in some way because
you know, the more people you make care, the more
pressure that's put correctly, I think, on law enforcement, just
(33:44):
to be sure you're not gonna forget her. Well, I mean,
I know for a fact the detective you have right
now that's not the case. But I'm talking about for
the last you know, decade after decade. So I'm saying
now it's a different day, But there was a time.
No phone call, no update, no canvasing, no trying to
get new witnesses, nothing. I mean that was the status quo.
(34:08):
That's why when you said in the beginning, you said it,
and Detective Terra said, look, I'm not going to make
you any promises, but I'm gonna try. And I was,
you know, it was like in my mind, think, girl,
that was my wedding vakay, that's that's all I can do.
(34:28):
No promises, but I'm gonna try. But I was just like,
but you know, that's I mean, I'm good with that
because that's all we've you know, honestly, sometimes that's more
than what we've gotten. Well, it's all I can tell
you with my forty years experiences, Terris Smith, they're gonna
(34:49):
let that happen, and the prosecutors in Savannah Chadaw County
ain't gonna let that happen. If we get close enough,
I think it's gonna be a solid case that you're
gonna be proud of and that prayerfully if we can
get That's why I have a lot of faith in
her because even though it's gotten to the point now
where I'll go months without talking to her, Um, I'm not.
(35:12):
It's not that same feeling, it's not that same familiar well,
you know, here we go again, like I know she's
doing things, but I also know that she's crossing her
teeth and she's got in her eyes because she wants
to make sure that it's solid. And I appreciate that,
(35:33):
and that gives me a lot of patients. I have
a lot of people that contact me and they're like,
you're anything yet you know, we have the Facebook group
and I haven't posted on that and forever, because you know,
people are just like, you know, what's the latest? Do
you know anything? Like is it gone back to being cold?
And you know, I just want to say it's no.
(35:55):
I mean, it'll happen when it's supposed to happen, and
I truly, truly, truly believe that. But how do you
and I think you are closer than you have ever been.
Oh for sure, for sure, and we wouldn't have been
able to knife the white hats are coming. I just
every time I look at her, I mean, I just
know she's working, you know what I mean. She's wonderful
(36:18):
and she always told me she's always had this case.
She's I will never stop working on this case, even
if I get fired, and I never don't work for
the police anymore. She's girls like, she told me that,
and I said, wait, that's something I don't please, don't
get fired, not yet, not yet. No, But she that
(36:40):
is her, and she means if she were to get
fired tomorrow, this case files going with her. She's not stopping,
and she's too close. And when you say that, you
know she's crossing those teas and dot in those eyes.
I have rarely seen somebody work so deliberately with every
thing she does, every phone call, she understands what's going
(37:03):
to be discoverable. She understands they're gonna be looking at
her notes. She understands all of it. And she's ready,
so good, feeling ready. I'm ready to so we'll see. Well.
I appreciate you again put yourself out there talking about
this horrible event. But again I'm telling you, there's power
(37:25):
in it. The more people that think about Tammy can
send a prayer for you, your dad, Tara, the detective Tara.
I think that's important for people to think about you
all and send good vibes because I feel that too.
I can every time I watch you do a speech,
I'll watch that audience. You can feel that, and you're
(37:47):
gonna be able to feel this too. So I appreciate
you being here. I appreciate you more than you now. Again,
none of this would have happened if it weren't for you,
and I'm just so thankful for you all the time.
