@Steelslady
Yes, these are all valid points that you raise. I don't think Victor had been in NH for very long before Tammy's abduction. He was sentenced in late August of 1984 for night prowling and served 30 days in jail. He subsequently returned to NH. Probably because he knew he was in violation of his parole. I'm a bit confused about this point. Apparently, he was in Florida without permission. His parole officer got him the job in Exeter. The reason his parole was ultimately revoked and he was sent back to prison in NH was because of that night prowling charge. I'm not certain what he was doing during the month of October. The records show he was at Southwind Motor Inn from November 2nd to about the 20th. That seems to correlate with his employment at Brad's Auto Body on Main Street. The Auto Body shop was about a block away from Lincoln St. school. And about a 3 minute drive away from Tammy’s house. He wouldn’t have to drive past her house but he could’ve followed her home from school. We also know that he liked to cruise around.
I share some of your hesitation. I’ll put it to you this way about Victor Wonyetye, I’m 85 % convinced that he is the one. There are just a few nagging points that bother me. He wasn’t a world-class criminal. I’ve tracked his record back to the late 50s. The reason I could was because he was always getting caught. The idea that a guy who couldn’t steal a carton of cigarettes without getting arrested could go on to abduct two children in broad daylight and leave nary a forensic trace... well, it’s not impossible but it’s difficult to buy. The Exeter PD are convinced he’s the one. I have to think they know far more than me about it. The police in Florida have a total of 5 suspects, including Wonyetye.
His parole officer notified Exeter P.D. within two days of Tammy’s abduction. Investigators were questioning the manager of the Southwind Motor Inn in Rye within a week and searching the grounds. The FBI was also questioning him at this time and tearing apart his car. They ultimately tested about 40 items. He was arrested a little over two weeks after Tammy’s abduction and his parole was revoked and he was returned to prison until ‘91. Then he was rearrested about 6 months later in Florida and was imprisoned until 2012. He died 6 months later.
According to my research in 76% of the murders of an abducted child, the child was dead within 3 hours. 89 % are dead within 24 hours.
In 1985, the Exeter chief of police thought he had enough to take to the grand jury for an indictment against Wonyetye in Tammy's abduction. They felt that they had discovered some evidence that was related to the receipt of stolen goods and felt this linked him to Tammy. I believe there was a charge on those stolen goods. I’m not sure yet what became of this. I know the FBI found no linkage between the items tested and Tammy. And he was never charged for Tammy or Christy’s abduction.
It seems clear that Victor did not have a lot of time to clean up or hide Tammy's body. It's likely he had about 48 hours before he was on anyone's radar. Now we know Tammy's parents didn’t know that she hadn’t been to school until about 3:30-4pm, when Patricia called her sister-in-law whose child was in Tammy’s class. That would give an abductor a good 7-8 hour head start. (Unfortunately, a very similar scenario occurred in Christy’s abduction.) Keep in mind that Wonyetye was seen by his parole officer at some point that day--where and when I'm not sure, yet. At that time the Rockingham county seat and courts were in Exeter but his parole officer might have met him elsewhere. The charges he was on parole for were from Strafford County. And if my research is not mistaken he was at work the following day. He was scheduled to be into work on the day of Tammy’s abduction at about Noon. There is some confusion as to when and where he called in. I have found some information that he called in sick to work at about 9:30am while he was in the town of Exeter. Maybe he was seeing his parole officer at about this time. If Tammy was abducted at a little past 8am… well, that timeline could work out for the abduction at least. Nonetheless, I have not confirmed this yet.
But taking this all into consideration it doesn't appear that Wonyetye had a lot of time to hide Tammy’s body. The notion that he put her in a car that was then crushed seems very far-fetched to me. Yes, he worked at an autobody shop—as a painter—that doesn’t mean he had any access to scrapyards. The idea that he had time to get on a boat into the Atlantic seems far-fetched, also. If we’ve thought of it, the FBI thought of it.
I think maybe, sometimes, we want to see complexity where there isn’t any. We want to believe that the way Tammy’s body was hidden was very clever—something out of a Dorothy Sayers novel—but just consider Bear Brook. There was nothing especially sophisticated about the way that Rasmussen hid those bodies. It just came down to chance and circumstance and a hunter stumbling upon a barrel—and then looking into it. How many people had walked past that same barrel and ignored it? And the other barrel might still not have been discovered if it wasn't for the tenacity and luck of an investigator 15 years later!
Of course, this doesn't mean Wonyetye had no time to hide her, it just means he had very little time and he had to be very thorough in his cleanup. It could be that he had help. There are rumors about another person seeing Tammy in his car. I don’t know how much credit to give to these rumors because they seemed to be traced to one website and I cannot be certain where this person’s information is coming from. The lack of forensics is troubling but not totally unheard of. It’s not particularly common for there to be slam-dunk forensics.
Also, it was November when Tammy went missing and it was very cold at night. In fact, the first night she was gone there was freezing rain. Within a few weeks deep snow was on the ground. These are factors that could also play into body disposal.
