The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm Ali. And just like the last few weeks, I will be bringing you the podcast solo. You may remember from our last episodes, but Eli's mother passed away recently. So he's just taking a little time to himself to grieve and to be where he's at. He will be back soon and he will be welcomed back with open arms. I'm glad that he's taking care of himself, but I miss being creative with my husband and doing this podcast that we've built together.
I did want to bring you a case, however, this week we are on missing. So I have an unresolved missing person case for you. So let's just get right into it, I think. So today we are talking about the missing person case of Phyllis Eleanor Berry. And this takes place on Halloween night and into November 1st of 1975 in Terlingua, Texas. But first a little bit about Phyllis. Phyllis is 21 years old in 1975. She was born September 16th, 1954, and she would be 69 years old today.
Phyllis is a part of the Chickasaw Nation and was very independent at her age. She had lived abroad in Germany for about a year in her late teens and early 20s. In 1975, she was living with her roommate, Vangie Strait, who said that Phyllis was also kind and made an effort to get to know people. She was well liked by others.
Phyllis and Vangie were living in Odessa, Texas, but at the end of October 1975, they decided to pack up what they could, sell the rest, and hit the road to camp out and explore for a while. The first place they were headed was the ghost town of Terlingua, Texas that sits on the Mexico border. This brings us into the timeline of events.
On Saturday, October 31st, so Halloween of 1975, Phyllis, Vangie, their friend Terry Robert Bailey, and Phyllis' puppy, a little Irish setter, all head to the world championship Chili Cook-Off that's held in Terlingua, Texas. And just as a little aside, this Chili Cook-Off is serious business. It had started in the 60s, but by 1975, around 10,000 people were attending the event. This is something that still happens to this day.
To even be able to sign up for the Chili Cook-Off, you have to win other, smaller Chili Cook-Offs. It's a huge deal for those who work the chili circuit. Essentially, 10,000 people descend on the ghost town of Terlingua, an old mining town with abandoned shafts all over the place, and the population goes from 75 to 10,000 for a week. There is lodging in the area.
Terlingua is located outside of Big Bend National Park, so those visiting the park will stay at the lodges in town that provide jobs for those who live there year-round. But when the Chili Cook-Off is in town, folks usually camp about a quarter mile from the Cook-Off site. This still holds true in 2023. So Phyllis, Vangie, Terry, and Phyllis' Irish-setter puppy all packed up their camping gear into Phyllis' car and head off to the Chili Cook-Off.
On Saturday, October 31st, the event is in full swing, and when they arrive, the trio part ways. Terry goes off to visit with other friends at the festival. Vangie went to go take a nap in a friend's camper, and Phyllis was seen taking a motorcycle ride with a young man in his 20s with blonde hair. They were seen riding a Honda 350 that was dark in color. As the sun starts to set on the Chili Cook-Off, an impromptu dance party breaks out in the ghost town.
At the dance party, Phyllis runs into two other friends from Odessa, Texas, her hometown, John Jackson and Dale Wade. Also with them is a hitchhiker that John had picked up on his way to Terlingua. His name was Jim, and he was from Austin, Texas. According to John Jackson, Phyllis was in good spirits when they ran into each other at the party. Phyllis is wearing blue jeans, a tan and black shirt, and a pair of knee-high granny boots that laced up the front.
He says, quote, I saw her dancing with several fellas and she appeared to be having a good time, end quote. Lots of people saw Phyllis at the dance party enjoying herself, including Vangie, who says, quote, the last time I saw her was about 1030 or 11 o'clock Saturday night, end quote. Vangie also says that Phyllis was in good spirits and enjoying herself when she last saw her. Just before midnight on October 31st, 1975, Phyllis heads back to the campsite.
