Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - New Evidence Renews Mom's Search for Daughter's Killer

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Brittany Phillips, 18, attends Florida's Eckerd College on a full chemistry scholarship her freshman year, but the homesick college student returns to Tulsa to continue her education. Within a week, the 18-year-old is dead. Phillips was found raped and strangled inside her locked apartment. Now, a letter has been found with a postmark after the date Phillips was thought to have died, sparking new hope for an arrest.  Joining Nancy Grace today: Dr. Maggie Zingman- Brittany’s mother, Trauma psychologist; Facebook: /Mom.Missing.Brittany Matthew T. Mangino- Attorney, Former District Attorney (Lawrence County), and Author: "The Executioner's Toll: The Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, Last Meals, Final Words and Executions of 46 Persons in the United States" Caryn Stark- Psychologist- Trauma and Crime Expert; Twitter: @carnpsych Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Founder: Atlanta's Cold Case Investigative Research Institute; Host of the new podcast, "Zone 7;" Twitter: @ColdCaseTips    Dr. Kendall Avon Crowns-Chief Medical Examiner for Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), & Lecturer for University of Texas Austin and Texas Christian University Medical School   Andy Kopsa- Award-winning Investigative Reporter; Twitter: @AndyKopsa  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A grieving mother is hoping and praying that new evidence will shed light on her daughter's murder. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. I'm talking about a gorgeous young girl, Brittany Phillips. First of all, take a listen to our friends at KJRH. New evidence discovered by her own family is breathing hope back into this 18-year-old cold case.

Her mother, Maggie Zingman, says she got a call from Brittany's father recently that left her stunned. All of a sudden, about a month ago, I got this call from him, and he said, I need to show you something, but don't be upset with me. Brittany's father told Maggie that he had recently discovered a birthday card Brittany had sent to him in 2004 to mail to her grandfather. It had a mechanized white post office stamp, meaning it came out of a machine that somebody either bought at a kiosk or a post office desk. Okay, why would finding that card shed light on the murder of her daughter? And why would she be angry at its discovery? First of all, let's explain what happened to this teen girl, Brittany Phillips. Take a listen to Ashley Holt, Channel 2.

Like many parents, I thought, this will never happen to me. She remembers how it started. I opened the door to this young sheriff standing in the rain, and he had a piece of paper in his hand. He just quickly said to me, are you Maggie Zingman? I said, yeah. He said, you need to call Tulsa Police. Your daughter's been murdered murdered she had left Brittany a voicemail days before I'm pretty please call me I know you're okay but I just

need to hear from you next thing she knew she's standing in Brittany's apartment swarming with investigators Brady dropped the friend off at her apartment complex at 51st Memorial. Brittany drives home. The last time her friend saw her. They go and check the well-being and find Brittany deceased inside her apartment. And joining me right now is Brittany's mom, Dr. Maggie Zingman. She's a trauma psychologist, and you can find her at BrittanyPhillipsMurder.net. On Facebook, you can find her at Mom.Missing.Brittany. Maggie, thank you for being with us. Thank you for once again giving us a voice in this time period

that I could have never imagined we'd be going through this now. You know, Dr. Maggie, Dr.ie zing when this is britney's mom do you still remember that moment when you open the door and there's a sheriff standing there oh yeah i mean just as i was listening to it again even at 18 years you know it brought tears to my eyes because i remember that shock. I remembered not believing it. And then I remembered this sheriff just based in Chandler abandoning me. So, yeah, I still remember that. You know, with me, founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute and now star of a hit podcast, Zone 7, Cheryl McCollum.

You know, by the sound of it, that may have been that sheriff's first time at ever advising a family that they had a dead loved one. You know, just it tumbled out and he just ran for it. And he was probably scared to death. I mean, those are the worst things that you can do, I think, in this profession. They're known to get easier. You know you're fixing to knock on a door and destroy somebody's world. So it's a difficult assignment for sure.

