Scarface Actress Tammy Lynn Leppert Mysteriously Disappeared on This Day in 1983 (1983)

Young actress, model and beauty queen Tammy Lynn Leppert (a.k.a. Tami Lynn), who had a small role in the Brian De Palma crime classic Scarface as the girl in the blue bikini during the drug-deal-gone-wrong chainsaw sequence, disappeared on July 6, 1983 under suspicious circumstances. As of March 2024, she has never been heard from again.

While working on the set of Scarface, Leppert reportedly had a breakdown while watching a violent scene – presumably part of the infamous bathroom chainsaw scene or the follow-up street side gun fight. After being taken to her trailer, she expressed to a family friend Walter Leibowitz her fears about alleged money laundering and people supposedly wanting to kill her. Tammy quit the film shortly afterward and returned to her family home in Cocoa Beach, Florida. She vanished on July 6th after being dropped off near Cocoa Beach by a friend, after another apparent nervous breakdown. Tammy’s disappearance occurred slightly over five months prior to the film’s release to U.S. movie theaters.

Leppert’s disappearance was featured on the season five premiere episode of the television series Unsolved Mysteries, which originally aired on September 16, 1992. Tammy’s mother Linda Curtis, family friends Wing Flanagan & Walter Liebowitz, and Cocoa Beach Police Detective Jim Skragg, were interviewed for the segment. Ms. Curtis passed away a few years after the interview and Tammy’s sister continued searching for the missing actress after her mother’s death.