Road Trip to Murder

It's very hard to understand. I always say that if this happened to Matt and Phil, this could happen to anyone. And something like this shouldn't happen to anyone. I really think what they ran into was someone very sinister. And very evil. It's early in the morning on Friday, March 20th. And twenty-nine-year-old Philip Reagan is preparing for a life.

Adventure. The Cleveland, Ohio native recently accepted a job in California, and he's busily packing everything he owns into his Black Ford escape before embarking on his cross-country journey. Phillips' older brother, 39-year-old Matthew Reagan, has offered To make the drive with him, to experience some of the country's amazing sites that they've always dreamed of visiting together.

As the SUV pulls out of the driveway, Matt waves goodbye to his wife, Faye, and their five boys, expecting to return home in just a few days. No one suspects that it's the last moment Matt and Philip will ever have. and this is our They were packed up, they were ready. They were excited. They were up early. It was uh still pretty March weather here in in Ohio.

to keep us posted. We hugged them and kissed them, told them we loved them. It was just kinda normal seeing'em off, but I still felt a lot of trepidation that morning. Faye Reagan, Matt's wife, originally encouraged her husband to make the cross-country drive with his younger brother. But as the trip approached, she started having second thoughts. COVID-19 had just become a real concern in the United States.

Matt was starting to watch the news. We were asking Phil. We're like, wow, you're going there. California seems like it's about to close down its borders, you know? That was our concern. He's like, No, they're telling me to come. I still have a job, but if Matt needs to drop out, I understand. We're not

the type to panic, we're gonna be reasonable. And Matt's like, it's okay. They had a dropout plan for Nevada if needed, but they were trying to be flexible because they didn't know what was going to change with California or the pandemic starting. I mean there were so many mixed messages, so much mixed up information, but they were just two guys in a car, and they would be okay. Fay and Matt met in high school when Faye was only seventeen, and their connection was instant and unbreakable.

They dated throughout college, with Matt studying to become a mechanical engineer while Faye got her nursing degree. They waited ten years before finally getting married, but they both knew all along where their lives were headed. Matt and I are husband and wife. I still say husband and wife. I love him just as much as ever. We were together over 20 years, and we spent every day together, and we're just really happy and really in love.

I feel like we were lucky that as we grew, we grew together. I don't think many people get that in their lifetime even. Matt loved to be outside. He loved hiking and walking and riding his bike. He loved being with his brother. I can't express to you what a hardworking and good person he was and what kind of work ethic he always had. His parents raised a great man and he and his brothers are great guys and there's so much to love about him.

For Madden Fay, family was everything, and they both shared the dream of having a large family of their own. Their first son was born two years after they got married, and by twenty twenty, five boys were running around the house. They both loved being parents. If he was changing the brakes, he was showing our oldest son how to do it.

If we're driving a long drive on vacation, he's teaching them how to read the map and how to read the mile markers and asking, Well, how many more miles till this city? They would leave Rubik's cubes around the house for each other to challenge each other to see who could solve them faster. Okay. He was always making sure to enjoy his time with them and create memories with them. And so I feel like we were living a dream.

Philip Reagan was a full ten years younger than his brother Matt, but they maintained a close bond into adulthood. The two loved to tinker on cars together, and Matt would often invite Philip along on family outings. He was a beloved brother-in-law and uncle to Fay and the boys. I think Philip was one of those guys. He could be loyal to a fault. Like he would just be helping any underdog, a friend of a friend, no matter who asked him, he would just go out of his way for people.

He always had a smile and he's very funny and very witty, just like his brother. He was so young and I think he was really looking forward to starting his life. At the start of 2020, Philip had a job as a maintenance worker for an apartment complex in Cleveland, but was looking to make a career change. In early February, a close friend told him about several open positions at the Montecito Sequoia Line.

California's Sequoia National Park. Intrigued by the opportunity, Philip applied, and at the end of February, he was offered a job. He immediately called his older brother Matt to share the news. Matt was excited for Phil. He was like if he doesn't do the do this, he'll always regret it moving out to California. He's like, you know, he needs to do this. It's the time in his life. He doesn't have children or significant other. And so, you know, if he's gonna make a big move, now is the time.

I looked at Mac I mean we just just look at each other and know what the other one was thinking. And I go, You wanna go with him, don't you? And he goes Yeah, I'm like, well you should do it. Go with your brother. Your dad wouldn't want you guys to travel alone. So he immediately talked to Phil and Phil's like, that would be great. And they started making plans.