She catches a ride with Dale Wade on his motorcycle while John and Jim follow behind on foot. The party site was just down a hill from where folks were camping. At the campsite, so now we are officially past midnight and into the early morning of November 1st. Phyllis and a group of others were sitting near a campfire. John Jackson says, quote, we just stood around for a few minutes eating Fritos and bean dip. The fire had just about burned down and she asked us to get more wood for the fire.
I don't remember her exact words, but she said she was going to sit by the fire and wait for us to return. Jim sat with her on the cot for a minute or two and then joined us about 20 feet away where we were gathering the wood. We all walked back to the campfire a few minutes later and she was gone. She was there one minute and gone the next. She just kind of slipped away. At first I thought she must have gone down the hill to party some more or to use the bathroom. End quote.
At the campfire, about five minutes after they realized that Phyllis is gone, Terry Bailey drives up to the campsite in Phyllis's car and with her dog looking for her. All of Phyllis's belongings are in the car, including her purse. People at the campfire begin to look for her. Dale Wade hops back on his motorcycle and drives around for about an hour looking for Phyllis. No one is able to find her, but nobody is panicked. John Jackson says, quote, we didn't think too much about it.
We figured she just went down the hill. End quote. John Jackson, Dale Wade and Jim all go to bed. As the day breaks on Sunday, November 1st, this is the final day of the chili cookoff. Jim, the hitchhiker, heads out to catch a ride back to Austin and Dale Wade packed up his motorcycle and left. John Jackson hangs around the cookoff looking for Phyllis. He helps Terry Bailey look for her in the morning, but John Jackson returns to Odessa by Sunday night.
Vanjie and Terry continue to look for Phyllis all over the cookoff and campground. They couldn't find anyone who had seen her or talked to her since the night before. As evening starts to set in, Vanjie calls folks back in Odessa to see if Phyllis caught a ride with someone and headed back. But nobody had heard from her. Finally, Vanjie and Terry call police and report Phyllis missing.
Monday, November 2nd, the next day, Brewster County police begin to search for Phyllis as a mass exodus is happening at the same time. The police launch a plane to help them in their search, but they don't find any sign of Phyllis. It's determined that she disappeared somewhere between midnight and 8am on November 1st. All of her personal items, her car, her purse, her puppy, were all left behind. Police search all day and find no sign of her.
Vanjie goes to another police department to ask them for help in their search. She is desperate to find her roommate and friend. The next day, Tuesday, November 3rd, Phyllis has been missing for two days, the Texas Ranger join the search and a massive ground search is launched in the ghost town. Still, nothing is found. Police continue to search into Wednesday, November 4th, when the search is suddenly called off.
A report comes in that Phyllis had called police in Odessa to say that she was okay. This however will just turn out to be a rumor. When police try to validate the story, they can't find anyone who remembers taking the phone call and talking to her. But it's too late at that point. Everybody had left. Vanjie and Terry were back in Odessa. Phyllis was nowhere to be found. On November 30th, Phyllis has been missing a month.
The Texas Rangers have taken over the investigation and they are not hopeful about Phyllis's fate. Texas Ranger LA says, quote, under the circumstances, I fear foul play, end quote. Over the past month, police have searched the area on horseback with helicopters and scent dogs, but not a single clue was found in the search. Ranger LA says, quote, we've just ran out of leads. We need help. Bad. End quote. It does appear the police are looking for a witness.
A young man who was riding a motorcycle. It's unclear if this is Dale Wade, her friend from Odessa, who had a motorcycle, or the blonde hair youth that she was seen riding a motorcycle with when she first got there. Either way, police are looking for this motorcycle riding young man to talk to and they insist that they just want to talk to him and that they're not looking at him as a suspect. There are also two rumors that the police are dealing with.
The first being that Phyllis called Odessa police, the one that I had just mentioned. Texas Ranger LA says, quote, maybe it was a prank call. Something to throw us off the track. End quote. The second rumor is that Phyllis was seen at a bar in Mexico just across the Rio Grande. Ranger LA says, quote, we just can't run them down. We've heard that a girl and a guy were spotted in the bar, but we can't say for sure it was Miss Barry.