Guys, take a listen to our friends at Crime Online. After graduating from Union High School, Brittany Phillips is off to St. Petersburg, Florida and Eckerd College. The 18-year-old chemistry student is homesick and decides to move back to Tulsa, enrolling in Tulsa Community College. Phillips gets an apartment across from her old high school. Was that her personality, Maggie? She was so homesick for you and home. She's like, yeah, I want to go to college, but not this far away from home. Yeah, I mean, you know, she actually finished the whole year, but, you know, she was a year younger than everybody.

So I wasn't surprised at the end of the year. It was like she didn't have a lot of contact with her dad. So she wanted to be near family. Of course, I'm more than happy to let her do that. You know, when I'm thinking about Brittany, I want all of you to hear more about her in life. Take a listen to our friend Vincent Hill, KJRH. Maggie says she had her hands full when she had her second child, Brittany. So much so that she gave her this nickname.

Accident, because by the time she was three, I think she had been to the emergency room three times. As Brittany got older, Maggie says she worried for a different reason. She was a typical teenager, you know, running around with her friends. Brittany was a great student. She graduated a year early and headed off to college in Florida, but quickly became homesick. She decided at the end of the second semester to move back to Tulsa.

Brittany enrolled at Tulsa Community College and got her own apartment in a location they thought would be safe. Where we had never heard about anything bad happening. You know, I want to go to Karen Stark joining me. Not only a long-time colleague, but a long-time friend. Karen Stark joining me, not only longtime colleague, but longtime friend. Karen Stark, renowned psychologist in the Manhattan jurisdiction. She's a trauma and crime expert at KarenStark.com. That's Karen with a C.

Karen, you know, we lived in New York for so long, raising the children there and moved. And then recently, you and I were talking about coming back and visiting. I'm like, the crime is so awful. The crime is so terrible. I'm afraid to even bring the twins back to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center or go see a Broadway show. You know, you do your best as a parent and you think about every decision, how it will affect your children. And here, Maggie thought it was a great idea for Brittany to come back home. She got an apartment across the street from her old high school, for Pete's sake. What could be safer than that?

I need to tell you, Nancy, that exactly what you said is true. Parents, and especially moms, who give birth to their children, they do everything they can to make sure their children survive and are safe. You see it in the animal kingdom, right? Like Mother Bear is a good example. So when your child dies before you, the sleep is unbearable and terribly compounded by thoughts of failure. And it's nonsensical, but you feel like you failed to do your job to protect

them. It's not logical, but feelings are not logical. Maggie will never get over her daughter's violence and senselessness. It's just complex. You know, I want to go to Maggie again, Dr. Maggie Zimmerman, Brittany's mom.

What was running through your head regarding her safety when she moved back home? Well, you know, being a trauma survivor myself, being a trauma psychologist, you know, I taught her a lot of things about safety and stuff. And we checked, you know, the history of the apartment and stuff. And so I felt pretty safe. I mean, I was more worried about her when she was, you know, 2,000 miles away in Florida, you know. And so, you know, I mean, luckily the other side of it is I've met a lot of parents who blame themselves.

And in the early first years, I really had to get past that because her killer was going to get another destroyed life if I kept in that. Let's fast forward. Take a listen to our friend Jackie Howard. On September 27th, Phillips plays chauffeur for a friend, taking them home and then talks to her mom on the phone. Over the next couple of days, mother Maggie Zingman calls her daughter to no answer. Getting worried, she leaves a message for her to be in contact, but Zingman is not the only one who's worried. During the same period of time, Phillips misses appointments and classes. One of the friends requests the Tulsa City Police Department to do a wellness check on Brittany.