The twenty four hundred mile trip from Cleveland to California will take four days by car, and the brothers leave early on Friday, March twentieth, in Phillips SUV. Matt plans to fly back home the following Tuesday. Their timeline in between is loose and flexible to allow for sightseeing stops along the way. They'll travel on historic Route sixty six, stopping to visit the famous Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and check out some of the lava tube caves spread across the southwest.

They also want to spend one night at the rustic Spider Rock Campground in Arizona's Canyon Deshay National Monument on the Navajo Nation. Reaching these remote destinations means taking significant detours away from their main route, but Matt and Philip are prepared. They have two different geolocation devices to guide them on their journey.

The first day they drove a lot farther than they were supposed to. But I think they got up, they were excited and they made great time'cause it was just two brothers on the road. They were thinking they were gonna stop in Oklahoma, but they made it all the way to Texas. The last time I Skyped with him was Friday night when he and Phil got checked in to the Shamrock Inn in Shamrock, Texas.

They were definitely tired looking, they looked weary. So we didn't talk very long. I told them goodnight and to get some good rest. And that was pretty late. It was like after eleven thirty Ohio time. The next morning, Saturday, March 21st, Matt and Philip are back on the road early, eager to check out as many sites as they can and reach Spider Rock Campground before sunset.

Matt's very good about keeping in touch when he travels. He knows I worry a lot, so he's real good. Plus, I think he wants us always to feel included, you know, in whatever he's doing and shares with me and the boys. And so there would be periods where

I wouldn't hear from him and I think those were the times when Matt was driving. It seems like they would switch at each gas station stop. So when it was Matt's turn to ride, then we would be getting some texts and some pictures and stuff along the way. My very last communication with Matt was a picture he sent me in the late afternoon on Saturday.

Matt's texts initially help to alleviate Faye's anxiety about the trip, but when she's putting the boys to bed Saturday evening, she's suddenly struck by a feeling that something isn't right. This is gonna sound strange, but for me it was about eight thirty ish on Saturday night. I felt like something was wrong. It had been four hours since I heard from Matt and I feel like he very rarely misses saying goodnight to the boys.

But then I thought to myself, They'll be okay, they're gonna text you in a little bit. You know, he's probably his turn to drive. Faye does her best to dismiss her nagging concerns, but as the evening grows later, her fears are impossible to At about eleven thirty midnight, I started texting and called both of them.

I got no answer. I really couldn't sleep that night. I got up at pretty much the middle of the night again and started thinking about checking on them. And I called and left a few of our friends a message, you know, has anyone else in the family heard from them?

I even called hospitals'cause I can't shut my nurse brain off and flag staff told me they're like, Oh, honey, there's no cell reception here I'm sure they're fine. And so that told me, I'm like, You are panicking, listen to what she says, just give'em time. But Sunday morning passes without any word from Matt or Philip. They still aren't answering their phones. Faye calls hotels, campgrounds, and hospitals in the areas where they were traveling, but no one has seen them.

As the hours tick by, Faye knows in her heart that something terrible must have happened to her husband and Philip.

It was pretty late in the evening, eight thirty, nine thirty, right around that time is when the police came. And I knew as soon as they knocked, I just took a deep breath, walked to the door and I said, he's like, ma'am, and I'm like, you're here for about my husband, aren't you? And he said, Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry. The kids were still awake when the police came. And so my oldest could hear them talking to me at the door.

And the police said that the Arizona law enforcement had called and they found my husband passed away on the Apache Trail. And I was thinking to myself, I d I have no idea what the Apache Trail is. I didn't recall that from any of their planning.

When you hear those words that he's passed away and you think, I have no hope. Like even as I was walking to the door, I felt like I knew, but I kept thinking, please just tell me he's somewhere and I need to get by his side and we can pray and he's gonna be all right. Police officer asked me, like, who can we get for you? I just couldn't even think straight. The person you get for me, you just told me, isn't available. is passed away. I cannot believe

And I just didn't want to believe. I'm like, it's gotta be the wrong person. Our dispatch received the call of the incident at five thirty PM. What was relayed to me was that a citizen who was out cutting some wood in this area were headed back in the direction of sawmill when they had come upon the scene.

The scene, described to Apache County Sheriff's Deputy Rosco Herrera, was intensely disturbing. Two men were lying dead along a remote, unpaved stretch of Navajo Route 7, a few miles west of the tiny village of Sawmill, Arizona.

Both had been shot multiple times at close range, and an abandoned truck with Ohio plates was a half mile from the bodies. Local Navajo Nation police were the first to respond to the scene, and after identifying the victims as Matt and Philip Reagan, they reached out to the sheriff. for help with the investigation.

