Transcript of Nightmare in Quincy

Hello and welcome to This Doesn't Happen to people like me. A new 10-part series by the creators of Sword and Scale. Please do us a favor, and if you like the series and feel so inclined, visit Apple Podcast or Spotify, Subscribe, rate, and review. It's getting harder and harder to get the word out these days, so if you know anyone who will appreciate this series, please let them know about it. This series was written and produced by Michael Stabeal, engineered by Rob Ravelli. I'm your host, Mike Bude. On December 12, 2021, a 77-year-old woman was rushed to Hannibal Regional Hospital in Hannibal, Missouri. Her name was Tina. Tina was a kind, generous, and smart woman. Alongside her husband, she owned and operated a successful business. But what was most important to Tina was her family. Tina had four children, 14 grandchildren, and 17 great grandchildren. This is Tina's granddaughter, Carly.

December 12th, 2021. It was a Sunday evening It's all a blur. My aunt, Elsa, called me, and she was very short and frantic, and she just said, Get to the hospital.

All of Tina's children and grandchildren loved Tina dearly, and When they got the news that she was in the hospital, many of them immediately began making their way to see her. This included Tina's daughter, Ilsa.

My mom's husband called me and told me that my mom was headed to the hospital, and I went ahead and got in my vehicle and started driving to Hannibal. I didn't know what was going on. I was standing at the hospital waiting, and then they took me to the family waiting room, which the and then handed me her jewelry and said that it will be some time.

Unfortunately, not all of Tina's loved ones could go to her because in December of 2021, the COVID pandemic had just started to wane.

On the way to the hospital, I talked to my mom. My mom actually had COVID at that time and was unable to come, which was awful. They wouldn't let her in the hospital. My mom basically said all she knew was that she had collapsed and that she was unresponsive and that they had taken her to the hospital. All we knew at that point was they were still working on her.

Tina's family waited for the hospital staff to give them more information about Tina's condition. And when a doctor came When we see them, the news was all bad.

The doctor came in and told us that there's really not much more that they could do for her, and that we need to go say goodbye. That was the first time I had seen her when they told us that she wasn't going to make it, and it was awful. She was hooked up to all these machines, and she was breathing, but she was only breathing because of the machine stuck in her throat.

Tina's family was devastated, and they were caught off guard. As far as they knew, Tina was a healthy woman. When she last spoke to her daughter, Heidi, the day before, Tina seemed completely fine.

She was doing great, though. She had been to the doctor, and the doctors all gave her a clean I'll help. She was doing great. She had called me the day before. I wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas.

Tina's family gathered around the hospital bed to say their goodbyes. They found themselves in a situation that, unfortunately, many have experienced. Their eldest family member was dying. From the outside looking in, this likely seemed like a common occurrence. Tragic, yes, but common. Old people die every day, and their loved ones have to say goodbye. That's just how life goes sometimes. Though this situation with Tina and her family was anything but common. The doctor told the family that Tina was dying from heart failure, but they all knew better. They all knew that this wasn't a case where an elderly woman's life was simply coming to an end. They knew that Tina didn't just end up in a hospital bed. She was put there.

Just remember sitting in the waiting room, just not knowing what was going on, but also there's no way that she's going to die. She just went through this terrible situation. There's no way that that's going to happen one after the other. And I just felt so bad for her because she had survived this terrible tragedy, and she can't even see it through.

About a A month before this tragic day at the hospital, Tina had been assaulted, and there's no word in the English language to describe just how horrific that assault was. Putting it mildly, what Tina experienced was beyond brutal and extremely cruel. What happened to her that night was something that doesn't happen in Adam's Count. That's a movie, Your Honor.

That's something you watch on Halloween to scare you.

That's not real life, but it was real life for Tina Lohman on November ninth, 2021. Tina and her family were traumatized by what had happened to her. The depravity of what Tina endured was more than any of them could bear. This is Tina's oldest grandson, Joshua. She helped me, raised me. She was like my second mom. We had a very close bond. She always tell me how much she loved She adored my four children.

She made me make sure they were spoiled on every birthday and Christmas.

She loved Christmas, and she loved giving gifts. However, as I watched the trial and learned the gruesome details, I became physically sick. How did you done that to my grandma? The evil that Tina saw and experienced was beyond comprehension, and her family knew why her heart was failing. Tina was dying dying because she was brutally assaulted. Tina was dying from a broken heart. The assault she endured was killing her. And Tina's family wanted the people responsible to pay. They wanted justice. Unfortunately, Tina's family would come to find that the justice they were seeking was elusive, and the struggle to get it became a never-ending battle.

