Brittany Phillips /// Part 1 /// 732 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Music] n [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you doing thanks for
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cry [Music] a busy and ambitious young college girl moves into her first apartment she is on
her own she is happy she is social and outgoing and she's in school working toward her dreams of becoming a
scientist but then in late September of 2004 someone attacked Britney in her apartment Dr Maggie Zigman Britney's
mother led the charge looking for answers and for Britney's kill in 2007 Maggie began the Caravan To
Catch a killer still to this day almost 20 years later Maggie continues to fight
for her daughter and best friend 18-year-old Britney Phillips this is true crime garage and
this is the still unsolved case of Britney Phillips [Music] Britney yavon Phillips was born to
parents Dr Maggie Zigman and her husband John on October 4th 1985 Britney has an older brother his
name is Josh he's just one year older than Britney now Britney Josh they spent their early years growing up in the
State of Florida and then they moved to Kentucky for a brief period of time followed by settling down in the
wonderful City of Tulsa during this migration period Maggie and John separated so Britney and Josh went to
live with their mom after this divorce Britney was a social kid she was a big Runner and as a teen she even did some
modeling she was also smart and very driven and her mother says this was not just as a young adult but her entire
life she started kindergarten a year earlier than most kids she graduated from Tulsa Union High School in May of
2003 I believe she was only 17 when she graduated from high school and she did her freshman year in college at her
mom's alma mater which was eard college in Florida Britney wanted to become a scientist
she was studying chemistry on a college scholarship so obviously very smart very
driven but after wrapping up her freshman year this would be May of 2004 she decided that she was too far from
home too far from Mom she became homesick and wanted to move back to Tulsa at the same time that Britney's
moving back home her mother is moving to another city which is about an hour away
from Tulsa yes this is the city of Chandler and and this is because Maggie works as a psychologist in a women's
prison so Britney spent a couple of months in the early summer she's couch surfing at the home of a good friend and
then she gets a job as a waitress at an Applebees restaurant she decided it wasn't for her so she decided to get a
another job at a waitressing at another restaurant she decided to start taking classes at Tulsa Community College this
is in July of 2004 Britney enrolled at Tulsa Community College fulltime and in August she moved into an apartment of
her own the Glenn Eagles apartment complex this is just across the street from her old high school so she knows
the area she's familiar with the area it's it's in her comfort zone yeah her new address was
9407 East 65th Street the complex was a cluster of several two-story buildings very commonly rented to students at the
community college it was thought to be a safe neighborhood and Maggie her mother
felt very comfortable with the move and with the location and also we have her brother
Josh he's a student at the community college as well so older brother's still nearby in case of an emergency mom's
about an hour away in Chandler and everything was setting up to be great for Britney for
2004 now researching this case did you get this feeling I got this sense that she was very bright kid
worked very hard on academics then she went away to school again like you said kind of out of her comfort zone so now
she's coming back but but it almost feels like in a sense that maybe she was also just burnt out a little bit and so
this was kind of a reset in Britney's life I think you're exactly right here Captain it does feel like a bit of a
reset it's going back home and realizing that look the academic part of going to
college in Florida that wasn't an issue it's just many of us need to be close to
our families and close to home and close to what we know and that's what it looks
like with Britney here now she is making friends rather easily with other students
at the community college she's making friends with some of the residents at her new apartment
complex and she started casually dating a guy that that she had recently met at this time and it said that she took this
man this young man to meet her mom Maggie over dinner she said that the young man seemed to be very nice very
polite but she didn't get the vibe that the relationship was going to be a serious
one seemed a little casual which is a little strange to me cuz I'm like if it's going to be casual then why have
them meet your family but maybe it was also just like happen stance where it's like well
we're going to hang out but then I made plans with my mom and I kind of double books so hey you want to go with me to
meet my Mom that's the vibe that I get because we have all of her friends saying the same thing like that Britney
did not have a steady boyfriend so nobody seems to think that this was something that was very serious
now to fill in the blanks of the relationship and I think the moving back home is very telling about the
relationship between Britney and her mother but her mother refers to Britney as her best friend so they were they
were very close and now mom's living an hour away I think you're right Captain I
think Mom comes home home to visit with Britney and she brings her date along as kind of a tag along
for for the a nice dinner with Mom right so more of a tag along less hey meet my
mother because this is kid serious around the same time too we also have Britney who is kind of reconnecting with
an old boyfriend from high school this is someone that she dated in either ninth and or 10th grade his name is
