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, went to her evening chemistry class with her friend Lydia. As we said last week, and Britney car pulled together. Lydia was driving, and it was just an ordinary night. They were happily chatting about Britney's nineteenth birthday, which was coming up in a few days, and their plans to hang out that weekend.
After the test was over.
They got out of class a little bit early and rode together back to Lydia's apartment. They arrived there at around eight pm, and Britney got into her car and said goodbye. She lived a short car ride away in an apartment complex near sixty fifth Street and Mingo Road. That was the last time that Lydia ever saw her
friend alive. After Britney didn't show up for the next class, Lydia went into Britney's apartment and found the door unlocked, but after poking her head in, she told us that she heard Britney's cap me outing, got a creepy feeling and backed out. Then Lydia called her dad. After that, she called the authorities and asked for a welfare check on her friend. Investigators got there shortly after ten pm
on September thirtieth, and they found Britney's body. Clothing was found scattered all around her in a haphazard way, and the balcony doors to her second floor apartment were open. Britney was found lying next to her bed, and investigators believed she had been dead for at least a couple of days. News reports said that Britney had been raped and strangled, but last week we saw the medical examiner's report, and in that report there was no definitive evidence of
sexual assault. What happened to Britney Phillips after she went up to her dark apartment that night? Was she actually sexually assaulted? What's the status of the DNA that was found under her fingernails? And could her killer already be behind bars or still be out somewhere possibly looking for more victims. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where
murdered never happens. I have 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 or 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. When we talked to Lydia last week, she told us that Brittany had recently started seeing someone. There were rumors that Brittany may have had a crush on someone in her building. Britney's mother, Maggie Ingman, said she didn't believe that was true, and Lydia clarified Britney's new boyfriend did not live in her building. Lydia told us that after she called for the welfare check,
she called the restaurant where Britney's boyfriend worked. He came to meet her at Britney's apartment during the time when authorities were doing the welfare check. As paramedics and investigators entered Britney's apartment, we would love to talk to Britney's boyfriend. Lydia remembers talking to him, but unfortunately does not remember his name. She also doesn't remember where he worked, just that it was a coffee shop or restaurant that began with the letter B and had at least two locations
in Tulsa at that time. She remembered him being very concerned during the welfare check and cooperative with police. I want to be very clear, we do not suspect that Britney's boyfriend had anything to do with Britney's murder. But because there's a lot we don't know about Britney's last few weeks, he might have important information, maybe information he.
Doesn't even know he has.
So if you are out there, please reach out, or if you know this person, please send him our way. The next thing I wanted to try and shed some light on if we can, is the timeline. Police believe that when they found her body, Brittany had been dead for at least a couple of days. They believe she was killed sometime between the night of the twenty seventh, after she got home from her chemistry class in the morning of the twenty eighth. Other evidence also points to that.
Last week we talked about the medical examiner's report. It stated lividity was fixed and blanched, which normally occurs around eight to twelve hours after death, and rigor mortis was absent, which normally only happened starting around twenty four hours after death. Also, no one saw or heard from Brittany at all between the night of the twenty seventh and the time her body was found. Brittany's body was naked from the waist down.
She was wearing a white shirt with loral print. The same shirt that Lydia had seen her wearing when she last saw her, and Brittany had a dried used hampon next to her body. Now, the fact that Brittany was wearing the same top that Lydia last saw her in on September twenty seventh isn't conclusive, but it does, in my opinion, point to Brittany being killed shortly.
After she got home. But then there was the stamp.
Last week, Maggie told us that Brittany's father contacted her in twenty twenty three. He showed her a card that Brittany had forwarded to him to mail to her grandfather for his birthday, and the postmark on that stamp was September twenty ninth, two thousand and four. Now, Maggie considered the possibility maybe Brittany dropped the letter into a mailbox before her class, and that the letter could have sat in the back of the mailbox for a couple days.
But later she said she had discovered that the stamp was printed either from a post office or from a kiosk on September twenty ninth.
The stamp was a mystery.
Because if Brittany had printed the stamp and mailed the letter on the twenty ninth. That would mean that the police's entire timeline could be off by at least twenty four hours, which would mean, presumably that police would have to.
Talk to everyone again.