I don't think anything can prepare you for what we went through. I think it's just still... We're still not even over it. I don't know if we ever will be.

Many of you know, or at least you can imagine, the pain and the grief that comes with losing a parent or a grandparent. It can be the most tragic thing that a family can experience. This was the case for Tina's family, but for them, things were much worse. They were saddled with the burden of fighting for justice, and the fight became another tragedy all on its own. Roughly 100 miles north of St. Louis, and near the edge of Missouri's Eastern border, is the small city of Quincy, Illinois. Quincy is the county seat of Adams County, with a population of 40,000 people. Throughout 2022 and 2023, many Quincy residents became well-informed about a crime that occurred in their city in November of 2021. Some refer to this crime as the Tina Lohman case. One of the reasons why so many people knew so much about this case was because it was covered extensively by the local news outlet Muddy River News.

My name is David Adam, and I'm the editor of Muddy River News. My involvement with the Tina Lohman case was that I covered the case for Muddy River News, and I was there for just about every motion hearing, status hearing, trial, you name it. I was there 50, 60 times, possibly throughout the course of this ordeal.

David Adam wrote and published countless articles about the Tina Lohman case, and he was pretty much the perfect person to do it, not only because he was a professional news editor, but also because he was and continues to be a lifelong resident of Quincy, Illinois.

The best way that I think I can describe Quincy, it has everything a big city has. It just has one of everything. There's really nothing here that you can't do in St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, but there's just one of them here.

And speaking with David, we learned that he loves his city. And despite his coverage of countless criminal cases, he does consider Quincy to be a great place to live and an ideal place to raise a family.

I believe most parts of Quincy are a safe place to live. Absolutely. Sure, there's a couple of places in town that I would be a little leery of, maybe, but I have a lot of confidence in law enforcement around here. I'm a big fan of many of the people who work for law enforcement around here.

When it comes to David's opinions about Quincy, he isn't alone. Many of the residents feel the same way about their city. In 2021, that included a woman named Tina Loeman.

At 77 years old, Tina Loeman had raised four children. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She ran a successful hot business. But to Tina, what was most important her family.

77-year-old Tina Loeman had four children, two daughters and two sons. They are Heidi, Chip, Derek, and her youngest daughter, Ilsa.

My name is Ilsa Tarroll, and I'm Tina Lohman's youngest daughter. My mom was 77, and she worked at American Builder Supply.

Tina was also a grandmother to several grandchildren, all of which were adored by Tina. One of her grandchildren is a young woman named Carly.

My name is Carly Highland. I am Tina Lohman's granddaughter. Just to put that in perspective, my mother is Heidi Young, who is her oldest daughter.

By the age of 77, Tina Lohman had lived a very interesting life, which began on March 30th, 1944. Tina was the daughter of Earle and Mildred Lohman.

I know she was born and raised in California. She was an only child. My great grandmother struggled to have children, so my grandma was her miracle child. She wasn't able to have any children after my grandmother, so she was very spoiled as a child.

Tina was born into a wealthy family, and her father's business led her to attend classes in Sorbonne University in Paris, France, as well as London, England's School of Economics.

My grandfather was President of Bechdel Oil Company and they traveled overseas. She was in London. She'd been everywhere. She went to a college in London.

Her father was big in the oil industry in Europe, so she lived in Italy for a while. She was able to travel. To around Europe, Paris, Italy.

Throughout her youth, Tina traveled through the country, and eventually, she and her family made their way back to the United States. Once there, they decided to settle down in the small city of Quincy.

My grandmother was originally from here as my grandfather was, and they came back for some family problems and an elderly great grandmother, and she ended up meeting my father.

But she loved it here, and her mother loved it here. It just appealed to them because it's close to big cities like Chicago and St. Louis, but it's far enough away to where it has that small town feel.

As an only child, the idea of having a lot of babies and making a big family appealed to Tina. So that's exactly what she did. Did Tina have children? Yes.

How many children did she have?

She had four children. And she had 14 grandkids? Yes. And 17 great grandchildren?

And probably more.

Tina was the matriarch of what became a very big and very close family. For her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, being related to Tina Lohman was a pretty lucky situation.

