School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
On Monday, September twenty seventh, two thousand and four, eighteen year old Britney Phillips, a student at Tulsa Community College, drove home from campus with a friend of hers, Lydia.
They had just taken.
A chemistry to test, and Brittany was looking forward to hanging out and celebrating her nineteenth birthday, which was coming up on October fourth. When we talked to Lydia, she said that Brittany met Lydia at her apartment that night and that they rode in Lydia's car. After class, they went back to Lydia's apartment, which was a short ride away from Britney's. This was at around eight pm. Brittany got into her own vehicle, said goodbye to Lydia, and drove home.
I have to drag my memory now for such a while ago, but we met me and we started studying together, and then we realized she was a chemistry major and I was a biology major, so we needed to take some of the same science bosses together. So we decided to do our schedules together and take all of our classes together. We became friends. We were hanging out, We even were on a trip together. We had a night class and we got home to my apartment. Her birthday was coming up, her plans.
But then as the week rolled on, Lydia said, Brittany never called her, and then she noticed that Brittany didn't show up for their next class on Wednesday.
I remember calling her. I remember trying to get a hold of her and she didn't answer, and I was like, that's so weird. I was like, maybe she doesn't feel good. And so I went to school Wednesday night and she wasn't there. I was just like, that's so weird. She's not here, and she didn't tell me she wasn't going to be here, you know what I mean.
But I didn't know exactly what kind of thing going on. And then come Thursday, I still hadn't heard from her, and I just was like, what's going on? Where are you?
Are you?
God at me?
Are you upset? Are you having a problem?
Lydia was unsure if she was overreacting or what to do, but her gut told her that something was wrong.
So I was like, I wonder where she at. And so I remember driving by her, so I was like, I'm just gonna drive by and see, and her car was there, her car window was down. That's weird. And then I walked up to her friend's door and it was dark. And the way that her apartment is, you have to walk around to the back of the buildings, very not safe for a young girl by herself, so you have to walk in, you have to walk upstairs.
So I walked up to her door. I even like cracked her door open real quick, and I said, Brittany, and I heard her cat me out and then I set the door because I got nervous. It was just dark. It's crazy out back there by myself, I was nervous, so then I called my dad.
Lydia's father had been a district attorney in Rogers County.
That's my dad.
I just can't get a hold of my friend. You know, I haven't seen her in a few days. Her boat's going straight to voicemail. I'm just and Murry's about her, and I don't know.
I just I have no idea why.
I just thought this is so randomly odd.
Lydia's dad explained to her how to call the authorities for a welfare check, and when first responders and police arrived, they found Britney's body in the bedroom of her apartment. News reports said that Brittany had been raped and strangled.
In the two decades since, ex.
Boyfriends and strangers have been questioned, sex offenders have been investigated and DNA swabs have been taken, but there's still no suspects. And the information that we've found so far has made me question if a lot of the facts that have been reported about this case are true at all. We're going to be going back to the beginning and asking some fundamental questions, including could the timeline of Britney's murder be off by up to forty eight hours. Was
Brittany definitely raped? Was this the work of someone who knew her and staged the crime scene or could it have been a serial killer? And could that person still be out there? And finally, could police have been on the wrong trail all this time? I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing
as a small town where murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families.
And their communities.
If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Britney's mother, doctor Marjorie Zingman, will never forget the day that she got a call
about her daughter's body being found. Since Britney's death, Maggie, a psychologist who specializes in trauma and works with veterans, has been relentless in trying to find answers and she's gotten very creative about her methods. We met Maggie at the True Crime Conference Crime Con. She was driving a bright, pink and purple Kia Carnival with a huge picture of Brittany on it and the side is emblazoned with a
phone number where people can call in tips. She calls the vehicle Caravan to catch a killer, and over the years she has driven all around America, traveling thousands of miles and talking to multiple media outlets to bring attention to Britney's case. Maggie is now seventy years old. She tells us that her greatest hope is to see this
case salved and the killer caught before she dies. Britney grew up in Tulsa, and after graduating from high school, Britney moved to Florida to attend Eckard College in Saint Petersburg, but after a year, she moved back to Oklahoma. She began attending Tulsa Community College. Brittany loved her major chemistry and according to her family, was hoping to someday work in cancer research. She also loves sports and music and planned to eventually transfer to Oklahoma State University to continentnew
her studies. Friends and family say she was very focused on her goals and was a good student. The last time that Maggie spoke to her daughter was earlier that day, on Monday, the twenty seventh. This is also the last day that Lydia saw or spoke to Brittany. Maggie told us that Brittany had allergies and that on that day Brittany went to an urgent care near campus to try to get an appointment.
