Please Consider Brittany's Story (addendum 9/17 within first three paragraphs)

 I am sending this to as many people as I know. I am asking you, as a friend or acquaintance, or as a friend of my friend or acquaintance (and so on and so on) to forward this email to your friends and ask them to forward it to theirs and so on and so on. By doing so I am hoping that, through the expanding information network, one or both of the goals listed below might be met:

LAMAR Advertising is moving the billboard (seen on this site) every three months and it is beginning to get more and more exposure. For those of you who don't know, within three weeks of contacting LAMAR's national office, the billboard was designed, created and put up in downtown Tulsa. The more places it is the greater chance we have of getting more tips. The reporters who have followed this story have been great; Ashli Sims of Channel 6 and Nicole Marshall of the Tulsa World have done extensive work and Channel 23 and 2 and 8 have also provided coverage.  With so many "rule-outs" of suspects, the hunch that her killer has moved on, appears to be true. I have found two national forensic experts who are volunteering their help (Dr. Kepple is one, Dr. Lee another). But staying at this local level in media stories limits our ability to pull in more and more information. I am becoming scared and worried that we will never find her killer.         

 I am hoping that, through the expanding information network, one or both of the goals listed below might be met:

1) Finding a way to continue to build the reward fund that will bring in more information-- I have been writing numerous corporations to ask if they will donate to a reward fund. There have been groups who have explored this issue for a month or so and then decline. Sadly, if you watch the national news, you may notice how some murders will immediately have a $20000-50000 reward posted and the tips seem to start coming in. I am not asking an individual to donate but rather I am looking for someone who knows someone (etc.) who might work for a corporation that might be interested in such an endeavor (not individual donations!). They would be able to contact Jeff Felton, our detective at 918 596-9141. He would be able to tell them how to donate to the reward fund. Nicole Marshall of the Tulsa World has done a number of stories that really pull at the community and often bring us leads. Her number is 918 581-8459. She could verify the story for those who don't know me.

2) I have emailed national news shows asking them to cover our story, sent certified letters and get either no response, a response that they will do her story when the murder is solved or that they just are not interested (although they are saddened by our story). Because we have ruled out so many suspects, without national coverage it will take years to find another detective in another state who maybe has solved a similar case. The above numbers can be contacted for verification and I can be contacted at 918 6292317 at most times and work 4059641672.

      If you have any ideas, thoughts, write me back at therapoet@aol.com. Please help me just by sending this on. Again, I am not asking for an individual donation from each person, rather trying to find a connection to a funding source.  I would be willing to do a national story in a moment's notice.Thank you for reading this. Please read Brittany's story below.