A couple of other points to keep in mind: Chief Caracciolo in Exeter said that several sources reported seeing a suspicious blue vehicle in the area around the school on the morning of Tammy’s disappearance. One of the last times Christy Luna was seen in Florida she was talking to a man in a faded blue car. Victor Wonyetye owned a blue car. However, the eyewitnesses in Florida described the man as Hispanic and between 5’6” and 5’8” tall. But Victor was of Romanian heritage and did landscaping at a golf course in the Florida sun. Pictures of him at that time show he had dark hair. He was 6’1” tall. Eyewitnesses in Exeter failed to pick out Wonyetye in a police lineup. One person actually picked someone else. Also there were hoax reports in Exeter at that time about an eyewitness seeing a little girl being forced into a blue car with Florida license plates. That was completely false and it was very painful to Tammy’s family. Blue is not an uncommon car color. My family owns a pale blue car. So do my neighbors.
I'm really hoping to get a better sense of Wonyetye's psychopathology. It's frustrating because when I find one item of information that seems to be indicative of his guilt, I find another that seems to contradict it.
There are certain aspects of his past that stick out to me. His father was an alcoholic and physically abusive. His mother was cold, demanding, and disapproving of Victor. That’s almost a cliché. He has a long criminal record that includes breaking and entering, night prowling, voyeurism, and sexual assault against a minor.
But Marjorie Luna and Tammy were abducted when Wonyetye was 41. That seems comparatively late to start murdering. There might be a reason for why this is the case, though. Just simply the amount of time he spent institutionalized—between reform school, jail, and prison he didn't have a lot of time to develop as a predator. Also he had no time to continue because of the time he was in prison after the two abductions.
The fact that he was an avid, almost compulsive voyeur is deeply troubling to me. He had to know that the police were tailing him. But he kept on peeping into windows and masturbating. He kept approaching little girls. He kept trolling public parks. When he was arrested for night prowling in 1984 the house was occupied by a single woman and her three young daughters.
The research literature links peeping tom behavior with violent sexual crime--usually that behavior is a part of a pattern of escalation. But there's no reason to think that voyeurism and murder could not occur concurrently in the same individual—especially one incarcerated as much as Victor.
I have also confirmed that Victor WOULD get fixated on certain girls and follow them home from school. He kept returning to the same two houses that had young girls in Lake Worth over a period of weeks when he was being surveilled by police in 1991. That confirms one of my suspicions about Tammy's abduction. Wonyetye could have targeted and stalked her. The circumstances could have been right on that particular morning.
My feeling, based upon my familiarity with Exeter now, is that if she was taken by force and in a car it had to be somewhere on either South St. or Court St. and she was taken south on rt. 108 towards Kensington, the warren of backroads, and possibly Massachusetts. She was only on Court St. for about .1 miles. That’s like 200 paces. It just doesn’t make sense that an abductor would have or could have taken her on Elm St. and then headed into the traffic in town. Going into the town of Exeter at that time one would find stop and go traffic around the Academy and Water St.
I’ve also wondered about whether there could’ve been a second person—maybe behind the wheel, while the person who grabbed her controlled her in the backseat. Or... maybe it was someone who Tammy knew. Maybe they lived in a house along the route. Maybe they were able to lure her into a car.
I lived in Exeter for several years as an adult and work in the area quite often. What has always struck me about the area Tammy was taken was how unlikely a spot it was for a stranger abduction. If someone was organized enough to plan and to follow a kid, they’d be organized enough to do it in an area where they were least likely to be observed. From my research, well over 50% of kids at that time walked to school in Exeter. And while the population has grown, it hasn’t grown THAT much. And the vast majority of the houses in that area were there at that time.
I actually just walked Tammy’s route yesterday. It took me about 5 minutes to walk from her house to the corner of Elm St. I will say this about that area, at certain times of the day it is a ghost town. At other times, it’s not. I've inserted a photo I took at the corner of River St. and South St. You can get a feel for how isolated it can be. The far end is Court St. However, this photo was taken at about 11:30 AM. And there were two different people working in their yards on River St.
I’ve been in discussions with a man who lived in Exeter at that time and went to school with Tammy. He was also 8-years-old in 1984. He lived on Court St. and walked to school. He would often see Tammy on Elm St. He also is shocked that anyone could abduct a kid there because many of them walked in groups or in eyeshot of one another.
Clearly there are certain reasons to like Victor Wonyetye for this crime. And there are reasons to have reservations. Exeter P.D. called Lake Worth P.D. in 1984 after Wonyetye was on their radar, that's how they learned about the Luna abduction in bordering Greenacres. The only reason Wonyetye became a major suspect in Exeter was because of the Florida abduction. The only reason he became a suspect in Florida was because of the NH abduction. If one case falls, the other case seems significantly weaker. Greenacres named a new suspect in Christy’s abduction in 2013—Delbert Mosher. They are obviously not settled on Victor Wonyetye. Unfortunately, NH never developed other suspects. If they did, they haven’t named them. This could be because Victor was the one. And they had enough evidence to know it but the evidence wasn’t strong enough for the A.G. to sign off on it. It could be they have another suspect and they don’t want to tip that person off. I have also wondered about the Academy and so have a few other people I’ve discussed the case with. I just don’t know. There are problems with this, too.
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