That day, she couldn't even go to her last cliff because she was so stuffed up. And then she also had this little little pug nose. It just was so small that it also caused proms, But it was the allergies that were just making her totally sick. And so she sat in that urgent care about halfway between the pampus and her apartments and sat there for two or
three hours. And that's when she called me when she got upset to meet like a little girl, you know, just graying, I've been waiting here for hours type of thing.
Britney's friend.
Lydia tells us she doesn't remember Brittaney mentioning being sick or her mentioning urgent care, but she does remember that they went to class together that night. She remembered what Brittany was wearing when she dropped her off, a white shirt with a floral print and pants. Maggie told us that to her knowledge, Britney was not seeing anyone seriously, but Lydia said Britney had recently told her she had started seeing someone.
She had a boyfriend.
I had never met him.
They had only been talking for like a month. Can I remember her telling me about him? And then she had told me that he's worked at some restaurant and forgot the name of it now and started with the best and there were two locations.
Lydia called one of the restaurant's locations and was told that the boyfriend worked at the other location. So she called the other restaurant and talked to the boyfriend and told him what was going on.
I was like, I am looking for Britney.
I'm her friends.
He's like, I can't get a hold of her either, and I was like, oh my gosh. So I told my dad all that, and my dad said, okay, Paul, the non emergency have them come over and do a Commonwealth pro check. And I said, okay, so if the boyfriend actually met me out there too, we have.
The cop come.
They go upstairs and then they come back and they can they tell us? You know, I was just completely shocked.
Britney's case is still an open investigation, so we have not been able to access information through FOYR requests. But according to what Lydia said, Britney's boyfriend seemed upset and was cooperative with police. We don't know anything about the interview process that police had with him. Lydia said she does believe police interviewed him, but we don't know anything about how police were ruling out suspects at that point. In the apartment, officers found Britney dead on the floor.
Britney was lying near the foot of the bed, Her head was turned to the right. She was wearing only a shirt, the same shirt that Lydia described her wearing when Britney dropped her off, and she was naked from the waist down. We were able to get a copy of the medical report from Britney's mother first responders pronounced her dead on September thirtieth at ten nine pm, and the medical examiner arrived on the scene at one.
Forty five am.
It was noted in the report that there were numerous towels and items of clothing adjacent to her body. Investigators stated there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the piles of clothes scattered around.
Police also said there.
Didn't appear to be anything obvious missing from the apartment, and Tulsa Police Department Cold case Detective Jeremy Styles said no one that police interviewed remembered seeing anything out of the ordinary outside the apartment either. When Britney's toxicology report came back, it was negative for alcohol or any kind of drugs. One of the main things that you'll find if you google this case is the fact that Brittney was raped and strangled.
But is that true.