Billy so that's what's going on in Britney Phillips world at the time now unfortunately Britney is going to be
killed she's our victim here this week and there's a lot of information that we have on her
case and there but there's a lot of room here that that still needs to be filled
up with information there's still some a good number of questions involved in this case and it's a bet it's a bit of a
messy case and I think everybody will agree with that statement after we get into some of the details now one thing
that is was surprising to Maggie so Maggie says that she found out after her daughter's death that Britney was hiding
something from her which Maggie thought was strange because as said they were very close and this took place about two
weeks before Britney was killed this is when Britney got a call from a close friend who lived in Texas and we are in
Tulsa Oklahoma so it's not terribly far away the friend confided in Britney that
she had been sexually assaulted by an ex of hers and ask Britney to come down to
help her get through this traumatic period so she goes down there and with along with another friend they drive
down to Texas they are going to console their friend and and try to help her get
through this very traumatic situation right this is a surprise to mom because she said hey I'm going down
there on vacation right I'm going to take a little vacation with my friend we're going to go to South Padre Island
now Maggie feels that Britney wasn't on with her because she says if had I known
while why she was going down to Texas I would have not let her go because she says I would have been too concerned
about her safety because the circumstances of the sexual assault are or were unclear at the time right which
is which is understandable but we have to remind the listeners Britney is not a minor so even though her mom could have
suggested I don't want you to go that doesn't mean that Britney wouldn't have gone and I also you know I don't think
she was necessarily keeping secrets from her mother it could be a situation as simply when something like that happens
and somebody confides in you that sometimes they they want you not to tell other people exactly and so so it could
be as simple as her friend said please don't tell anybody yeah I'm telling you this in confidence and
and until I Chang my mind I'd rather not be discussed with others openly now it's
believed captain that this trip took place around September 15th and as we've already covered and as you
just said yes Britney is an adult she's 18 she's she would turn 19 on October 4th so it's we're just weeks before her
19th birthday and yes she's already living in her own apartment so Mom might not have had the ability to completely
stop her from going down there but by September 27th we have Britney she's back in Tulsa and she's fully immersed
in school at this time she's studying chemistry she wanted to go into pharmaceutical
research her course load was 16 credits so a lot of work now the 27th of September that was a Monday she had an
allergy based sinus situation that was brewing and it sounds to me Captain like she had a lot of sinus problems and so
she's not feeling well but she decided to go to class anyway now we know she was in class that day because she bumps
into her brother Josh on the campus they talk very briefly say hello now this is
going to get us to 6:00 p.m. on September 27th she went with a friend friend to an urgent care clinic again
this is because she's not feeling well she toughed it out went to school that day now she's going to go to urgent care
hopefully she can get some relief from this sinus problem right she calls her mother Maggie at
7:15 that night and said that she had been waiting for 75 minutes without being seen she was stressed out because she
had an 800 p.m. class so Maggie told her to leave she didn't get an appointment she she didn't get to see a
doctor but said that she would schedule an appointment for later that week so Britney and her friend they leave the
clinic it is known that Britney then went to an ATM at Bank of America she stopped at her friend's house at 51st in
Memorial Drive and then went to class on the TCC campus do we know how much that
she withdrew from the ATM that I don't know but I'm guessing with it being a college kid I'm guessing with
it being a college kid it's probably not a significant amount of money that was that was my thought when looking into
this case because you hear that she goes to the ATM and I thought well if it was
a large number that law enforcement probably would know this and we'd probably know that information so it's
it's probably really just a very nothing Burger on the on the timeline yeah and it's really just marking all of her
movements when you see an ATM visit your mind goes to okay well could somebody have followed her from the ATM now while
it's not out of the realm of possibility keep in mind she doesn't go from the ATM
to home she goes to the ATM stops at a friend's house then goes to class and then drives a friend home after class
and she does speak to her mom Maggie again on a brief phone call that night they Saidi love you the way that they
always did so nothing's out of the norm as far as Mom Maggie is concerned Britney was actually expected to go to
Maggie's home for the weekend so they were kind of shuring up those plans a little bit right now Britney would be
killed and found in her apartment while we cannot say 100% with 100% certainty that after this phone call after
dropping off her friend that she went home immediately but it's believed by law enforcement and by Britney's family
and everyone that knows her that that would have been exactly what she was doing drop off the friend talk to Mom
briefly and then she then go straight back to her house and there's nothing to suggest that that is not the case and