They were identified by obtaining the license plate number from the vehicle and running some checks on it. Once it was established that both victims were of non native descent, the call was immediately placed to our dispatch center for us to be able to do that. for us to respond. I arrived on scene at about 825 PM. The first thing I'm concerned with is the security of the scene. It was late. Of course it's dark. It had just recently rain or snowed just prior to that, so the road was muddy.

I had made a decision to wait until daylight the next day to collect evidence. On March 21st, 2020, we received a call from Navajo Nation criminal investigators. advising that they had two deceased non native males and because it was the potential that there was a native involved, then we needed to be involved. So we ended up working the case jointly with them. Sam Davenport is a supervisory agent with the FBI, covering the northeastern portion of Arizona.

The Navajo Nation is a sovereign state, so investigating the two murders requires federal involvement. The FBI quickly joins the case, working alongside Navajo police and the local sheriff's office to find answers to three fundamental questions. How did the Reagan brothers end up on that remote stretch of road? Who shot them? And why?

I have been to the crime scene. I have been to the area. It is certainly not well populated. You have the town of Sawmill, which is even by reservation standards, fairly small community. The population of sawmill is seven hundred and six people. That was as of twenty twenty. They have one gas station convenience store there, and really once you're outside of the town, you're in the woods.

It's a little bit higher elevation, lots of pine trees, very susceptible to weather conditions, snow, rain, mud. By Sunday morning, March 22nd, the investigation is in full swing. Authorities determine that Matt and Philip must have. To get to Spider Rock Monument in Canyon Deshay, but road conditions forced them to abandon their vehicle.

Their vehicle is located maybe about half mile from them to the west on this dirt road, which is Navajo Route seven. It's paved up to a certain distance past sawmill. and then it becomes dirt road and it goes into Chin Lee where the tribal park is at, which is known as Kang Dish, you'd have to know your way around and be familiar with the road and to get to the park. So generally only locals or people who are familiar with the area use that road.

In the past we've had individuals who are not locals, visitors, tourists. I specifically know about a couple of cases where Google Maps or some type of other mapping system has been used by some of these individuals and it'll route them through that road. Some snow had come down, I believe, at that time and it made the road conditions pretty bad as far as mud. And for the vehicle were we determined that the two victims had become stuck.

The vehicle had apparently slid off the road into a small bar ditch. There were branches, pieces of wood around the vehicle. There were multiple handprints they were determined to be from the victims pushing on the vehicle in an attempt to get the vehicle unstuck. However, that vehicle was pretty sucked into the mud and they weren't able to get it out.

There was no tampering in the vehicle. As a matter of fact, he was still locked up and no damage to the vehicle other than what occurred It's my belief that they were attempting to walk back to the little community of sawmill to get some help to get their vehicle out. Amen.

Knowing Phillips' Blackford escape had to pass through the town of Sawmill, authorities obtained security camera footage from the local convenience store. They searched the video for clues that could help them determine the time of death or if any potential suspects were found. Matt and Philip. Based on our investigation and the limited surveillance footage that we could find in the area.

It appears that they had passed through Sawmill somewhere around 3 p.m. on the afternoon of March twenty first. Later on that afternoon, early evening is when they were reported to have been found deceased on the side of the road. Time of death would be between three PM and six PM. Nothing uh we found from the surveillance video indicates that they had any altercation within the field of view of the surveillance footage. Did not appear that they were being followed either.

Looking at the video surveillance, any individuals coming to the store before or after that might have piqued our interests. We started from that looking at one individual who may have been a suspect. We did identify a this individual. We determined that the individual matched an individual who lived in Sawmill who did not have a good police record. So this individual was located and interviewed.

While initially a promising lead, the person of interest seen on the surveillance footage fails to develop into a strong suspect. So investigators cast a wider net throughout the sawmill area, hoping to find potential witnesses or useful information. With the help of Naval Nation Police, we had conducted a area sweep of the community, essentially going door to door some of the properties or the homes that are just past sawmill. There's several residents

in the area. We did what we can to collect any information. We were hoping that a witness would give us some helpful information, specifically seeing the victims possibly. or hearing any gunshots or just anything out of the ordinary. This area that we canvassed was approximately a mile and a half from where the victims were located. So it was pretty slim that we would get anything out of the canvas at that time.

Not everybody lives directly in the small community of Sawmill. Some people live a little bit further out. More Homesteaders, I guess, would be a good way to look at it. They have their own pieces of property, uh little Further out. Crimes involving non-natives in general on the reservation are not that common. Most of our work with the FBI relates. to native on native crimes, and usually by somebody that they know.

The Navajo Nation. It has a very large tourist population during the summer months. Tribal members are welcoming. They are appreciative and they understand that tourism is a very significant economic factor for the community. So to have a situation like this where you have two non-tribal members that are brutally murdered en route to see a tourist destination is very, very rare.