And like I said, even if nothing ever came from this,
nobody has cared about us the way you have, and
(38:09):
that's sweet of you to say for that. But listen, well,
I love y'all too, and we ain't done. We're gonna
have a follow up episode. I feel it, y'all. I'm
gonna end Zone seven with a quote from somebody from
my Zone seven and this is from Becky Patty, the
grandmother of Liberty German, killed in Delphi, Indiana. Becky said, listen,
(38:33):
you hear more than you realize. And I don't think
that could be truer than on Tammy's case. In the
next episode of his Zone seven, I speak with Detective
Taras Smith as we look at details of finding Tammy's
botting the pathway of this investigation and working to or
(38:53):
finding in her killer or killers. We investigate multiple potential suspects,
multiple potential motives, and we get to see firsthand how
this detective honey action oriented detective is on this case
and it's gonna solve it. I believe in my heart
(39:15):
that tariffs nil will solve this case. I'm Cheryl McCollum
and this is on seven
There is no better sound in the world to me
than a full house with all of my family here
in the laughter, singing, cheering, stories, babies, dogs, the kitchen,
and full action, listening to all the people that love me.
In this just cocktail of energy, infusion of history of
(00:31):
our events, our ancestry, while adding simultaneously memories. If just
one of us is missing, the dynamic changes. You can
literally feel one person's absence in a room of thirty
five people. I have four sisters, and it takes all
four of them to ultimately give you that intensity, that
(00:54):
liveliness of a moment for it to exist. We recently
rented a cabin and there were rooms that were private
in the basement. There was even a detached apartment, but
I wanted the room right off the kitchen and the
living room. I'm Houston, Honey, I am command Central. I
want to be right in the middle of all the action.
(01:18):
I can only imagine how Tammy Jackson's family feels every
time they're together for a special family event or just
an average day. They have to be living with the
knowledge that Tammy is not there because of murder. She
was stabbed over a hundred and thirty times. Hog tied
(01:43):
and run over by a car. She was just seventeen
years old. She thought she was grown, y'all remember that age.
Her parents knew she wasn't, her sisters knew she wasn't.
She had the whole world ahead of her. She wanted
to live at Why open and then she's not just murdered,
(02:07):
but tortured. Is there a serial killer on the loose
or did somebody who knew her shut her up? I
ain't just hanging fire here. Let's go to work. I'm
Cheryl McCollum, and this is on seven. I started my
(02:29):
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 them all, well,
(02:50):
not all of them, but most of them. I've had
the opportunity to work on hundreds of criminal cases you've
heard of and thousands that you haven't. As a working
c S I I'm not a first responder. I'm a
last responder. The unimaginable for any family is for a
(03:10):
member to be murdered. The Jackson family had such an
unbearable event. They're sweet seventeen year old daughter and sister
was stabbed and killed on Hudchison Island, Georgia. I have
four sisters. Each one is their own person. Their likes, dislikes, humor, style, talents,
(03:31):
all very different. Even our accents are slightly different. But
I know them, possibly better than anybody else. I know
the inside jokes, shared events, secrets, life changing moments. I
can anticipate how they're going to react to certain situations
and conditions. I know absolutely which one would love a
(03:53):
surprise party and which one would not. In my business,
under standing the victimology often lead you to the suspect ology.
If you can understand that victim, assess their risk factors,
understand the groups of people in their life, you can
start to narrow down the suspect pole. We must listen
(04:17):
to the people closest to them to truly understand that victim.
So our job today is not to say a seventeen
year old, but to say this seventeen year old, what
did she like, who did she love, what did she
do for fun? Why did she move out? When did
(04:41):
she go missing and did anybody report her. This is
not where we speculate. We want facts and stories. The
facts are January, construction workers found Tammy's body on Hutchinson Island,
just outside a Savanta. She had just turned seventeen a
(05:13):
month ago. She went missing at approximately ten pm. We're
not exactly sure of the actual time because this was
something fluid. A witness soar he thought something doesn't look
right about that. This is a young girl to him,
you know, even from a distance, he knew she looked young,
(05:36):
and she's leaning into a car talking to two men,
and he just felt compelled to go check on her.
So that was the first time that we know for
sure a timetable. So it's approximately ten she's last seen
on the side of the road talking to these two guys.
