Brittany Phillips

Case background and investigation

Brittany Phillips grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, graduated from high school, and went off to Eckerd College in Florida. Homesick, she returned home in 2004, moved into her own apartment at the Somerset Park at Union complex in south Tulsa, and was settling into life while planning her next steps. She was 18 years old and, by all accounts, a bright and warm young woman with an especially close bond to her mother, Maggie Zingman. She had a job, a small circle of friends, and plans to continue her education, and her return home was meant to be the start of a hopeful new chapter, not the end of her life.

Brittany was last heard from on the night of September 27, 2004. When friends and family could not reach her for days, a welfare check was requested, and on September 30 officers found her body in her second-floor apartment. She had been raped and strangled. Investigators estimated she had been killed sometime between the night of September 27 and the morning of September 28. The killing of a young woman in her own home, with no clear suspect and no obvious motive, alarmed the community and launched an intensive homicide investigation. Detectives canvassed the apartment complex, interviewed people who knew her, and collected forensic evidence, but they were unable to develop a suspect who could be tied to the crime.

For years, the investigation's greatest hope was DNA recovered from the scene, which detectives believed belonged to the killer. It was compared against more than 1,500 potential suspects, none of whom matched. Then came a crushing setback: further analysis determined the DNA did not belong to the killer at all, but to a young man who had innocently stayed overnight at the apartment with his girlfriend. The forensic lead that had anchored the case for years evaporated, leaving investigators without their central clue and the true perpetrator's identity still unknown.

The case remains unsolved more than two decades later. Brittany's mother, Maggie Zingman, has become a nationally known advocate, driving across the country year after year in a car covered with information about her daughter's murder and other cold cases, hoping to generate tips and support other victims' families. New pieces of evidence have surfaced over the years, including a birthday card postmarked after investigators' estimated time of death, raising questions about the established timeline. The Tulsa Police Department's cold case unit continues to seek information and has kept the case active, and investigators have expressed hope that advances in forensic genealogy or a single tip could yet break it open. For Brittany's family, the passage of time has brought no answers, only a determination to keep her name in the public eye. Who killed Brittany Phillips, and why, remains a painful mystery more than twenty years on.