______________________________________________________

   Our billboard states "A murderer remains on the streets of Tulsa" is the statement our billboard cries to all who pass by. Each weekend when I drive down to Tulsa and sit below it, I cry.
      My name is Dr. Maggie Zingman. There have been numerous stories on my daughter's murder in September 2004.  But the local news stories cannot reach far enough. We need national exposure. My detective has found some other detectives across the US who have similar cases, but that process is painstakingly slow. With rule-outs of all friends, suspicious strangers and others, Detective Felton and others have begun to think the individual has moved on and may well be a serial rapist/killer. A national show would get our information beyond the streets of Tulsa, would give us a chance to ask many Police Chiefs, "Is this familiar?" A large reward would also attract information from sources who would otherwise not get involved.
            We buried my daughter on her 19th birthday. Today almost two years later, I look at the face smiling from the billboard and I smile and cry. She should be here! Yet she isn't, taken from us, in the middle of the night, in the safety of her apartment.
     We have evidence, but no one saw Brittany's murderer in smalltown America, Tulsa, OK. Yet my daughter's story is a story that touches all, about the loss of a daughter who had great potential and the question as to her death being a possible side effect of rape judged as a sexual crime rather than the violent crime that it is. It is also about two great organizations, LAMAR Advertising and the Sund/Carrington Foundation.
BACKGROUND
Please pardon the length of this story but there seems to be so much to tell.
I am a psychologist at Mabel Basset Correctional Center and have been a trauma therapist for the past 17 years. I have worked with female survivors of trauma during most of these years with the last 8 focusing more on female offenders (80% who are survivors of some form of sexual assault). I am also a disaster intervention specialist and worked both at the 1995 Murrow Building Bombing and during the 1999 F5 tornado recovery effort as primary therapist in New Castle and Bridgecreek. I am also a survivor of traumas.
       Yet all my work did not prepare me for the events of Sept 30, 2004. On September 30th my daughter was found brutally raped and murdered probably 3 nights prior, in the middle of the night in her apartment. This apartment sits right next to Union Highschool in Tulsa where she went to high school 2 years prior. 
        In 2003 my daughter went away to college to at alma mater in Florida. She was a year younger than all the freshman and was planning to be a pharmaceutical researcher and had received a full years scholarship.  At the same time she was beautiful with long blond curls and would stop traffic where ever she went. She decided in the spring of 2004 to move home to Tulsa, that she felt too young to fully be away. Little did I know that the move back near to me would in the long run be her last move. I usually talked to her on Monday's after class. She had a pretty heavy schedule so to not talk on Tuesday and Wednesday was expected. I called on Wednesday and wasn't surprised to find her away. Yet when I called on Thursday I was a bit angry that she did not call back. That night, or rather at 1 am Friday, I received a knock at the door and was informed in a quick and curt manner, that I needed to call Tulsa police because my daughter was dead. I was to find out after rushing down to her apartment at 3 am that she had been dead for two days. The only thing that allowed me not to go crazy was that she died by strangulation and that this was immediate.
      We have yet to find her murderer. That alone is frustrating. It has also been distressing to find out, soon after she was murdered, that we were never told of previous attacks, rapes, etc., that had occurred near her apartment complex prior to her moving in. Afterwards we did hear of some previous attacks. I find now, when I visit the complex to post information posters, that 1) the complex does not inform new renters that a murdered happened 2) That the managers are tearing down the information signs. Now a year and 5 months later with her killer somewhere out in the world and my family without any closure as to who completed this horrendous act, this loss is even harder. 
      Although we have a DNA profile that has been analyzed locally and put on CODIS, there have been no matches. I have a great detective and many of the detectives and Tulsa Police officers volunteer to help with this case. Much of the evidence found lends the police and I to think it is a serial rapist. Although it was not the same person, a serial rapist that had been terrorizing Tulsa was recently caught (my daughter was murdered, these other victims weren't) who had been breaking into homes and raping young women between 11 and 19. 
    We were very lucky in that the Sund/Carrington Foundation gave 5000 to the reward fund and now this indiovidual in Tulsa. The billboard is very powerful in its simple statement about a murderer still free in Tulsa. With the way the investigation is not turning up anything locally, it may well need to say "across the United States."                                                          America's Most Wanted has considered her story but because the could not spend all day in the prison where I work, they backed out, stating there was no story without the filming all day in the prison. My daughter's death had nothing to do with my work at a female prison.

      While I am constantly thinking of ways to help solve her murder, I have also been writing senators, representatives, congressmen and women and many other groups. I cannot change what happened to my daughter but I hope to influence factors in relation to the sentencing of rapist and the judicial system that judges rape as sexual rather than violent.
Strangely enough I have received few if any responses from any of the senators, representatives, etc., that I have written to get information on how to get involved with such changing of laws.   Another reason why the Tulsa DNA profile may not be getting a "hit" is because a number of individuals, who are caught, charged with rape, then plead down and thus their DNA is not taken. We had two suspects who at first appeared clear yet later (9 months later) we found out that they have plead down in a rape/kidnapping case to a misdemeanor "endangerment to a minor" unfortunately it was still not a match.
           So I try to go own through my work, through helping to find her killer and through trying to impact a change in a sometimes violent world. I hope some aspect of this story intrigues you.
I lost my best friend, my dancing princess (as we called her)
We buried her (Brittany Phillips) on her 19th birthday 10/04/2004.
Thank you for your consideration and thoughts on this issue.
Sincerely,
Dr. Maggie Zingman
work 405 964 1672 (Mabel Basset Correctional Center)