Then she is not seen again until workers at daybreak
(06:02):
find her body on Hudgenson Island. So from ten pm
to seven am when she has found there is a
nine hour gap that we know of where she's driven
less than seventeen miles. We know she got out of
the car on Hudgenson Island because there are footprints with
(06:25):
a natural walking gate all the way to the river's
edge and back toward the car. There's two sets of footprints.
One we know is Tammy's because she's still wearing her
shoes when she's found and it matches the impression. The
other we don't know who that belongs to. We're assuming,
(06:46):
of course, obviously the killer. There's no running footsteps like
a wide gate. There's no scuff marks, there's no drag marks,
so it would appear that she was blitz attacked at
some point. We know there were two weapons used. One
(07:08):
was a straight edge weapon, one was another type of weapon.
We know rope was used, and then we know a
vehicle was used, and that is all we really know
right now. Tammy didn't have a car, so we gotta
figure out how she got there. She didn't have a
purse or i D. We gotta figure out how this
(07:32):
crime occurred. It's important to start with the victim again,
an eleventh grader, strong family, loving parents, close sisters. She's
in a juxtaposition of being a child and a woman.
(07:52):
We've all been there, we understand. It's also important to
understand where she came from. Savannah his star at Coastal Town,
deep South Georgia. It's star at Holmes towering Live Oaks,
a river city. It's small town life with major tourism.
(08:15):
How I got this case? You might be wondering how
I got it. So I'm scrolling one night and this
little paragraph pops up and it says, seventeen year old
stabbed a hundred thirty times hudgetson Island, Georgia, and I'm like,
Hudginson Island. And I'm immediately thinking the ocean. And I'm like,
(08:37):
I've never heard of Hudgenson Island. I knew Jekyll, I
know sex Simons, etcetera. Never heard of this island. As
I read further, it said right across the Savannah River,
and I'm like, oh, it's a river island. Still hadn't
heard of it. So I looked up her grave. On
(08:59):
her gray her sister's names were listed. I had never
seen siblings names added to a gravestone. So when I
saw Stacy and Tara Jackson, it was so simple and
so sweet, but it just said beloved sister of you know,
(09:21):
Stacy and Tara, and I thought that's such a compelling
thing to have on there. And for us it turned
out to be a godsend because we were able to
locate them on social media and then offer our help,
and shockingly, I did not hear back. So I reached
out again, and her older sister, Stacy called me back.
(09:46):
We're talking about the brutal murder of Tammy Jackson, who
was stabbed, hog tied, and run over by a car. Y'all,
if you were to look at the details of this
case and the facts of this case just on paper,
and I did not tell you the age of this victim,
(10:08):
her actions, you would think she was older than she was.
She was going to bars, she was living in an apartment.
She was kind of doing as she pleased, you know,
going here and there. She knew different people, some married,
some single. She was alone with these people. She had
relationships with these men. And if you factor in a
(10:33):
month before she was murdered, she was sixteen. She had
no money, she had no car, she had no job,
she had no fake idea that anybody knew. But she
kept a diary like a child. And in that diary,
you know, she had these just idyllic dreams of this
white pick of fence was a man. She loved this child.
(10:56):
I mean, it kind of reminds me of that old
show let's make a deal where they would sometimes offer
a contestant a bicycle. I mean, it was a guarantee.
Here's a brand new bicycle. You could have this, or
you could have what's behind this shiny curtain. And Tammy
seems like the type of person to me that is
(11:17):
never going for the real deal. I don't want to bike,
I want whatever is behind that shiny curtain. It was
just too intriguing to her. And that's how I see her,
a child that's playing these adult games and the rules
are getting changed on her. Now again, I'm just saying
how I feel Tammy is coming off how I see her.
(11:42):
But there is somebody that can tell us much better
than I ever could, and I think it's time for
us to bring her sister Stacy. Stacy, welcome to Zone Heaven.