We talked to one of the former detectives on the case to try to figure out why police believed that Britney had been raped. He told us that because of the way her body was found, and because of the fact that she wasn't wearing pants, that indicated to him a possible sexual assault. There was also a dried used tampon found near Britney's body and a small amount of dried menstrual blood in her vagina, but in the autopsy report there is no mention of any seamen being found
inside Brittany. So, barring any other evidence, I have to disagree with the detective's assessment. To me, it does not appear that there was any definitive proof of rape. We asked the detective about this, he replied via text. He told us he believed if there was semen, that it may have degraded in the time between when Brittany was
killed and the time when her body was found. But the autopsy report also specifically states that there is no sign of either external or internal vaginal or anal trauma, and there is no mention of a sexual assault examination of any kind. Is it possible that Britney's killer removed the tampon to stage the crime scene to look like an assault, or that they were in the process of
sexually assaulting her but were interrupted. We don't know, but in my opinion, the fact that there is no definitive indication in the medical examiner's report of rape or sexual assault might change the killer's mo and presumably might widen the pool of suspects. But then, because nothing was taken from the scene, what was the killer's motive and was it someone who Britney knew or a stranger possibly a
serial killer. Lydia did say that because of the chemistry test that night, she and Brittany had left class a little earlier than usual. Could the killer have known Britney's schedule and been stalking her. One thing that detectives used to determine if the killer was known or unknown to the victim is whether or not entry to the crime scene was forced. Many media outlets have reported over the years there was no sign in a fourth century. So
how did Britney's killer access the apartment? One theory investigators had was that the killer could have gotten in through an attic space that was accessible to all of the apartments in that complex, which might suggest that the killer was familiar with Britney's apartment complex. But it turns out Britney's apartment was much easier to access than initially reported. A few weeks before her murder, Britney had been locked
out of her apartment. She had had to get someone to boost her up to her second four balcony so that she could get in, and when Britney's body was found, it was noted that the balcony doors of her apartment were open. Also, Lydia told us that when she went into Britney's apartment that the door was unlocked. In the early stages of the investigation, police seemed to believe that
this was some kind of robbery gone wrong. In two thousand and seven, police went public with a piece of evidence, a light purple lavender pillowcase found at the scene that did not match any of Britney's other bed linens. According to Tulsa World, Police theorized that the robber may have broken into Britney's apartment and was using their own pillowcase to steal things, and then the robber was either interrupted by Britney walking in or just got frazzled and forgot
the pillowcase. Investigators at the time said they were releasing the information about the pillowcase because there had been robberies in the area, robberies where the perpetrators used pillowcases to gather up the stuff they stole. Police released photos of this pillowcase and they that maybe someone out there might recognize the linens. We asked Maggie about the pillowcase. She tells us that the police found no DNA on it and that eventually they discovered that it either belonged to
Brittany or to someone she knew. They now don't believe that it was related to Britney's murder. It seemed to be just another red herring. There was some DNA of in it's found in Britney's apartment. According to information that law enforcement has released over the years, there were traces of seamen on Britney's sheets, a small amount of blood on a wall, and DNA underneath Britney's fingernails. Maggie said that she believed that the DNA under Britney's fingernails indicated
that her daughter may have fought for her life. She believes that the killer was either waiting for Brittany when she came home, or possibly that he broke in while she was sleeping. Maggie tells us she started investigating the possiblity that Britney's killer had been a serial killer and that he may have killed again or possibly left the area. That's why she started sharing Britney's story. With people across the country. Maggie said she estimated she's traveled over three
hundred thousand miles. She told People magazine that she has spent a massive amount of money, approximately one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, to keep Britney's story out there. She also told the magazine her travels have given her a new purpose in life. They've allowed her to process her grief and to connect with other families, in some cases, people who have also lost family members to violent crime. She's also gotten multiple tips over the years she's shared
them with police. Unfortunately, none of them have panned out so far. Although Maggie remains hopeful that one day Britney's killer will be brought to justice, she has said that her travels have also become about another purpose. She wants to connect with the victims of other homicide cold case families, and she wants to change legislation to allow more DNA testing to be done, hopefully without waiting years or decades.
But Maggie has also never given up on getting the break that will bring Britney's killer or killers to justice. In twenty twenty three, Maggie got a call one that she said could change everything that she thought she knew about the timeline leading up to when Britney's body was found. In twenty twenty three, Britney's mother, Maggie got a call from her ex husband, Britney's father. He told her that he found a birthday card that Brittany had mailed to
him in two thousand and four. He was supposed to forward it to her grandfather. That was apparently their routine every year. In twenty twenty three, Maggie was on private investigator Cheryl McCollum's podcast Zone seven, and they talked about on the podcast the fact that Cheryl had investigated the stamp and found out that the stamp was bought from a Kiosk machine, which means that the stamp was printed
from that machine on the day it was mailed. But the weird thing is the post office stamp was dated September twenty ninth, and up until that point, police's working theory was that Britney was killed sometime between the night of the twenty seventh, after she dropped Lydia off and the morning of the twenty eighth. Maggie believes that could change the timeline. Brittany could possibly still have been alive on the twenty ninth, at least a day after the
police's timeline. She is also considered the possibility someone else could have mailed that letter for Brittany, possibly one of her friends.
Or less possibly the killer.
Over the years, Maggie has talked to a lot of Britney's friends, so she hasn't found anyone who remembers being asked to drop off a letter. So that is still a big unanswered question. We're going to be diving more into that question next week in Part two. Other than the material under Britney's fingernails, which is not conclusive, there's no sign of defensive wounds anywhere else on her body.
