Cold Case Files - Good Girl Gone

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

When 19-year-old Tara Sidarovich goes missing from her Punta Gorda home, Florida police consider her a runaway until her body turns up in a swamp. Years later, shocking prison recordings will send detectives on a nationwide hunt for her killers. ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

Hi Cold Case listeners, I'm Marissa Pinson, and before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now, on to the show. The following episode contains disturbing accounts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. Tara was my daughter. She was a human being. She had dreams. Something happened in the house. Everything that day

pointed to trouble. She was involved in quite a struggle, but we really did not have a clue if she was still alive or not. Any idea that I had that this case was going to be routine went out the window. It was a nightmare for a very, very long time. It's in my blood to close the case for the family. That's what I do. I would never just let it go. Never, never. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's October 1st, 2001 in Punta Gorda, Florida. Keith McPhillips is Tara Sidorovich's stepfather.

It's just another day. I had to be to work early, so I didn't wake anybody up when I left the house. Sharon McPhillips is Tara's mother. Tara's brother and sister were getting ready to get on the bus. I have three children. Tara's my oldest.

Tara was sleeping. So I went to Tara's room. She shared with her sister. And I believe the covers were over her head. The night before, Sharon had asked 19-year-old Tara to stay home the next day to deal with the plumbers who were due at the house to look at a septic tank problem. So I woke her up to let her know that I was leaving and that the septic company was coming. She had her earrings and she had her hair still with the ribbons and as normal. I told her I loved her. And then I went to work. When I left work, I just went directly home. And I pulled up.

I seen Tara's car was still in the drive. And Veronica, she said, Tara's not here. I said, where's your sister? She told me she didn't know. And then I looked in Tara's room, and I could see all of her stuff was there. Keith had called me at work. I knew something was wrong. And I immediately see all of her stuff was there. Keith had called me at work. I knew something was wrong. And I immediately left work.

There's no way that Tara would have not told us where she was going or what she was doing. And I remember crying and praying to please don't let nothing be wrong with my Tara. Taking care of Tara and her siblings was one of the main reasons Keith and Sharon moved here from Scranton, Pennsylvania. We made the move to Florida to try to make a good life, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we heard about the schools and everything down there. You live there a year, then you go to college for free. So we thought, you know, that would be great for Tara too. What attracted me to Punta Gorda was it was a safe area. You know, it wasn't like a part of Florida where it was like real crazy and wild. Arriving in late summer in time for the kids to start at a new school, they rent a house in a quiet neighborhood.

We were very family oriented. We attended all functions together, every cheerleading event, every violin concert. Tara and I would go shopping, of course. We both loved to dance. We just enjoyed spending time no matter what it was. Tara liked to hang out with her friends, played softball, loved cheerleading. Tara was popular for many reasons. You know, her kindness, her outgoingness, and she cared about others. Tara worked in the Port Charlotte mall in a jewelry kiosk, and she liked it. Tara wanted a belly button ring. She thought that it

was pretty, and it looked good on her. I wasn't too thrilled with it, but I couldn't tell her no. I mean, she was old enough to make her own decision anyway. Even though Tara is technically an adult, she always tells her parents if she's going out. So when Keith arrives home that evening to find her missing, he's immediately concerned. Her purse was there. Her car keys were laying out and stuff. I mean, she'd definitely take her purse with her. And I know she would never leave the door open. I mean, it's just the type of girl she was. And I'm just looking through the rooms. When I looked

in our room, I opened my drawer and I looked in there. My jewelry was gone. My money was gone. Everything pointed to trouble. I just called the sheriff's department right away. When I got home, there was police officer there already. And I just was concentrated on, you know, Tara's not here. Like, my daughter's not here. I know my daughter. Something isn't right. And they try to say that maybe she was at a football game or she was here or there.

But I kept expressing, I know my Tara. She would not just leave without telling us. My Tara would never, ever do that. Initially, they treated it as a burglary. But that first hour that she was gone, that Sharon had gotten home, she knew. And no one would listen. Something about, oh, she's an adult, it's bullshit. Plain and simple.