(12:03):
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. All right,
let's just start beginning. What did you think when you
got my message? Well, you can tell the truth. Tara
and I definitely collaborated behind the scenes because you know
that this You weren't the first, and since it had
been gosh well over twenty years, the case had been cold.
(12:25):
We were used to different people getting in touch with
us from time to time, and some of them were genuine,
some of them really did want to help, Others were
just looking for a story. Others were a little crazy
and just you know, putting their nose where they didn't
(12:45):
need to put it. So, yeah, we were skeptical when
we got your message and we discussed it and did
a little googling on Cheryl McCullum, and I was like, well,
I don't know, she might be somebody we want to
talk to, so so I appreciate you calling me back. Well, yes,
(13:05):
we do too, for sure. Definitely there were even times
just because you just it's with such a terrible thing
that happened and so mysterious that we were afraid to
talk to strangers to a point because even when you
and I started talking again, people came and asked me
the question that was in my mind all the time,
(13:28):
which was are you putting yourself in danger? What if
the person that came after her, because they're still out
there somewhere, I know they know who we are, are
they going to come hurt you too? But that's a
valid question, And that's a valid question for you as
a young mom and having a young child through all
(13:48):
those years. Absolutely, that's valid, and like you said, factually
the killer is still out there. Right, all, Let's talk
about your mom and dad, your church, her school. Just
tell us about Tammy. Well. Tammy is a fraternal twin.
She's three years younger than me. Born and raised in Savannah.
(14:09):
It's the only place she ever lived. You know. We
grew up in a strong Christian home, fairly uneventful. You know,
we were all good kids. We didn't really cause a
lot of trouble. And you know, other than just normal
sisters stuff, my sisters did tended getting up on me
from time to time, so there was that whole element.
(14:31):
My mom was a full time teacher. She taught math,
and my mom was a rock star to be honest,
and I, like, I didn't learn to appreciate her until
I became an adult and a mother myself, because I
was a single mom for to just one. She raised
(14:51):
three of us. My dad was still around, but he
worked on the road, so he was hardly ever home.
But she worked full time as a teacher. She raised
three girls by herself, made sure we all had meals
every single night, we all had extracurricular activities, and we
were all completely different, and my mom made it happen.
(15:15):
She was awesome. My mom used to say, if you
could raise children and they're all different, that's just good
parenting because you let them be who they are. Yeah,
Tammy was the girliest of the three of us. Tammy
was the dancer. She was you know, tiny and petite
and just cute and she had great tone and she
(15:40):
just excelled everything she did and dance that was her thing.
She loved it. She had a ton of friends. She
did she did always and you know, she was always
really good about including Tara. Know they she loved Tara.
They were just you know, obviously it's their twins. It's
a connection that I would never be able to understand.
(16:02):
But they had some friends that were separate, but for
the most part, their friends were the same. They celebrated
birthdays together and had parties together. And she was just
always funny and laughing and making jokes and making fun
of herself and um, just she was great. That's the
(16:26):
part about her that just it's so hard to reconcile
in my mind. Somebody would find something in her that
was a threat or was negative or anything like that,
because she was just always so upbeat and positive, and
everybody loved Hammy. Everybody loved Hammy. Let's talk about her
(16:47):
moving out. How did that come about? We grew up
in a strong Christian, very sheltered home. There was not
a lot of communication between our parents and us about life,
and you know what to expect, and so, you know,
(17:08):
we were going to this private Christian school and it
was awful, very cliquish, and there were the popular kids
and they were the not popular kids. And and I
wasn't a popular kid. Tary and Tammy weren't popular kids.
We didn't wear all the latest fashions and stuff. Anyway,
it kind of messes with you. And so when I
(17:30):
started high school, my mom and dad let me go
to a public school. And that was the most liberating
experience of my life. But I went crazy. I went
from one side of the spectrum to the other. And
I was like, this is awesome, you know, just I
I did it all. I did it all. And I
(17:53):
caused a lot of grief for my parents during that
period of time, but I was having a great time.