Could there be another explanation for the posthumous postmark. One of the big things that we revealed last week was that Britney's apartment was much easier to access than had been initially reported. Maggie told us she believed that the killer could have been waiting in her apartment when she
got home. Britney's killer could have accessed her apartment in multiple ways, through the building shared attic, from Britney's second floor balcony that was open, or through Britney's front door, which was unlocked when Lydia went into check on her. Lydia also mentioned that Britney's apartment was in the back of the complex, so it would have been a place where someone could have gotten into more easily without being seen.
We looked through a ton of old.
Cases to find out if there were any similar attacks to Britney's one where the killer gott into someone's apartment to rob or sexually assault them.
It turned out there were a lot.
Of attacks in Tulsa during that time, including several high profile cases, or the killers were not caught for a long time. In October of two thousand and five, news headlines in Tulsa stated that a serial rapist was terrorizing the town and he was very active between two thousand and four and two thousand and five, the same time
period when Brittany was murdered. This assailant hadn't killed anyone, at least not anyone that police knew of, but NBC News reported the man had been breaking into holmes for two years and raping young women and girls. There were seven victims that authorities knew about at that time, but they estimated there could be more. His youngest victim was only two years old. The rapist mo was breaking into
homes that were unlocked. The Tulsa Police Chief day Ben told news outlets that the rapist had gotten into the two years old home by climbing in through an unlocked bedroom window, all while her mother slept in the next room. Last week, we talked to Britney's friend, Lydia. She told us that over the years she has spoken to detectives multiple times. She has tried to the best of her ability to help figure out what happened to her friend.
She said she does remember hearing rumors about a serial rapist in Tulsa back around the time when Britney was murdered.
I've talked to detectives throughout the years, and I've booked the pictures and I never really noticed anybody or anything. And for some reason, I remember hearing that at the time there might have been a serial rapist in the area. That it's been a long time agoing out remember ifoun was ever true.
Police did find a lead on at least one Tulsa rapist. In that NBC interview, police confirmed that the Tulsa rapist DNA matched victims from crime scenes from February of two thousand and four and May of two thousand and four. Police described the man as a white male with brown hair, approximate age early twenties to early thirties, with a stocky build five foot seven inches to six feet tall, and in February of two thousand and six, Tulsa police arrested a suspect.
His name was Gary Graham.
Through DNA technology, they were eventually able to link him to twelve different attacks, and he was hit with over forty felony charges, including first degree rate rate by instrumentation, attempted rate, lewd molestation, kidnapping, forcible sodomy, sexual battery, burglary, and possession of child porn. Gary Graham pleaded no contest to thirteen of the charges and the rest were dismissed. In return, he got two life sentences to run consecutively,
plus another one hundred and eighty years in prison. After his sentencing, one of his victims, Catherine Hall, talked about how when she was fifteen years old, she woke up to find Gary in her room. He put a knife to her throat and told her that if she wasn't quiet, he would kill her, and then he sexually assaulted her. There were some similarities between Gary Graham's crimes and Britney's attack,
but there were also some differences. For one thing, the Tulsa rapist seemed to choose the path of least resistance. He did not beat his victims. Instead, he either selected victims who were young enough to subdue, or used a knife or other weapon to keep them quiet too terrified to move. Brittany was also not beaten. In fact, there
were basically no defensive wounds on her body. So it's possible that her killer did use a weapon and attempted to sexually assault her, and then maybe something made him stop. Maybe it was the fact that she was having her period, or maybe he heard a noise, maybe there was some other sort of interruption.
We just don't know.
It's also possible, by the way, that she was sexually assaulted, so we can't be sure. Gary Graham talked to a reporter from News on six, and in that interview, he completely denied any involvement in the serial rape cases. He told the reporter quote, I didn't do this. I don't look like that guy. I wouldn't do this. I have two kids of my own. I would kill somebody if they touched either of my kids.
End quote.
Gary insisted that the whole thing was a set up by the police and that he was being framed. He even mentioned true crime shows to News on six, saying, quote, how do you take a swab Monday night and get it back Wednesday?
That's impossible.