You know, I don't care if your child's three or your child's 90. It's still your child. I'm trying to do this nicely, but it's very hard. I get very angry with the way it went in the beginning. It was very frustrating. Like, I felt like I wasn't being heard. Officer Brian Harrison writes up a report on the stolen items

and interviews two neighbors who saw nothing suspicious. Our hopes were that Tara's going to appear. She's going to make a phone call to Mom, Dad. Hey, sorry I didn't call in last night, and it'll all be done and over. That was the hope. Keith and Sharon called friends to help them look for Tara. We're in the house, and our one friend was like, what's this? Is this Tara's earring?

And you had to pull it out of the carpet. It wasn't just laying there, it was embedded. That was the one Tara was wearing the day before. You just think of why are they embedded in the carpet? And it wasn't a good conclusion in my head. So that was frightening. By this time, I was out of my mind. I just, I just, someone help. I just wanted help, help me, help, help, help me. Somebody help me. That first night was the night from hell, I guess you could say, because there was no sleeping at all. We just kept staring at and listening,

and you're just looking and you're waiting. Every time a car would drive by, my head was out the window. You open the door to see, just thinking, you know, hoping somebody's dropping her off and she's late or something, but I was just hoping she'd come home and say, sorry about the mess. We had no idea what happened. The wheels were just spinning, but nothing's coming out of them.

I knew from that car ride home, but at the same time, my heart and mind are like, no way. Maybe, you know, just, just, just, you know, just maybe. Maybe she's somewhere. I just kept calling. I even called friends in Pennsylvania. You do whatever you have to do. You call whoever you have to call. And I was grasping at any straw that I could find. Mike Gandy is a detective with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit.

It was being worked as a burglary case. And the next day Tara still had not showed up back home. Any idea that I had that this case was going to be routine went out the window. After a long sleepless night, Sharon files an official missing persons report. It was such devastation, because who wants to do that? And there was so many emotions that I had. I don't even know.

Sergeant Brian Harrison searches the house for any signs of a struggle. I recall walking into the bedroom, and you could observe the mattress and box spring were slightly separated from one another. And we could see some what looked like shoe or scuff marks on a dresser, which indicates to me a potential struggle. There was no blood, but that doesn't mean that there has to be blood in order for there to be foul play. He finds another red flag in the front yard. At the front of the house, there was a small palm tree near the front door that was pushed over, and on either side of it was tire tracks,

indicating to me that somebody had driven a vehicle into the front door that was pushed over and on either side it was tire tracks indicating to me that that somebody had driven a vehicle into the front yard and it was just within a few feet of the front door it certainly raised the level of concern let's secure this scene all hands on deck and let's find tara kurt mell is a detective with the charlotte county sheriff's office cold case unit something happened in the house and there Unit. Something happened in the house, and there were some things found in the house, but they came up with zero forensics that were related to the actual crime. So that led to that somebody may have come and intentionally cleaned up.

A closer search of the yard turns up a worrying piece of evidence. A ribbon was found in the front yard, same type of ribbon that Tara wore in her hair. That would lead me to believe that that came out of Tara's hair and she was carried out the front door and probably it fell out of her hair. That was the most reasonable scenario I could come up with. The search for the missing teen intensifies. We have different teams to help us with the searches. We used extensively cadaver dogs, we used horseback, and we would organize searches

too. Sometimes we would get a tip, hey, I saw something out here about that time, or I've seen buzzard or animal activity. We would check every one of those. We really did not have a clue where Tara was or, you know, how she disappeared or if she was still alive or not. We just did not know at that point. Police interviewed Tara's friends and neighbors, hoping to establish the events leading up to her disappearance. A tip was received that Tara was seen with a boy at the football game. The detectives, of course, jumped right on that.

They did run the lead down, and it turned out that it wasn't the terror that we were looking for. We had tons of leads come in. I don't know how this one in particular got twisted around, but twisted information we live with every day. All that has to be followed up, no matter how far out it seems.