that's backed up further by the lead detective on the case Jeff Felton who told told the Tulsa World publication
that after leaving her friend's house it is believed Britney got into her car and
drove home quote that is the last time anybody saw her about 9:45 p.m. we know she made it home but she never attended
any of her other classes that week and that's that statement is important I want everybody to make mental note of
that as we go through the timeline that 9:45 pm is about the last time anybody would
have seen her we know that she made it home but she didn't attend any of her other classes that week this is going to
take us to Tuesday the 28th Captain Maggie didn't speak to Britney and this is maybe of a little bit of concern they
didn't talk every day they were very close but but Maggie says that they spoke practically every other day if you
had to break it up now it gets a little tricky on this Tuesday right we have that statement by police but she never
attended any of her other classes that week now to be clear on that it's actually a little bit murky it's I would
say that it's unknown whether Britney went to class on the 28th on Tuesday the 28th so most articles most sources here
say that she missed classes on Tuesday and the detective said that as well but what I want to be clear on here is do we
know for certain that this was actually verified with the college one and two anybody that's attended College knows
that sometimes they take attendance sometimes they don't have attendance records at all because when you're
paying to go to school they don't really care if you show up or not it's not like
it's not like high school where you're truant if you if you didn't attend yeah it all depends on on the teacher some
teachers will tell you right away you miss more than three classes you're you're done but then other teachers will
say as long as you do your homework and long as you take the test you don't have
to show up ever so it's hard to tell what kind of teachers she had and also what types of classes because if you're
in a class of let's say over a hundred people is anybody gonna really notice if you were there or not so even if the so
if the teacher doesn't take attendance yeah you might have a hundred other people in that class but do they
know her well enough to say oh yeah I remember her being there on the Tuesday and with all of that said it seems like
so a quick breakdown the 27th we know she's driving home 9:45 p.m. that's the last time anybody saw her law
enforcement saying she didn't attend any of her other classes that that week Tuesday we're saying could be a question
mark if she attended any classes but it seems like law enforcement is set on the
idea that nope she didn't go to school on the 29th she missed all of her classes and this date seems to be fact
this is this is fact-based we can say with with 100% confidence she did not attend
any classes on the 29th Maggie says that she tried calling Britney that day got no answer she left a message saying hey
I'm calling to check on you can you call me she thought that maybe Britney was just sleeping a lot because remember
last time she spoke with her she wasn't feeling well and feeling so poorly that she had to go to urgent care and never
got to see the doctor right now we do have some of Maggie's words right here she says quote Tuesday the 28th I tried
calling her didn't get an answer I left a voicemail tried calling her on the 29th didn't get answer again and I left
another voicemail Maggie said that she wasn't really surprised she didn't get a hold of Britney as she knew she had late
classes remember we talked about her her course load and had late classes on Tuesday and that Wednesday she just
thought you know my daughter got busy or she doesn't feel well and she's just not
calling me back now this just to be clear on the Monday she goes to class that's the day that she went to
the emergency room that's the day she talked to her mom on the phone talking about how she's
going to spend the weekend with her and then she drops her friend off and then she goes home that's that you I think
you said the 27th that's the Monday correct right so on Tuesday we don't know if she showed up to school we have
no record of her showing up all week okay I just want to make sure I'm I'm clear on that yep and it by the 29th now
Mom is getting concerned now this is going to take us to the 30th which would be the Thursday this is a friend of
Britney who has not been named in any of the research material that I could find
or any of the uh newspaper articles but this is a friend who is now getting concerned saying look I haven't
seen Britney in a while and I've also been attempting to get her on the phone she's not answering my calls and her
friend saying this is very out of character and oh by the way I've not seen her on the college campus either
for a few days so now we have Mom and friend who are concerned together right United in this concern
for Britney Phillips and so the friend goes to the apartment on the 30th decided to call
her father once she got there saying hey I'm at her apartment she's not answering
I have an uneasy feeling she's call Britney's Dad no no she's calling her own father okay and saying dad what do I
do and dad says I'm G to call the police so the friend's dad calls the police and
requests the wellness check best thing you can do correct better better safe than sorry I wish and a lot of these
cases you know we have people that well I went and check the apartment and then I came back a couple days later no best
thing you do best thing you can do is call the police they're there to protect and serve us and this is one of the
services and don't ever feel embarrassed either because police do more of these welfare checks than the general Public's
aware of this is a this is a pretty common thing um especially well also you know if you talk to police officers and