And Done or Me looked up to me, almost to
a fault, because she she copied me if I did something.
She did it. If I liked to be and she
liked to be, And if I wore a certain kind
of clothes, she wore a certain kind of clothes. If
(18:15):
I wore my hair curly, she wore her hair, you know,
that whole thing. And while I should have considered it flattering,
it annoyed me to no end. But that was just
that was what she did, and it lasted for years
and years and years. So I say all that to
say that when Tammy got to that same age, when
(18:38):
she was in high school, she also transition from that
very private, very suffocating environment, judgmental to a public school,
and she was like, hey, I see it. Now she's on,
(18:58):
you know, fixus is on to something. So she proceeded
to as usual, you know, following my footsteps. But the
thing about me and Tammy that was very different is
I was always very I had a lot of common sense.
I had a lot of street smarts. Tammy wasn't. Tammy
(19:21):
was very spontaneous. Tammy was very in the moment, and
it's like, this is great, this feels good. Let's just
do this. I'm not gonna think about what happens next.
Tammy's family lived on the outskirts of town and a beautiful,
modest neighborhood. Lots of friends. You know, they had barbecues,
(19:42):
they just had a great time. Her mom was a
geometry teacher that had just recently turned bank teller, so
she was, you know, switching jobs a little bit. Their
dad was an engineer that worked for Western House. He
was on the road all the time. Their entire childhood.
He was basically gone. And you know, Tammy's life was
(20:05):
in Middle America. Mom and dad her home. Mom and
dad stayed together. Mom and dad love each other. They're
a solid family. They go to church, they go to school,
they hang out with each other. The three siblings were very,
very close. As we know. Tammy had a twin sister, Tara,
and then an older sister, Stacy. But the three of them,
(20:28):
I mean they would seeing they were dads, you know,
just sibling stuff. There was a little bit of a
rivalry maybe sometimes with sharing clothes, and you know, I
think Stacy pretty so cute when she talked about how
Tammy wanted to be just like her um. But that's
the deal. I mean, they were just that solid family.
Every single person that knew them loved them and cared
(20:50):
about him and had nothing but wonderful things to say
about all of them. So she started to meet these
bad choices. She met a guy who was in the army.
Of course, she's young, she's only seventeen mh. And he's
(21:10):
in his twenties in the military. He's an adult. And
she starts seeing him, and like I've always said this before,
she was just a little kid trying to play grown
up games. But she didn't know the rules and she
didn't know how to play. I think she just kind
of felt like she was being pulled in different directions.
(21:31):
It was this life that she was living now versus
the life that she was raised in, and it was
just conflicting. I think it is so important for y'all
to remember this was not a bad kid. This was
(21:51):
a kid making bad choices. This boyfriend was much older
than Tammy, and he had been in the military, and
he had about a decade on her, so you know,
he had more life experience than she did. That girl
was sheltered, she was smothered, she was cared for. She
(22:13):
did not have freedom like a lot of folks. So again,
this seems to be where Tammy's life took such a turn.
She started making decisions that weren't just poor, you know,
poor choices, they were pitiful choices. She put herself at
(22:34):
risk by some of the things she started to do.
Tammy's life goes from her making poor choices to others
helping her make dangerous decisions. You know, my parents are saying, no,
(22:55):
you have to live like this, you have to do
these things, and her friends are saying, no, you should
do it like this. And eventually it all kind of
came to a head where after weeks of rebelling and
lying to my parents and refusing to come home, and
you know, they finally gave her the ultimatum and said, look,
(23:17):
our house, our rules. If you don't want to live
by our rules, then you can't live in our house.
You can't drive our cars. It was the ultimate example
of tough love. I remember my mom giving her the
ultimatum over the phone, and we were all like, she's
going to come home. She's not stupid. She didn't come home.
