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What drives a person to kill? Is it uncontrollable rage? Overwhelming fear? Unbearable jealousy? Or is it something deeper? Something in the darkest corners of our psyche? Every Monday and Thursday, the Crime House Original Podcast Serial Killers and Murderous Minds dives deep into the minds of history's most chilling murderers. From infamous circumstances, serial killers to ruthless cult leaders, deadly exes and terrifying spree killers, I'm Dr. Tristan Ingalls, a licensed forensic psychologist. Along with Vanessa Richardson's immersive storytelling full of high stakes twists and turns, in every episode of Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, I'll be providing expert analysis of the people involved, not just how they killed, but why. Listen to and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds available now. Wherever you get your podcasts, there's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more. You're listening to DNAID, brought to you by Abjack Entertainment. Be sure to check out some of the other great TR crime podcasts from this network, including the Murder in My Family, Missing Persons, Scene of the Crime, Zodiac Speaking Beyond Bizarre True Crime, Campus Killings, Below the Surface, and Killer Communications. All of these podcasts are available for you to binge on right now. Wherever you listen to podcasts, subscribe where you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. Sam. It was 1972 on Hot July Saturday, July 8th around 11:35am A young woman named Ruth Logar was driving north on Rural west road. This was 18 of a mile north of the intersection was Shoaf Road, then a little used gravel thoroughfare two miles northeast of Huntertown, a mile east of Indiana Route 3 and about 8 miles north of Fort Wayne. There were no other cars in sight. As she drove along, Ruth was very startled to see a very small child who turned out to be three years old standing in the grassy area right next to the road. She appeared to be looking at something on the ground. Ruth stopped her car and put it in reverse. Backing up, she pulled up next to where the toddler was standing. Looking toward the child, Ruth could see that there was a bloodied woman lying in a ditch. The child was calm but did not move from the spot where she stood now looking at Ruth. Ruth said, do you want to come with me? No, said the girl. Ruth said, okay, and drove the very short distance up the road to her parents house there. She told them, hey, there's a little girl standing beside a woman's body in the ditch. Ruth's parents called the Huntertown Fire department. It was 11:37am When Allen County Police Department officers David Smith and James Talarico arrived to the scene at 11:54. Huntertown firefighters had collected the little girl and blocked off West Road between Shoaf and Simon Rhodes. They told the officers there was a deceased woman in the ditch on the west side of West Road and she had visible head trauma. The officers went over to the ditch and observed the body. She was a young white woman dressed in dark blue shorts and a white T shirt. Her feet were bare, her shoes nearby. She had been shot. There were no signs of a struggle. A woman's purse was on the ground near the dead woman's body. The firefighters told the police officers that the little girl who had been found standing near the body had a laceration on her head. They instructed their ambulance driver to take her to Parkview Hospital. The officers then turned to Ruth and her parents, who were standing nearby, having returned to the scene after calling the fire department, they had checked the body and stood guard over the little girl until the fire department arrived. Ruth explained to the officers exactly what she had seen and that she asked the girl whether she wanted to get in her car and the girl said no. Officers Smith and Telerico searched the purse that was on the ground and found a driver's license in the name of Phyllis Jean Baylor, age 27, of Indianapolis. The photo matched the woman in the ditch, and it would turn out someone was looking for her. Allen County Coroner Dr. Richard Bauer performed the autopsy on Phyllis on the very day she was found, the 8th. She had no personal articles on her body, and the only documented clothing on the coroner's verdict I was provided was a T shirt and shorts, but we know she was wearing underwear. You'll hear why in a minute. The cause of Phyllis's death was two gunshot wounds to the head and neck. She had been shot at close range. Police described it as execution style. I don't have any information as to whether this means she was forced onto her knees and she knew what was happening or whether she was shot suddenly and was none the wiser. It doesn't seem that she fought back at all. There were no other injuries to her body documented in the report. Believe it or not, I was able to obtain the original incident report even though this was all the way back in 1972. The officer who wrote the report stated, quote, she appeared to have a Gunshot wound with a mark which apparently was made by the muzzle of an automatic pistol upon her left cheek. End quote. Needless to say, the coroner pronounced the manner of death as homicide. He loosely established the time of death