Cindy Zarzycki: Disappearance, Cracked Cold Case, and Conviction

Cindy Zarzycki was a 13-year-old girl from Eastpointe, Michigan, who vanished on April 20, 1986, after being lured to a Dairy Queen on Nine Mile Road by Arthur Ream, the father of her boyfriend. Her disappearance was misclassified as a runaway, sat cold for more than two decades, and was solved in 2008 when Ream was convicted of first-degree murder and later led investigators to her shallow grave in Macomb Township.

The Day She Disappeared

Cindy lived in Eastpointe, a working-class suburb northeast of Detroit then called East Detroit, with her father Ed, her brother, and her sister. Her parents were divorced. She had recently been grounded for walking home from the Macomb Mall, so on the Sunday morning she vanished, she told her family she was going to church.¹

Instead, she walked to the Dairy Queen to meet Arthur Ream. Ream had told her he would drive her to a surprise birthday party for his son Scott in Pontiac. There was no party. Scott’s birthday was in January, not April.²

Prosecutors later showed the setup was deliberate. Ream had paid a former employee’s travel expenses to take Scott to south Texas, on the condition Scott come along. The two left two days before Cindy disappeared and stayed away for nine or ten days.²

Cindy had told two friends, Cathy Bouford and Theresa Olechowski, about the plan. She swore them to secrecy. She believed her parents would refuse to let her attend a party twenty-five miles from home.³ She was never seen alive again.

Why the Case Went Cold

Authorities classified Cindy’s case as a non-family abduction, but for the first eight years it was effectively treated as a runaway.¹ The two friends who knew about the Dairy Queen meeting were never interviewed in 1986. Without them, the connection to Ream never surfaced in the original investigation.³

Ream was not a stranger to police. He had been convicted in 1975 in Gladwin, Michigan, of taking indecent liberties with a child and had served prison time. Investigators did interview him in 1991 while he was incarcerated at a prison in Marquette, but no charges resulted. In 1996 he was sentenced to four to fifteen years for third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a teenager and sent to the West Shoreline Correctional Facility.⁴

Cindy’s family kept pressing. Her stepmother Linda Zarzycki regularly visited the Eastpointe police station to review the file, suggest theories, and handle administrative tasks. The family wrote letters to keep the case from being forgotten.⁵

How the Case Was Cracked

Eastpointe Police Detective Derek “Mac” McLaughlin was assigned to the cold case in 1995. Nearly a decade later, in 2004, a college intern named Jennifer Leibow began reviewing the file while working at Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, a Chicago-area interrogation consulting firm. Leibow reached out to McLaughlin and offered to help. Their partnership ran for three years.⁶

Around 2007, McLaughlin and Leibow interviewed Bouford and Olechowski. For the first time, the two women told police what Cindy had told them more than twenty years earlier: that she was going to meet Arthur Ream at the Dairy Queen.⁵

A search of Ream’s former carpet warehouse produced another piece of evidence. Inside a jewelry box, investigators found a “Have-You-Seen-Me” missing-person mailer with Cindy’s photograph on it. The mailer was dated to expire in June 1995, meaning Ream had kept it for years after Cindy disappeared. Prosecutors called it a trophy.²

McLaughlin and Leibow then interrogated Ream for eight hours at a prison in Muskegon. He denied involvement but did not refute specific accusations when confronted with them.²

The Trial and Conviction

On January 8, 2008, Arthur Ream was charged with first-degree premeditated murder. He was already in prison on the earlier sex-offense conviction.² The case was prosecuted in Macomb County Circuit Court by Assistant Prosecutor Steven Kaplan, head of the county’s cold case unit, before Judge Mary Chrzanowski.⁷

The evidence was largely circumstantial. Much of Ream’s history as a pedophile and his prior convictions for sexually assaulting children were ruled inadmissible.² Jurors heard from Cindy’s friends about the planned meeting, from Ream’s ex-wife that Scott was in Texas the day Cindy disappeared, and about the mailer recovered from the warehouse. After a June 2008 trial, the jury deliberated roughly two hours before finding Ream guilty of first-degree murder.⁷

On August 7, 2008, Judge Chrzanowski sentenced Ream to life in prison without the possibility of parole.⁸ Prosecutors said Ream had abducted and killed Cindy after she resisted his sexual advances.⁹

