Criminology - The Murders of David and Bobby Phillips

Episode Date: August 3, 2019

Brothers David and Bobby Phillips were murdered near the Christmas holiday in 1992. Their parents came home to find them dead in the house. But many believe that their murders were a case of mistaken identity and were, in fact, related to the 1991 murder of husband and wife Coy and Tonya Wilkerson. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss this twisted tale of two double murders. Police have theorized that whoever murdered the Phillips brothers was actually out to kill the parents of Tonya Wilkerson. There are many similarities in the two cases that make that theory plausible. You can support the podcast by going to patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 72 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you today? Doing good. How about you?

I'm doing great, man. I have had a good week. Always get excited to record. right there's so much work that goes into the research leading up to the day that we record that's like the ball game right everything else is practice but the actual recording of the episode is like playing the game and that was always the most fun part for me you know when I played sports yeah I look for every week to doing the episodes that we pick out and covering them and going in depth on them so I always can't wait to record

in the morning on when we do the recording. And I think we've had a pretty good mix of episodes. The one that we're going to talk about today is a lesser known case, but we have some big hitters coming up in the near future. So starting next week, we're diving into the son of Sam, David Berkowitz. And more if I got to tell you, man, this is a guy that has fascinated me for a long time. You know, just one of those infamous killers that really kind of boggles the mind. It's one of those where you just want to know what was going on in his head.

And it's that part of trying to figure that out that to me is the most fascinating. Yeah, it's a very Zodiac-esque-case, just the East Coast version of Zodiac. And I think if he somehow wasn't caught, we'd be wondering who he was, just like we do with Zodiac. right let's do our patreon shoutouts we had sarah chris lynch gina don parker paulette kern sheila dirk brin b and jennifer berry so a lot of great new support more if we appreciate that yeah i recognize a couple of those names from our social media too people are very supportive on there as well as patreon so we can't thank you enough for that and if you'd like to help support the show through Patreon, you can by going to

Patreon.com slash criminology. Okay. It's time to get into this case. And it starts on a quiet night during the 1992 Christmas season. Brothers Bobby and David Phillips were brutally murdered in their South Tulsa, Oklahoma home while their parents were Christmas shopping. And initially, police didn't find a motive

for their murders. And that happens a lot, right? especially in the very beginning. But police believe they are related to the 1991 murder of husband and wife, Coy and Tanya Wilkerson, who were murdered in a similar fashion. A man was convicted of their murders in 1998. Police believe that the Phillips brothers could have been killed in a case of mistaken identity. They think that the killers meant to kill Tanya Wilkerson's parents. So that's really the question in this case.

Did the person convicted of the murders of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson also kill the Phillips brothers? But to this day, their case remains unsolved. Bobby Phillips and David Phillips resided with their parents, Robert and Wanda Phillips, in the 9,800 block of South Oswego Avenue, an affluent South Tulsa neighborhood. Bobby graduated in August of 1990 from Oklahoma Christian-Jeworth, University of Science and Arts in Oklahoma City, where he majored in advertising, design, and broadcasting. While there, he worked as a sports announcer for KOCC Radio. In 1992, 26-year-old Bobby was working for American Administrative Services Incorporated, an insurance claims company owned by his father,

Robert Phillips. He was described as a sweet, kind, and gentle young man and an excellent employee. Not quite as much as known about David Phillips. He was 19 years old at the time that the murders occurred. David was mentally disabled and had been a special education student at Jinks Public High School. On December 7th, 1992, Robert and Wanda spent the day Christmas shopping and they returned home around 9 p.m. In a small bathroom near the garage, they found the bus. body of their oldest son, Bobby, and immediately called police. Police arrived pretty quickly, and not long after they got there, they found the body of

David Phillips in another room of the house. David died from a gunshot wound to the head, while Bobby had been bludgeoned to death with an axe, apparently as soon as he had walked through the door. There was no sign of forced entry, and nothing appeared to be missing from inside the home. The killers didn't touch the home safe, but there was a car missing from the garage. So in thinking about these details, this is a very brutal double murder. And it's horrific to think about parents coming home to find both of their sons dead, murdered in their house.

I just, those type of things more if I just can't even fathom what that was. would be like. Yeah, and especially since it's such a brutal crime scene and bloody and that just has to be horrifying. And one thing that really bothers me, all the murders we talk about are upsetting, but to know that one of these boys was, you know, mentally challenged, you know, I think of that as sort of like along the lines of being defenseless and that really bothers me to know that he was probably scared and didn't know what's happening. Well, not to mention you're getting ready for the Christmas holiday, right? You've been out shopping.