between 8pm Friday and before 11am Saturday, and the pathologist determined that Phyllis had been raped. Semen was found on her underwear, but I've got to be honest, I don't know specifics as to why this conclusion was reached. The autopsy report from 1972 contains no reference to vaginal swabs that I saw. I suspect they were collected, analyzed for sperm, came back positive, contributing to the conclusion of sexual assault, and then were discarded, being of no more use at that time. Phyllis was found fully clothed, which pointed to her being allowed to redress herself after the rape. There is also no indication in the report of where the rape took place. There is no reference to vegetation or dirt found on Phyllis or on her clothing. So it remains unknown whether she was violated by the roadside where she was found in a vehicle or somewhere else. At Fort Wayne's Parkview Memorial Hospital, little Jody was determined to have an abrasion on her head at the site of the laceration. She was fine, but was kept for observation before being picked up by her father and taken to the home of Phyllis parents, the Millers. There is no indication that Jody's injury was deliberately inflicted, but we simply have no idea because Jody's time is unaccounted for for more than 12 hours. So who was Phyllis? Phyllis Jean Miller was born on July 13, 1945 in Bluffton, Indiana. Her father was George Edward Miller and her mother, Leona Lucille Miller. Apparently, Phyllis preferred to be called Jeannie, but I'm going to refer to her as Phyllis to avoid confusion. Phyllis and her older sister Barbara were raised in Bluffton and attended Bluffton High School. Phyllis was a member of the Bluffton First Baptist Church. On May 8, 1966, she married Richard Rick Baylor while he was in the Air Force and the two had a daughter, Jody Lee. They relocated to Indianapolis in approximately 1970. Since 1969, Phyllis had worked as a legal secretary for ROCAP, ROCAP, Reese Young. Her employer, Keith Reese, told the media that she was a, quote, lovely girl and a very good employee. Rick, her husband, worked for Indiana Bell. Like many young marriages, that of Phyllis and Rick did not last. According to everyone I spoke with, the couple very amicably agreed to separate and divorce. Phyllis was the petitioner at a hearing on the matter. In November of 1971, they moved into separate homes and their Divorce was to be finalized on September 6, 1972. Jody resided with Phyllis. I don't know what the custody arrangements were, but Rick was very involved in his daughter's life. Phyllis was just 27 when she was killed. She was single and was very close with her parents. Her sister had married and moved to Minnesota. The Allen County Sheriff's Office was the initial lead investigative agency on this case. But the Indiana State Police got pulled in within days for reasons you'll hear. Allen county investigators interviewed Jody's parents and husband Rick. Their stories revealed that Phyllis had disappeared and she and Jody had been missing for several hours before they were found. The timeline went like this. On Friday, July 7, Phyllis had called her father, George Miller, who lived in Bluffton. Phyllis did not work on weekends, so she and Jody were headed to Bluffton to get out of the city and spend the weekend with her parents. She told her dad her plan was to leave Indianapolis around 8:00pm on by car. But when Phyllis and Jody didn't show up at the Miller home at 32 Columbian Avenue by 11, George called her house. When there was repeatedly no answer, he called her soon to be ex husband Rick. Rick had no idea where Phyllis and Jody were and he started to get worried. Phyllis's drive from Indianapolis to Bluffton should have taken an hour and 48 minutes. According to Google Maps, it's a straight shot heading northeast from Indianapolis right up I 69. Phyllis had told George that she was planning on leaving Indianapolis around 8. She possibly timed her departure with Jody's bedtime. I know from personal experience that it's much preferable to drive with a sleeping toddler than an awake one. They should have pulled into her parents driveway no later than 10pm I don't know what time exactly. George reported Phyllis and Jody missing. It was sometime late on Friday night. His daughter and precious granddaughter were mia. And in the days before cell phones there was no way at all to determine where they could have gone. On Saturday morning, July 8, Rick, no doubt absolutely beside himself with worry since Phyllis and Jody had not shown up, started out on his own to look for them. This seems like a long shot, right? But still, I'm sure it seemed preferable to pacing around waiting for the phone to ring. Rick drove the route he knew Phyllis would have taken, north on I 69. He drove for about 75 miles. And then at 10:30am he saw it. A 1965 Ford was sitting on the right shoulder, its hood up. It was empty of all passengers. The keys were not in the vehicle. I called the state Police right away, Rick said, recalling that day. Now I'm not certain how Rick knew that this was the car his wife had been driving. You see, Phyllis's car was in the shop and she had borrowed this car from a co worker. I think it's likely she'd told Rick about the car she was borrowing for the trip. And when he found it, he