50-year-old cold case solved after mother was found dead in ditch with daughter left abandoned next to her
Topics: True crime, Crime, US News, Science
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Indiana State Police
Topics: True crime, Crime, US News, Science
A 50-year-old cold case of a mom who was killed and her body left beside her daughter has finally been solved.
There have been a couple of cold cases that have been solved in the last few years, and each one brings closure to those who have waited a long time to get it.
But this one focuses on a mother who was murdered and left by the side of a road in Indiana, with her three-year-old daughter beside her, unharmed.
On July 7, 1972, Phyllis Bailer, and her child were driving from Indianapolis to Bluffton, a 100-mile journey to see her parents.
Advert
However, the 26-year-old never made it there.
The Indiana State Police said that at 10:30am the next morning, Bailer's car was found in Grant County, Indiana, with no sign of the mother or her child.
Sadly, just one hour later, a woman driving would make the discovery of Bailer’s body and her daughter in a ditch in Allen County.
According to the police, Bailer had been sexually assaulted and shot, but her daughter was left unharmed.
At the time, no arrests could be made, even though they had a suspect in mind.
But after a partial DNA profile taken from the mom’s clothing eliminated the person, they were left with no clues as to who really killed her.
Left to go cold for decades, it may have seemed as though nobody would ever find out the truth of that night, until now.
Last year, police shared that ‘a much stronger DNA profile’ was developed from the victim’s clothing, which allowed investigators to work with a forensic genealogy company called Identifinders International, a forensic genealogy company in California, founded by Colleen Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick stated: “Identifinders is proud to have supported the Indiana State Police with bringing long overdue answers to Phyllis and her family. This case is an example of still another homicide that would never have been solved without Forensic Genetic Genealogy."
This allows unknown DNA from crime scenes to be used and compared to family members of the suspect, after they voluntarily submit DNA samples to a database.
Thanks to this tool, police were able to confirm that Fred Allen Lienemann was the person who left DNA on Bailer’s clothing.
In an announcement on Wednesday 16 April, they stated that: "Phyllis Bailer never made it to Bluffton to visit her family."
State police spokesperson Sgt. Wes Rowlader continued on a social media post: "After years of questions, this family finally has answers about what happened to her."
Lienemann was 25-years-old when he murdered the mother, and while he ‘had no known connections to Phyllis Bailer but had a significant criminal history’.
As for closure and criminal justice, Lienemann was killed in Detroit in 1985, but if he had survived, police state that prosecutors would charge him with Bailer's murder.
Providing a news clipping of his murder in a press release, it states that two men were charged with beating him with a baseball bat, throwing his body in a dumpster and setting it on fire whilst he was still alive.