I watched Discovery Channel in Court TV, and those big labs in California don't get it back that fast end quote. Gary was convicted of the assaults, and in two thousand and seven he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison plus one hundred and eighty years. That's where he remains to this day. He was never officially linked Totney's case. We found another case that was similar to Britney's. This one occurred years later in twenty seventeen, but some
of the circumstances were similar to what happened with Britney. Also, this case we're going to talk about in my opinion highlights the problems in Oklahoma with DNA testing delays, which was also an issue for Britney's case. In twenty seventeen, a nineteen year old named Kelsey Tenant was killed when a man brutally attacked her in her apartment. Kelsey lived near sixty fifth Street in Mingo, right across the street
from Britney Phillips apartment complex. We've spoken to Kelsey's mother and she told us that on the day she was murdered, Kelsey had been at work at Metro Appliances and more. She got a break around three pm and went home to watch some reruns of Friends, but when she got inside her apartment. Police believe someone was waiting for her. Her attacker was in the process of robbing her apartment. Kelsey's mother, Michelle, said that her killer was throwing things
into a trash bag. After Kelsey walked in and interrupted the burglary, he viciously turned on her.
He beat and strangled her.
Kelsey's mother said that Kelsey's killer used a lamp chord to strangle her. Then as she lay there dying, he continued gathering up her stuff and throwing it into the trash bag.
There were just several items in a trash bag and a shoe that had blood.
On it that she had been wearing in the little lamp.
He used the cord for it. The strangler, so it was in the bag, and just random items like that that had any kind of evidence that there had been a struggle.
He had it in a trash.
Bag and he had actually tossed it out onto the patio.
At some point, Kelsey's boyfriend, Riley Allen, got worried because she wasn't answering his calls, so he went to her apartment to check on her and walked into a horrific scene. Kelsey was laying motionless on the floor and the killer was still inside the apartment. The killer then turned on and attacked Riley and strangled him as well, this time with his hands. Riley passed out and the killer fled the scene. Riley recovered soon after and called for help.
He and Kelsey were both rushed to the hospital. Riley miraculously ended up with only minor injuries, but Kelsey was another story. By the time she got to the er, she was already in critical condition. She was brain dead, and she was pronounced officially dead a few hours later. Riley helped police identify the killer, and it turned out that even though this man was a stranger to Kelsey, he was not a stranger to her neighbors at the
apartment complex. His name is Gregory Eperson. He was homeless at the time and was staying with a friend who lived in the apartment right next door to Kelsey's. Later, Kelsey's mother said police had discovered that Kelsey's attacker had been friends with that neighbor, and that this friend had been allowing him to crash at her apartment. Kelsey's mom, Michelle, also told us Kelsey had seen Gregory around the apartment complex and that he gave her the creeps.
So the neighbor's store at Kelsey's store were both in an alcove together. Now the apartment complex security cameras did not have security on her particular building.
That he was seen.
Going around checking doors throughout the complex, and Kelsey had crossed house with him a few times because he did frequent that apartment and told a friend that.
He gave her the creeps, Michelle said.
The neighbor testified in court that she and Kelsey shared an air conditioning unit, and Michelle also told us Kelsey had been having issues with her air conditioning unit. Michelle said that one possibility that police had considered was that perhaps Gregory could have posed as a maintenance man and use that as an excuse to try and access apartments. Kelsey's murder, according to law enforcement, seemed to be completely
a crime of opportunity at the time. Tulsa Police Sergeant Dave Walker described the horrific attacks and murder as being due to an interrupted burglary to Tulsa World Daily, there's not much information out there on Gregory Eperson. He was forty one years old when he was arrested for Kelsey's murder, and he had a criminal history. He had previously been convicted of second degree burglary, driving under suspicion, obstructing an officer,
and transporting an open container, but no serious felonies. He was described as a father of two who seemed to be between places to live. We did do some research and we found out Gregory was living in Tulsa in two thousand and four at.
The time of Britney's attack.
He was linked to an address about a ten minute drive away from Brittany's, but since he appears to have led a pretty transient lifestyle, to be honest, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where he was. But shockingly, it came out later that Kelsey's murder was not the first time that Gregory Eperson had been connected with the murder in Tulsa. In September of two thousand and eight, Gregory's landlord, Ray Johnson Junior, disappeared. Ray Johnson Junior ran a used car
shop at six thousand North Peoria. His vehicle was found in front of his workplace, and there was blood inside the trunk of the car, blood that investigators said the trunk had been.
Cleaned with bleach.