you ask them what they would do if a loved one wasn't responding they would do the same thing and what's the harm
they knock on the door Britney answers oh I'm sorry I've been sick and then you you go hey nothing bad happened good
yeah back to work for the police and to really kind of put the listener into the
driver's seat here uh and fully experience the situation so the friend shows up to the apartment knocks on the
door hoping that her friend's going to answer hoping that Britney opens up the door
oh it's a misunderstanding everything's fine or I'm not feeling well decided to stay in the apartment for a few days
till I feel better that's what she's expecting she knocks on the door gets no answer she checks the the door knob and
she says the door's not locked and so she turns the door knob opens the door just a little bit and
then closes it because she said she got scared so this is young woman too this is some one of Britney's peers one of
her friends so this is a young woman as well she gets scared that's why she calls her dad of course now police are
on the scene they arrived at the apartment and they confirm the door is unlocked they go inside they entered the
apartment on the 30th at 9:59 p.m. according to the police record they find unfortunately find Britney lying on the
floor next to her bed her head is pointing toward the foot of the bed and and she she's deceased at this time do
you have many details on this apartment is it a one-bedroom is it a studio apartment it's a small apartment yes
it's uh so she lives on the second floor from my understanding there's apartments
on the on the ground level and then on the second floor as well and she is in one of the end units so you have 16
apartments in this one building right there's no like shared space or common space there's you walk
up the steps to walk over to the door that you're of the apartment that you need to go to so you have eight on one
side eight on the other side she's on one of the end units so technically she only has one next door neighbor if that
makes sense yeah but the nice thing is because these apartments are so close you possibly will have eyewitnesses or
ear Witnesses yes now they're going to send out a deputy to Maggie's house remember she's living in Chandler an
hour away so it's at 1 a.m. that she finds out that that her daughter's been murdered the deputy tells her after
confirming that she is Maggie Zigman he says you need to call the Tulsa Police your daughter's been murdered she finds
out that Josh her son had already been notified by the Tulsa Police Department of his sister's death Maggie drives
straight to Tulsa but the cops would not let her into the apartment Britney had already been identified by her driver's
license and removed from the apartment and off to the medical examiner's office that is when detective Jeff Felton tells
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to the windows to the walls onward and upward cheers to you Colonel cheers to you Captain we do have the autopsy
report here um so real quick is is it do you think it's a little fast how F how quickly they removed her
body and took it to get examined cuz you you figure like they have to you know do
the photographs they have to start collecting evidence obviously once they remove the body they can continue to
collect evidence but seems a little quick to me it does seem a little a little bit on the quick side it's been
about 3 or 4 hours by the time the body is removed but I think to a lot of that it it has
to do with jurisdiction I mean everything happens differently in every jurisdiction right but in this situation
my belief is the reason why the bodies were moved so quickly from the apartment is how she was killed so here's some of
the information from the autopsy report the the office of the chief medical examiner was notified of Britney's death
at 12:45 a.m. on October 1st so now we're to October 1st we were able to review some of this report and it
reflects the body was found by police and death pronounced at 2200 hours which is 10 p.m. now the narrative on the
autopsy report States the following this is the medical examiner's words I arrived at the the scene which
was an upstairs apartment on October 1st at approximately 1:45 a.m. I was led to
the bedroom the bedroom door leading to an outdoor balcony was open a used dried
tampon was near the body the body was on the floor immediately next to her bed her head was turned to the right and her
face was congested in purple there were numerous towels on the deceased and items of her clothing were a jent to her
one of the towels adjacent to the right side of the bed was soaked with decomposition type fluid she was clothed
only in a shirt I'm pulling from the report here this information because we're going to see how it will
be valuable to the investigation later but also this statement right here is interesting to me because there are a
lot of other source material out there that I found that said that she was wearing more clothing than just a shirt
but from the autopsy report says she's only wearing a shirt riger mortise was minimal and very easily broken in the
extremities it was absent in the jaw early decomposition change included drying of the fingertips focal
marbling focal bloating of the face decomposition fluid exuding from the nose and mouth and Mild decomposition
odor the hands were examined and no specific trace evidence was identified the hands were bagged and the body
packaged it says medical examiner left the premises at 3:15 a.m. now the cause of death was
xixia due to neck compression so strangulation right and of course she's going to show signs of peal hemorrhaging
hemorrhages in the eyes so it makes it sound like what they gather gathered in evidence as far as like her hands are
concerned is that our suspect that we should be looking for is not he wouldn't have had injuries to him it didn't look