Probably had a great time. You're in a good mood. You walk in the door and find this. Unimaginable. When police arrived, the unmistakable odor of natural gas permeated the home and four-lit candles were in the living room window. No murder weapon was found. Evidence showed David probably had just...

up before his death. Afterwards, his killers watched MTV and drank soft drinks while they waited for other residents to come home. Although Bobby was found in the bathroom, he had been killed in the main entrance to the home, and then his body dragged to the bathroom. The killers made a feeble attempt to cover up the blood trail with a throw rug. Detective Mike Eubanks said at the time, they were still waiting for someone to come home, and they did not want them to see what they had done. So we mentioned how brutal these slings were. And then it appears that the killer or killers waited around to ambush Robert and Wanda Phillips when they got home. But something happened. Obviously, we don't know what happened. Maybe the killer or killers were frightened off by something.

Maybe they just got tired of waiting. But there's a couple of things to take away from this. It seems as though the police thought that there was probably more than one killer in the house. It also appears that when they left the scene, they staged the home to try to blow it up. And you have to think, why would they do that to cover evidence or they're not going to stick around? Maybe Robert and Wanda would be killed when they came home from the house blowing up. everything timed out right. I don't know what you think, Mike, but the fact that the killer killers watched MTV and drank sodas, to me, puts them in a younger age bracket.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I would also say it probably sheds a little light about what they thought about what they were doing. They had just murdered two people and they're just going to sit down on the couch, turn on the television, watch MTV, and drink some sodas. They might as well have been at their house just chilling. That's the feeling that I get from them. And obviously, I'm making a lot of assumptions, but I think it takes a special kind of person to be able to do something like that. It's almost as though they did this horrible deed and then just said, Well, I'll wait for the other people to come home. Let me grab a soda and watch some MTV.

It's very disturbing. And it's also very cavalier to me. You know, if they were truly waiting for the parents, did they know where they were? Did they have any kind of inkling of what the timing might be for them to come home? That's cavalier to me to just sit on the couch chilling. When you're waiting for someone to come home any minute. I just think more if there's a lot to,

unpack here. Police were able to find some important clues and evidence when they searched the home. They found a footprint left by a killer. They also found fingerprints left on a bathroom wall. There was some blood spatter found on a wall, but it's unclear if the blood was from Bobby or from David or from the killer. But I think one thing was clear to police. Whoever did this, tried to clean up the scene. And again, maybe they thought a fire or explosion would destroy evidence or clues. So they weren't really all that worried about it. When you think about the feeble attempt, you talked about morph to throw a rug over what was a trail of blood. That's not a long-term cover-up, right? You're not getting down and scrubbing this blood. It sounds like to me,

you're merely trying to mask it so that when somebody walks in the door, it doesn't jump out immediately. So my thought is they weren't worried about fingerprints. They weren't worried about, you know, anything like that shoe prints because they believe that the house was going to explode. But that didn't happen. And you wonder why it didn't happen, right? Obviously, they have opened up the gas.

Gas is filling this house and their plan was to light some candles in the front window. You know, was it just timing? Were the candles too far away from the source of the gas? I don't know. I don't know. Normally when you, you know, have natural gas spilling into your house and open flames, that makes for a very bad situation. But in this case, it did.

The Phillips missing car was found the next day by a school. bus driver in the Memorial High School parking lot, about a mile from where the family had lived before moving to South Tulsa a year before. Police searched the car for fingerprints, but an overnight frost made the task difficult. A few days after the murders, police said that they could find no motive in the slayings. In a news conference, police corporal Julie Harris said, from looking at the house, there is not a motive. From what the Phillips habits are, they don't carry a lot of money in the home. they don't carry a lot of money with them. Harris also said David died several hours before Bobby,

who was found with his jacket still on. Sergeant Steve Emmons said that the detectives believed that either Bobby surprised the killers or they were waiting on him after killing his brother. So more of a couple of interesting things here for me. Number one is where the car is found. Very close to where the family used to live. They had just moved to South Tulsa the year before.