And more. A late-night knock on the door wakes Maggie Zingman. On the other side of her door, a homicide detective with the Tulsa Police Department. When police perform their welfare check, they find Phillips' body and clear evidence of a struggle in her room. Police say it is evident that Phillips tried to fight her attacker. It's thought at one point the killer slammed her against the wall. The medical examiner determines Phillips is raped and strangled or suffocated. Her estimated time of death is between 9 p.m. on September 27th

and 8 a.m. on September 28th. To Brittany's mom, Dr. Maggie Zingman, Dr. Maggie, when did you learn about how your daughter's body was found, about the scenario we just laid forward, the thinking as to how she was killed? Well, when I was given that information, I mean, one of my worst fears is whenever Brady got upset, she would go, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, even at 18 years old. And so when I first heard that information, I felt like that, you know,

my concern was that, you know, she had done that when she was being killed. And the detective told me that most likely by the evidence they found, it looked like she died instantly. So, but, you know, I mean, it's just, it's something you can't fathom hearing. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

To Cheryl McCollum, forensic expert and founder of the Cold Case Research Institute, explain know, she had some evidence under her fingernails. And she, it looked like, you know, even when they first walked in, that she had been sexually assaulted. So when you think of no forced entry, you think, well, perhaps she let somebody in. To Dr. Kendall Crowns, Chief Medical Examiner, Tarrant County, that's Fort Worth, lecturer at University of Texas Austin and at Texas Christian University Medical School. Dr. Kendall Crowns, thank you for being with us. What do you make of her injuries? So in individuals that are strangled or suffocated, with suffocation, you can actually have no injuries found. And then with strangulations, you're usually looking for hemorrhages in the musculature of the neck and possibly fractures of two specific locations, which is the hyoid bone, which is a structure in the neck and a thyroid cartilage. But often in younger women, these are still very cartilaginous or they still have a lot of bend to them. So you don't find a lot of findings with those.

So really, if you don't see injuries to the neck, you're looking more for suffocation. Okay. You said with a suffocation, like putting a pillow over someone's face, that you don't see injuries. You'd still see the burst petechiae in the eye, correct? No. So to get petechial hemorrhages, you have to actually have compression of the neck structures, specifically the jugular vein. You do about 4.4 pounds of pressure to block off the jugular vein. And then what happens is the carotids still push blood into the head, but because the drainage of

the blood by the jugular is blocked, the capillaries start bursting and you see the petechial hemorrhages. And you won't get that in a pillow type suffocation because the vasculature is not blocked off. You know, every time I speak with you, Dr. Kendall Crowns, I learn something new. I thought that with any type of asphyxiation, be it suffocation, strangulation, manual or ligature, that there would be hemorrhage, the blood vessels in the eyes. But that's only with strangulation, not suffocation. That's what you're saying, right? That is correct.

Okay. In this case, Cheryl McCollum, was it strangulation or suffocation? Again, Nancy, they didn't really make that determination, but it would have appeared to me if she's taken from the bed and thrown up against the wall and then she's fighting him somewhat there was no pillow there was nothing like that i would thank strangulation dr maggie seaman joining us trauma psychologist but she's britney's mom was it ever made clear to you which mode of death? Now, from what I remember, I remember they said something about that muscle or that bone that he mentioned that that could have been a possibility. They said

there was a very faint mark on one side of the neck that, you know, after her being dead for four days. But, you know, I think generally they were saying suffocation, but they said there were some minimal things to lead it to possibly being strangulation. So I've always said both. And the reason I ask is because I would think, Cheryl McCollum, crime scene expert, that if it had been manual strangulation,

we might be able to get touch DNA. Yep, that's a great thought. There's no question about it. And that's why we believe she fought him off and there was some evidence of that under her fingernails. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, exactly. Joining me now, award-winning investigative reporter, Andy Kopsa. You can find Andy on Twitter, at Andy Kopsa with a K.

Andy, thank you for being with us. Tell me what you know about the case up to the point of the discovery of her body, the area, who has access to the apartments, anything you can tell me. So, you know, she is going back and forth to Tulsa Community College, and it's not very far. Tulsa's not a huge town, and she's going back and forth with her friends. She's also, in the months, and looking at it from an investigative standpoint, I want to know where she was even in the months leading up. So she had a job at an Applebee's in June and July. Did somebody see her potentially at Applebee's? Were there other workers there?