So it's very time-consuming. Mike Vogel is a detective with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit. It turned out Tara had been out the night before to a club, and we talked to some of her friends that she had gone to the club with, and they all indicated Tara was there and Tara was fine. Sharon contacted Tara's work. Her friend had told her that Tara had called her around 12.07. They talked on the phone for 10 or 15 minutes. Tara planned to come pick up her check, go to the bank. Tara would have had to have left her home probably by no later than 3 o'clock,

but she never left the house. So we were able to establish a timeline of windows of opportunity. This crime had to occur between a certain time in the morning and three o'clock in the afternoon. Next, investigators turned their attention to the septic tank workers who were due at Tara's house that day. This is an older neighborhood, so everybody's on septic. I think we'd had a lot of rain and a lot of the systems were backing up. Numerous septic tank companies had been in and out of the neighborhood pumping out the tanks. A lot of people were outside of their homes because when it backs up in the house,

that's not where you want to be. You want to be outside in the fresh air. So people coming and going to the neighbor's house throughout the day. A couple of workmen at the neighbor's house observed a white pickup truck in Tara's driveway up to about 2.15 or 2.30. The neighbor saw a white truck pull in and she knew the person who was in the truck with another person. They waved at the people next door. Sergeant Brian Harrison immediately tracks down the driver of the truck, Phil Barr, who runs a company called ABC Septic. When I spoke with Philip Barr and asked him if he was at Tara's residence the day prior doing some septic work, and he said, yes, I was. And in fact,

I can show you the paperwork. He stated that his partner, David McManus, had knocked on the front door and had contact with the young lady at the house. The two of them ended up leaving and no other contact with her. Police also talked to Barr's live-in girlfriend, Linda Dilley, to corroborate his account. Part of Phil Barr's alibi for that day was he had been talking with Linda Dilley in the morning at least twice, maybe three times, just chit-chatting. Phil said they had made plans that he would run to the store and buy some steaks. And Linda said when she got home around 1, 1.30 for lunch, that Phil had left a note saying that there were steaks in the refrigerator. McManus and Barr say they briefly entered Tara's house to test the toilet.

Barr tells investigators that he saw a young man in the bedroom. As I recall, he was sitting on one of the beds. He described him as a young man with dark hair. It could be a boyfriend, someone that the family doesn't know about, that perhaps they left the house together. They could be a boyfriend, someone that the family doesn't know about, that perhaps they left the house together. They could be anywhere.

Then we received information from the kids that lived next door to Tara that there had been a 17-year-old boy that had been cutting the grass of the neighbor's house. These kids said that he ended up having a bunch of change in his pocket, and this kid had some sort of criminal history. The team wonders if the boy with the loose change is the same person Phil Barr and Dave McManus saw in the house. Of course, one of the items that was indicated missing from the home was change from Keith Drescher. So he obviously came up on the radar as someone we needed to talk to.

This was huge. This person might be responsible for the disappearance of Tara. He'd lived about probably three blocks from Tara on a different street. So we tracked him down. He was actually on his bike riding the next day and indicated that, yeah, he had cut the grass, but he didn't know Tara, hadn't been into her house,

didn't have anything to do with taking change out of the house. He did have an alibi that was checked and the majority of change that was taken from the house was silver coins and he had pennies in his pocket at the time. We were not able to establish that he had anything to do with our case. When was the last time you need to go to a doctor, but you pushed it off? Sometimes it feels like you don't have the time or you just don't know which doctor to go to. I think we've all been there. Booking a doctor's appointment can feel so daunting. But thanks to ZocDoc, there is no reason to delay. They make it so easy to find and book a doctor

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That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com. Weeks pass with no trace of Tara and no new leads. Tara's 20th birthday is fast approaching. We still hope that she's coming back. So we still have a birthday party for her. So presents were bought. And I'll never forget this. I was going to open a present.

And my son said to me, he said, Mom, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm going to open one of her presents. And he said, no, you're not. The kid said, no, absolutely not. Just leave it there. When she comes home, she can open it. Just leave it there. She'll get it when she gets here. So just break your heart. So her presence sat on the bed for months till we found her. After 284 agonizing days and nights, a terrible discovery is made 10 miles from Tara's house. A construction worker had to go to the bathroom, so he decided he would drive down this long dirt trail, and he walks a couple feet, I guess, and notices what he believed was a human skeleton. We bring in an excavation team and we painstakingly slowly go through

every piece of grass and weeds and dirt and clumps and roots around that area looking for evidence. The rain, the elements of Florida are very rough on on a decomposing body like that. The decomposition is going to be much more rapid in the heat, and it doesn't take long. You've lost physical evidence, and being able to determine exact cause of death, it can become very difficult. We found the skull.