Does that mean something? I don't know if it does, but in my view, it's strange that the killer or killers chose to leave their car in an area where the family used to live. Yeah, you have to wonder, is that a coincidence or is that somebody from their past reaching out for some reason? Yeah, that's exactly what went through my mind when we started talking about. about that. And then hearing what the detectives had to say, I think it's pretty simple. When you find out that David died hours before Bobby, I don't think there's any doubt that the

killers were in that house for at least an hour or two, a number of hours waiting on someone to get home. Now, who that someone is is a mystery. The police have their theories, but who showed up was Bobby. and they murdered Bobby essentially as he walked in the door. Like he said, still had his jacket on. Yeah, you would think that if this was a simple home invasion or a robbery or burglary, that they would have got in and got out as fast as possible. And here we have them hanging out, drinking sodas and watching MTV for not just a little while, but a period of hours.

So my big question is, who were they really waiting on? Were they waiting on Bobby? Or were they waiting on the parents, Robert and Wanda? And it just happened to be that Bobby came home first. Police interviewed one person of interest a day after the murders. But they released him when his alibi checked out. They conducted more interviews, but no arrests were made. It was when police began canvassing the neighborhood.

They were talking to neighbors and residents that they learned of a red Mitsubishi sports car that was seen by multiple people leading up to the murders. Neighbors said it seemed out of place, almost as if the car was prowling the neighborhood. One witness told investigators that they saw a similar car parked in the Phillips driveway the night of the murders. But the problem is this red Mitsubishi sports car and its driver and maybe even a passenger were never identified. I think we talk about this pretty often in some of these cases, how surprising and frustrating it is that despite a unique or eye-catching car that's seen by people, yet it doesn't lead to that car being located or identified. That seems really frustrating. Not that a red Mitsubishi is extremely rare, but it still seems like a pretty good starting point to take up some clues. Yeah, I'm with you.

I don't know how rare a red Mitsubishi was in 1992 in South Tulsa, but it was odd enough that neighbors took note of it. And maybe it wasn't the color or the make of the car. Maybe it was more so the fact the way this car was driving around the neighborhood. That's what I got from this. I have the same thing in my neighborhood, Morph, and my daughters are very attuned to it. You know, if they look out the window and they see a car that they believe is traveling too slowly, they panic, they get worried. They come find me and say, Dad, there's a, there's a van and it's just crawling along.

It's just out of the ordinary. Now, it could be as simple as someone searching for an address, right? you've done that, I've done that. Everybody listening has probably done that. And it's completely harmless. But in the eyes of people, you know, peering out their window or standing on their front lawn, it seems strange. Yeah, I think some people just drive really slow.

I got stuck behind somebody this morning that was driving very slow. And if I had looked out my window and seen them driving past my house, I might think they were casing the area. And it turns out it was a little. old lady in driving, but you never know. Is it somebody that's lost or like you mentioned, or are they up to something sinister? It could be as simple as a van trying to deliver an Amazon package. They're just trying to find the address. Two weeks after the murders, the downtown Kwanis Club offered a thousand dollar reward to help find the person or persons responsible for the brother's murders. Additionally, they set up a scholarship

Fund in Bobby's name to give the high school seniors involved in the key club. So this is a student-led organization that helps build character through service and leadership. A scholarship was also set up in David's name to give to a special Olympics athlete. Months went by, but the investigation seemed to have stalled. A year after the murders in December 1993, police still had no idea on motive, nor did they have any clue who murdered the brothers. They pursued several theories ranging from a professional hit to an angry schoolmate of David's, but they came up empty-handed. Through an unnamed law enforcement source, the Tulsa world reported that an FBI profile was developed that said the killer was most likely a young man from a dysfunctional

family who probably didn't know his victims. It was also suggested that Tulsa police would not be able to solve the case. And you have to be honest, this report so far has proven to be right because the case has never been solved. But there is one theory that stands out in this case and makes the most sense. And it's that the murders of these two brothers may be linked to a similar set of murders that occurred in May of 1991. If there is a link, then it's possible that the brothers were killed in a case of mistaken identity. Coy Wilkerson was born on September 25th, 1960, to James and Aline Wilkerson. Tanya Wilkerson was born on June 23rd, 1962, to Jim and Wanda Phillips.

The two married on June 20th, 1985, and lived at 5735, East 2nd Street, in Tulsa. Coy and Tanya both worked at Tulsa Expediting Incorporated, a freight company owned by Tanya Wilkerson's father, Jim Phillips. Coy, who's vice president, and Tanya oversaw computer operations for the company. On the morning of May 8th, 1991, Tulsa firefighters responded to a house fire call at 5735 East 2nd Street.