Now we should say the body had been there for an estimated possibly two or three days by the time she was found, and everything including DNA evidence, deteriorates during that time. But the medical examiner's report does not mention any evidence of beating or defensive wounds. There were no injuries to Britney's face or nose. The medical examiner also noted that rigor mortis was absent in Britney's jaw and extremities, and that liver mortis or blood pooling was fixed and
non blanchable on the back side of her body. Now normally blood pooling becomes fixed around eight to twelve hours after death. Fix just means that if the body is moved, the blood will stay in the same place. The medical examiner did not indicate a time of death, which isn't that uncommon. Often, in cases where a body has been at a scene for days or weeks, the time of death is determined by the time the victim was last seen, rather than exact forensics.
But we do know that it takes.
About twenty four hours for rigor mortis to pass, which would indicate that Brittany had almost certainly been dead for at least a day or more. On Britney's neck there were three irregularly shaped oval bruises, bruises that were about the same size as fingers. She was wearing a white metal necklace and it was broken. Her hyoid bone showed signs of trauma but was not broken, which, while not conclusive,
is more common in manual strangulation than ligature strangulation. Brittany had hemorrhaging in her throat and broken blood vessels in her eyes, which both.
Can be indicative of strangulation.
The autopsy concluded Britney's death was violent and that the cause of death was asphyxia due to net compression. Given the evidence, I believe that so far it seems to point to suffocation caused by manual strangulation. DNA samples were taken from Britney's apartment and compared in its CODIS the Combined DNA Index system, and there was no match. Maggie began raising funds to do private DNA testing. She reached out to every person she could think of in an
effort to make it happen. In twenty eighteen, Eddie Majors, a cold case investigator with the Tulsa Police Department, announced that he was inspired by the way the police had caught the Golden State Killer in California using genealogy websites. He told Tulsa World that over the years he had developed a close friendship with Maggie. He wanted to help
her find answers in any way that he could. Emitted samples from Britney's crime scene, the blood and seamen on the wall to Parabond Nanilabs, a Virginia based DNA company that is able to run familial DNA samples there, Maggie and Eddie started working with the chief genetic.
Genealogist, C. C. Moore, and they got a match.
Maggie told us the DNA from the blood and semen wasn't just a familial match, They got an exact match. But then there was another twist. Law enforcement discovered the DNA profile lay built from blood and seamen was from
someone the police had already talked to. He was the boyfriend of one of Britney's friends, and he and his girlfriend had spent the night at Britney's apartment the weekend before the murder, and Maggie told us investigators have told her that this man had an airtight alibi and that they had already interviewed him. Police have confirmed this, which meant that the phenotype of the killer came from the
wrong DNA profile. Only the blood and seamen contributor was tested, but apparently the DNA found underneath Britney's fingernails came from a totally different person.
Eddie Majors confirmed this in an interview.
With Tulsa World, saying, quote, through information we received from him and corroboration we got for his story, we are no longer looking at the suspect. Based on the forensic composite drawing that we released, This means the DNA profile that we have used for fifteen years developed from blood and semen at the crime scene. The blood and seamen was not our killer. It was found at her apartment because Brittany let this young man and his girlfriend sleep
over end quote. This was a huge blow from Maggie and the rest of Britney's family and friends, because, in her opinion, that meant this investigation had to start back at the very beginning. Next week, we're going to try to answer a lot more questions, including does that stamp really change the timeline and if so, does that mean that all alibis have to be questioned. We're also going to take a look at the murder of another young woman that happened right across the street from Brittany, again
a case with robbery but no sexual assault. If Britney wasn't raped and the killer isn't limited to someone who knew her apartment complex, well does that change the entire direction of the case. Meanwhile, Maggie continues to drive around the country in her pink and purple car with her daughter's pictures on the side, hoping that someone somewhere will have a lead that could help close this case, or that eventually the DNA from underneath Britney's fingernails will be
tested and could help identify a suspect. If you have any information about the murder of Britney Phillips, please call Tulsa Crimestoppers at nine one eight five nine six cops or email Homicide at Ciftulsa dot org. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plush channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at
Helen Gonepod. If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six' one four. Five that's six seven eight seven four four six one four.
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