Finding Her Remains

After the conviction, McLaughlin pressed Ream about the location of the body. In a videotaped interrogation, Ream said, “I can’t make up for the wrong I’ve done. That’s just like with Cindy. The next day … I knew what I did was wrong. But how do you take it back?”¹⁰ He also told detectives, “I’m into, was into, teenage girls.”¹¹

In July 2008, Ream drew a crude map and led law enforcement to a wooded area in Macomb Township, south of 23 Mile Road and west of North Avenue. He stopped and said, “I’m pretty sure I buried her right here.” A Michigan State University anthropology student began clearing the ground and unearthed a purse containing an REO Speedwagon cassette tape. It was the right spot. Cindy’s remains were recovered from a shallow grave more than twenty-two years after she vanished.¹²

Ream never fully admitted responsibility. In prison writings titled “Disappearance at the Dairy Queen (The True Story),” he claimed his son Scott had told him the girl died after falling through an elevator hole at the carpet warehouse. His ex-wife’s trial testimony that Scott was out of state that day contradicted the story.¹³ Scott himself had died in a car accident on July 4, 1994, years before his father was ever charged in Cindy’s death.⁵

Suspected Other Victims

While in prison, Ream reportedly bragged to fellow inmates about killing four to six other people. Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dwyer confirmed those jailhouse statements, and investigators identified five Metro Detroit cold cases with possible connections, based on Ream’s pattern and the fact that his carpet-installation work put him near several of the victims’ last known locations.¹⁴ The suspected cases:

Kimberly King, 12, missing since September 1979 from Warren, Michigan.
Kim Larrow, 15, last seen June 8, 1981, in Canton Township.
Kellie Brownlee, 17, missing since May 20, 1982, from West Bloomfield Township.
Donna Serra, 17, killed in 1972 in St. Clair Shores.
Connie Royce, 24, last seen June 1, 1990, in Mount Clemens.

Warren Police Detective Sgt. Jim Twardesky, who took over the Kimberly King case in 2017, stressed that the links were “possible” rather than “definitive.” Investigators said Ream was manipulative and known for “messing with cops.”¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

In 2022, Ream sent a letter to Kimberly King’s sister, Konnie Beyma, saying, “I hope you understand when I say I had nothing to do with your sister’s disappearance.” Beyma and her family called the letter manipulative.¹⁷

Arthur Ream died of cancer on August 15, 2024, at age 75, at the Duane Waters Hospital within the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, Michigan. Cindy Zarzycki remains the only murder he was ever convicted of. The five suspected cases are unsolved, and investigators have said Ream likely took whatever he knew about them to the grave.¹⁴

1
NBC News. After 22 Years, Unlikely Duo Crack Murder Case
2
NBC News. The Disappearance of Cindy Zarzycki
3
Seattle Times. Convicted Killer Told Police of Penchant for Teen Girls
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Macomb Daily. 86 Slaying May Be Solved
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NBC News. The Disappearance of Cindy Zarzycki
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Today. After 22 Years, Unlikely Duo Crack Murder Case
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Macomb Daily. No New Trial for Child Killer Arthur Ream
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Macomb Daily. Child Killer Gets Life, No Parole
9
Charley Project. Cynthia Jocelyn Zarzycki
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CBS News Detroit. Arthur Ream, Serving Life for Killing Michigan Teen Girl, Dies in Prison
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CBS News Detroit. Convicted Killer Told Police He Had a Fondness for Teen Girls
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Oakland Press. Retired Sheriff’s Deputy: Arthur Ream Knew Macomb Township Wooded Area Well
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WDIV ClickOnDetroit. Inside the Mind of Arthur Ream: Convicted Killer Writing Behind Bars
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Detroit News. Suspected Child Serial Killer Dies in Prison; Police Fear He Took Secrets to Grave
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Washington Post. Police Expect to Find Bodies of Half a Dozen Girls in Vacant Field After Reopening Cold Case
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Macomb Daily. Task Force Searching for Young Girl’s Remains Again in Macomb Twp.
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WXYZ. Family of Suspected Victim Says There’s No Closure in Arthur Ream’s Death