Convicted child murderer and rapist Arthur Ream indicated to detectives shortly before his death that he might have been responsible for the deaths of several other young girls.
Ream was serving a life-sentence for the 1986 murder 13-year-old Cindy Zarzycki, whose body was discovered in the woods of Warren, in suburban Detroit, in 2008.
Although they lacked sufficient evidence, Warren authorities were convinced that Ream was responsible for the disappearances of at least four other girls – Kimberly King, Kellie Brownlee, Kim Larrow, and Connie Royce.
Before Ream passed away from cancer in August, Detective Sgt. Jim Twardsky was meeting with him twice a month, begging him to confess.
In his eerie final words, the suspected child killer said to Detective Twardsky that he would likely be convicted for their murders.
‘He never admitted to doing it, but he did specifically say that a jury would clearly convict him for it,’ the investigator told WDIV.
Detective Twardsky was ultimately unable to extract an explicit confession from Ream, who was known to enjoy playing ‘mind games’ with law enforcement.
Twardsky said: ‘He was a bad guy at the beginning. He was a bad guy at the end. He enjoyed messing with cops at the beginning. He enjoyed messing with cops at the end. [He was] just an all-around bad person.’
The investigator spent over 50 hours interviewing Ream, and he felt that there were several moments when the convicted killer seemed to be on the verge of boasting or offering details about other murders.
‘It just reached a frustrating point because there were multiple points where he said, “I can see why you think it’s me. Sure seems like something I might have done. But I didn’t do it.”‘
Detective Twardsky believes Ream never admitted to anything because he was ‘wired differently.’
‘It’s a very tough interview. He doesn’t express emotion or feel fear or joy or any emotions like the rest of us.’
Twardsky characterized the late murderer as a man who was ‘extremely smart [and] extremely manipulative.’ He said that Ream didn’t view his victims as people, but as ‘pawns in his little game.’
‘Talking to [Ream], you wouldn’t suspect that he’s a bad person or that he’s evil.
‘But he’s done evil things, and he’s clearly just able to hide his emotions well.’
Authorities had previously tried to tie Ream to the murder of King, who disappeared aged 12 in 1979, and the murders of Brownlee, 17, Larrow, 15, and Nadine O’Dell, 16, all of whom vanished in 1981 and 1982. .
In 2018, police searched a Detroit warehouse where the killer once operated a carpet business after fellow prisoners said Ream boasted about murdering four to six other girls. Ream failed a subsequent polygraph test.
At the warehouse, police failed to find human remains, but they managed to uncover ‘valuable documents.’
Despite this, Ream maintained his innocence and mocked the efforts of law enforcement.
‘To be honest with ya, on one hand I was laughing my a** off and on the other hand, I was pissed off,’ Ream told the Detroit Free Press. ‘So, you take it for what it is. There’s no bodies there that I know of.’
It was at this very same warehouse that Zarzycki died in 1986. Ream maintained that her death was an accident.
Zarzycki was dating Ream’s son. He killed the 13-year-old after trying to come on to her.
He initially evaded guilt and the case went cold for many years. However, in 1998, he was convicted of her murder after authorities revived their investigation.
At the time of his conviction for Zarzycki’s killing, Ream was already serving a 15-year sentence on an unrelated molestation charge involving a 14-year-old girl.
He later was temporarily released from prison to lead police to Zarzycki’s body.
He told investigators that Zarzycki’s body was buried near a creek.
Ream also drew a map of the site and spent about an hour at the search scene with authorities before leading police to where he buried her body in a shallow grave.
Authorities said Reams had a sick obsession with young girls.
