A stamp dated September 29, 2004 and a new witness throws this case into brand new territory.
TRANSCRIPT (from automated service)
00:00
So imagine you're getting ready to mail something.
00:05
Let's say it was maybe, oh, I don't know, like 1990 or 1986? I don't know, why is it 86? Why not,
00:18
you would write the address on the envelope or the box or the label, you'd probably put your return address. But the one thing that you would absolutely have to make sure is on the parcel is some kind of stamp. If it was a regular old letter back in the day, you would have to unroll your little stamp roll, rip it off at the perforation, give it a lick, and stick it on the envelope, right? Or, or you could buy an entire book of, of the peel and stick stamps. And the nice thing about the book of stamps is that I can walk over to the post office right now buy a book, and I could be using it for the next six months, depending on how much mail I send, this is something that seems, or that is very intuitive, right? mailing a letter or mailing a package. I need you to think about something a little differently when I tell you about the new evidence that's come forward. In the case of the murder of Brittany Phillips, a couple of weeks ago, Maggie, Brittany's mom,
had gotten a call from her ex-husband, and he found a piece of mail that had been sent by Brittany. And the thing about this piece of mail is the cancellation date. So you know, when you run a piece of mail through a postage machine, it's canceled by the machine. Or if it's a larger parcel, it's hand canceled, whatever, you know, I'm talking about the little round thing with the name of the town or the post office with the zip code, right? So we're all familiar with that. And the date on this envelope from Brittany was September 29, 2004. I mentioned in the timeline that the last time that Britney was seen, alive or heard from was, according to the Tulsa police department in the medical examiner was the 27th of September 2004. So they put her time of death sometimes the evening of the 27th of September to the 28th. And so then you have this letter show up that is canceled on the 29th. What a reminder, right? So it's it's it's one of those things, it's like did this piece of mail? Is it just a message from Brittany or a reminder? Or just one of those things that happens? Sometimes to those of us these these moments where we feel like we're being talked to by the person that we love who's dead? Is it just something special? That's a reminder of her the piece of mail that Brittany's dad has his cancellation on it a day after or two days after the date that she was supposed to have been dead? There are a lot of explanations for this. And when Maggie and I first started talking about this new information,
03:46
it was like, Well, was it the kind of thing where Britney had put it in a letter box or, you know, dropped it off at the front desk of of, you know, like her school or,
03:59
you know, her apartment complex to have the letter carrier or the post the post office, pick it up. And it just maybe didn't get postmarked until the 29th. But she had like, maybe it got stuck in the back of a letterbox. And so that that could be and how bittersweet, right? Oh, my God to get a letter from your daughter after she's dead. But it's not just, you know, a piece of sentimentality. It's an actual piece of new evidence. And it isn't the cancellation mark. That makes it new evidence because again, there could be reasons why it you know, got stuck in a letterbox, right cancelled few days after she was dead. But here's the thing. There wasn't a normal stamp on this. There wasn't one of the peel ins
05:00
deck from a book of stamps, there wasn't a lick and stick stamp, this stamp that was on this piece of mail was a point of purchase stamp. And what that means is on the 29th of September, Brittany, or somebody else had to walk into a post office or a kiosk and turn over 36 cents back then for the actual piece of postage, and it was printed immediately that day.
05:33
And the thing about those point-of-purchase stamps is that they are printed out with a code and all these other things. But importantly, it's printed with the date that it was purchased. And that date is September 29th 2004. So it's not just the cancellation date, that could potentially be explained away that little circle, you know, that stamp Tulsa on the 29th, we could explain that away, we can't explain away the date on the actual piece of postage, that is on the piece of mail. And so what that means is the timeline has shifted. And so what does that mean? To me? Again, as an investigative reporter, I can only look at it through that lens, because I'm not a detective, I'm not a cop. And in this case, common sense is quite right in assuming that the piece of mail was sent on the 29th.
06:38
But as an investigative journalist, when I spend time doing research on a long term project, like for example, I just got done working on nearly a year long investigation. And that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of information, a lot of documents and timelines. And you know, all these different pieces of information. It's a lot like solving a puzzle, or solving a case, if you will. It's it's putting all the pieces in order. And and then even if I get a new piece of information that forces me to change the trajectory of my reporting. And I've had I've had it happen before with stories where I've had to kill stories, a new piece of evidence takes the wind out of the sails or completely
07:35
blows apart the story because it disproves what I had thought the original story was about, I have to be very open to new information, I have to be very honest about what that information means and the implications for my article. And sometimes, you know, it sucks. But I have to scrap an entire investigation and either start over with a new theory, or, you know, walk away from the story. This is no different. So what this means is that Brittany herself was alive on September 29, went out of her apartment purchase this stamp at a post office nearby, or a postal kiosk, put the label on the piece of mail and turned it over to the postal worker herself, or had asked a friend to mail it. And that friend, then posted it on the 29th. The most disturbing option is that Britney was in fact dead on the 27th or 28th. And whoever killed her had the foresight to take her mail and send it.
08:57
That seems highly unlikely.
09:01
So what about friends? I think I mentioned Maggie has turned this over to the Tulsa police department and they had said that they were going to look into it. Maggie being Maggie always being an advocate for Brittany took it upon herself to call. I think it was five or six of Brittany's friends that were closest to her and including the young woman who was with Britney the last night that she was seen and ask did Brittany give you anything to mail for her? And so far? The answer from all of the friends that Maggie has spoken to is no. You can bet that if your friend asks you to mail something, and you find out a day later that they've been murdered, you need to remember, you remember that? It's not likely that whoever murdered her
10:00
centered. So what's the most logical answer then? And the most logical answer is that it was Brittany. And that the timeline needs to be shifted,
10:18
the time of death has to be looked at again, you have to go back to the medical records and see if you can determine a more specific time of death.
10:31
And we have information on that as well. And we can get into that into another recording. But it means a whole lot of of rethinking about the very nature of the case, it's almost like it just happened. The police can take this for what it is a new piece of evidence and run it down and figure out in some way, whether through interviews, etc, that it is actually not a big deal that they did find the person who actually sent it, interviewed them ruled them out, and we just move on, like everything in the original timeline. The alternative is that they have to go back to square one, because it fundamentally alters Brittany's life, everybody that had an alibi. Everybody that's been interviewed and cleared be put back on the table. You've got to bring everybody back in. You probably are going to have new witnesses. Because Britney was alive on the 29th she was out and about. She was at a post office we can run that down, right. So everything changes. Nobody's cleared and that that is daunting it but but it's critical for any kind of justice. For Brittany for Maggie and her family.
Episode Two: The New Evidence