First posted September 7, 2009
There was some early speculation by members of law enforcement that somebody had returned to the ravine between the interim of the disposal of Tammy’s body and its discovery to make it look like Tammy was raped and murdered in some sort of random, serial type of attack.
How do I know this? Many of Tammy’s friends were questioned by law enforcement, including me. The nature of the questions caused much confusion.
The public record on the investigation in those early days goes as follows:
“(Capt. Dave) Winkler (officer in charge of the investigation for the Nebraska Highway Patrol) said that it is possible that the victim was killed elsewhere and placed in the ditch, which is a steep ravine leading into a wooded area. At the bottom of the ravine is a flat area — possibly an old dry creek bed — where the body was found. It is also unknown if the victim was raped, Winkler said. He said he was not allowed to say if the victim was clothed, but he said her clothes and identification at least were found near the body.”5
According to the Cedar County Sheriff: “Haas died of a broken neck, and her body was thrown in a ravine, made to look like she’d been raped.”9
If somebody were trying to make it look like Tammy was raped, why would they leave bodily fluids (not semen, just urine) on her underwear that could possibly implicate them?4
If Stukel’s story about Tammy walking home after leaving his parents’ house was true, and considering his version of events when he and Tammy arrived at work, why was gravity seemingly not at work on any bodily fluids while Tammy was making that long walk?6
According to the prosecution, “There was no indication of sexual assault or theft — the kinds of things you would expect when abducted by a stranger.”2
Why didn’t the attacker(s) steal items from her purse?1
Why didn’t the attacker(s) rip her clothing and instead just pull down her pants?1
Though Tammy did have apparent assault wounds on her body, none of the signs of a forcible rape were present, nor were there signs of a manufactured rape, save perhaps her pants being pulled down1,2,3 — but that last part most likely has a different explanation.
In the end, for us to understand this crime, the question must be answered, who returned to the ravine and why?
Again, according to the Cedar County Sheriff: “Haas died of a broken neck, and her body was thrown in a ravine, made to look like she’d been raped.”9
Maybe someone made it to look like she’d been raped as a conscious decision to foil law enforcement, but I do not think so…because one striking piece of evidence seems to contradict the last part of this “made to look like she’d been raped” theory and reveal the true state of mind of the person or persons returning to the ravine in the days following Tammy’s death.
Tammy was wearing a watch before she died.1 According to testimony delivered during Eric Stukel’s preliminary hearing by Det. Ron Hilleges, the strap of that watch had broken and the pin that held the strap to the watch had disappeared at some point before her body reached the ravine.1
This watch pin never materialized despite an extensive search of County 121 above the ravine, in the area surrounding the guardrail, and along the ravine bottom and across the slope of the ravine.1,2
What was so peculiar about the broken watch was its placement on the body: though its strap was broken and its pin was missing, the watch was placed neatly across Tammy’s wrist.1
In other words, somebody would have had to have placed the watch back on her wrist after her body came to a rest at the bottom of the ravine.1
Quoted from the Press and Dakotan: “Investigators also discovered a missing pin on the wrist band of Haas’ watch. Her watch had been placed around her wrist at the site of her placement (in the ravine), indicating another person had come down to her resting place.”1
Would this act, replacing the watch, have been part of someone deliberately making Tammy look like she had been raped?
I doubt it.
Did anybody even follow Tammy down to the bottom of the ravine on the night she died?
I doubt this too.
Tammy’s shoes and purse had been cast into the ravine from some distance.1,2,3
These objects were not placed. They were thrown. Her body was not hidden. It remained where it had come to a stop right at the bottom of the ravine.1,2,3
Tammy’s body came to a rest at the bottom of the ravine before livor mortis, within a half hour or so after her death.1,2,3,4
I believe the actors on the night Tammy died acted in haste.
But removing the pants and replacing the watch seems something entirely different.
Considering the darkness of the ravine floor on that quarter-moon night, as well as the thickness of foliage on the ravine floor below, as well as the condition of the purse and shoes, tossed down from somewhere upon the slope, all of this happening in one night is possible, but not likely.1,2,3,4
The initial act, discarding the body, shoes, and purse seems to have been done in haste.
Replacing the watch and pulling down the pants seems secondary to the initial act of disposing the body, meaning those two acts happened at a different date and time.
In 1992, cell phones with flashlights did not exist. Maybe teenagers carried flashlights with them when going to homecoming parties to drink beer and smoke pot, but I seriously doubt this.
Tammy’s body was at the foot of the slope of the ravine, but her body was not well hidden.
More likely, somebody returned during daylight hours, on a later date, when the sense of urgency of disposing of a body had passed.
In either case, returning a watch with a broken watch strap to the victim’s body does not appear to be the act of a stranger committing forcible rape and homicide.
How did the watch break in the first place? One might consider the wounds on Tammy’s hands and arms as a reasonable explanation.1,2,3,4
In other words, the watch could easily have broken while Tammy was trying to deflect blows of an attacker.
Now we must return to one of our first questions: why did Eric Stukel say he took Tammy home to make love to her?
Was he afraid law enforcement would find something to implicate him to Tammy’s death at the crime scene?
What evidence would be at the crime scene to implicate Eric Stukel? Possibly urine matching his rare type on her underwear?4 Meaning what exactly? Her pants appeared to have been pulled down after she arrived at the bottom of the ravine.1,2,3,4 Meaning what exactly?