They gather on the scene, and they found a smoldering fire and two dead bodies inside the home. The victims were Coy and Tanya Wilkerson. Both Coy and Tanya had been shot in the head. Investigators found the phone lines at the back of the house had been cut, and there was evidence of a robbery inside the home. The killers had used some type of an accelerant in an attempt to burn down the house, most likely to destroy any incriminating evidence. This was determined by burn

patterns on the floor that indicated a flammable liquid was used. But the fire never really caught fully due to the damp weather. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water.

Listen now, wherever you get your... podcast. Later that evening, a woman named Vicky Holt saw two young men attempting to burn some documents by Country Road near her house. Vicky had a short confrontation with the boys, warning them not to be lighting fires. The boys left, but not before Vicky took down the tag number of their two-door sedan. She gathered the burnt items and placed them in a shoebox and started to look through them. And although they were charred, Vicky could see that one of the items was a checkbook with the names Coy and Tanya Wilkerson on it. That same evening, Wagner County Deputy Sheriff Douglas London pulled over two young men in Amani Carlo for speeding. The driver was Malon,

Butch, Bastien III, who was 27 years old, and he had a 16-year-old passenger with him named Jackie Leeland Wright. But at the time, Deputy Sheriff London didn't have any reason to hold the boys. So they were released with only a warning. The next day, May 9th, Vicki Holt saw a television report about the murders and she recognized the Wilkerson's names from the charred checkbook. She immediately called police and gave the tag number of the car that she had written down to Detective Roy Hym. He ran the number and he found a car registered to Malon Bastion that was only one number off. So in his mind, this was a match, and most likely Vicky had written down one number incorrectly.

Butch Bastian had previously worked at Tulsa Expediting Incorporated where the Wilkerson's work. Jim Phillips, Tanya's father fired Bastion in January 1990. Butch filed for unemployment and the company opposed his claim. Bastion later told his wife Tracy that he planned to get even with the Wilkerson's by breaking into their building and burning the evidence. Tracy divorced Bastion not long after this happened. So let's break this down, Morph. We have this individual Malon Bastion, worked at the same place where the Wilkerson's work, a company owned by Tanya's father, and he fired. this guy and then opposed his unemployment claim. So he wasn't happy. That's obvious. But then his wife

comes out later and says that he talked about getting even with the Wilkerson's and part of that involved burning down their building to get rid of evidence. So I think you can definitely talk motive here. But you can also talk arson. which we've discussed in both of the double murders we've talked about so far. It definitely seems like he could be a strong suspect, and then you've also got him burning checkbooks that belong to the victims. It seems pretty compelling. At the very least, this is a guy that police would want to talk to.

And police wind up doing more than that. After obtaining an arrest warrant, authorities went to Bastion's apartment at 3 p.m. to make an arrest. However, he refused to come outside and barricaded himself in the apartment with his ailing grandmother. The standoff with police lasted 26 and a half hours, and Bastion fired at least 60 times at authorities with a 9mm handgun. One bullet struck an aerosol can in an adjacent building, sparking a fire that injured one police officer and heavily damaged at least seven apartments. Firefighters had a hard time putting the fire out because they couldn't fight the fire properly due to the nearby gunfire.

Tough enough, right, to be a firefighter. That's not an easy job. Add on top of that, the fact that somebody's firing. Somebody's firing a gun in your direction. That has a whole another element to fighting this fire. Yeah, the last thing you want while you're battling these flames is to be looking over your shoulder wondering if you're about to get struck with a bullet. During the ordeal, Bastion also fired at least 24 shots at a remote-controlled police robot. And he must have been a halfway decent shot. He hit it a number of times, messed up the video camera, and ultimately disabled this robot. This was one of those robots that was armed with a shotgun and was meant to go into the apartment after the door was knocked down.

But he disabled it. Police used concussion grenades to blow open the front door, but Bastion didn't budge. The deputy police chief said the man was heavily armed. We counted at least five different types of rounds that were being fired. During the standoff, police officially charged both Bastion and Wright with arson and two counts of first-degree murder. Authorities obtained an arrest warrant for Jackie Leland Wright. When they confronted him, he spoke with them briefly and then took off. But after a short chase, officers tackled him to the ground and placed him in custody at 2.30 p.m. on May 10th, 1991. And I do think this is kind of strange more if when you look at it on the surface, there's this massive standoff going on. And in the middle of it, authorities charge

both men with arson and first degree murder, and then they get an arrest warrant and go get Jackie Leland right. Meanwhile, this standoff has not resolved itself, but my thinking is they can't wait, right? They don't know how long the standoff is going to go. They can't wait to go go get Jackie right because the longer they wait, the better the chance that he's going to take off. and it's probably a good thing because he did try to take off. And it seems like the police, after getting into the standoff with this guy who was shooting at them and held up in this apartment, you must think that they have, they think that they've got the right guy and that's why they decide to put these warrants out at that point. Yeah, probably not too hard for them to believe that Bastion was involved in this. Because why else would he barricade himself?