Even though this homicide happened in two thousand and eight. Charges weren't filed against Gregory until July tenth, twenty fifteen. At that time, Tulsa Police Sergeant Dave Walker put out a wanted notice for Gregory Epperson, and shortly after that, Gregory turned himself in. He was arraigned on July seventeen, twenty fifteen, and charged with first degree murder. In court, police said they believed Gregory Epperson had shot and killed Ray Johnson, thrown his body into the trunk of a car,
and dumped the body into a creek. However, Ray Johnson's body was never found. According to an affidavit, police had a witness. This witness claim they had gone over to Gregory Eperson's house sometime in September of two thousand and eight. The witness said when he got there, he said that Gregory was holding a bucket of bleach, that there was blood on the ground and a body on the side of Gregory's house. The witness said that Gregory was hosing
down his driveway to get rid of the blood. Then he claimed Gregory put a gun to his head and forced him to help put the body in the trunk. But then in January of twenty sixteen, the DA dropped the charges against Gregory Eperson. Later media reports said this was due to the fact that investigators never found Ay Johnson's body. They said there was a lack of evidence. News Channel nine interviewed Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Coonsweiler.
He said, quote, the prosecution of Gregory Jerome Eperson for the death of Ray Johnson was discontinued due to significant concerns about the lack of corroborating evidence to convict him.
End quote.
One problem was DNA, one newspaper said, quote DNA checks to connect that blood and hair took a while to come back, so charges were dropped end quote. That's the line I've read a few times, and I wonder why did it take over seven years to get DNA back on this case. There were also no eyewitnesses to the actual death. The DA said the witness was a convicted felon, and that that witness had only told the story about Gregory Eperson after he was arrested for another crime.
Another issue the DA said they.
Had was that the witness's story about finding the body and being forced at gunpoint to help dispose of it couldn't be corroborated by any other witnesses or by any other evidence, So in twenty sixteen, Gregory Eperson walked away a free man. After the news broke about Kelsey Tenants murder in twenty seventeen and news organizations started looking around into Gregory Eperson's past, they learned that neither Kelsey's brutal killing nor the disappearance of Ray Johnson were the first
time that Gregory Eperson had been suspected of murder. Police also stated Gregory Eperson was the suspect and yet another murder, a third murder of his landlord, John Baker, who was reported missing in twenty ten. John Baker's body was found a few months later by Lake Keystone. Tulsa Police homicide Sergeant Dave Walker told news reporters that the last person known to have talked to John Baker was Gregory Eperson, who at the time was living in one of John's
rental houses. But by the time investigators found John baker body at that lake, the physical evidence had deteriorated, so in the end, they did not find enough usable evidence to charge Gregory Eperson with anything, which meant that Gregory Epperson could have very possibly gotten away with murder twice by the time he broke into Kelsey Tenant's apartment, and he was already in his forties. Could he have committed
other crimes or other murders over the years. After Gregory was charged with Kelsey Tenant's murder and the attack on her boyfriend Riley, the prosecution announced that they were seeking
the death penalty in connection with Kelsey's murder. This would have been the first case in Oklahoma where someone was charged with murder and could receive the death penalty in many years, and Kelsey's mother, Michelle, said that the family got a shock when they showed up for their court hearing before the scheduled trial and discovered that Gregory Eperson, who had previously denied any involvement in Kelsey's murder, was pleading guilty.
We were set to start the jury trial in December, and I believe that it was late September early October when we went for the court hearing. We're a couple of hours away, So when we got there, we went to the floor for families of victims and met our advocate and I used the restaurroom Brokswick and when I came out, she said, the dasis called, he's decided.
To plead guilty.
We need to get the family down there. So we went down to the courtroom and he fled guilty. The judge made him answer a bunch of questions, so he answered the questions. The judge asked him if he did it, and he asked me if he had anything else you said, He said no. They looked at me to see if we wanted to do a victim statement, and I think I was just since that thought that he was actually admitting to it, and I didn't know what I would say, so I just shook in my head.
No.
The death penalty was taken off the table when he pled guilty. Gregory Epperson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Kelsey's mother said that, in addition to never expressing remorse, Gregory didn't answer any questions at all, either for Kelsey's family or the judge about her brutal murder, but he may have talked to other people behind bars. According to media reports, Gregory Eperson bragged to a fellow inmate that he had already beaten two
murder charges. To my knowledge, no one has ever connected Gregory Epperson to Britney's case, But now that he's been convicted of Kelsey's murder and his DNA's in the system, I absolutely believed that the DNA from under Britney's fingernails should be tested against his and the other millions of DNA profiles of convicted felons in Cotis And I also wonder could Gregory have committed other crimes that he was
never charged with over the years. Remember that last week we talked to doctor Maggie's Ingman, Britney's mom, who has been crusading for justice for her daughter for over two decades. Now. You may remember that the original DNA profile that was sent off for testing was taken from blood and semen that was found in Britney's apartment. From that DNA profile, Parabond created a composite photo of a white male with
brown or blonde hair and blue or green eyes. That was the profile police used to search for Britney's killer for fifteen years. However, we also learned that in twenty nineteen, after police got an exact DNA match, they learned that the man who was the DNA match to the blood and seamen was not their suspect.