(23:40):
Even the next day, my dad changed the lots on
the front door. We're like, well, you know, mom didn't
scare her. Dad's gonna scare her for sure. The next
day he's changing a lot she showed up at the
house and he's like, give me your keys. If you're
not gonna live byur rules, then get your stuff and
get out. And she did. But Damny also felt like
(24:03):
she had somewhere to go, right, yeah, because she had
this boyfriend in her ear, just come stay with me.
All your parents there, this, you're there, that, your sister,
she's this, she's that, So you can just come stay
with me. He had his own place, you know. For her,
it was it was you know, she I'm sure she
romanticized the entire idea because it was like, oh, I
(24:24):
can go live with my boyfriend and I can you know,
play house and pretend like I'm the little wife and
and you know the part of that that blows my
mind because in my head, I'm thinking, man, you bust
out at seventeen, you're living with your boyfriend in this apartment.
You are as free as you're ever gonna be. But
she went to school every single dance. That blows my
(24:48):
mind because for me, the kind of student I was, Honey,
that'd be the last building I darkened ever again. I
would be like, I'm out, I'm free. You think I'm
gonna do a you know, geometry problem. Ever, it's not
gonna happen, I know. And here she's going to school
(25:08):
every day, every day. And I think that too, was
just like that, you know, that warring that was going
on inside of her because she knew, like in her
deep down places, she knew what she was doing was wrong.
She knew, you know, the rebellion was wrong and her
choices were wrong. But she was like, but this one
(25:29):
thing I can continue to do right, So I'm gonna
do it at m Granted she rebelled. She loved my
mom and dad dearly so much that even during that
month that she was out of the house, she would
call my mom. They would Mom would take her to lunch.
You know. She was like always trying to like soothe
(25:53):
things with her and feel her out. And she told
my mom, I know I need to come home. I
know what I'm doing is wrong, but I need a
little bit more time, is what she told her. All right,
let's talk a little bit about When you and I
did talk finally on the phone, I thought there might
be a couple of things on this case we could
try that maybe the detective was not aware of that
(26:17):
was work in the case. I talked to one detective
didn't really get anywhere. And then you got a new detective. Yeah,
you called me. I'll never forget you called me and
he said we got a new detective. And I'm like,
who is it? And you said, Terra Smia. And the
(26:38):
first thing that crossed my mind is she's a mama.
She might see this whole thing a little differently. So
what did you think? So actually, the detective Smith called
me and she asked me. She told me she they
had a new cold case unit with the police department,
and she asked me some questions, and then I never
heard from her again. So I was like, well, you know,
(26:59):
I'm used to this is what I told you in
the beginning, Like we're just used to people disappointed, you know.
I mean, they try and then nothing happens. But one
day I get a phone call from my friend Lisa
and she said her granddaughter was taken some class by
another home school mom about criminal justice. Turns out it
(27:21):
was Tara. We call her detective Tara. They got to
talk in because Lisa's granddaughter said, mom my g has
a friend who's had a person, you know, her sister
was murdered. And then they got to talk in and
realized that Lisa's friend was me, and that Detective Tara
(27:43):
was the one that was actually on Tammy's case, and
that she hadn't She had been doing work on her own.
One night, she was at work and like a breeze
or something. She was standing next to somebody else's desk
and a breeze came by and like not some papers
off the desk and whatever it knocked off right there
(28:04):
underneath it was the stuff that I had given to
the other guy. And she's like, this is my case.
So when she saw my friend Lisa, she was like,
tell her to call me. So I did, and she
tells me this story and I'm like, wow, that's insane.
And then I was like, well, I've been talking to
(28:25):
this lady, and I said, why don't I uh put
you two together? Because I really wanted to see what happened,
because I was like, you know, I was getting a
good feeling, but I felt like if you could validate that.