We found some long bones, and some of the smaller bones, and some of the rib bones. But we only recovered less than half of the true number of bones that are in a person's body. They found a belly button ring. So that's, we knew right then and there. We didn't need any more proof. We know. But you have to wait for verification, DNA, dental, everything.

The medical examiner, once he recovered the bones, the teeth were compared to dental records from Tara and were positively identified. The results of that autopsy indicated to us that she was involved in quite a struggle. We were able to determine through the forensic anthropologist that she did have injuries to her ribs that were consistent with being caused at the time of her death. So that evening I went to Tara's mom's and we pulled up out front and walked up to the door. She, of course, knew this was coming someday in her heart and she reacted how you would expect a mother to react. It was a horrific day. You know what they're coming for and it just makes it real that you're never going to see your daughter again.

I had a whole lot of anger, a whole lot of guilt. I don't know how to explain it, but just started crying. How can someone do that to someone else? How can they just, like, not care? I can't imagine having to live through that and having to hear those words. It's just, it's heartbreaking. I just wanted answers. i wanted something done i wanted someone to pay for what they did i wanted justice even after her

body was found there was really nothing to indicate who was involved with Tara's disappearance and ultimately her death. So you're trying to develop leads and develop information, but we're still in the dark about what had happened. For the first time in many months, investigators get a new lead. We discovered that a subject by the name of William told his girlfriend that he was actually called by Tara that day to come and sit with her because she was concerned about some workers coming to the house. This individual William sort of resembled the person that Phil said he had seen in the house.

It was just the person responsible for Tara missing. It needed to be explored and eliminated one way or the other. We just wanted to determine, first of all, was he even there that day? And if he wasn't, why did he make it up? So I contacted him, talked to him on the phone. Initially, he said that he had been to the house, but Tara wasn't there.

So I got him to come in to give us a sworn statement. He said that that's not true. That he had told his girlfriend that he was at Tara's house to make her jealous. William turned out to be just a kid who wanted to make himself look like he was more of a ladies' man than he was. As the years go by, fresh information dries up. At some point, you completely run out of leads. And then, of course, I retired. So I didn't have everyday contact with the case.

With no new leads, the case of the murdered teen goes cold. It's frustrating when you don't have any leads to follow. But most cases are never closed. Detectives that are working in the Major Crimes Unit will be assigned old cases to work on them when they have time, which never comes. Quite honestly, you cannot work cold cases part-time and that's just just the facts. And then in 2009, the sheriff asked me to come in and start a cold case unit. It gave me an opportunity to continue the work on Tara's case, to give it a fresh look. It's a unit made up of retired police officers, detectives, investigators,

who were not from the area, not from the agency, who would be able to devote 100% of their attention to these unsolved cases. You get three different perspectives from old guys who have done this for their entire life. We start at the beginning of the file box, and sometimes these file boxes are a mess. Actually, all the time, these file boxes are a mess because they've been gone through so many times by so many different people that there's, you know know there's little organization there a cold case is not an easy case to work because you're second guessing work that had already been done what i like to do is just sit back and stare at it if you stare at it long enough you're going to start seeing things

and we will find errors 99 of the time what jumped out at me was the fact that we had two individuals, Philip Barr and David McManus, the septic workers, and that both of their stories, when they were initially interviewed, appeared to conflict with each other. The stories differed in the number of times that they were at Tara's house on that day, the description of what Tara was wearing, and where they parked Phil Barr's truck. It's now October 7th, 2010, nine years after Tara's murder.

I met Sharon, Tara's mother, after we were assigned her daughter's murder case. I went and visited her when she was living up in Maryland. By this time, Sharon has left Florida. Her marriage to Keith breaks up under the enormous strain of the case. I went there to open a line of communication. And I figured it was going to take about an hour. It was about four hours, a very emotional time.

