The beauty from ‘The Face with the Scars’ disappeared 42 years ago: Mom, I saw something terrible!

Was on July 6, 1983 when 18-year-old Tammy Lynn Leppert, A young beauty on the threshold of a promising model and acting career, disappeared from Coco Beach in Florida. Her disappearance followed after months of strange behavior and intense paranoia that someone wanted to hurt her, and even after more than four decades, the mystery was not dismissed.

Tammy Lynn Leppert, born in 1965 in Rockkledge, Florida, seemed destined for stars. Her path to the world of glamor began at the age of four, when she began to participate in beauty competitions.

A series of success in beauty elections was impressive; Tammy has won as many as 280 crowns over the years in almost 300 competitions she participated in. This success naturally led her to modeling. As early as 1978, as a teenager, she adorned the cover of the prestigious Covergirl magazine. She supported her early career because she also directed her mother, Linda Curtiswho worked as an agent for actresses and models.

Over time, Tammy Lynn Leppert began to get roles in Hollywood films. In 1980, she played a small, unsigned role in « Little Darlinges ». Another unsigned role followed in the 1983 teenage film « Spring Break ».

The shooting of « Spring Break » was smooth, but the party was organized for the cast after the shoot, she left, it seems, a deep mark on Tammy. Her closest noticed that after the party she became a « other person » – paranoid and withdrawn.

« Sometimes I would ask her what’s on her mind, if she was bothering her. » And she would usually change the topic or say, ‘Nothing,’ you know, and then tried to get it away with laughter – he said Wing Flannaganher close friend.

Her mother Linda also noticed her daughter’s worrying behavior.

– She once told me, ‘Mom, what would you tell you to tell you that someone was trying to kill me? Curtis recalled. –

– I just took a deep breath and said, ‘Do you think someone is trying to kill you, Tammy? She said: Yes, ”her mother added.

In 1983, she appeared in a small but memorable role in the cult movie « Face with Scars » Briana Depalme. where she starred a girl in a bikini that distracted the actor’s attention Steven Bauer During the famous scene with a chainsaw. However, she returned home four days after the start of the shoot.

Scene from ‘Face with Scars’. Steven Bauer and Tammy Lynn Leppert |

– I received a call from the production, they told me that Tammy had a breakdown on the set during the scene where someone was supposed to be shot. She sprayed artificial blood. They said that Tammy, looking at the scene, began to cry hysterically and became so bad that they had to take her to the trailer – he told the US media Walter Liebowitza family friend she stayed with during filming.

Tammy’s anxiety was just getting worse. Sometimes she refused to eat or drink for fear of being poisoned. On the first of July 1983, just a few days before the disappearance, she broke the windows of her house with a baseball bat – supposedly in panic fear because she was locked outside – and even attacked her friend Wing Flannagan. Her mother took her to the doctors for an expert assessment. Tammy was retained at 72 hours, but the medical report did not show evidence of drug or alcohol abuse or visible disease. Still, according to her mother, Tammy was still nervous, insisting that « she saw something terrible, which she shouldn’t have seen » at the party after filming « Spring Break ». She refused to find out exactly what she saw, she just kept saying that they would « come for her ».

On July 6, 1983, Tammy left the house without combing her hair, which, according to her mother, was completely unusual for her. She went with a male friend, later identified as Keith Robertswho was the last person to see her alive. He told police that they had quarreled while driving from her home in Rockkledge. He claimed that after she allegedly asked her to leave her there, he disembarked alone near the old Glass Bank building at Cocoa Beach, about eight kilometers from her house. They were allegedly arguing because he did not want to lend her $ 300 or take her to a friend at Fort Lauderdale.

– At that moment she said, ‘Let me out! Let me out! ‘ So I just said ‘OK, whatever you want’ and it was the last time I saw her – said Roberts.

Supervisory cameras later noted that it was standing in a nearby parking lot. From there, she seems to have gone to a nearby public booth from which she repeatedly tried to call her aunt and friend. As she failed to get them, she left more « emergency » messages before she disappeared without a trace.

Tammy Lynn Leppert was last seen dressed in a blue denim skirt and blue shirt with floral applications, carrying a gray purse and sandals. Some sources say she was barefoot and without money just before her disappearance. There were and never confirmed by the speculation that she was three months pregnant at the time of her disappearance, which her sister Suzanne later mentioned. Tammy’s mother claimed that her daughter was « afraid » of Keith Roberts, which stated many to question his involvement in disappearance, but he was never officially considered the suspect and the indictment was never filed against him. Linda Curtis reported her daughter’s disappearance to the police on July 11, 1983.

A police investigation faced a lack of solid evidence. One of the theories connected Tammyj’s disappearance with Christopher Wilderknown as the « Queen of the Beauty Queen », a serial killer responsible for the killings of numerous young women in 1984, some of whom happened in Florida. Wilder was known for luring the victims in his car or home on the pretext of photographing them for fashion engagement, which could have attracted Tammy. Wilder was killed in April 1984. In a showdown with the police in New Hampshire, and the authorities have never been able to find solid evidence to associate him with Tammy’s disappearance.

John Brennan Crutchleyknown as the « vampire rapist », was also active in Florida at the time of Tammy’s disappearance and was considered a potential suspect. He was suspected of killing as many as thirty women. Crutchley committed suicide in prison in 2002, and police also failed to find a link between him and Tammy.

As time went on, Tammy’s mother Linda developed the theory that her daughter « knew too much » about the local drug store and that she became the target of a gang that wanted to cover up her operations. Tammy allegedly mentioned « money laundering » during one of her breakdowns, which may have indicated that she was involved in a criminal organization or simply found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. She even reportedly filed a report to the police, but did not mention that she felt her life in danger.

After Tammy’s disappearance, detective Harold Lewis Cocoa Beach’s police received two telephone calls from a woman who claimed to be Tammy still alive. In the first call, the woman said that Tammy would get in touch when the time came for it. During her second call, she said Tammy was doing what she had always wanted: she attended school to become a nurse.

Between 1984 and 2014, the remains of 13 different unidentified women were compared to Tammy’s patterns, but no coincided. Linda Curtis passed away on October 4, 1995 at the age of 54, never finding out what happened to her daughter. Before her death, she allegedly wrote a script in which she accused the local elite of connecting with her daughter’s disappearance.