And when you called me back and said she's awesome
and that she was all about all of the stuff
(28:48):
that you were wanting to do, the first thing she
said to me was what do you got? What can
we do. I mean, it's just been amazing since then
because she's an amazing person. I just love her. She's
an amazing person, and she's smart. She walts to do
everything she can on a case. And one of the
first things she said to me was, I'm not sure
(29:10):
how this is going to play out with our budget,
and so I got to thinking about that, and I
thought that that's gonna be our only roadblock. We gotta
move that. And that's when you and I talked, and
we reached out to Carl Marino. And I want people
to know how awesome this guy is because those of
you that are fans with Homicide Hunter, Carl Marino plays
(29:33):
the young Joe Kenda. Well, I called him and I
told him about Tammy, and I said, I've got an
idea about raising some money. His wife is also an actress.
They just make a beautiful couple. They're a sweet, dynamic,
engaging couple. And I said, if y'all come to Atlanta
(29:54):
and we do a fun thing about kind of behind
the scenes of Homicide Hunter, think people would be interested
in that, right and we could raise some money. Well,
sure enough, we did, and we raise enough money to
start the process of testing some of the things that
the scene, and again, all these things kind of lined
up because you again put yourself out there, Stacy, and
(30:17):
you call somebody you don't know. Then you call another
detective that you're not sure if they're gonna let you
down again as well. But you kept doing that, and
I think this fight that you've been in and it
is a fight to one keep the case alive because
I'm gonna tell you, for those in my world to
(30:38):
have a case that somebody seventeen years old has done
to her, what Tammy Jackson had done to her, and
I've never heard of the case, that shouldn't be. We
should all know about her. We should all be looking
around saying, hey, what can we maybe think of to
help put this case where it needs to be. And
that's in the solved column. I get asked all the time,
(31:02):
what would it mean to you for this case to
be solved? Well, I'm gonna tell you about now. It
ain't about me, but it would mean after thirty years,
Tammy Jackson finally has justice. It means after thirty years,
her family has answers, and it means, after thirty years,
(31:27):
the people of Savannah have got a killer off the street,
Why don't you talk a little bit about some of
the things that you've had to do to keep this
thing alive. When it first happened, there was a lot
of information that was coming almost on a daily basis.
You know, the detectives kept in touch with us and
(31:50):
they would say, well, we have this, and we have this,
and you know, they always sounded very hopeful. And that
went on for I don't know, two or three months,
I think, and then all of a sudden, they just
stopped calling us. We learned pretty early on that if
we were going to try to find out anything about
Tammy or keep her name at the top of people's lists,
(32:14):
that we were going to have to be the ones
to instigate and you know, ask the questions and be present,
make the appointment, show up at the police you know.
Um My mom and Tara used to go a lot.
They would go up there to see the lieutenant just
(32:34):
to say do you have anything and he would always
say no, or he would say well we're still looking
at this lead, but these are the issues or this
is where we are with it. And I couldn't even
tell you how long they did that for, but it
was always us, always here's the thing. Even when you
(32:58):
and I did the event with Carl Marino, you looked
at me at one point and you're like, this is
just so hard, Like this just takes it out of me.
So it's not like it's enjoyable for you. It's not
like you even tonight when you get off this podcast,
it's not like you're gonna go, WHOA, that was awesome. No,
I had so much fun. A matter of fact, I
(33:20):
don't want to do this. I hate doing this stuff.
I don't want to do it, and I know you
hate it. I know you hate it. And for me,
you know, it's so important that people know her. It's
important that people connect with her in some way because
you know, the more people you make care, the more
pressure that's put correctly, I think, on law enforcement, just
(33:44):
to be sure you're not gonna forget her. Well, I mean,
I know for a fact the detective you have right
now that's not the case. But I'm talking about for
the last you know, decade after decade. So I'm saying
now it's a different day, But there was a time.
No phone call, no update, no canvasing, no trying to
get new witnesses, nothing. I mean that was the status quo.
