Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mom drives across USA searching for daughter's killer & stops by Nancy's studio

Episode Date: August 28, 2018

After 18-year-old Brittany Phillips was raped and strangled to death in her Tulsa, Oklahoma, apartment in 2004, her mother waited for answers. But Dr. Maggie Zingman is no longer waiting. The mom is driving around the United States in a hard-to-miss vehicle wrapped with her daughter's photo and details about her murder, raising awareness to the case in the hope someone who knows something will come forward. Zingman caught Nancy Grace's attention as she traveled through Atlanta and was invited to the Crime Stories studio to discuss the search for her daughter's killer. They are joined by Cold Case Research Institute director Sheryl McCollum. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. 18-year-old Brittany Phillips was raped and killed in her East Tulsa apartment. She was my best friend. And there's a lot of people who are going to miss her. Go and check the well-being and find Brittany deceased inside her apartment. I want him to rot in the jail cell for the rest of his life. I don't want to go through the rest of my life wondering what happened. Police say there were signs of an altercation.

All I could think of was how long she was hurt, how long she was dead. Detectives took DNA from the scene and sent it to a lab. We know his hair color, his eye color, his skin complexion, where he is originally from as far as his family. It does give me hope, but I've had to learn to just, I'll believe it when we see it. Who killed a beautiful young girl, Brittany Phillips? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with me. And joining me here in the studio, all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a beautiful young lady in her own right.

It's Brittany's mother, Maggie Zingman. Maggie has been on a journey, a very long journey, and a very, very rough and rocky road as she searches for justice. You know, Dr. Zingman, may I call you Maggie? Sure. You know, you've been in my home and seen photos of my twins, John, David, and Lucy. They're 10. And they're my whole world. They're everything to me.

It's God's greatest gift to me. I can't even imagine what you're going through. I thought I knew it all after my fiance's murder. But now that I've had the twins and I've had these 10 years with them, I just cannot imagine someone taking one of them away from me. And, you know, I've seen your caravan to catch a killer tricked out. It looks like a minivan but i mean i've never seen anything like it except once when i went i was in vegas i saw a van go by and it was covered like shrink wrapped with an ad for hookers okay so that's the only time i've ever seen a van that tricked out before yours is beautiful but heartbreaking at the same time

because in big cursive letters on the side it says, Caravan to Catch a Killer. I could recite the facts just like that. But let me start with the day that you found out something had gone horribly, horribly wrong? With me in the studio, I want to say Dr. Maggie Zingman, but I'll go with Brittany's mom. Go ahead. Well, I had found out about Brittany's murder

after three days of being unable to contact her. I had talked to her at 9 p.m. on September 28, 2004, and I had just moved away from Tulsa. I was in a little town, and she was going to come up that weekend and visit with me, and so I said, well, I'll get together with you later that week, and I called her the next day, couldn't get hold of her. Called her again, couldn't get at 1 a.m. the next morning, I got a knock on my door, and I opened the door, and a young sheriff all alone had a piece of paper in his hand, and he said to me, are you Brittany Phillips' mother? And I said, yes. He said, here, you need to call this detective in Tulsa.

Your daughter's been murdered oh my stars when you opened that door at 1 a.m in the morning and you saw a sheriff what went through your mind it's a typical mom thing you know somebody's been in a crash um you know did my kids get in trouble all those. But I never expected him to tell me it was a murder. And I kept saying, you mean she was in a crash? No, she was murdered. And he left so quickly, I couldn't even ask him any questions. And years later, I ended up talking to police departments about that.

Because, I mean, I was in shock with his words. But then I was in shock that I was left there not knowing what to do. You know, you're right about the way crime victims are told the worst news. I also am thinking about that young sheriff, for all I know, he was a rookie, and this was the first time he ever had to tell anybody bad news. And he's like, I got to get out of here. I can't take it. Exactly.

And then went home that night, probably told his mom what had happened and what he had to do and what he had to tell you. And he skedaddled. Oh, oh. I'm trying to imagine you, Maggie, walking from that front door to the phone to call the detective. What did you learn? I didn't learn a lot then. I just learned that they had found her and that I needed to come down to Tulsa, which was 50 miles away. And so my next thing was, how do I get down there?

Because could I drive? Was I willing to drive myself? So he said he would be there within a couple of hours and that he would tell me everything that he could. Those words, you need to call Tulsa police. Your daughter has been murdered. She had just left Brittany a voicemail asking, please call me. I know you're okay, but I need to hear your voice. I need to know you're okay. Joining me right now, the director of the Cold Case Research Institute, Cheryl McCollum. Cheryl, what do we need to do on Brittany's case?