why else would he, you know, fire a large number of rounds at the police unless he had done something pretty bad. He obviously did not want to give up. Tracy Bastion spoke with a Tulsa News channel during the ordeal from her home in Wichita, Kansas. She didn't think her ex-husband would give up willingly, and she felt that he would either kill himself or commit suicide by police. She was willing to talk to him and try to get him to come out. out, but she never got the opportunity. Bastion's grandmother, Darlene Bastion, who was 79 in wheelchair-bound, was considered a hostage by police, but she refused to leave her grandson's side, even when given the opportunity to leave. At 7.10 p.m. on May 10th, Bastion turned the gun on himself and took his

own life in front of his grandmother while he spoke on the phone with negotiators. Police entered the apartment and found Butch's body. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and they found two guns nearby. Medics took Arlene out of the apartment. The next day, Butch's father, Malon Bastion II, criticized the way police handled the standoff. He said, we had a scared kid and a 79-year-old woman. This is totally uncalled for. They promised me this would be a talk-through type of thing. Police called Bastion's father during the standoff to have him try to talk to his son. He said his son was scared by the horde of police officers surrounding the apartment and the idea of going to prison. He also told his father he was innocent of the murders of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson.

His father said he told me, I didn't kill anyone, but I know who did. And I'm not going to jail. So I get this more. If this is a father who's just like, lost his son, but on the other hand, what are police going to do? Right? They are there to do their job to take him into custody. The guy barricades himself and starts firing.

And in the end, they didn't kill him. He took his own life. So to say that this is totally uncalled for, I don't, I can't agree with that. I understand a father's grief. Don't get me wrong. But you cannot. defy the police, barricade yourself in an apartment, essentially with a 79-year-old woman as a hostage, and then fire, what, close to a hundred rounds at police and start a bunch of fires?

It doesn't work that way. And he's already a suspect in a double murderer, and now he's injured people in the shooting. And as you mentioned, he took his own life. If police didn't storm in there and shoot them down, they were still trying to negotiate, it seems. So I think his criticism of the police is unfounded. Well, and let's not forget, the police were not there on a hunch. They had some pretty compelling evidence that this individual was involved in a double murder.

So, you know, I don't know. Police get a bad rap. And sometimes justifiably so. But from what you read and from what we know of the facts of this situation, I don't know what else they could have done. They didn't torch the place. They didn't fire a hail of bullets into this apartment and kill this individual. They waited for him to come out and he never did.

Under questioning, Jackie Leland Wright admitted he had been with Bastion on the night of the murders. But he left Butch at about 11 p.m. or close to midnight. He claims he rode his bike around until 6 a.m. the following morning. He also admitted going for a ride with Bashin the next night and observed Butch pull over to set some items on fire. Wright claims that he thought to himself that this was weird. The arson and murder charges against Wright were dismissed on June 18, 1991, because of insufficient evidence. And Wright's fingerprints were not found in the Wilkerson home.

Additionally, no fibers linked him to the crime scene, and there were no traces of an accelerants. aren't found on right shoes when he was arrested. I don't know more. I don't know much about this person right. It seems strange to me to ride your bike from 11 p.m. or midnight to 6 a.m. the next morning, just riding around. But it's possible, I guess, that he could have done that. You just wonder what role, if any, this guy played, or was it just simply a matter of

the fact that they just didn't have any evidence to really put him at the crime scene or to link him to these murders. Yeah, I think that's the key part is they just didn't have the physical evidence. But to me, the part about rioting around for those six or seven hours, that just doesn't sound doesn't sound realistic to me. And I guess the flip side is it's possible that he could have been in the car with this guy after the murder was committed. when Butch set the items from the house on fire. That is possible. A week and a half after the murders, the parents of Coy Wilkerson spoke out about the grief of

losing their only child and his wife. Aline Wilkerson said, I don't think it has sunk in yet. I still look down the road and expect to see them coming. I still look at the front door waiting for them to come in. I depended more on them than anyone else. I don't know what I'm going to do without them. I just don't know. The last time Aline and her husband, James, saw the couple, was May 3rd when the two were over

for dinner. On the night of the murders, Aline had spoken to both of them on the phone. She said Tanya was elated because they had just sold their house. And more, if you and I talk a lot about grief. There's a lot of grief in the cases that we cover and you feel very badly, for you feel very badly for the parents of some of the victims. Think about Aline. Talk to both her son and her daughter-in-law on the very night they were murdered.