She had a job at Cheddar's. You know, she had these different jobs plus going to school. And it was all in the, and Maggie can correct me if I'm wrong, all pretty much in the centralized area of Tulsa. And so, you know, between school and doing her work and going home every once in a while on the weekends, she was pretty much in that central area. But in the days, so like in the immediate days leading up to and up to the day of her her death or supposedly i think we have some questions about that but you know she she spent time that last day on the 27th going to school then she spent time an hour and a half to two hours at a an urgent care center and i've detailed detailed kind of, I'm trying to help Maggie kind of put this all on a map so we jog memories. But they spent time at an urgent care center. She wasn't feeling well.

This area down by a big cloverleaf intersection with all these businesses around with a friend. Then she went to a Bank of America. And then to the best of our knowledge, she got home that night around 8 or 9 p.m. and then talked to Maggie. Now, that's where the timeline stopped. But there's some questions now as to whether or not that was maybe the last day that she was actually alive. But it is the last day that we know that she was in contact with Maggie. And Dr. Maggie, isn't it true that, well, let me ask you, how often did you guys speak? We spoke usually at least a couple of times a week and more near the end of the week because I lived about 40, 50 miles away. And so we would always call and talk and plan the weekend. So after I

talked to her Monday, and she was frustrated about not getting into the doctor, I said, well, I'll talk to you Thursday or Friday. And, you know, we'll set up a time. But like any mother, I called her Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Well, why was she going to the doctor? What was wrong? She had a lot of sinus problems and she was just miserable all the time. And she waited there for like two hours and it was evening hours. So she wasn't getting in. You know, Matthew T. Mangino is joining me, high profile lawyer joining us out of Lawrence County. The author of The Executioner's Toll, Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, Last Meal, Final Words, and

Executions of 46 People Across the U.S. Matthew Mangino, thanks for being with us. You know, I was just thinking, Matthew, about all the potential suspects. She works at Applebee's. She works at Cheddar's. She was in school that day in all of her classes, walking back and forth. She was at a dock in the box, you know, like a first aid station. Hundreds of people could have seen Brittany Phillips that day, but what we have learned in the recent case of the four Idaho students murdered that attended University of Idaho, we now believe their alleged killer, Brian Koberger, had been stalking them for some time. This was someone outside of their sphere, someone that wasn't where they worked or where they went to school. He was at Washington State University about 15 miles away across the state line.

So he would not have fallen into the normal category of who she worked with at Applebee's, at Cheddar's, who was at the dock in the box, who was in her class. So it doesn't necessarily have to be someone in their outer sphere. Well, no, it doesn't, Nancy. Although I think, you know, investigators are going to, you know, follow through on every possibility.

So at the outset, you're going to begin to canvas the neighborhood. You're going to be, you're going to go to the places that she frequently went. You're going to go to her classes and her college and try to piece together a timeline of where she was or who she interacted with.

But just like in the Idaho cases, this doesn't appear to be something that would just be random. Exactly. Right. This is something where at least this person knew where she was going to be, when she would probably be there, what apartment was her apartment. This wasn't just someone, at least I think, who says on a whim, I'm going to follow this young woman into her apartment and sexually assaulting her I think this is this is someone who had planned and and had stalked her and so there's the possibility with that that someone observed him doing what he was doing guys uh let's move forward take a listen to our friend Ashley Holt to Tulsa police say

there were signs of an altercation before she was raped and strangled to death. All I could think of was how long she was hurt, how long she was dead. Investigators tested DNA from the scene. Any kind of crimes that are even remotely similar we're looking into. But came up with nothing. Dr. Zingman's final goodbye to her daughter through a blanket. I basically had to pat her head as I always had and say goodbye to her. I just rubbed my finger down her nose and just and I just said I'm sorry pretty I'm sorry this happened I'm sorry I didn't protect you I'm sorry that they won't even let me touch you you know. It's probably the case I spend most of my time on. Police figured the murderer could be anywhere.