Though the urine on Tammy’s pants did not match Stukel’s type, the urine on the back of her underwear did.4 Type A Non-secretors make up only a small portion of the populace. Eric Stukel just happens to fall into this small portion.4
Did Stukel anticipate questions about the condition of the body when speaking to law enforcement or was he forced to stick with the story he first concocted when Tammy’s friends and family started asking him about Tammy’s apparent disappearance on Saturday, September 19th, 1992, a day and a half after her death?
Did Stukel tell Tammy’s friends and family that she left his house sometime between 12:30 and 1 a.m., without realizing that his story would be invalidated by the physical evidence? (See the post: “The Three Fibers.”)
We know somebody likely did come back to the ravine, but the evidence indicates they didn’t bother tampering with her shoes or purse, which were in a different location than the body. Whoever did return to the ravine seemed only focused on the body itself.1
But what about those shoes and purse — were they dusted for prints?
If any prints were recovered from the shoes or purse, law enforcement and the prosecution didn’t make a case out of this evidence. Had there been any prints from an unknown assailant on the purse or shoes — prints not matching Eric Stukel’s — the defense most definitely would have had their case for reasonable doubt and the implication of another suspect to the crime.
Eric Stukel’s fingerprints on Tammy’s purse and shoes wouldn’t have been so unusual, were he her killer or not, as Tammy had been with him that night…but somebody else’s prints found on the shoes, the purse, or the watch?
Prints from another suspect would have been a boon for the defense.
Because there were no known prints found on these items, can we assume that somebody wiped the shoes and purse before tossing them into the ravine? Can we suppose that somebody had wiped their prints from the watch before placing it around Tammy’s wrist?
Maybe, maybe not. Evidence gathering is a little more complex in the real world than television procedurals would make it seem.
Making suppositions based upon an absence of evidence is always dangerous, but in this case — knowing the body was transported and dumped into the ravine, knowing the condition of Tammy’s body, the wounds that killed her — supposing that fingerprints had been wiped from Tammy’s belongings might be a safe bet.
Latent fingerprint technology has advanced in the past decade or so, as has DNA technology. Assuming these articles belonging to Tammy were not compromised over the years, could there possibly be a chance of finding latent fingerprints or trace DNA on these key pieces of evidence? What would happen if forensic analysis of these items revealed DNA belonging to somebody other than Eric Stukel or Tammy?
On April 13, 2021, the FBI held a press conference. Law enforcement still cares about this case7 even though nearly twenty-nine years have passed.
Eric Stukel’s exoneration (if he is truly 100% innocent, as his lawyer has proclaimed) could possibly come through a more thorough examination of the articles of clothing found at the crime scene. Twenty-nine years would be ample time to conduct these tests.
If other fingerprints could be uncovered through latent fingerprint detection or if trace DNA could be found on her underwear, her purse, her shoes, that are not Eric Stukel’s, another suspect could suddenly appear.
What are the chances of finding latent fingerprints on Tammy’s belongings, not belonging to Eric Stukel? If Eric Stukel had help covering up Tammy’s homicide, does this become a distinct possibility? To this date, nobody else has been arrested for crimes surrounding Tammy’s death.
What about DNA? Whether he concocted his alibi with deliberate intent or not, Stukel did cover his bases by saying he and Tammy did have sex on both Wednesday and Thursday night. In other words, law enforcement was expecting to find fluids matching his type through the use of a rape kit, just as they did, where they did.4
But consider…if any DNA matching another suspect could be identified through a reexamination of the rape kit or by reexamining Tammy’s clothing or belongings, the house of cards built upon the presumption of Eric Stukel’s guilt would suddenly crumble.
That said, no other evidence at the crime scene or during the autopsy, linking any other person to Tammy’s body, seems to have emerged. No known fingerprints, no known hair fibers, no known fluids — except the urine on the back of Tammy’s pants, which can be explained quite logically by somebody at the Stephenson party urinating into Stukel’s opened car window just after 11:30 pm on homecoming eve (See the post “A Practical Joke Gone Wrong?“)
Eric Stukel told a friend the day before Tammy’s body was discovered that for all he knew “she was dead in a ditch or field.”1,8
When that same friend asked Stukel if he was worried they would find anything in his impounded car, Stukel said, “No, they shouldn’t find anything. I cleaned it out real good.”8
Those words are telling.
WORKS CITED
1. Rothanzl, Lorna. “New Clues Revealed: Sufficient Evidence Binds Stukel Over To District Court.” Yankton Press and Dakotan. Oct. 31, 1995
2. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Testimony Begins in Stukel Trial.” Yankton Press and Dakotan, Sept. 27, 1996
3. Rothanzl, Lorna. “More Evidence Offered In Stukel Trial.” Yankton Press and Dakotan, Sept. 28, 1996
4. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Experts Testify in Stukel Trial.” Yankton Press and Dakotan, Oct. 1, 1996
5. Anderson, Dan. “Clues sought in Tammy Haas’ death.” Yankton Press and Dakotan. Sept. 24, 1992
6. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Stukel Takes Stand: Prosecution Rests, Stukel Denies Knowledge Of Death.” Yankton Press and Dakotan, Oct. 3, 1996
7. Rothenzl, Lorna. “Law Officers Agree Sole Suspect Was Right Man.” Yankton Press and Dakotan, October 7, 1996.
8. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Friends Testify at Stukel Trial.” Yankton Press and Dakotan. Oct. 2, 1996
9. News Staff: “Jurors: Evidence was lacking in Stukel case.” Cedar County News. Oct. 1996
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