You're never going to forget that phone call. It's going to be burned into your memory for as long as you live. Aline said she had trouble sleeping that night and did not go to bed until after her husband, James, went out on a call at work that morning. When he returned, there was a message to call Betty Clark, a friend of the family and the real estate agent who handled the sale of Koi and Tanya's home. James called her back and she told him there had been a fire and gunshots at Koi and Tanya's house. He then broke the news to Aline that something serious had happened at Koi and Tanya's house. Aline said, when he told me all I

could think of was getting to my child. When we got there, I ran up to the house, but someone grabbed me and wouldn't let me go inside because the body were still inside the house. Aline did eventually go inside the home to see the bodies and was struck by the fear that was on Tanya's face. She never saw coy because she was too upset. Years went by and really nothing happened with the Wilkerson case. In 1996, Jackie Leland Wright was sentenced to four years in Missouri for second degree burglary, stealing, and first degree property damage. The following year in October 1997, Investigators went back to the Wilkerson case and they started the investigation from scratch. New evidence and witness statements led police to charge Wright with two counts of first degree murder.

And at his trial, a witness named Pauline Neal testified that Wright had admitted killing Tanya Wilkerson by putting a pillow over her face and shooting her. He also told Neil he had taken a necker. from Tanya's neck and a ring from her finger. The most damaging testimony came from a man named Jason Porboy, a close friend of Wright's, and also a friend and neighbor to Butch Bastion. Poor Boy testified that Wright and Bastion had asked him to rob an undisclosed residence in the days prior to the murders, and that, quote, if people were there, we'd have to kill them. Poor Boy declined the offer. He also testified that Wright confessed to being the shooter,

in both murders. According to poor boy, Wright told him that Bastion's gun had jammed, so Wright shot both victims. Poor boy claimed Wright also said he shot the Wilkerson's, not only to eliminate witnesses, but just to see what it felt like to kill someone. Right didn't testify in his own defense. And Morph, to me, that's a scary thing, right? It's all scary, all the stuff we talk about. But when you hear someone talk about the fact that they shot two people, not just in the commission of a crime to eliminate witnesses, but really to see what it felt like to kill someone. To me, that's a scary individual. There's something going on in their head. There's something in their makeup that is not quite right. I mean, that to me gets into the

serial killer type mentality. And maybe this guy right would have grown up. into a serial killer. We don't know. My thought is he definitely didn't seem like he had any empathy for these people. That's for sure. But we have to go back to this witness. Jason, poor boy. This guy was no saying at the time of the trial. He had unresolved assault charges. He had marijuana charges, which to me that's not that big a deal. But he also had a felony conviction for assault. And you have to ask the question, what did he receive for his testimony? And it appears that he received a $90,000 bond reduction and was released from jail after he spoke to the assistant district attorney about Jackie Leland Wright.

And I'm not saying his testimony was false, but you always have to take all of that into account, right? what is this person getting for testifying against someone? If they're not getting anything, then what do they have to gain? But if they are getting something, then you have to factor that in. On October 9th, 1998, almost seven and a half years after the double murder, a jury convicted Jackie Leland Wright in the 1991 deaths of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson. It took the jury about three and a half hours. of deliberation to find Wright guilty of two counts of first-degree murder,

the seven-man, five-woman jury imposed the maximum possible sentence of life without parole, as well as a $10,000 fine on each count. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, so Jackie Wright was sentenced to life in prison without parole. A couple years later in 2000, Wright tried to appeal his sentence. According to the appeal, Wright said that the state waited to file charges against him to avoid the statutory protections afforded to juveniles. He claimed he was denied the right to be certified as a child under Oklahoma's reverse certification law.