And truly, this woman was devastated. I felt like if I were Sharon, I wouldn't believe a word we were saying because of all the years that had gone by. I was just like, uh-huh, uh-huh, you know, listening to him because I've heard a lot of, we're going to do this, you know, I heard all that.

So he said, we're going to treat Tara as our own. And I believed him. They were just always there, no matter what. We look at every document, and it was probably 12 boxes, 14 boxes of documents. Took a long time, probably six, seven months. Kurt Mell zeroes in on the statement of the neighbor who saw the white pickup at Tara's house on the day she vanished.

I discovered that in the interview of the next-door neighbor, she had told the officer that her sister-in-law was present, but she had not identified her sister-in-law. And there was no formal interview in the file. I thought, well, who was this particular lady? And we need to talk to her. The investigators tracked down the neighbor's sister-in-law. And she saw a lot more than what the neighbor saw. She witnessed both Philip Barr and David McManus, the septic workers, walk through the front door of Tara's house. This was Tara's house.

This witness observed the white pickup truck with Barr and McManus arrive at this house two different times, was sitting right here where this orange cone is. So she had an unobstructed view. That Sago palm was run over by Barr's truck when the witness saw them back up to the front door and open the tailgate.

So that all tied in together and made complete sense. The first time they seemed like they were happy. The second time she saw them when they backed the truck up, there was an obvious demeanor change. She said that they were looked like they were sweaty and looked like they were frantic, in a hurry. Once we interviewed this witness, we were extremely excited.

It was a game changer. 11 years after Tara's murder, prosecutors believe they now have enough evidence to charge the two septic workers who were questioned early in the investigation. David McManus was arrested in Cumberland, Maryland, at his home. I believe I'm involved.

Yes, sir. Based on statements that you have made. That I've made? Yes, sir. And your answer wasn't according to you and statements that you've given. I've never claimed I was there more than once. Yeah, yeah. So you see, you can't keep your story straight. But we did not know where Phil Barr was at the time.

We were able to track Phil Barr down. Philip Barr was sort of on the run. He had assumed a different name and was living up in the Vermont area. We theorized that he was up in that area, so he'd be close to Canada in case he ever felt we were getting too close. The Marshals Service said that he,

when they knocked on the door, he basically tried to get out the back door of the trailer, but they had marshals around the back. They arrested him there. I didn't do anything. How the hell can they arrest me when I didn't do anything? It was an awesome feeling that they were behind bars. I was very, very happy. And in the same sense, you know, you're a little scared, you know,

because you want to make sure you get the conviction. I was confident in the case that we had, but you just never want to get too overconfident. You could have one juror on there that just refuses to believe anything, and that could throw the whole thing in a tailspin. This is a difficult case. We gave the state attorney a commitment that we would work hand-in-hand with their prosecution team all the way through to the verdict.

As detectives prepare the case for trial, they stumbled across another piece of damning evidence. Back in 2002, Phil Barr was incarcerated in the county jail for unrelated charges to the Tara case. A jail call was then made by Phil Barr to Linda Dilley. Press 9 to accept. Hey. Hello? Hello. Yeah?

Linda was Phil Barr's girlfriend. She was mad at him, as usual, about, you know, why he was in jail. And she was mad about the whole thing with Tara. When we got the tape of the jail call, it was extremely disturbing. How dare she talk about my daughter like that? To be quite honest, it really just pissed me off. That tape just fired everybody up. After hearing the prison phone call, the Cold Case team takes a closer look

at the statements Phil Barr and his girlfriend Linda Dilley gave when Tara vanished. Back in 2001, they both said they were on the phone together throughout the day, making it impossible for Barr to commit murder. The detectives back then subpoenaed the cell phone records for those two numbers. But there was no

information about Monday, October 1st on those records. I discovered it was because the service had been terminated for lack of payment and not re-established by the phone company until October 17th, 16 days after Tara's disappearance. Supposedly they had talked on the cell phone several times. Clearly, that was a lie. So Linda Dilley was criminally charged with two counts of perjury in a capital murder case. She could have done many years in prison. Linda's attorney approaches the prosecutor looking for a plea deal if Linda will agree to testify. The detectives try another approach to persuade her to talk candidly.