Just thinking of you, Dr. Maggie Zingman, touching her through a blanket is just breaking my heart. On the other hand, I know that DNA was found at the crime scene and it has been tested against thousands of guys. It has been run through every possible DNA data bank. I want to go forward with the investigation. Let's go to our cut eight, our friend Vincent Hill. Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado was a homicide detective with Tulsa police at the time. Regalado says Brittany's killer had likely stalked her before. Whoever murdered her that night more than likely had seen her before and knew that she lived

in that apartment. Regalado had a long list of suspects. We're talking individuals that had backgrounds that would lead you to believe they were potentially able and willing to do a crime such as that. 276 to be exact that either lived in the apartment complex or close by. I'm talking you know theft of women's underwear. I'm talking of peeping toms. I'm talking of rapes. And top it all off, Cheryl McCollum, tell us about a secret door in Brittany's closet. Yeah, so this little trap door, if you climbed up through it and dropped down behind the closet, it was almost like this little cloister where you could enter several of the apartments just from that little center where you would drop down from. So if you were in apartment A and you drop down into that center,

you could enter apartment B, C, or D through their trap door. So essentially, this perpetrator could have been laying in wait, and therefore there would have been no forced entry. However, it may not have appeared that way. There wasn't any dust on the floor or there was no evidence that anybody had been drinking or smoking or eating anything back there. And Tulsa being so warm, I don't know that you could have stayed in that area. It's kind of like an attic type temperature for a long period of time. But it was something that once law enforcement noticed it became a concern. To Dr. Maggie Zingman, and you can find her at BrittanyPhillipsMurder.net. Dr. Maggie, what is your gut feeling? Do you think the killer

came through the secret trap door in the closet? I don't know, because I agree with Cheryl. You know, that was a very hot time of year. But I think, you know, it's either that or years before she was killed or months before she was killed, she had a friend shimmy himself up on her balcony because she had locked herself out. And her balcony doors, you know, were easy to open. And so, you know, I'm thinking they possibly came that way. Although I just recently, after a bunch of stories I did, I had a friend call me and she said,

you know, I had to keep reminding Brittany to knock, to lock her door. And, you know, I thought I had taught her better but yeah okay guys a photo composite is created how did they do that take a listen to sierra wheelie fox 23 police were able to get dna of britney's killer at the scene but that dna has been sitting through the years until now when long-awaited technological advances have finally given detectives their first lead in a very long time. Sergeant Shane Toole says recently Parabon Nano Labs used the DNA to come up with a phenotype report. It can narrow down to a very good certainty of hair color, freckles, ethnicity. And it ultimately led to this computer-generated picture.

Zingman says she now has new hope. Having a visual possibility, it's opening a big door because it's not just going to be some theme or some idea that somebody's going to tip us on. It's going to be the way the person looks. Now, I remember seeing the photo. Maggie, Cheryl, remember how thrilled we all were when a photo composite was made based on phenotyping.

A lot of hopes were raised only to be dashed. But Cheryl McCollum, explain what is phenotyping. P-H-E-N-O-T-Y-P-I-N-G. Phenotyping. They are able to extract basically features of a perpetrator with this phenotyping. So they can tell hair color, skin color, eye color, whether or not you've got dimples, whether or not you've got freckles, and they come up with a composite that looks like the person from the sample. And in this case, they came up with a Caucasian male, blonde-headed, blue-eyed, and Maggie did something extraordinary with that composite.

I'll let her tell you about it. Tell us, Maggie Singman, what did you do? Well, for about 14 years I had traveled in three different cars with a caravan to catch a killer. I took my story nationwide because I, too, believed her killer wasn't necessarily in Oklahoma or that maybe he was serial or whatever.

But on my fourth, third car, I took that picture and got it wrapped because my car was wrapped with pictures of her. I put his picture on the front of my hood. I didn't want to look at him, but wherever I was, I wanted people to see that face. And it did. It generated tips for about three or four months. We got 75 tips of people

saying, well, it looks like him. It looks like him. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Explain to me, Cheryl McCollum, how everyone's hopes, including yours, mine, Dr. Maggie's, were dashed. Explain. Oh, Dr. Maggie's were dashed. Explain. Oh, gosh. So CeCe Moore got involved, who's one of the best there is as far as, you know, looking at somebody's ancestry and connecting them to crimes. And she got a perfect match. She said, I know the person. And it was somebody that law enforcement had already cleared. And so the composite that she had placed on her car from Parabon had to be removed. I mean, it wasn't the guy, according to law enforcement.