I was very close with my mom. I saw her every day. I was her youngest, so I was spoiled, rotten. She was always happy to take me to anything I had to do. She was just always there for me. My mom was always laughing, always happy. She liked going out for dinner and drinking red wine. She loved shopping. She loved Christmas and loved buying all of her grandchildren and children Christmas gifts.

Being the granddaughter of Tina Lohman was delightful. She knew how to spoil kids and her grandkids. She definitely made you feel loved. I could always go to her if I just needed event or if I needed chocolate, I needed ice cream, whatever. She's always willing to listen to you. I couldn't ask for a better grandma. You just felt love when you were around her.

Tina was a loving and lovable mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. But she wasn't the typical white-haired woman you might find in a Hallmark Christmas movie. Tina Lohman had a bit of an edge.

She was so funny. She loved to laugh. She was a sassy little thing. She had some attitude about her, but I love that about her. She didn't have a filter. You knew exactly what she thought about you. But she was also so kind. So even though she's a little sassy, see. She was so sweet and caring and so empathetic. She loved spending time with her kids and her grandkids, mainly her great grandkids, actually. She loved babies. So whenever we all started having kids, that's just what she lived for. She loved having a big family. She was an only child, so just having a big family just really fulfilled her. That's where her love language was, just buying all the kids things, toys, clothes, She just was very thoughtful.

As a thoughtful woman who enjoyed buying gifts for her family, Tina loved the Christmas season. This was her time to shine, and every year, she went out of her way to make sure all the kids were spoiled.

Most of my childhood memories were just at her house. She would decorate to the nines. Her tree was beautiful every year. She wrapped her gifts so beautifully. She made her own bows.

In early November 2021, Tina was already thinking about the upcoming holidays. She had big plans for that Christmas. And like every other Christmas before, she wanted to make this Christmas the best one yet.

And on November ninth, 2021, she was looking forward to celebrating the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with her family. She was looking forward to spending those holidays with her husband, her children, her 14 grandchildren, and and her 17 great grandchildren.

On the evening of November ninth, 2021, Tina Lohman left the business she owned and operated with her husband and began driving home.

She loved to work just to keep her mind busy. She really didn't need to work, but she loved her customers, and she loved the social interaction.

Tina's plan for that evening was to arrive home and grab a quick nap before going out to dinner with her husband, but things didn't work as planned. On her way home, something happened that changed her life and the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren forever. On her way home that evening, Tina Lohman crossed paths with a monster. In early November of 2021, 77-year-old Tina Lohman was living in Quincy, Illinois, with her husband. The couple owned and operated a successful business together, and they were thankful to live in what they had come to know as a very safe city. Tina had no reason to think otherwise. After all, she lived in Quincy for years. She successfully raised four happy and healthy children there. This included her youngest daughter, Ilsa.

Quincy is a river town where you know everyone and a small community, and you feel pretty safe. You have felt safe here raising children and going to school everyone's like family.

On the evening of November ninth, 2021, Tina Lohman left work and began driving home. But she didn't get very far before she decided to pull over.

It was around close to 5: 00 PM, and my mom was leaving work. She was traveling down Broadway to approximately 48th Street and went over to Cook's Lane.

My grandma was having issues with her headlights. One thing about her is she was not very tech savvy. Even though her car was pretty simple, she didn't understand what was going on with the headlights. So instead of trying to figure it out while she was driving, she decided to pull over.

Then she pulled over approximately down on the bottom roads by in Cooks Lane and realized that she couldn't get her lights turned on.

The sun was going down and it had started to rain. Tina expected that the headlights on her car would turn on automatically, as that's what had always happened before. But for some reason on this evening, Tina's headlights didn't turn on, and she didn't know how to fix them.

Sergeant Lohmier, did you learn that her name was Tina Lohman? Yes. And Did you ask her what had happened? Yes.

She said she was on her way home. It was evening time. She drives a car where the headlights typically turn on automatically. Someone else had used the car previously, or somehow the The automatic thing was not working. As it was starting to get dark, she was concerned about the lights. She stopped on North Bottom Road to try to fix the light situation. Tina was alone at dusk and parked on the side of a fairly isolated road. She was worried and maybe a little scared, but she assumed everything would eventually be okay. She knew that her husband would inevitably be driving down the the same road that she was parked on.

