Carjackings Heighten Auto Crime Fears : Violence: Number of well-publicized cases has led to growing anxiety across nation. Two arrests in Philadelphia are the first under new U.S. law.

Last August, Tammy Zywicki was driving from her parents’ home in New Jersey to start her senior year at Grinnell College in Iowa. She had car trouble and had to stop by the side of Interstate 80 near LaSalle, Ill. It was the last time she was seen alive.

Nine days later, her body was found beside Interstate 44 near Sarcoxie, Mo. Her slaying sent a collective shiver through the country’s heartland.

It also added to the growing sense that drivers’ safety is no longer assured in the one place that seemed to be a haven from crime--their own car. This fear has been heightened recently not only by the Zywicki case, but also by a well-publicized wave of carjackings, by sniper fire on an interstate near Jacksonville, Fla., and other violent incidents.

In the case of Tammy Zywicki, no arrests have been made, despite an intense two-month investigation, the distribution of thousands of leaflets throughout the Midwest asking for information about the killer and the tracking down of 468 leads by the Illinois State Police. Within the last week, a Pennsylvania man offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer.

Most telling on the psyche of the public has been the large number of people, in Midwest urban areas and farmlands, who have taken precautions they might never have thought about before. They are not alone.

Despite the recent attention given to carjackings--the theft of a car in which a weapon is used on the driver--most auto thefts still take place the old fashioned way--when no owner is in sight. Greg Tanski of the National Insurance Crime Board estimated that fewer than 1% of last year’s 1.6 million car thefts were done by carjackers.

Still, though the carjacking numbers may be relatively small, they are being viewed as serious because of the lethal nature of this new round of criminal behavior. Law enforcement officials say that carjacking is not new, but the thing they find most troublesome is the way it is increasing.

This surge was first pinpointed in Los Angeles in the spring of last year. The crime has since spread to a number of urban areas in the United States, including Detroit, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Houston.

The actual number of carjackings taking place in the United States is uncertain, primarily because it has only recently been categorized as a type of crime. But it is the violence of the act, the sense that the car thief cares little or not at all for human life, that makes carjacking so ominous.

Louis Mizell, another security expert with a data base of crime statistics, predicted there will be at least 27,000 carjackings in 1993, many by criminals who may be even bolder than they are today.

“These carjackers in the United States seem to be the most brazen in the world,” he said. “They’ve stolen police cars, a hearse with a casket in the back, ambulances, even armored bank vehicles.

“There’s so many security precautions people can take,” said Mizell. “Thousands of highway crimes would be prevented each year if people would simply lock their doors. But people won’t do it.”

In Los Angeles, police project there will be 4,500 carjackings this year, and expect the crime to mirror an expected overall increase in robberies.

But media scrutiny is also way up, notes police Commander John White. In the three weeks since a federal anti-carjacking law went into effect, he said “we’ve gotten at least two calls a day from everyone from McCall’s magazine to ABC News inquiring about it.”

“Carjackings are nothing new,” White said. “What is new is the attention given them by the media.”

Perhaps, but it is the brutal nature of events that has caused the microscope to be put on cars and crime.

The single incident that riveted the nation’s attention, and the lawmakers who run it, was the September carjacking in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., in which a woman was killed after she became entangled in her seat-belt strap and was dragged for a mile and a half by thieves making their getaway. The carjackers then threw the woman’s 22-month old daughter from the car. The brutality of the crime caused such an outrage that calls for carjacking laws reverberated through Washington.

Little more than a month after the woman’s death, President Bush signed a bill making a 15-year sentence mandatory for carjacking and imposing an automatic life sentence if a victim is killed in the commission of the crime. FBI Director William S. Sessions ordered task forces across the country to target carjackers as a nationwide priority.

And on Friday, authorities had such a case.

Two men were charged with carjacking in Philadelphia in what the Justice Department said was the first case in the nation under the new federal law. Charged were Craig Paul Watson, 24, and William Shaw, 21, both of South Philadelphia.

They are accused of seizing a car from an unidentified man and woman at a suburban Berwyn restaurant on Oct. 27 after forcing the couple into a trash dumpster.

“The assailants locked the dumpster, threatened to kill the victims if they got out and drove off in their BMW automobile,” said Bob Reutter, in charge of the FBI office in Philadelphia. “The victims managed to get out and called the police.”