Tell me. Nancy, we have got to get his picture everywhere everybody needs to look at the composite that britney's mother had done through phenotyping so they they know what he looks like he's a white wait a minute wait a minute way whoa whoa whoa whoa phenotyping and i'm guessing that's p-h-E-N-O typing, and I'm guessing that's P-H-E-N-O typing, phenotyping. To Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator, forensics expert, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet, are you familiar with phenotyping? Yes, ma'am, I am. Hit me. Yeah, well, we have what's called phenotyping? Yes, ma'am, I am. Hit me.

Yeah, well, we have what's called genotyping. Think about the DNA strand. And if you unwrap that strand, you have phenotyping. Genotyping kind of gives us a general overall picture. Phenotyping, which is really great, is that it gives us specific identifiers for an individual, like will somebody have blue eyes or brown eyes or red hair or brown hair, height, weight, well, not weight necessarily in all cases, height, you know, their structure, those basic building blocks that gives us what we see, okay, when a person presents themselves, dimples, that sort of thing.

So this is a fantastic technology for what we're trying to accomplish here. Okay, you know what? I appreciate all that, but you kind of sounded like reading from an encyclopedia. You know, Cheryl McCollum, when you go in front of a jury, you know, whenever I had a homicide case or any case that dealt with a doctor, I would physically go in my beat up Honda and smoking out from under the hood. I'd park it on the street in inner city Atlanta, hoping somebody would steal it. Actually, no, because then I have to pay for a down payment for another one. And I absolutely did not have the money. So I just stuck with it. I would go to the doctor and say, I don't understand what you're saying.

Okay, I'm just a JD. You're the MD. And I would literally, I know it drove him crazy, Cheryl, but go through every line of an autopsy report and say, hematoma? What's that, a bruise? Well, could you just say bruise? You know, questions of that ilk. Now, help me explain to me in regular people talk, Joe Scott. Cheryl, what is phenotyping and why is it so important in Brittany's case? We can talk about molecular photo fitting or we can just break it down, Nancy, to say here's the deal. Inside your DNA, it will tell your skin color, your hair color, your eye color, whether or not you have dimples, freckles.

So they take those markers and develop a composite of what this person most likely looks at. So when law enforcement, like in Brittany's case, puts the DNA in CODIS and there's no hit, they can take this photograph and put it around the community to see if anybody recognizes this assailant. We know his hair color, his eye color, his skin complexion, where he is originally from as far as his family. It does give me hope, but you know, I've had to learn to just, I'll believe it when we see it. I want to go back to phenotyping. I think I understand what you're saying, that the DNA found at the scene from the

killer did not hit in CODIS. In other words, he doesn't have a record or didn't have a record then and has never given DNA for any other reason. Therefore, we're not getting a hit on him. But based on that DNA, you can determine so many physical markers such as eye color, hair color, and much, much more. According to Joe Scott Morgan, I want to go back to that night and with me here in our studio all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is Dr. Maggie Zingman, who has been on a journey to catch her daughter, Brittany's killer, for a very long time. After you spoke to detectives on the phone, what did you do, Maggie? Well, I immediately called a friend to help me drive down to Tulsa because I was afraid I couldn't drive alone.

And she and her husband came up and picked me up. About halfway there, in my usual caretaker manner, I decided I needed to go alone. I couldn't have them come. They had known Brady for their whole life, and I didn't want them exposed to that. When I got down to the apartment, I saw the door was open. I walked in, and suddenly an officer came out of the bedroom and I asked

where my daughter was and he said she'd already been identified by her license and taken down to the ME and I wouldn't be able to see her. What, if anything, did you do then? Well, I pretty much didn't know. I didn't understand anything. So I just sat there. He said the detective would be there, but I was upset because I really was not willing to accept it was her and not being able to see her. You know, I couldn't then accept it. And within a couple of hours, the detective came and he basically told me that she had been dead in the apartment for three days probably killed sometime between 9 p.m and 8 a.m that night three days was she dating was she dating anyone at the time yes she was dating someone and did police locate him and exonerate him yeah they located him they have swabbed every single boyfriend, old boyfriends,

males around the apartment complex, workers around there. We've actually compared our DNA sample to over 3,000 regional suspects. And I'm told by OSBI in Oklahoma that it's gone through a million in CODIS without a hit, which is part of the reason I started these caravans. Let me ask you a question, Dr. Maggie. This is Brittany's mom with me. Have they compared the DNA found at the scene with familial DNA, familial DNA? Yes, actually we are in that process right now. For about two years, Oklahoma OSBI was planning to do the familial,

