US After months of erratic behavior, Tammy Lynn Leppert, who had won 280 crowns in beauty pageants, disappeared in 1983, leaving behind a decades-long mystery.
Tammy Lynn Leppert was born in 1965 in Rockledge, Florida. Starting her pageant career at the age of 4, Tammy won 280 crowns in nearly 300 different competitions, paving the way for a modeling career. The blonde appeared on the cover of Covergirl in October 1978.
Tammy’s mother, Linda Curtis, supported her daughter wholeheartedly by acting as her manager, busily taking her daughter everywhere.
In 1980, Tammy had a small, uncredited role in Little Darlings, marking her first appearance in a Hollywood film. She had another uncredited role in the teen film Spring Break in 1983.
The filming of Spring Break went smoothly, but a party held for the cast afterward seemed to have taken a toll on Tammy. Those close to her said she became paranoid and withdrawn.
Tammy’s close friend Wing Flannagan said the model would come home from the party “like a different person”. “Sometimes I would ask her what was on her mind, if anything was bothering her. But she would change the subject or say, ‘Oh, nothing,’ and try to laugh it off,” Wing said.
Linda also noticed her daughter’s worrying behavior. Tammy once asked, “Mommy, what would you say if I told you someone was trying to kill me?” “I took a deep breath and said, ‘Do you think someone is trying to kill you, Tammy?’ She said, ‘Yes,'” Linda recalled.
Despite her unstable mental state, Tammy continued to pursue her career in Hollywood. In 1983, she went on to play a small role in the hit film Scarface. However, Tammy returned home after only four days of filming. Walter Liebowitz, a friend who was with Tammy during the filming of Scarface, said he received a call from the casting director saying that Tammy had collapsed on set. “They said they were shooting a scene where someone gets shot and fake blood is spraying out. But when they saw the scene, Tammy started crying hysterically, and it was so bad that they had to put her in a car to rest,” Walter said.
In the weeks after leaving the Scarface set, Tammy’s paranoia and anxiety became more severe, sometimes refusing to eat or drink for fear of being poisoned.
On July 1, 1983, Tammy smashed a window with a baseball bat and attacked her best friend Wing Flannagan. Linda took her to a specialist.
Tammy received medical care for three days and was discharged. The report did not indicate any drug or alcohol abuse or illness. But according to Linda, Tammy still seemed stressed, insisting that she had “seen something terrible that she shouldn’t have seen” at a Spring Break cast party. Tammy refused to say exactly what she had seen, only repeatedly stating that “they” would come for her.
On July 6, 1983, Tammy disappeared.
That day, she did not comb her hair before leaving the house – which Linda thought was unusual. Tammy then went out with a male friend, who was the last person to see her.
He said they had an argument, and he dropped Tammy off near the old Glass Bank building in Cocoa Beach, Florida, at her request. The building is about five miles from Tammy’s home. Surveillance cameras later captured her standing alone in a nearby parking lot. Tammy then walked to a nearby pay phone, possibly at a gas station, and attempted to call her aunt and a friend multiple times. Unable to reach them, she left several “urgent” messages before disappearing without a trace.
Tammy was last seen wearing a blue denim skirt and a blue floral shirt, carrying a gray bag and wearing sandals. Some accounts say she was barefoot just before she disappeared.
Linda claimed her daughter was “afraid” of the male friend who picked her up and dropped her off alone that day, leading many to question him. However, he was never officially considered a suspect by police and no charges were ever filed against him.
The police investigation led to a man named Christopher Wilder, nicknamed the “Beauty Queen Killer,” responsible for several murders of young women in 1984 (some of them in Florida). He would lure his victims into his car or home under the pretense of recruiting models for photo shoots or fashion shows. This tactic is believed to have convinced Tammy to follow him.
In April 1984, Christopher died in a shootout with police in New Hampshire. Authorities have not found any concrete evidence linking him to Tammy’s disappearance.
John Brennan Crutchley, nicknamed the “Vampire Rapist,” was another potential suspect who was also committing crimes in Florida around the time of Tammy’s disappearance, but police had difficulty connecting him to Tammy.
Linda theorized that her daughter knew “too much” about the local drug trade and was killed by a gang to keep the secret. Tammy is said to have mentioned “money laundering” during a fit of rage, perhaps implying that she was involved with a criminal organization or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
However, these theories were never confirmed. Linda died in 1995, and decades later, the mystery of Tammy’s disappearance remains unsolved.