like she was able to put up a fight that seems to be correct based off of that statement the other part of this report
is that there's no evidence that a ligature of any type was used right to paint this unsettling picture a little
more in detail here Britney was a petite young woman and So based off of the emy's report
here what it looks like to me is that somebody just overpowered her strangled her the hyoid bone was found to be
intact but the me is basically saying it was obvious just by with his trained eye
that we that he observed these abrasions on her neck that indicates to him this is the result of neck
compression she was unable to breathe and and died because of that obviously if you're law enforcement you're going
to be at her apartment you're going to be looking for what items are there what items aren't there you said that she was
only in a t-shirt but there's mixed reports on that but I'm going to go with the medical examiner report she's in the
T-shirt but what about any jewelry or did she have anything else on her when they removed the body from the crime
scene yeah so the personal effects inventory listed here we have white shirt as you
mentioned and we have white metal hoop earrings now this goes to the manner of how she was killed too she also has a
white metal necklace but it was broken and the as you heard before we went to the
break unfortunately the conclusion here is that she was raped and murdered so we
have a sexual assault that took place as well did did they say if there was any evidence of because sometimes
with these cases you know the killer will make the individual take a sh beforehand or
afterwards do we have any evidence if she did or did not do that well that's an interesting angle here because we do
know that the csis collected 70 70 DNA swabs from Britney's body looking for evidence including under her fingernails
now unfortunately the autopsy report says nothing about what was collected or found with any of
those swaps right so that doesn't mean that nothing was found it just means that it's not in the report that we were
able to see obviously they probably did a rape kit as well we do know that they did the toxicology and that came back
clean Maggie says that she was told that Britney was raped before she was killed
but the autopsy report makes zero mention of conducting a rape kit it does mention some external
examination again no evidence is listed here or no injury is listed here and there was never any mention by police of
DNA from a rape kit now one article does say that evidence at this scene suggested that a sexual assault had
occurred no doubt that was because she's partially unclothed and right Tamp removed the medical examiner didn't
record the core body temperature even though apparently he did measure it so I I don't know why to me unfortunately
Captain what it appears to me is that we have a not so great report here and maybe it's that that everything was
checked I hope but not everything was recorded if that makes sense right so if they did a rape kit well maybe they did
maybe they didn't we don't know because the report is kind of incomplete and look you could have a
great medical examiner you could have a great medical examiner that does a thorough job but part of doing that
thorough job is doing a thorough report yes especially when you have a case that's going to sit in the unsolved pile
for this many years this is something that people are going to need to reference right and you may not Mr
medical examiner you may not always be around to for us to reach out to with questions and we're going to have to
rely on your reports now we've seen this in other cases and we've talked about why this happens and
and how it makes sense but remember the core body temperature part of this report they don't conclude the
medical examiner does not conclude or even give an estimated time slate of death and I'm guessing that's based off
the science or evidence or lack thereof what we're going to have here is we're going to be relying on police to shorten
that window to make that that window of time as precise as it possibly can be to help us look for the person that
did this the the the man that did this based off of the information that police collect is that they narrow down the
time of death to 10 p.m. on the 27th to sometime early the next morning on the 28th again that's based off of nobody
sees her nobody talks to her after that 9:45 p.m. on the 27th and unfortunately Britney was buried on what would have
been her 19th birthday October 4th 2004 now we got to figure out who did this and this usually we have some suspects
that are right there the obvious suspects for you but not so much in this case right who could
have done this as we covered Britney has no steady boyfriend she has no known stalker or
enemies she didn't do drugs she led a very lowrisk lifestyle I'd also say that for the
majority of the time if somebody has somebody in their life that is being overbearing or
stalkerish that normally you tell your mom about it or tell at least some friends about it so it is possible that
she had somebody like that in her life but I would say unlikely because no word to the mother and no word to any of her
friends about it well and keep in mind she's been gone for a year right she's only at this location she's only back in
Tulsa for about three months yeah and then but it doesn't I actually think this makes things more complicated
because if I'm law enforcement I'm looking at this Co okay so we don't have anybody with red flags right away going
well this guy that she dated was a weirdo we need to look into him so you don't have these red flags right away so
you got to go okay well who was she dating and even though they might have been casually dating we need to question
them and then it makes a little bit harder because like you said she was in Florida for like a year okay who was she