and they couldn't get the funding, and we just started taking DNA at arrests. But right now in similar groups that worked with Sacramento and the killer that they caught out there. The Golden State Killer. Yeah. We are being, that's in the process of being analyzed, finally at almost 14 years. So explain, if you don't mind, very quickly, Joseph Scott Morgan,

the importance of familial DNA, and it really came to the forefront with the case of the Long Island jogger death. And as you know, Karina Vetrano and her father, Phil, really fighting the battle for familial DNA to be used to solve cases. Explain what is familial DNA and why it is so important, Joe Scott. Yeah, with familial DNA, Nancy, this is going to give us, we've got now this huge pool of DNA that's out there as a result of a lot of these websites that are out there that are advertising, you know, check your ancestry and this sort of thing. And as a result of that, the pool has expanded. You know, Cheryl was talking about CODIS a moment ago. Well, that's a very limited database.

And so with familial, this is going to show us ancestral connections between various groups of people that are out there. And this connection can be driven. You can actually go to somebody and say, hey, listen, do you know anybody in your family that might look this way? Is there anybody that's on the radar that might fit this profile? So it expands or kind of unpacks this idea of the DNA footprint that's made now as opposed to when we're just very limited by offenders. Sometime between 9 p.m. September 27 and 8 a.m. September 28, Brittany, beautiful young girl, Brittany Phillips, was brutally raped and strangled, strangled to death. Her body found inside her bedroom in her apartment.

The location was 65th Street there in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is now known as Somerset Park at Union Apartments. It was formerly the Glen Eagles Apartments. We know that there were several ways the perpetrator could have gotten into Brittany's apartment. It was on this second floor, which we always say is more safe than the first floor. One, he could have pulled up on her balcony and come in through her back door. There was a common attic space that was shared between the apartments on that floor. So could he have entered through another area in the complex and come through the attic?

That's another question. Windows in Brittany's apartment were found open, but it was very unclear whether she had opened the windows herself or did the killer open them. To her mother, joining me here in the studio did she typically sleep with her windows open no she didn't she was uh pretty savvy about being safe she knew self-defense she you know was knew how to walk smart she usually had the air condition on she even closed there were two french doors out of her bedroom onto a little balcony and so she wouldn't have and even the detective said it almost looked staged because all the screens were off the window let me ask you something cheryl mccollum i've really learned a lot from the

pamphlet that you gave me called find my killer and there there's a beautiful shot of Brittany on the front. Just so pretty. So much promise. You have a snapshot, an actual snapshot, of what you think the killer would look like. How did you get that with no DNA comparison, no photograph? Again, that's where the Parabon comes into play to do the phenotyping. That was the result of that testing. And Nancy, let me tell you something. Dr. Maggie is doing what you and I have done from the moment we met.

She has taken this case literally to the street. She took that suspect photograph. She slapped it right on the hood of her car. And she has driven over 200,000 miles hunting for this killer. Let me tell you a little bit about Brittany. Brittany Yvonne Sarah Phillips. Absolutely drop-dead beautiful 18 year old girl She had her whole life in front of her She wasn't just beauty

She was beauty and brains She had a chemistry scholarship To a Florida college After attending there She decided to come home to be near her family I did the very same thing when I was an undergrad. And her dream was to research for a cure for cancer. I mean, like an angel. Beautiful on the inside, beautiful on the outside. She had only lived at Glen Eagle Apartments, now Somerset Park at Union Apartments. And she had been attending college in Tulsa for just three months before she was murdered.

I'm curious. I'm curious about was it someone she knew at school? Was it someone that worked at the school? I'm also curious, Maggie, why you think that her killer may have a public service job like bill collection, cell phones, cable, where he accesses customers' addresses. Why do you think that's a possibility? Well, I guess I've learned that over the years that a lot going to the public service first is that, you know, they will have customer service, they will have access to the address, and they could stalk her from her coming to pay a bill of going back to that attic access what we

learned probably within a year or two is that there's eight apartments in that one little section and each apartment in its closet has an access to the attic. And my detective, Jeff Felton, the original one, was 6'2", and he could pull himself up into that attic access. And I noticed when I was walking to the apartments that when you go up the steps, you can get up on the rail and get up onto the roof very easily and get in there. And so even just a year ago when we first published this, or less than a year ago, this January,

when we published the phenotype picture, we got a call from somebody who used to live in Tulsa and worked with the cable company and said there was a really weird guy, and we all know we had to lay cables up there. And he gave a tip of somebody he worked with way back then. Maggie, I understand your final goodbye to Brittany was through a blanket. What does that mean? Yes, Nancy, that was extremely hard. I mean, back in the first few days after the murder, I didn't have the voice I have now. And she was kept at the Emmys for about four days and released a day before her 19th birthday. So we decided to set the date for October 4, 2004.