saw her and Jody's weekend bags and other items inside the car that he recognized because all those things were inside the vehicle. The only things missing were Phyllis's purse and keys and her and Jody. I'm not sure if Rick contacted the ISP or if he continued driving the route to Bluffton, hoping against hope that his wife and daughter would be there. But somehow ISPs red key post was contacted and sent troopers out to deal with the car. The car was not registered to Phyllis of course, but they soon made the connection between her and the vehicle. They now had a missing persons report on a woman and a toddler and an abandoned car with hood up and upon inspection, an evident mechanical issue. Police determined a radiator hose was broken and the car had likely overheated. There is Nothing in the 1972 reports about whether the co worker car owner was interviewed about the car having problems. But I was told that all indications point to this being a wear and tear issue rather than a sabotage issue. Phyllis had borrowed a car because hers was broken and the borrowed car broke down. While all this was going on, the report about Phyllis and Jodi being found came in. It's impossible to imagine how Phyllis's parents and Rick felt upon hearing the news that Phyllis was found dead in a ditch and Jody was alive but had been taken to the hospital with a possible head injury. All this news, the finding of the car and the two missing females happened in the space of about an hour. The family must have been reeling with shock. Let's talk about exactly where the car was found. On Friday night, we think right around 8, Phyllis set off from Indianapolis and drove north on I 69. She made it about 75 miles before she had to pull over onto the northbound shoulder. The location was in Grant county, just north of State Road 26, near Fairmount, 12 miles south of Marion. It was right along the route to her parents house. While the state troopers were on site inspecting the broken down vehicle, a farmer who owned the property nearby approached them and reported that he'd seen the car there when he drove home from work on Friday night. He wasn't certain of the time, but it was around 11:30pm 11:30pm the car had been there since 11:30pm where were Jody and Phyllis for more than 12 hours? They were certainly in a vehicle for at least part of that time. They were found in Huntertown, 70 miles north of where the car was abandoned. But it would only take just over an hour to get to that location. Had Phyllis been dead that entire time and Jody just left her own devices? Indiana State Police Capt. Kevin Smith, who spent many years pushing to get this case solved, told me that those early reports do not contain any information about what Jody's status was when she was found. Was she hungry? Thirsty, Crying? Subdued? Did she have a dirty diaper? Unfortunately, we don't know. Jody has declined all requests for interviews. But according to the News Sentinel, Jody was not able to provide information about the incident. And police at the time believed she was either, quote, knocked out, as they put it, or asleep at the time of the slaying. But she said she saw a man, and police think it was the man who killed her mother. This is all we know. Jody apparently did not relate whether they got in a man's car or a man gave them a ride. If she heard the gunshots or God forbid, witnessed anything happening to her mother. She was unable to share that. The broken down Ford was towed to the state police post in Fort Wayne to be processed for prints. No unidentified latent prints were found. There was nothing in the vehicle indicating that anyone other than Phyllis and Jody was were in the car. Phyllis purse found near her body was searched and found to contain some cash, her identification and cards. Nothing of value appeared to be missing, but the car keys were never found. As for the gun used to kill Phyllis, it was a small caliber automatic weapon. One of the questions that I asked about this case was whether shell casings were found at the scene. Unfortunately, the original incident report I pulled from 1972 makes no reference to shell casings, so we don't know if any were found. But I wondered how the reporting officer could have concluded that the gunshot was made by an automatic pistol unless there were shell casings found at the scene. Do different muzzles of guns make a distinctive shape leading him to draw the conclusion just from the muzzle mark on Phyllis cheek? I just don't have the answer to that. Anyway, that's what the report said. So an automatic it is. I was unable to learn whether any bullets were actually recovered from Phyllis, but Captain Smith told me the Indiana State Police was not able to do anything with ballistics that advanced the case. No neighbors in the area where Phyllis was found remembered hearing any gunshots, even though the nearest home was just a quarter mile away. But the area at the time was rural and residents may have been used to the sounds emitted by hunters and not even noticed. Police declined to speculate about what exactly had happened to Phyllis, whether she had had car trouble and had been abducted by a seeming Good Samaritan. But they did acknowledge that she had been taken to the remote area near Huntertown and killed there.