talking to down there was there anybody down there that she was dating that maybe if we start looking into we're
going to see some red flags well and when you talk to everybody that knows her you talk to friends and family
everybody in her Social Circle and that doesn't lead you to a suspect then you do
your due diligence you got to go back to the crime scene right that that's where
you're hoping to find something pointing you to the person that did this now do we know how many total units there were
in this apartment complex because you I would I would assume again you got to look at her Inner Circle but
you also have to I think your inner circle becomes your community as well and her community would be a little bit
larger and a lot more people of her peers because like you said a lot of the people living in these apartments were
going to the Community College exactly and so it's a large apartment complex and we'll go through some more of the
details of that I want to get us back to the crime scene and tear through that but so we've already covered that
Britney lived in a second floor apartment at the Glenn Eagles complex her apartment was accessible by climbing
the exterior stairs from the ground level so you walk up the steps and then you can go to her apartment now there's
no exterior common area door or foyer there's no area for people to go into each apartment has its own entrance door
which led directly to the outside of the apartment now the key thing here one of
the interesting aspects of this crime scene is police can't find any sign of for entury so the question was how
did her attacker get into Britney's apartment right the thing that that's going to possibly lead you to your
suspect here is what's found at that crime scene so we have CSI at the scene they uncovered some very important
evidence as they were processing this apartment they find a seamen stain that was on the sheets like
bedding and then and then they a small amount of blood it's listed as a droplet of blood that was on one of the bedroom
walls now I want to be clear here because some reports vary that droplet of blood some reports state that it's on
one of the bedroom walls other Reports say that was it was on a hall a small hallway wall that led to the bedroom but
it shouldn't take too many tests to figure out does that blood match that seen right and that's that's one thing that
they're going to work on and yes it does belong to the same person that deposited those fluids
yeah so like you were saying if I'm law enforcement how did this person get in I
mean obviously you always have the possibility that Britney just didn't lock her doors yes that's correct so the
the other questions that you have here too was she lying in bed when she was attacked was she sleeping or attempting
to go to sleep that night when somebody or she coming in and out of the shower or not well and you know we've also
talked about this where no I so I don't I think we can get rid of the whole shower idea again it's not out of the
realm of possibility but what we do have is remember the friend that she drops off after class right police confirm
with that friend that the shirt that they found when they found Britney the shirt that she was still wearing is the
shirt that she wore to class that night and the shirt that she was wearing when she dropped off her friend and the
reports state that Britney's pants were found lying on the floor next to her so it sounds like to me either somebody
gets into this apartment somehow or is it possible you mentioned the shower idea which I think that's
interesting to examine because I I kind of picture this as she's getting ready for bed right uh or or not or or not had
the ability to get ready for bed completely yet and somehow the attack goes down and you know Captain it could
be as simple as bad guy knocks on the door and young woman opens the door it could it could be just that simple but
so what police are saying here is their exact words is quote it didn't look like
somebody broke in but there were some disruption okay what were the disruptions well the the disruption is
police are saying there was evidence of a struggle in the bedroom and it it appeared to them that
during the struggle the attacker had flung Britany against the wall so this is the wall opposite of
where her body was found so in the bedroom somebody pushed her or threw her into the wall so she's attempting to
fight this guy off this is based off of marks on the wall that I presume line up with marks on her
person right there have also been reports that the apartment was ransacked but Maggie her mom says it
just might have been my messy daughter lived you know this looks to me like my messy daughter lived here not that
somebody was going through the apartment looking for something this is the this is the part of the case that I cannot
make heads or tails of the screens you know the windows screens yeah there were four windows for
that apartment all four of these window screens were found inside the apartment they were removed from the windows and
inside the apartment she could have been trying to clean them that's what I wonder is this a situation where she
took them off and cleaned the windows and just didn't put them back on yet maybe she was going to do that the next
day seems like a weird thing when the mom's saying well look this my d was a little messy but I guess you could be a
little messy and you know you get into this apartment and you want to clean the windows and oh why I'm clean the windows
let me clean these screens as well I just look I'm not trying to take anything away from young people but I
was 18 once cleaning the outside of the windows of an apartment that I'm not going to keep for my the entirety of my
life was way down on the list of to-do items and that's why they call you dirty Grand