It could be anybody. It could be a community member. It could be somebody passing through. It could be somebody from a further community. We don't have a particular subject identified at this point.

The cold-blooded murders rattle the Navajo community. It's a brazen crime, and the more time that passes without an arrest, the more locals worry that Matt and Phillips' killer could be walking amongst them. But with little evidence or information for investigators to go on, a motive for why these two men were brutally gunned down remains elusive. We have no indication that robbery was a motive, but could it have been a robbery and somebody came up on them and scared the individual off.

Could it have been the Reagan brothers when they were walking back came across something that they shouldn't have such as a you know, a drug deal. That's possible. We remain open to any possible motive because we don't have a specific motive. Personally I think that they just happened upon a criminal act that was being committed and they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now as to what the criminal act was being committed by these individual or individuals.

This guess would be some type of drug transaction. I think my husband and my brother-in-law came across some true evil. And I don't know if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but What was done to them is so terrible. I don't believe that this person hadn't done this before and won't do it again, or persons,'cause I mean they killed two healthy men.

One of the biggest challenges facing investigators proved to be the timing of the murders. The Reagan brothers were killed just days before the country went on lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It made it difficult to have the evidence that we collected to be examined by a lab because people were not at the workstations. They were at home protecting themselves from COVID. That put our evidence on the back burner. So that became an issue as well.

The pandemic also affected Fay Reagan's ability to get information from authorities on the progress of the investigation. Due to travel restrictions and other barriers, she wasn't allowed to visit the scene of the crime until more than a year later, in December of twenty twenty one. The police had mentioned the possibility of if I wanted to come out and they could escort me.

And that they were hoping to share more things in person with me than they can over the phone. And some time passed and I thought if I don't take them up on this, I'm afraid that offer will vanish. So I made arrangements and went out because I wanted to To see where they were, to see the area, to meet law enforcement, to advocate for them in any way I can, and to try to find some peace for myself. Unfortunately for Faye, the trip to Arizona did little to bring her closure.

You know, I expected the trip to be one way and what I left with was something completely different. I was hoping to get more answers. I was hoping that if VI could share more, they were not able to. And I think that just is what it is. I feel like it was a very spiritual journey for me. Matt and I are very religious. We believe in God. And I feel like he showed me a lot of things that I needed to take back with me that were different.

the area, it's very beautiful. Matt loved to be outside, so It was good to see the beauty in the place they were at.

Three years after the shocking murders of Matthew and Philip Reagan, their family still longs for a sense of peace while the case remains unsolved. Despite the early hindrance of the pandemic, investigators continue to push the case forward in every way they can and haven't slowed in their search for answers. We have done hundreds of interviews. We have reviewed surveillance footage. We have searched and Digital evidence that we have. Thank you.

Physical evidence recovered has been sent to the lab. Everything that could possibly be done, any potential lead, any avenue of investigation at this point has not only been covered but Covered repeatedly, having eyewitness. information coming from members of the public, people that have information, heard something, saw something. That is really what drives our investigation. We take these cases personally.

And it doesn't matter who it is, that person is a human being and has a family. And they deserve the same justice as everybody else. And my agents will continue to work this case till we find a subject. And push it through to prosecution. This individual or individual should not be allowed to be walking free because of the brutalness of the what occurs to the Reagan brothers.

And there's a possibility that it may occur again if somebody doesn't come forward to help us solve this crime. It was cold blooded and uncalled for. For Faye Reagan, carrying on in the aftermath of Matt and Phillips' murders remains a daily struggle. The boys are carrying a huge amount of grief with them every day. But they are amazing.

They love life like their dad. They work hard like him in everything they do. But It's still very difficult and it's still something we are working through every day. I spent every day with Matt, with the exception of a few trips he took for work, every day, for over twenty years, and I just can't believe that Matt won't be here to grow old with me.

No matter where we would have been. And he won't be here to see his sons graduate and grow and show them how to be an amazing man that he was. Someone has destroyed all of that. Someone out there knows. And all I ask is that they please find it in their heart. to reach out, to share a tip, write an anonymous letter. Whatever you can do, if you know something, just share it. Because every day I think of my husband and my brother in law. Every single day.

And our life has this these two huge holes in it. And whoever did this destroyed everything we spent time building for ourselves, for our sons. Their murderer or murderers are out there, and I don't know what happened to my husband and his brother in the last moments of their life. Their mother has to carry that. That's crushing her. Please think of her. Think of my sons. Please just give us an answer. Bring their killer to death. At tips. Gov or Thank you for joining us.

Unsolved Mysteries Podcast. Lenick. Listening to episode eighty. Of Unsolved Mysteries.