On the afternoon of August 23, 1992, a white 1985 Pontiac T1000 with New Jersey plates sat abandoned on the shoulder of Interstate 80 near Utica, Illinois. Its driver, 21-year-old Grinnell College senior Tammy Zywicki, had been on her way back to school after dropping her brother at college in Evanston. Witnesses reported a tractor-trailer pulled up beside the car between 3:10 and 4:00 p.m. Nine days later, on September 1, Tammy was found along Interstate 44 in rural Lawrence County, Missouri — nearly 500 miles away.
Her Canon 35mm camera, a Lorus musical wristwatch that played “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” and a one-year St. Giles Soccer Club patch from Greenville, South Carolina were missing and have never been recovered. The case file holds more than 200 pieces of physical evidence. No one has ever been charged.
The full video covers who Tammy Zywicki was, the drive toward Grinnell and where the car broke down, the tractor-trailer and driver description the FBI has published since 1992, the discovery in Missouri, the drivers questioned and cleared over the years, the family’s decades of advocacy, the single DNA profile that has never matched anyone, the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative, and the August 23, 2026 Illinois State Police / FBI announcement of a new lead and evidence retesting.
If you have any information about Tammy Zywicki’s murder, the Illinois State Police ask that you call (815) 726-6377 or 1-800-CALL-FBI, or leave a tip at isptips.illinois.gov. Tips can remain anonymous. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the identification of the person or persons responsible.
Sources
Illinois State Police, August 23, 2026 public assistance release; FBI Seeking Information poster for Tammy J. Zywicki; FBI’s 2017 25th-anniversary feature on the case; and contemporaneous news coverage.
Related reading
No well-reviewed book has been written about this case specifically. The closest genuinely relevant read is Frank Figliuzzi’s “Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers” (4.1 stars, 1,100+ ratings) — a former FBI assistant director on the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative, the program built for exactly this kind of interstate case.
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