So, you know, here she had spent all these years believing this was the person, this was his face. How did they clear him? Because the sample was from the home of a person that gave an explanation of why his sample would have been there and law enforcement accepted it and cleared him. Okay, you know what? What are you trying to say?

You mean this was a person, a male, that male, from that DNA that had been phenotyped, that C.C. Moore, who is brilliant, had isolated. This is the guy. But his DNA was there innocently? Is that what you're trying to say, Cheryl? I'm not saying it was there innocently. I want to be real clear. You've got a person that left more than one biological sample. He left seminal fluid on the bedspread, and he left blood in the sink in the kitchen. And law enforcement accepted his explanation of how that happened. What was his explanation, Dr. Maggie? Well, his explanation is that he was there with one of Brittany's best friends.

And I knew that Brittany let some of her younger friends sleep over there. But Eddie Majors, who is the detective then, never gave me a full explanation. He said he has a good alibi. He never told me the alibi. He said, oh, you know, probably, but blood and semen? He said, well, you know, somebody could have a bloody nose or cut themselves with a knife. And I said, well, but they would remember it. I mean, I don't necessarily think he's a killer,

but I never was told any of the alibis. I was told possibly there were some issues with the investigation when they interrogated him. I don't know what you're saying. Issues with the investigation when they interrogated him. Speak English to me, please. What are you trying to say? Hold on.

Andy Kopsa, do you know what she's trying to say? Yeah, somebody can say it better to me. Please, what are you trying to say? Hold on. Andy Kopsa, do you know what she's trying to say? Yes. Somebody can say it better than me. Go. Well, I mean, I think that the problem is that something doesn't smell right. And so that's when my ears go up.

I think that there's a lot that Tulsa Police Department has done right. Okay, guys, be frank. Cheryl, what happened? He said that he and a girlfriend were using Brittany's bedroom for a little trip. And then he said, yeah, I probably got hurt sometime, probably cut my finger, and that's why my blood's in the kitchen. So that's how he explained the way the similar-

Okay, stop. How's the woman corroborated his story? The friend, the roommate? Yeah. Yeah. Guys, despite the setback in the phenotyping, Dr. Maggie Zingman, Brittany's mother, has moved forward. Take a listen to Hour Cut 20, our friends at KJRH. But this setback hasn't deterred Zingman.

She's put 43,000 miles on her SUV, driving from coast to coast, trying to drum up leads in what she calls Caravan to Catch a Killer. I'll keep putting them on. Yeah, I feel like I can't stop. This case, you know, it was horrific, you know, and it really weighs heavy on my heart. And, you know, I bring it home with me all the time and think about the case and what I can do. Detective Jeff Felton's just as determined to find Brittany's killer. He says even the smallest hit from someone close to the case could be the key to solving it. We'd appreciate calls from anybody that knew Brittany,

calls from anybody that may have been around the complex that they thought were suspicious. You know, anybody that we could check out because, you know, at this point it could be anybody. Guys, we are desperate to help find Brittany's killer. There is no statute of limitations on murder. This is a mother that has shrink-wrapped her car with information and driven across the country. She drove here to our studio. She's driven across the country trying to get help. Won't you help us, please?

The tip line, 918-798-9477. Repeat, 918-798-9477. There's also an email, thera poet, T-H-E-R-A-P-O-E-T, thera poet at email.com. Guys, is there new breath breathed into an old investigation? Take a listen to Our Cut 26. The date on the card is September 29th, which is postmarked after her death. It could be that Brittany sent it, meaning her timeline is wrong on her death, because the police have said consistently for 18 years that she died sometime between September 27th, that Monday night, and I had talked to her about 9, so they assume it's after 9 and 8 a.m. the next morning, the 28th. Maggie is asking anyone who may have mailed the card to come forward because that could possibly change the timeline of her death. Dr. Maggie Zingman, tell me about when you learned of this card being postmarked.