End quote. Another Texas Ranger working the case who wished to remain anonymous says, quote, we haven't been able to come up with anything concrete. The longer she is gone, the more apt we are to think that something has happened to her. We have no evidence that she went off by herself. On the other hand, we have nothing to indicate she was carried away by force. We need to find out when she was last seen and by whom. End quote. Phyllis's family believe firmly that foul play was involved.
Her aunt Ruth Matheny says, quote, if she was okay, she'd get in touch with us. I just know she would. Her car was left behind and her dog was in it. So was her purse. I know she didn't go off alone and leave everything behind. Because of the false reports, a lot of people think she has been found. But we don't know anything more today than we did four weeks ago. God, I wish we could hear some good news. End quote.
Over the next several months, Phyllis's family and friends will keep pressure on the police to continue to work the case. But by October of 1976, this is approaching one year of Phyllis being missing, the case is cold. While police have found no trace of what happened to Phyllis, Brewster County Sheriff James Skinner puts it down pretty sharply when he says, quote, I think she's dead. This is a very hilly area with a lot of mine shafts around. Some of them are open. She might be in one of them.
You could stay down there for many years before your bones are found. They may never be found. This is a big country. It's as big as you want it to be. Others have disappeared too. End quote. Phyllis's roommate, Vanjie Strait, believes that she was taken by human traffickers because she can't fathom her friend being dead or leaving without telling anyone. Vanjie says, quote, if she was going to leave, she would have said so. She would have taken something.
Sometimes I think if she was dead, they would have found her. I don't know. I don't think she's dead. If there was something I could do, I'd do it. But I feel so helpless. End quote. That is truly the last update on the case that I could find. Over the years, Phyllis's case has been compared to unidentified Jane Doe's for comparison purposes, but none of those turned out to be matches.
And to date, there has never been any sign or clue as to what happened to Phyllis Berry during the 1975 World Championship Chili Cook-Off. So if you know anything about the disappearance of Phyllis Berry on Halloween night of 1975 or her whereabouts today, please call the Texas Rangers at 432-249-0961. And the sources for the podcast today come from The Odessa American and The Charlie Project. So that is the case of Phyllis Eleanor Berry.
And this is a case that when I ran across it, I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it before. You know, it has kind of all of the elements of a of a sensationalized missing person case. You know, it's this young woman who's going camping. It's the World Championship Chili Cook-Off happening in a ghost town on Halloween. Like all those elements are there for like the media to really pick this story up and run with it. But I was really surprised that that didn't happen in this case.
The only coverage that I could really find from the time in 1975 came from The Odessa newspaper where Phyllis was from. So there hasn't really been any media updates on this case either since 1976, about a year after Phyllis went missing. So where the case stands today, what police have been able to rule out and what they haven't. Have there ever been any suspects? All those things we don't really know. I would venture to guess that police don't know them either.
Otherwise we would have seen some updates over the years of, you know, police victories and bringing justice or closing a cold case or resolving a missing person case. So none of that has happened over the years. I do wish there was some more details or clarity around this witness that police were looking for at the end of November of 1975. So just as a quick reminder, Phyllis had been missing for about a month at that time and police wanted to find the person who was riding a motorcycle.
And it's unclear if that's Dale Wade, who was her friend from Odessa who she rode a motorcycle with. We know he took her back up to camp kind of after the dance party, but before the bonfire. Or if it was this other mystery person, this blonde young man that she was seen riding the Honda 350 before the dance party even started, kind of in the middle of the day, they were seen riding a motorcycle together. So it's unclear if it's either one of those people or if it's just a third person entirely.
There does seem to be some rumors that she was seen on a motorcycle, but we know that she did ride one that evening, you know, she got on the back of Dale Wade's motorcycle. So I'm not sure if that is what people are referring to whenever they talk about her being on a motorcycle, or if she was seen again later that night, kind of after the bonfire. It is a really short window of time. And we seem to get like a lot of details from John Jackson, her friend from Odessa.