well here's the thing Captain the so if this would make sense if somebody were to have used that as a way
to get into the apartment right we've seen plenty of cases where you we have a cut window screen or window screen is
removed and somebody accesses the premises through the window yeah that would make more sense if it was on floor
number one and not floor number two she's on the second floor here the Second Story and all the
reports that I reviewed have said that there would have been no way for somebody to climb up the exterior of the
building and enter one of those windows and here's the other thing if you are accessing the apartment via window
you're removing one screen you're not removing all four to me if I saw that I would just start off with the thought
that this is probably not what the Killer used and more likely it was just that maybe Britney removed them to clean
the windows or maybe she was cleaning the screens herself the other thing too is it's not police removing them and
checking for fingerprints because it's the police that are saying we found the four screens removed and we we can't
sort out why that would be right the other problem here too is the medical examiner report has a weird note in it
that says that the French doors to Britney's balcony were open when he arrived so the problem here we can't
sort out based off of the medical examiner report were they left open by the killer were they left open by
Britney and somehow the killer got up to the second floor balcony and accessed the the apartment through these French
doors that she already had opened the other possibility here too would be that look it appears that she had laid there
in that apartment for some period of time did they open up the doors did police open up those doors to air out
the place a little bit before the medical examiner arrived here's the thing though before we move off of these
French doors Captain we have Maggie Britney's mom who says that when she went to go clean out the apartment that
there was lattice work that's on the outside of the French doors she says that that appeared to her to be messed
up is the way that she described it but she this is a very logical very smart woman Maggie and she clarifies by saying
look I don't know whether that was already like that or not or if it has something to
do with how the attacker accessed the apartment so it's it's wor worth noting here that someone could theoretically
have climbed up into the balcony we say this because we we know of a specific story where okay so Britney gets locked
out of her apartment and she had a friend a tall male resident friend who climbed up to her balcony goes into the
apartment and then unlocks the front door so I'm pointing I'm just pointing that out to show a situation where the
Apartment renter locks himself out of the apartment and doesn't is not locking the balcony
door so if I'm law enforcement like I said I got to start talking to our friends I got to talk to these guys that
she's been seeing even though they're casual these are part of her Inner Circle but because she lives an
apartment complex that has a lot of college age students a lot of people around the same age as her I got to put
them into the Inner Circle then I'm also going well who knew about this story about her getting locked out is that
somebody again in her Inner Circle that would have knew about this and and possibly knew that the balcony could
have been a point of entrance and not to look as if you were breaking and entering but also it makes you
wonder if I'm law enforcement I'm going okay who's your handyman around here how
many do you have because they would have access as well yes the apartment complex they're
going to have access to this apartment and some of their vendors would but you know not in the middle of the night the
the other tricky thing here too is I've seen this several times and this usually
you just find this with uh burglary cases but it's not terribly uncommon so the four apartments on her side that all
face the same direction they shared an attic together so you could if you lived in apartment a let's say it's apartment
a right you could climb up into the hatch through the hatch get into the attic above your apartment and probably
military crawl your way and open up the hatch and drop down into apartment B now
now we know that this is fact because the detective he did just that he went up into one of the hatches crawled
through and could drop down into Britney's apartment the thing is here and the detective he's six foot two he's
not a small guy so it seems like most people would be able to do that most people would be able to fit through
there I want I question who would even know that that's a possibility right it would seem to me like a very
list of people would know that those attics are all connected so like you're saying we handyman maintenance person
cable guys Telephone Company People Electric Company HVAC people who service the apartment complex
those are the people that I think might have some knowledge that that's even a possibility but I do want to be clear
here we do have police saying that we looked up there and we're not finding evidence that someone had been up there
that that was how that they access Britney's apartment well and because there's multiple
crimes again she was murdered but we have a rape then to me it's like what was the
intention was the intention that this person wanted to rape Britney and then after he did so
figured well I'll kill her to cover you know to try to cover my tracks cuz she knew me or got too good of a look at me
you know what what was the motive here here's some the options on how Britney's killer could have accessed the apartment
okay Britney could have let him in he was waiting for her when she got home right now this could be he's either
already in the apartment or forced his way inside with her you know as she's unlocking the door as you covered