The other two incidents that captured the nation’s attention took place in recent days in New Jersey and Florida. The New Jersey case began Nov. 3 when a woman was killed after a man forced his way into her van at a stoplight. The murder gained national attention, in part, because the killer left the woman’s 3-year-old daughter, shivering and suffering from exposure but nonetheless alive, outside a Piscataway, N.J., day care center. The woman’s body was found last Saturday in a lumberyard ditch. A suspect has been arrested in the case.

The other took place in Florida.

National Guard troops earlier this month began patrolling overpasses along a 13-mile stretch of Interstate 295 in an attempt to end a months-long siege of sniper fire and rock-throwing directed at motorists. Because of the attacks, the American Automobile Assn. issued a rare “travel alert” advising motorists to avoid the area.

So far, three teen-agers have been arrested in the incidents.

Another concern is that even the least-populated spots in the United States are not immune to the rise of crimes involving autos. Last August in Montana, for example, a vacationing couple and their two small children, unable to find a motel room, drove late into the night toward Missoula. Near midnight, they were sideswiped by an oncoming car and forced into a roadside ditch. Men in the other car opened fire on the family with automatic weapons and then robbed them.

“The whole question of highway crime has been brought sharply back into focus,” said Jeff Sundstrom, a spokesman for the AAA.

This sense of uncertainty is not lost on most drivers.

In the Chicago area, for instance, cellular phone sales increased dramatically in September and October as a direct result of the Zywicki killing.

In the small college town of Ames, Iowa, Tery Rutter, who works at a cellular store called Electronic Engineering, said cellular phone sales there were up 50%, most of them sold to students attending Iowa State University.

“Parents aren’t letting their kids come home until they have one in the car,” said Rutter. “I had one girl in here, her family lives in Dubuque, she sat here for hours waiting because her parents said she couldn’t come home until she had one.”

One theory on why armed attacks on motorists seem to be increasing was offered by Richard W. Kobetz, a Washington area security expert.

In recent years, he noted, increasingly sophisticated security systems in both homes and cars have caused criminals to change their tactics. The suburbs have become much more well-lighted to help deter crime. So now, he believes, it is easier for thieves, especially those who are not professionals, to accost people while they are driving or just getting out of their cars.

“What happens is that criminals now say that when you leave that cocoon, that home, you’re mine,” he said. “They can cruise and watch and wait for you.”

A footnote on the Tammy Zywicki case. Lt. Harold Brignadello, who is heading up the investigation for the Illinois State Police, said he believed as many as 20 people may have stopped to help the young woman as she sat by the side of the road. Zywicki’s problem, according to family members, was that her car was overheating. She had to stop to allow it to cool down. Brignadello thinks people who stopped to help were simply told there was nothing to do until the engine cooled.

What bothers Brignadello is that though trucks, cars and even a motorcyclist apparently stopped to offer assistance, not one driver has come forward to describe the scene on that August afternoon.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe people are so paranoid that they believe if they come forward we will try to put the blame on them.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writer Ron Russell in Los Angeles, researchers Lianne Hart in Houston, Doug Conner in Seattle, Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Ann Rovin in Denver and Edith Stanley in Atlanta, and special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami.

How to Avoid Being a Target

Here are some tips from the American Automobile Assn., on how to avoid carjackings: Choose well-lighted, well-traveled facilities: If you are stopping to use a public facility such as a pay phone or gas station, try to park in a well-lighted place where the station attendant or another motorist can see you.

When returning home, be aware of all vehicles and pedestrians: Keep your house and driveway well lighted. Beep your horn and have someone inside turn on lights or open the door.

Be careful after a minor rear-end accident: If you are bumped from behind and you do not feel comfortable getting out of your vehicle, motion to the other driver and drive to the nearest police station, 24-hour store or service station, hospital or fire station.

Keep your vehicle locked and the windows rolled up: If you can’t keep windows closed because of hot weather, at least roll them up enough so it will be more difficult for someone to reach in and take your purse, wallet or keys.

The primary rule: If a gunman wants your car, give it up. The loss of your vehicle or other possessions is not worth risking your life.

Source: American Automobile Assn.