He was someone who had dated a friend of Britney's.
They had spent the night at Britney's apartment recently, so that's why police said there was a tiny bit of blood and there was semen on britney sheets. We talked to Maggie again about the other DNA found at the scene, the DNA that was found under Britney's fingernails. Police told Maggie that the parabond DNA composite was completely off. The DNA under Britney's fingernails was from a different contributor, and that this DNA indicated that Britney's assailant was not a
white male. Maggie wasn't sure by what the detective said if they meant the person was mixed race or Asian Native American Black. There are a lot of possibilities, but the original DNA composite was the wrong race. This new information did prompt us to go back and expand our search. We wanted to look at attacks in the same area where Britney was murdered.
We were focusing on.
One robberies and attacks that may not have been centered on rape or sexual assault, or where sexual assault didn't appear to be the primary motive, and two crimes where the assailant was a non white man, and we're still in the process of doing that. So what's next for
Britney's investigation. I believe that the numerous towels and item of clothing that were found adjacent to Britney's body could point to someone disorganized, someone who had access the apartment and was in the process of robbing it when Brittany walked in, or who surprised her outside her car or ambushed her on the way into her apartment. The killer
may have tried to sexually assault Brittany. The fact that she was on the floor and naked from the waist down with her tampon removed dow seemed to point to that, but again, there was no definitive proof of sexual assault in the medical examiner's report. In fact, the report said there was no sign of external genital trauma and no mention of semen being found. I do question why there
was not a more extensive sexual assault kit run. Even though DNA does start to deteriorate after a few days, it had been at most three days, and traces of seamen could have been found maybe that could have provided more definitive answers about whether or not Britney was sexually assaulted. Maggie continues to drive around the country in her caravan to catch killer, talking to other families, interviewing experts, and talking to anyone and everyone she thinks could potentially help
shed light on her daughter's case. The main thing that needs to happen now is that the Tulsa Police need to tell Maggie whether or not they have been able to test the DNA under Britney's fingernails and what the status of those tests is now. The fingernail DNA and any other relevant DNA needs to be run through CODIS since, as we've discussed, a lot of killers have been caught since then, maybe that DNA will be the key to me.
The investigation keeps coming back to Britney's apartment, as her friend Lydia said, it was in the back of the apartment call complex and dark and isolated, and Britney's balcony windows were open when her body was found, and the door was unlocked, and I keep coming back to something else that Lydia said that Britney's car window was rolled down. This may have been just a random oversight, But it seems to me that leaving a window down is not something that a young woman living on her own would
normally do when locking her car at night. According to a two thousand and four article in The Oklahoma Tulsa experienced a rise in crime in two thousand and four, including a rise in armed robberies and gang violence. In many cases, victims were fatally shot during robberies even after complying with the robbers. It was reported at the time that the Justice Department was sending federal agents to Tulsa and fourteen other cities that had a dramatic rise in
violent crime. Given that, it seems even more unlikely that Britney would choose to leave her window down.
It's a situation where she was getting out of her car, she was alone. It would start She's walking behind the building by herself.
I don't know.
I don't know if it was that timing to someone just saw her and she was just amazing target what Because they said that there was no sign of forced injury, So maybe the person just literally followed her upstairs.
There's also the possibility, as Tulsa police have stated that there are people out there who know something, Maybe even people in or around Britney's apartment complex or neighborhood who know something or saw something. Even though it's been over twenty years, I'm hoping that someone will come forward and help this mother who's been trying to get justice for over two decades.
Find some answers.
Britney's killer could still be out there and he may have killed again. If you have any information about the murder Britney Phillips, please call Tulsa Crime Stoppers at night five nine six cops or email Homicide at Cityfoftulsa dot org.
I'm Katherine 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 of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you're interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonepod.
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 or five.
That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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