(34:08):
That's why when you said in the beginning, you said it,
and Detective Terra said, look, I'm not going to make
you any promises, but I'm gonna try. And I was,
you know, it was like in my mind, think, girl,
that was my wedding vakay, that's that's all I can do.
(34:28):
No promises, but I'm gonna try. But I was just like,
but you know, that's I mean, I'm good with that
because that's all we've you know, honestly, sometimes that's more
than what we've gotten. Well, it's all I can tell
you with my forty years experiences, Terris Smith, they're gonna
(34:49):
let that happen, and the prosecutors in Savannah Chadaw County
ain't gonna let that happen. If we get close enough,
I think it's gonna be a solid case that you're
gonna be proud of and that prayerfully if we can
get That's why I have a lot of faith in
her because even though it's gotten to the point now
where I'll go months without talking to her, Um, I'm not.
(35:12):
It's not that same feeling, it's not that same familiar well,
you know, here we go again, like I know she's
doing things, but I also know that she's crossing her
teeth and she's got in her eyes because she wants
to make sure that it's solid. And I appreciate that,
(35:33):
and that gives me a lot of patients. I have
a lot of people that contact me and they're like,
you're anything yet you know, we have the Facebook group
and I haven't posted on that and forever, because you know,
people are just like, you know, what's the latest? Do
you know anything? Like is it gone back to being cold?
And you know, I just want to say it's no.
(35:55):
I mean, it'll happen when it's supposed to happen, and
I truly, truly, truly believe that. But how do you
and I think you are closer than you have ever been.
Oh for sure, for sure, and we wouldn't have been
able to knife the white hats are coming. I just
every time I look at her, I mean, I just
know she's working, you know what I mean. She's wonderful
(36:18):
and she always told me she's always had this case.
She's I will never stop working on this case, even
if I get fired, and I never don't work for
the police anymore. She's girls like, she told me that,
and I said, wait, that's something I don't please, don't
get fired, not yet, not yet. No, But she that
(36:40):
is her, and she means if she were to get
fired tomorrow, this case files going with her. She's not stopping,
and she's too close. And when you say that, you
know she's crossing those teas and dot in those eyes.
I have rarely seen somebody work so deliberately with every
thing she does, every phone call, she understands what's going
(37:03):
to be discoverable. She understands they're gonna be looking at
her notes. She understands all of it. And she's ready,
so good, feeling ready. I'm ready to so we'll see. Well.
I appreciate you again put yourself out there talking about
this horrible event. But again I'm telling you, there's power
(37:25):
in it. The more people that think about Tammy can
send a prayer for you, your dad, Tara, the detective Tara.
I think that's important for people to think about you
all and send good vibes because I feel that too.
I can every time I watch you do a speech,
I'll watch that audience. You can feel that, and you're
(37:47):
gonna be able to feel this too. So I appreciate
you being here. I appreciate you more than you now. Again,
none of this would have happened if it weren't for you,
and I'm just so thankful for you all the time.
And like I said, even if nothing ever came from this,
nobody has cared about us the way you have, and
(38:09):
that's sweet of you to say for that. But listen, well,
I love y'all too, and we ain't done. We're gonna
have a follow up episode. I feel it, y'all. I'm
gonna end Zone seven with a quote from somebody from
my Zone seven and this is from Becky Patty, the
grandmother of Liberty German, killed in Delphi, Indiana. Becky said, listen,
(38:33):
you hear more than you realize. And I don't think
that could be truer than on Tammy's case. In the
next episode of his Zone seven, I speak with Detective
Taras Smith as we look at details of finding Tammy's
botting the pathway of this investigation and working to or
(38:53):
finding in her killer or killers. We investigate multiple potential suspects,
multiple potential motives, and we get to see firsthand how
this detective honey action oriented detective is on this case
and it's gonna solve it. I believe in my heart
(39:15):
that tariffs nil will solve this case. I'm Cheryl McCollum
and this is on seven
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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