I contacted the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. We agreed that we would get two female FBI agents and one of the females was tasked to be more of the caring mom, sister type, and the other one was to be very regimented and more of a law enforcement individual. Linda Dilley consistently said she didn't think Phil Barr had anything to do with Tara's murder. I pulled the gun on Phil and I told him, if I ever find out you have anything to do with this Phil's disappearance, I will force you to stay.

I would excuse you, but I would have you shove it down into your heart. And we never told him. Linda Dilley was very protective of Phil Barr from the very beginning, and that was something and I had to shove it down his throat. Linda Dilley was very protective of Phil Barr from the very beginning, and that was part of the character profile that was developed over a period of time based upon input from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. But she started providing us information

that she suspected that Phil Barr was involved in illegal drugs right around the time that the Tara case occurred in 2001. Hi, I'm Stassi Schroeder. On my podcast, I share candid updates from my personal life, chat with some of my best friends about what's going on in our lives, give commentary on the latest pop culture headlines,

and sometimes deep dive into random topics I'm obsessed with, like human design. It's a bit all over the place, but that's how I like it. And you will too. Listen to my podcast Stassi wherever you get your podcasts. It's now October 24th, 2014, 13 years after Tara Sidorovich's murder. Over three days of questioning, the FBI interviewers coax Linda into revealing more about what really happened that day. There's so many reasons to do that. You've got grandkids, you're looking at jail time. You can unburden yourself. And you can help Tara get justice.

You just have to tell us everything that you know. I do remember it was I. Phillip had never, ever, ever done a labor law. Okay? And I had never been. And I thought that was kind of strange. She blurted out that she saw a body in the driveway wrapped in a beige sheet. And then when she realized she said that,

she instantly had to come up with a reason and I wouldn't let them. But basically, yeah, it was in a body because it was a hog's body. Dilley tells investigators she believes the body she saw was actually a hog they had killed. Then she talked about how Barr approached her on the 1st or the 2nd of October after the murder and asked her how to get rid of blood and how to get rid of DNA. None of this was ever mentioned to the investigating officers back in 2001. Subsequently, she made a deal with the state attorney's office to testify against Phil and Dave.

They both deny any involvement and plead not guilty. They're tried separately, with Phil Barr first to face both justice and his former girlfriend. Fourteen years after the murder, a packed courtroom finally hears exactly what happened that awful October day back in 2001. Our theory is that when they got in the house, Dave kept Tara busy while Phil went into the master bedroom and he stole what he could, put it in his pocket. I think drugs had something to do with it. I think probably there was a combination of they saw a pretty girl

and they needed money for drugs. Tara probably caught them, confronted them, and we feel she was she was killed or definitely incapacitated in the house they panicked fled the house and they made a trip or two back to the house to clean up and to get the body the jury deliberates for just 90 minutes before returning a verdict when I heard the word guilty, just so many emotions again, just of happiness, relief. And I just remember hugging my children and, you know, just like we did it. Actually, I was surprised at my reaction because I expected to jump for joy and scream and holler. And I had a little bit of that, but our job wasn't done. We still had one to go. Dave McManus is tried and

convicted two years later. Like Barr, he is sentenced to life in prison. Life without parole, both of them. And you know what I say? I hope they live to be 100. I hope they think about it every day. We hugged each other and we were ecstatic. I mean, we couldn't have been happier. It was a nightmare for a very, very long time. If it wasn't for the cold case unit, I don't believe I would have justice. They will be in my hearts forever. I was thrilled these people were taken off the street. Justice was served as much as justice can be served for such a heinous crime. Victims of cold cases do not deserve to be a box on the shelf. They are human beings. What I'd like to say to other families is never give up hope,

never give up fighting. Do what you have to do to get justice for your loved one. I believe in forgiveness to some extent, but I will never, ever forgive those men for what they did and what they took. They took my soul for a long time. Yeah, they took a lot, but you know what? They'll never take my memories. They're mine.