The court of criminal appeal stated, We find no support in the record of any sort of deliberate, prejudicially motivated delay by the state in waiting to file charges against Wright until 1997. the court rejected his appeal in June 2001 and upheld his consecutive life sentences. All right, Morph. So we have talked about two double murders. And we hinted early on that there is a possibility, I think especially on the part of police, they believe that there's a case to be made that these two cases are connected. And now we have to talk about it, right? How are they related? Or how could they be related? We talked about the possibility that the murders of the Phillips brothers

potentially could have been a case of mistaken identity. It has been suggested that the brothers were killed in a botched attempt at vengeance against their parents, Jim and Jill Phillips. So to really dive into this, we have to go back to 1991 after the murders of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson. We mentioned Jackie Leland Wright was charged with their murders, but those charges were dismissed in June 1991. And after that happened, Tanya's parents, Jim and Jill Phillips, they set out on a crusade for justice. They did not want to let this guy get away. They started their own investigation to try to put enough evidence together against Jackie Wright to hand over to the district attorney. And it was on November 19th, 1992, that the Tulsa World published an article

in which the Wagner County District Attorney mentioned that Jim Phillips had provided him with enough evidence to, quote, seriously consider filing charges again against Jackie Leland Wright. This is very important because the murders of Bobby and David Phillips occurred 18 days later. Tanya Wilkerson's parents, Jim and Joe Phillips, at the time of the murders of Bobby and David, resided in the Tulsa suburb of Oswasso. Bobby and David Phillips lived on Oswego Avenue in South Tulsa. So authorities have speculated over the years that it's possible that the killers confuse these two words when attempting to find their intended target.

Oswasso, Oswego. And then you have to talk about the fact that Jim Phillips first wife's name was Wanda, the same name as the brother's mother. Now, these families are not related in any way. It just happens that Tanya Wilkerson's maiden name was Phillips. So obviously, her parents' last name is Phillips. And Bobby and David and their parents' last name is Phillips as well. So you can kind of see how police are thinking that this could have been a case of,

mistaken identity. There are also additional similarities between the two cases. Both houses were set on fire to destroy evidence, and three of the four victims were shot in the head, and a red car was seen at both residences around the time of the murders. In December 2002, Jim Phillips told a Tulsa newspaper that he and his family had endured extensive harassment when they set out to prove rights guilt in his daughter and son-in-law's murders. Someone shot out a window at his office with a shotgun, stole his pickup truck, and made multiple threatening phone calls. He was quoted as saying, there is no question in my mind that it was me and my family who they were actually after.

I am the one who put pressure on and kept the situation going. They told me that they would blow my head off. So I think a couple of things here, Morf, number one, no doubt, right, in this guy's mind that it was he and his wife that were the intended, targets already dealing with grief around losing Koi and Tanya, I just wonder what the feeling is of possibly thinking that it was your actions that caused someone else to die. Now, no blame on he or his wife, but there has to be a thought there, right? In the back of your mind that, you know, we were pushing this.

we were pushing this, and two other people lost their life. And I think we talk about it all the time, that we would both do anything we could for our kids, and that's what they were doing in this instance. And so you can't fault them for trying to shine a light on this case. And unfortunately, as a result of that, it may be exactly as you said that the Phillips brothers were killed accidentally when it was meant to be them. On December 11th, 1992, the district attorney said there was not enough evidence to prosecute right for accessory after the fact regarding Coy and Tanya Wilkerson's murders. This didn't set well with the Phillips.

They vowed to continue their own investigation. But to date, investigators have not been able to officially link the two cases together. But it hasn't stopped them from trying. Over the last, you know, almost 27 years, they have tried to find new leads, have gone over binders and binders of information that they have on these two cases. They've even had FBI agents and members of the Vidox Society review the case. I think authorities have always thought the two cases were somehow related in that the brothers murders were as a result of mistaken identity.

But the family of Bobby and David Phillips said in 2011 that they didn't learn about the theory until six years after Bobby and David were killed. It was also at this time when they first learned that police suspected Jackie Leland Wright. So I think they were upset more if they talked about the fact that, you know, the authorities kept them in the dark, making them one. wonder, you know, who could have committed the murders of our children? Mary Ann Frost, whose Bobby and David's sister, endured a personal battle with Tulsa authorities

when her husband Brad Frost was sentenced in 2006 to six years in prison on federal embezzlement charges. Marianne claimed in 2010 that Brad was innocent and federal prosecutors cover up the crime. She said it's a real slap in our face when law enforcement feels that they don't have enough evidence to prosecute someone for double murder, but the federal government spends five years and millions of dollars committing perjury and falsifying documents to keep someone accused of a white-color crime in prison. A Tulsa area news outlet reported that Frost was 50% owner of Heritage National Insurance Company.

