AND SO HE RUNS

First posted September 16th, 2009

On early Wednesday morning, Sept. 23, 1992, Rick Kuchta of Yankton was searching for golf balls in the ravine across from the Lakeview Community Golf Course on Nebraska Highway 121 when he stumbled upon Tammy’s body.¹

Law enforcement arrived, and so began a homicide investigation. When Eric Stukel learned that day at school that Tammy’s body had been discovered, he ran from the building never to return.²

The police were coming through one door: Stukel ran out another. That night, instead of offering condolences to Tammy’s family or being with his own family, Eric Stukel and friends Jason Adamson and Dusty List traveled nearly halfway across the state to stay at a family cabin near Gregory, South Dakota. The reason they spent the night there was, according to List, to “eat a good steak and drink a few cold beers” and not to visit with a family lawyer about the current situation.

Which was what?

At this point, nobody knew a homicide had taken place…other than the people who were involved in that homicide. For all Stukel should have known, Tammy just left his house (after her most likely time of death)³ and vanished.

The news should have come as a total shock to him that Tammy was dead.

Shocked by the news of Tammy’s death, I hopped on a flight and returned to Yankton from Boot Camp in Fort Benning, Georgia. If I had known that she was missing or that she was in any sort of trouble, I would have gone AWOL days earlier.

The rest of Tammy’s friends came home from their respective colleges when they heard the news. Our instincts were to get home as fast as we could. We mourned. We did not party.

Oddly enough, Stukel and his party pals’ instincts were to run the other direction.   

The police came through one door: Stukel ran out the other.

WORKS CITED

1. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Testimony Begins In Stukel Trial.” Yankton Press and Dakotan. Sept. 27th, 1996.

2. Rothenzl, Lorna. “Stukel Jury Recesses Until Today.” Yankton Press and Dakotan. Oct. 5th, 1996.

3. Rothanzl, Lorna. “Experts Testify in Stukel Trial.”  Yankton Press and Dakotan, Oct. 1, 1996