My ex-husband, who I hadn't talked to in years, called me and said, you need to look at a picture I'm going to send you, and then I will send you this. And he sent me a text picture of an envelope with, and this was just a month and a half ago, with a mechanized stamp, meaning a stamp printed by either a kiosk or a post office that had the date of September 29th. And he told me that he received this about a week and a half after the funeral in Florida. And it was a card that every year, Brady would send to him to send to her grandfather because she couldn't remember his address. And he was so devastated, he said, that he put it away in a box for 18 years and suddenly decided that he should be sharing it. Matthew T. Mangino, high profile lawyer joining us.

One of the first things you do in every investigation or to take a case to a jury is establish as best as you can down to the minute, if possible, your timeline. This change and the possible date of the murder could change everything, Mangino. Yeah, there's no question. You know, this twist, this new piece of evidence could turn the whole investigation on its head. You know, a time frame that they were looking at in terms of their investigation may not be accurate. So now we may have another day or more where Brittany was alive. And who did she have contact with? And where did she go? And what did she do?

Exactly. So this really, you know, invigorates some new energy or should into this investigation to follow up on potentially. Take a listen to Sharon Phillips, KJRH. Because it's now considered evidence in the case, 2 News is not showing the actual card, but this is a similar stamp. This was mailed. It came out of a machine on the 29th. Somebody had to mail it. Maggie says she hopes this new piece of

evidence will trigger someone's memory and help her solve her daughter's murder. We reached out to the Tulsa Police Department's cold case unit, but at this time, detectives are not commenting on this case. As a mother, even at 18 years, I am going to do whatever I can to solve this case. Andy Kopsa, it's not an envelope that you drop into the mail. This is actually done by a machine, like at the post office, that stamps it with that day, which changes everything. This doesn't mean that, oh, the postman missed it somehow or didn't pick up the mail that day or it didn't go in till midnight. It was stamped the next day. Yeah, it was it. It didn't get stuck in the back of a mailbox, any of those things. So, you know, it and I think, too, after Maggie did that, some new witnesses came forward that that said, you know, I kind of remember seeing Brittany the day after they said she had actually died.

And that's a result of this new evidence coming forward. So not the 27th, but the 29th, at least the 29th, correct? Yeah. So it's dated the 29th. So it had to be purchased on the 29th. So that expands the window. Right, right. Okay, Cheryl McCollum, this is a big break.

This is huge. It absolutely changes the investigative timeline, period. Because only one of three things occurred. The killer mailed it, which is unlikely, but would show his movements. Two, a friend of hers mailed it for her, which would change the timeline as far as witnesses and when she was last seen, possibly. And it would show their movement. No one has come forward so far. Or she mailed it. That's number one.

I mean, a friend would have remembered. Oh, yeah, I took this to the mail for her. Last, to Dr. Maggie Zingman, this is Brittany's mom. What is your message today? Two things. One, you know, I'm still because I didn't know all her friends. And since I put the story out, friends have come forward. So I'm saying if anybody knows anything about mailing something, please come forward. The other thing is,

really, I'm a good example of you have to keep having a voice because I'm really having to push Tulsa police on this envelope evidence. And if you don't have a voice, some of these cases just end up even going further into the cold. Karen, start with me, renowned psychologist out of Manhattan. Karen, it doesn't matter how much time has passed. There is nothing greater than a mother's love and the pain of losing your child. That must never, ever go away. As I said in the beginning, Maggie, unfortunately,

she will never get over her daughter's death. It was violent and senseless and out of sync. She died wrong. She's supposed to die after her mother. And the pain will stay with her. But doing what she's doing, it gives her a sense of purpose. Well, Karen, I feel like she's never been able to move forward in life because she hasn't had this case resolved. So instead of having a chance to grieve, she's still on a quest for justice that's taken her all the way across the country many times over. She hasn't ever been able to grieve in 18 years. But this is a grief, Nancy. She's grieving while she's doing it. This is her way of coping.

And it's really a great displacement because she's got purpose now. Guys, if you have any information, please help us. 918-798-9477. We want justice for Brittany. Goodbye, friend.