And when we went to the funeral home the day of the funeral, the funeral director pulled my father aside and said, we don't think she should see her daughter. And I later asked, or I asked why, and he said, well, you know, she's been through an autopsy. We think it would shock you too much, and so we're not going to allow it. And I didn't know I had any other say so they walked me into the room and I could see her little body because she was only five two and they had a blanket over her face and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done Nancy because I went there and I kissed her on

the forehead and then I took my hands and run ran down her nose. She had this little cute pug nose. And whenever she got upset, even up to age 18, I used to calm her down just by going, it'll be okay. And so I took my fingers and ran them down her nose over that blanket and said, I'm so sorry, Brittany. I'm so sorry. I will always be here for you. And then I kissed her again. And I didn't know that I could

have argued against that. And later in talking with funeral directors, OSBI, and other people, I said, you really can't be making these decisions for family. For me, I worked through it. But for some, they will believe that there's never any closure if they can't say goodbye and yeah we're already shocked by the murder we can't be any more shocked by anything else how do you get up every morning and keep going well part of how I keep going Nancy is that I won't let her kill or take my life. If I crumble, if I fall apart, then he gets two victims. I keep going because I will not let this murder be unsolved. I mean, I'm 63 and I do get tired, but I'm going to keep going until we solve it. But it's even become more of that.

We may never really solve it, but I feel like I have to be a voice for all the silenced voices. There's so many cold case homicides that I've learned about, met the families, that it's very hard to get these stories across the U.S., so it's all those things, and really, I live in spite of and because of her murder. I knew so little when this happened. And if I can help other families by educating them about different aspects of this, I'm going to do it. And really, I'm always at a point about half a year into work where I go, I need one of these trips to recharge because they really do recharge me. They give me more purpose. And the thousands upon thousands of strangers who have

just been kind to have a place in my heart are really what keep me going every day. It's the kindness of every single person I've met since Brady's murder. Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute. Cheryl, they call it a cold case, but as long as someone like Maggie is working it, it's not cold. It's a brewing. It's brewing. It's a bubbling. It's not a full on boil, but it's bubbling. You know, right before you put the rice in, that's where we're at right now on this case. Time passes. These things happen. This case can be solved, Cheryl. Nancy, you're absolutely right. This case is brewing. They get tips all the time, and that detective follows up on every single one. Nancy, there's no question this case can be solved. I believe it will

be solved. Joe Scott Morgan, weigh in. You know, I was wondering, we were talking about the attic. You know, if this is the first time that this subject has ever done this, I wonder, I just wonder if he had gotten into that attic and had spent some time up there just essentially watching this poor young woman day after day after hour after hour just waiting to make his move at that time until finally he descended into her living space and essentially perpetrated this horrible crime. Maggie, what, if anything, do you think you have sacrificed in your life to pursue Brittany's killer since 2004 traveling the country? Well, I've sacrificed having my daughter in my life. You know, there's physical sacrifices. The first seven to eight years of the murder, my income didn't change. I would live without heat or air conditioner, even when I'd have a water heater broke in my house, which was a nice big house up. But I couldn't even afford those things. I would put everything on the shelf to do these caravans. You know, this is a lonely journey. And so I may, I don't know that it's a sacrifice, but I live, you know, a lot of my life alone because I'm working on this and only you know sometimes a parent or a survivor is going to invest this much time but in many ways because of the gifts I've received like even this Nancy today to me is such a gift that you know I don't feel I've sacrificed I can't bring Brittany back

so I have to find gifts in what I do or it'll crush me. Joining me here in the studio all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, it's Brittany's mother, Maggie Zingman. Maggie has been on a journey, a very long journey, and a very, very rough and rocky rocky road how did you get the idea to trick out that van that says caravan to catch a killer what do you want to achieve with that okay well at about year two i had little placards on my car because i was trying to talk to people about i was standing on street corners near her apartment passing out flyers. And about year two, we hit, I think, 1,000 or at least 800 DNA swabs against suspects that hadn't matched. And a lot of people kept saying, well, you know, he may have moved on, or maybe he's serial. And I thought, well, how do I get my story nationwide? And so I,

you know, started thinking about it. And then I kept seeing this one truck that was wrapped. And I left a note on the truck and said, could you tell me where you got your vehicle wrapped? And it ended up being the owner of a place called Midwest Wraps, who was also associated with Feller's Vinyl, which is an international vinyl company. And from that, in 2007, he and Feller's both donated the first of three wraps to my car. And what I did was I gave him a lot of pictures, told him what Britty's favorite colors were. And I thought, I need some sort of message that the minute people see it, they'll know what this car is about, even when I'm traveling. And I

don't know if it was a gift from Bridie or what, but I came up with caravan to catch a killer. And the minute I came up with that, everybody was telling me that's what it needs to be. And so this young man, Travis, who owns Midwest Wraps, designed it to be on all sides of the car. And then at that point, we only had a profile of what the police were saying was the typical profile because it was done in the middle of the night, no witnesses. So we would put the written profile on there. So that's basically how I started is just to get tips. But within two years, I learned so much about DNA and DNA laws and issues about that and what was blocking solving of cold case homicides.