He and another man were accused of taking more than a million dollars of insurance premium, and putting that into their personal accounts. On appeal, all but one count was dismissed for lack of evidence. Marianne has said that the last count would have been dismissed too, but the prosecutor did everything he could to make that last count stick. She has said that this man who would lie and cheat to keep an innocent man in prison is more evil than the man who killed my brothers. And more if you have to analyze that,

this statement. I get it. Marianne Frost is upset that her husband is in prison and she feels like he shouldn't be there. But to say that the district attorney, the prosecutor, is more evil than the man who killed her brothers. That is a very strong statement. Yeah, I can understand her being upset that her husband's in jail, but to say that the people that help put them there are more evil than the people that killed her brothers. I don't know how you can compare the two personally. Yeah, I don't either. My assumption is it's just something said out of the heat of the moment.

I think if you really thought back and analyzed it, it's something that you probably wouldn't say. That's my assumption. The original detectives on the Phillips case have since retired, but current detectives say they're still interested in Jackie Wright and are constantly looking for new evidence that would bring this case to trial. Quay Wilkerson's parents, James and Aline Wilkerson, are now deceased. Aline passed away in 1996, followed by James in 2003. And Bobby and David Phillips' father passed away from cancer in 2004. Wanda Phillips now lives in Texas.

So there was one interesting thing in the research morph as it relates to Jackie Leland Wright. We know he was convicted of the murders of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson, but his defense team appealed. And it appears as though in 2017, they were able to get post-conviction relief and have his sentences vacated. But then just the very next year, in 2018, he pleaded guilty to both murders. and the plea resulted in life sentences on both counts to run consecutively. And Jackie wrote in Tulsa County, Oklahoma on 5-8, 1991, I committed the crimes of murder in the first degree while in the commission of first-degree burglary. I am responsible for the deaths of Coy and Tanya Wilkerson.

Their crimes were committed willfully, knowingly, and with malice a forethought. This was in March of 2018. So, I mean, it's just an interesting tidbit. I really didn't understand it. I mean, you have to go through, you know, mounds and mounds of PDF legal filings. Amazing that he was able to get his convictions vacated. But then he turns around the next year and pleaded guilty to both murders. Maybe he thought more if that, you know, if I go to trial. Maybe he could get the death penalty. I just don't know. I thought it was interesting to talk about. He's still going to serve life for both. So I just didn't understand the whole, you know, thing about it. Maybe it was just the formality of appealing and they were successful. But

then what was he going to do? Go to trial and take his chances of maybe, you know, being put to death. I just don't know. But to me, as we wrap up and we kind of recap this case, The burning question remains, you know, are these two sets of murders related or not? Right now we don't know. Maybe at some point in time we will. What is known for sure is that the murders of these four people affected the communities. It devastated two families. And it's one of those cases that, you know, you can really dig deep into conspiracy theories,

rabbit holes, whatever you want to call it, there are a lot of them. Yeah, you have the Phillips names, you have similarities between both sets of murders. So it seems like there's enough on the surface to think that there is a connection. And if there is, and these two men, Butch and Jackie and some combination were responsible, one is dead and one is in prison for the rest of his life. So there's that possibility that justice has been served. Yeah, you're not going to get anything out of Butch. He's deceased. I can't imagine you're going to get anything else out of Jackie unless they were to offer him some kind of deal.

And why would they? I don't see the need to do it. You're not going to let him out. You're not going to reduce his sentence, I don't think, so that there's the possibility that he gets out. But, yeah, I don't know. It's just a very interesting case because of the connections. Thanks for writing and research in this episode. Goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com.

And as always, if you haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating if you love the show. Keep telling your friends about the podcast, your true crime friends. It goes a long way. And if you're active on social media, you can find us on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So that's it for this episode.

Morf, we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with the start of what is probably going to be a pretty deep dive into David Berkowitz, the son of Sam. I'm really looking forward to that. Like I mentioned, you know, in the beginning, this is a guy that has fascinated me for a number of years. I just think the details of him in particular, his crimes, why he says he committed his crimes, all of that, just extremely interesting. And listeners will get to hear from one of the surviving victims of the shooting. So I think that's just going to be really fascinating and it's going to be exciting to bring that to people. Yeah, I think it was a really good get as far as interviews go.

So look for that next week. But that's it. So we'll be back with you next Saturday night. So from Mike and more talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.