So the road she lives on, it's on the bottom road. So she knew that when her husband would eventually come down that road to go home, he would see her. There was only one way, really, to her house, which was on that road.

Tina fiddled with the knobs on her steering wheel, hoping that some switch or lever would ignite her headlights, but nothing did. At the same time, Tina kept checking from her rear view mirrors, hoping that the next car she saw would be her husband's car. But that never happened. She said a truck pulled up behind her. A man got out. She initially felt that he was there to help her with whatever situation she was having. A truck drove up and parked behind Tina. A man stepped out of that truck and approached Tina's driver's side window.

She was just happy that someone had stopped because she was scared that she didn't want to go out on the next turn where there was heavier traffic. There was a male who pulled over, and he went to go get a flashlight and was thinking he was coming back with a flashlight.

The man offered to help Tina fix her headlights. He told her that first he needed to retrieve a flashlight from his truck. As he did this, Tina looked in her rear view mirror, and she noticed something. Another person was sitting in the passenger seat of the man's truck.

Did she also, Ms. Lohman, also indicate to you there was another individual present with the white man with the scruffy hair? Yes. Did she know who that individual was? No. Did you ask her about that person as well to try to get information to find that person as well? Yes. What did she tell you about the person that was with that white man with the scruffy hair?

A shorter black female. Tina sat in her car and waited for the man to return with his flashlight. She was hopeful that the man resolve her headlight situation, and Tina would soon be back on the road. Of course, Tina did consider the possibility that the man who stopped to help her could be dangerous. But she quickly put that thought out of her mind. That possibility wasn't likely at all.

How do you think she felt? Was she relieved? Did she think she was going to get help? Was she scared? Was something bad about to happen? But she was 77 years old. And this is Quincy. Nothing bad happens in Quincy, right? In Quincy, when you have trouble, people stop, they pull over, and they help you.

This mindset that Quincy, Illinois, is a safe and friendly place is not uncommon. Many of its residents feel that way about their city.

Maybe I have rose-colored glasses. I have a Palliana-ish way of looking at things. But I think most people in Quincy, Illinois, would have seen somebody walk up, helping her. I believe it was a rainy night. It was at dusk, so it's getting dark. She saw somebody walk up. I believe that she's lived in this community long enough that she was going, Hey, finally, I got someone who's going to help me here. I would like to think that had that been my car pulling up next to her, that I would have got out on a rainy night and said, Hey, what can I do to help you out here? I think that's the way. Quincy isn't Mayberry, but it's definitely a town, I believe, that has the type of people who would have no problem stepping up and helping a woman in distress in a situation like this.

You think that when someone pulls over to help you, that there's no ill intent, like they genuinely want to help you? She's an older lady pulled over on the side of road. It's dark. And so her thought was not immediate danger. Her thought was maybe that these people can help me just turn on my headlights so that I can get back home.

Tina just wanted to go home and take a nap. So she waited for the man to return to her car with a flashlight. As a testament to the person Tina was, she was already thinking about how she was going to thank this man for stopping to help her resolve her car trouble. While waiting in her car, Tina reached for her purse.

My mom was excited that someone had pulled over, and she also, when they pulled over, they would go get a flashlight, and she pulled $20 out of her wallet to give them for stopping and helping her.

After pulling $20 from her wallet, Tina looked in the rear view mirror again, and eventually saw the man walking back toward her car. Whether If he had a flashlight or not, we don't know. But what we do know is that this man had no intention of helping Tina.

And I remember having seen some video of her in which I believe she was like, Oh, good. They might be able to help me. And that's when her nightmare started.

When the man returned to Tina's driver's side door, she looked at him. Tina didn't see a friendly face. She saw a face filled with ill intent and violence. Like David Adam explained, this was the moment that a long nightmare began for Tina. This was the moment when her life and the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren took a very, very dark turn. Next time on This Doesn't Happen to People Like Me.

When you went into the residence further, did you observe an individual inside of that residence? Yes. Tina's husband, Tim Smith, arrived home. He found Tina on the floor crying and bleeding, crying that she'd been raped, bleeding from her body. Tim, her husband, had a gun husband, not a gun, because Tina was so terrified that a defendant and his accomplice were going to come back.

She appeared to be emotional to you? Yes, she did. Did she tell you that he was worried they were going to come back? Yes, she did. Please subscribe if you can. We'll see you right back here before you know it.