So now it's a dual process. It's both still seeking tips for an almost 14-year-old case, but it's also talking to local media, talking to lawmakers, going to— when I'm down around Atlanta and places like this, I'll go to public areas because the car just draws people in. So it's become multi-purpose now. Maggie, what is your message today to other parents? That's always a hard one, but just, you know, I am so glad that the night I talked to Bridget on the phone before, probably an hour or two before her killer took her, is I said, I love you. You know I love you. And we used to, if we were together, I'd hold her face in my hand and I'd say, remember my smile and my arms around you because they will always be there. And so I basically said that to her on the phone. So say that you love your children. Don't let anything separate you or make you angry,

because within a day that can change. Maggie, what is your most vivid memory of Brittany, the memory you go back to in your mind? Wow, I have so many, and I'm surprised sometimes that I can still think of it. But I guess there's two memories. One, when she was little, and we even have one of these pictures on the car, but Bridie was blessed with these long blonde curls and dark brown, brown eyes. And we lived in Florida when she was four and five. And then we moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where I worked for United Way. And because I was a writer for United Way, Bridie was part of the

1991 Louisville campaign for United Way about diversity. And so there was a picture of her, an African American woman, Native American man, and youth. And they were the profile of the campaign, and all the pictures were on the buses at the airport and all over the city for a year. So she would just jump in the seat of the car when we'd be driving by a bus, and she would see herself going by on the bus, or when she would come into the airport when we would travel and come back and people would recognize the pictures. So that's one of my really heartfelt memory. And then the second memory is dropping her off at college in Florida at my alma mater. And, you know, just thinking, there goes my little girl. And, you know, worrying then, as I looked at her in my rear view mirror, and she was staying in a similar dorm I had stayed in like 20 years before. And seeing her standing there and just thinking, oh, God, please keep her safe.

And she survived there for a year and blossomed. And then she came home and three months later, right in the apartments next to her old high school. You know, she was brutally raped and taken from us forever. Maggie, what is your message to our listeners now? I guess one of the most important things, and Nancy, you said this a couple of times, and people say this always, I would never think it could happen to me. And that is a myth that we all live under. And I wish I had understood rape laws and DNA laws

and when they take DNA at arrest because Brittany's case is so typical of a lot of crimes against women she was raped she was suffocated it was behind closed doors it was in the middle of the night without witnesses she wasn't out on the street doing drugs. She, at that time in her life, didn't have questionable characters in her life, and yet she was still raped and strangled. And with as many people as we have not had a hit with our DNA sample. It's all about getting the laws to get people who are doing these things much sooner in their careers than later. And if they go to my website or they look up DNA issues,

they can really understand that. So don't think this can't happen to you because Brittany's story is definitely about the girl next door. That is what it is. This is not the type of person that we think will be murdered in the middle of the night. But unfortunately, like we just saw recently, it's the young women, beautiful young women, ages 15 to 30 who are being abducted and killed by these predators. What is a tip line that we can call with tips information theories, Maggie?

Okay, the homicide tip line is 918-798-8477. And people can also write homicide at cityoftulsa, all one word,.org. They can also call Crime Stoppers 918-596-COPS. And I even have people who email me at therapoet, at AOL.com, T-H-E-R-A-P-O-E-T, at AOL.com. And I send every single tip that I get because I get a lot through Facebook and other venues. The detectives get every single tip that we get because I guess sometimes people feel more comfortable sending them to me. I don't know. Maggie, if you could say one thing to Brittany, what would it be?

I say a lot of things to her, but I still say I'm sorry. I mean, I know I didn't do anything her, but I still say I'm sorry. I mean, I know I didn't do anything wrong, but, yeah, I tell her I'm sorry. I miss you, and I know you'd be living an unbelievable life now. And, Maggie, if you could say one thing to her killer, what would it be? On one end, I don't think anything I'd say to her killer would impact anything because he's not human but all I can say is we will get you and we will stop you from hurting other young women in Brittany's name Nancy Grace crime stories signing off goodbye friend this is an iHeart podcast