Captain maybe he had a key somehow we also know that the killer could have climbed up onto the balcony
and access the apartment through the French doors I'm going to remove the attic hatch in that space from our list
because we have police saying that they found zero evidence that that's the case
we also find unfortunately no useful fingerprints were found in the apartment I do like the fact that you did bring up
this addict angle because if the cops weren't doing their job if they weren't doing their due diligence like we like
to say then they wouldn't even known this was a possibility so just to to hear that the cops seem to be looking at
every angle of how somebody could have got into the apartment makes me feel a little bit better about their
investigation oh exactly I believe that is very thorough investigation that took
place here and and it's fascinating to me that they seem to be looking at this through all angles right they're they're
going outside the box if you will to come up with how did this how did everything go down now unfortunately the
apartment complex did not have surveillance cameras and neither did businesses in the immediate area and I'm
not trying trying to squeeze in a plug here but you hear us and you've heard us on the show before one of our sponsors
has been Simply Safe for several years and you know I was telling someone the other day so I I have cameras on most of
us have the ring doorbell camera or doorbell camera by any number of different companies or
Brands but I have a camera near all of the entrances possible es and exits to my house and so all four sides of the
house have a camera on them and somebody asked me they go well that makes sense it seems a little seems maybe a little
expensive but um you know I I got one on my front porch and I think that's probably good enough and I said you know
maybe it is good enough I said but we cover so many of these stories we cover so many of these cases to me this is
going to sound really dumb to the average Joe but if something happens to me or something bad happens inside my
house even if I'm not around I want the bastard to be caught and those cameras are so valuable and I
we've said this when we talked about the Jennifer kessie case and some of these other apartment cases this took place in
2004 you know this is not 1970 not 1980s 2004 if you are a single individual especially a young
woman that should be at the top of your list when you go to look at these apartments and when you're talking to
the the company that's going to be renting you the apartment what is the security like here yes we know this was
supposed to be a safe area we know that this was supposed to be a it was noted to be a safe apartment complex but that
put that at the top of your list do you have security cameras do you have security measures that have been
taken because here in this situation while we cannot bring this young woman back but if we had those cameras we
might be able to see who or at least how this person gained access to her apartment yeah and like we say all the
time I mean an individual is attacking you assume they're trying to kill you and fight and Claw and try to do enough
damage that they're going to leave behind that DNA that they can test and then again maybe you you lose the
struggle maybe you end up losing your life but if if it was me I would want every possible way for the person to to
get caught and so a lot of these apartment complexes have a common place for people to enter and exit this one
doesn't but a lot of times you see when they don't have a common place that they
at least have cameras on the parking lot but it doesn't seem like we have evidence of that but then it made me
wonder do we have any evidence that we could look you know with the with the school being basically across the street
because we know that they would have some cameras no I mean we don't have any surveillance cameras in the area as the
the we know the apartment complex didn't have them and we know that the nearby businesses didn't have
them [Music] join us back here in the garage for part two and until then be good be kind and
don't litter [Music] [Applause]

Brittany Phillips /// Part 1 /// 732

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Tulsa, Oklahoma - In late September of 2004 someone attacked 18 year old Brittany Phillips in her apartment. Dr. Maggie Zingman, Brittany’s mother has led the charge looking for answers and justice for her daughter. In 2007 Maggie began the Caravan to Catch a Killer. Still to this day, almost 20 years later Maggie continues to fight for her daughter and best friend. Have information about Brittany Phillips’ murder? Contact authorities. All information matters! Homicide Tip Line: 1-918-798-8477 / Email homicide@cityoftulsa.org

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Brief Summary

Britney Phillips was murdered in 2004; her mother continues to seek justice for her unsolved case.

Key points

The Fight for Justice. Maggie Zigman has been tirelessly seeking answers in her daughter Britney's case since 2007.
A Bright Future Cut Short. Britney Phillips was a driven college student with dreams of becoming a scientist.
Secrets and Concerns. Maggie discovers Britney was hiding something just weeks before her tragic death.
Maggie's Heartbreaking Discovery. Maggie learns from a deputy that her daughter has been murdered.
The Tragic Autopsy Report. Details emerge from the autopsy report revealing Britney's cause of death.
A Life Cut Short. Britney's burial takes place on what would have been her 19th birthday.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the still unsolved case of Britney Phillips.

Introduction to the case being discussed.

3:52WatchJan 23, 2024

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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