He tells us a lot about what was happening kind of her last moments before she vanished. Police mentioned that they really wanted to know where she was last seen and by whom. But from this account in the newspapers, it seems like she was last seen, you know, next to this campfire. I keep calling it a bonfire, but it was it was more of a campfire from all reports. So she was seen next to this campfire. And Jim, the hitchhiker from Austin, sat with her for a couple of minutes.
And then Jim is said to have joined John Jackson, who was gathering wood for the bonfire campfire, excuse me for the campfire. So it seems like the last person that was with her is this hitchhiker, but police never really mentioned him again, or that they are looking to talk to him. So I'm not sure if they were able to track him down and interview him and eliminate him or what. But I have a lot of questions around the campfire.
I would be really interested to know if there were any other witnesses outside of, you know, John Jackson, Dale Wade and Jim, like these three guys who are kind of giving each other the alibis for the evening. I would I would really want to know if anybody else saw her at the campfire that evening, saw her sitting by it, saw her sitting with these men. Maybe she was talking to somebody else.
I would just wonder if that has ever been verified, because according to her roommate, Vangie, the last time she saw her was at the dance party, not at not at the campfire. It was around 1030 or 11. And then around midnight, they put Phyllis at the campfire. So I would be interested to know if anybody else saw her that evening to verify these reports that she was at a campfire. In the years that follow, police seem to be, you know, pretty convinced that foul play was involved.
And I, you know, I don't think police are off there. You know, she's never popped up again in all of these years since. So she's just been missing for just under 50 years. You know, 2025 will be the 50th anniversary of her disappearance with no resolution in the case. And, you know, I think that police are correct in thinking that foul play was involved, but I can't believe that nothing has been done since then to help find her. You know, I couldn't find any details around big searches.
It seems like they searched heavily for about a month. But there's no details around if they searched any of the mines. Terlingua is, you know, a ghost town. There's lots of abandoned mines in the area. Some of them are closed, some of them are not. So I would be curious if police did attempt to search any. I know it can be very dangerous and it kind of takes some specialized teams to do that. But I would be curious if that was even attempted or done over the years.
In the future, I would be really excited to see a cold case detective assigned to Phyllis' case to see if there can be any resolution at all or any more information generated. Phyllis would be 69 years old today, so a lot of people who were around for that 1975 chili cookoff could have either passed on already or maybe don't remember anymore. So every year that ticks by, you know, it's just more information that's getting lost forever that can never be recovered.
So I do hope that sooner rather than later they assign somebody to look at it again and to review it and to really dig in and try to see what happened here before the case just gets closed because it's been so long, you know. But again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Phyllis Berry on Halloween night of 1975, please call the Texas Rangers at 432-249-0961.
And while I just have you for one more second, if you could please rate and review us in your podcast app, that would mean the absolute world to me and it helps others find these cases. So if you're passionate about true crime and cold cases being solved and missing people come home, by simply sharing this podcast with your friends and loved ones, rate and reviewing in Apple podcasts, it helps others find these cases, helps others hear about these cases.
If this was maybe the first time you've heard about this case, share it with somebody else, share it with another true crime fan in your life. And let's get these stories out there and let's get them the coverage that they deserve. This week we'll be sharing pictures of Phyllis on our Instagram. So if you're not following us yet, please follow us at Cold and Missing. You can check out our website as well that'll have pictures and that's www.coldandmissing.com where you can review us there.
You can learn more about Eli and I. You can donate as well if you support the mission of this podcast through our Buy Us a Coffee campaign and it's just money that goes directly back into the resources, the hosting, the funding of this podcast. But that's all I have. I'm Allie McLaughlin-Sylkowski. This is Cold and Missing. Have a great week and stay safe, y'all.