148. Karen Ann Phillips - The Murder Dream
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Okay, before we get to Garrett's 10 seconds, I just want to talk about something that's pretty cool. If you are a member of our Patreon or a member of Apple subscriptions, you actually get ad-free versions of Binged as well. No additional fee. We've just looped it all in. So if you've ever thought about becoming a

a patron or Apple subscriber. Now is the time because you're basically getting both shows plus the bonus content you get with murder with my husband. Speaking of which,

If you're listening to this on a Monday, then two days later on Wednesday, there will be three more episodes of Binged. Three of them. That is our second show that we are super excited about. So if you need more true crime or you need more from just us, go ahead and listen to Binged. For those watching on YouTube, sorry, I am pretty colorful today. So hopefully I am not...

blinding your eyes. This is our personalities in one little show. Me in all black, Garrett in all color. That's true. Okay. Are you ready for your 10 seconds? So for my 10 seconds, we are back on the topic of food. I was sitting there. I got Domino's this week and then I also got Pizza Hut a couple days later. Rough week. Don't want to talk about it. It is what it is. So anyways, I was sitting there and I was thinking, you know, like what is the best

fast food pizza. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, you can't include like, if you, if you're in New York or Detroit or Chicago, you know, you got your deep dish pizza, good pizza everywhere. I'm talking about your like chain fast food restaurant pizza. What is the best one? And I think I've come to the conclusion that it's Pizza Hut. Um, so, you know, there's like Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's, Little Caesars. I'm trying to think what else is

is big like mountain, I forget what it's called, mountain something. And I know probably on the East Coast and other places there's other fast food pizzas. Anyways, leave a comment, leave something down below because I'm curious kind of what everyone else thinks. I had both Domino's and Pizza Hut and my conclusion is Pizza Hut.

And I don't know. I mean, sorry, Domino's. Unless Domino's sponsors us, then Domino's is better than Pizza Hut. My vote, I know you didn't ask, is Little Caesars. Little Caesars is good, but sometimes I feel like it just hurts my stomach a little bit. Doesn't it all hurt your stomach? I guess so. Pizza Hut didn't. It's not that bad.

That is true. I was pretty happy. Let me know your favorite pizza below. And I love pizza. I'm a big pizza fan. I need to know, like, where do we need to go to try the best pizza? I feel like everyone's going to have a different opinion. So I'm curious to see if anyone agrees on, like, the best pizza places in America.

Honestly, the U.S. Okay, let's get into this. So our episode sources are Innocence, The True Story of Steve Linscott, law.northwestern.edu, casetext.com, and newspapers.com. Okay, so humans have been exploring, studying, and debating the significance of dreams and

Since the dawn of man, what do they mean? How come so many people have the same recurring dreams like dreams of falling from great heights or dreams of losing your teeth? And how is it that some people have dreams that seem to predict future events? These psychic dreams are known as precognitive dreams and no one really knows why or how they happen and how significant they really are.

But what if you were a detective investigating a murder and someone came to you about a dream that they had in which they seemingly saw that exact murder unfold. And the dream took place at the exact same time that the murder took place. And that person seemed to know things about the murder that they couldn't have known unless they were there.

That very scenario is at the center of today's story, which takes us back more than 40 years. It starts with Karen Ann Phillips, who spent the first two decades of her life in North Carolina before moving to Chicago in 1977. Now for Karen, a curious young woman who embraced new experiences and loved life, Chicago was the next great adventure in which she expected would be a lifetime full of them. She enrolled in Aurora College,

college and graduated with a degree in biology and her career goal was to become a nurse. So she continued her studies at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center and moved to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park in April of 1979 where she signed a lease on a cute studio apartment on Austin Boulevard and by this time in her life Karen had been introduced to the Temple of Kriya Yoga which

which was a wellness and learning center founded in the late 60s by a self-styled religious leader, guru, and astrologer. And the friends that Karen made from Kriya Yoga would soon form her core social circle. So it basically became her life. Friends like a woman named Helen, who she met in the temple's astrology class.

Helen was actually a swami or a priestess in the temple's hierarchy, so she was a high-ranking and very active member. And in her capacity as a swami, she had a lot of influence over Karen, convincing her new friend to enter the path to the priesthood herself.

So Karen poured more and more of her money into the Temple of Kriya Yoga organization. In fact, she was even sinking her student loans into the temple and going into increasing debt in the process. But this is what she believed in. This is what she belonged to. It's safe to say that Karen had quit

become a fanatical follower of the temple, spending much of her money and time there participating in regular activities like yoga, of course, meditation, and group hypnosis. So in the summer of 1980, it was during one of these hypnosis sessions that Karen had a disturbing premonition.

She claims that she came to believe that she would someday, perhaps someday soon, meet a violent end. So she's in one of these sessions and then she has this premonition. So are you talking about hypnosis when I was like in a senior in high school and they all take you, you know, you're all like in a class and some of the classmates get up and then everyone gets hypnotized. Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Is that what you're talking about? I assume we're talking about something a little bit different. It's okay. It's not like they all just get in an auditorium, but I'm sure like group hypnosis is very similar. It's just probably more like religious and spiritual and they have a leader and whatever. Speaking of that, I don't know. This is a conversation for another time. I don't know if I think that's real or not real. I'm not going to get too deep into it. Just like...

but classmates would get up on stage you know and they'd be doing things and i'm like dude i know you like you know like i know you're not actually i don't know i could be totally wrong that's just what i'm gonna say for now and don't come at me because i'm totally open to it being real doesn't bother me i'm just you just don't think that your classmates when you watched it were actually yeah like i feel like if they would have had me go up there i'd have been like

You think they were all fake dancing with their eyes closed? Exactly. A hundred percent. Anyways, let's keep going. Okay. So Karen gets a premonition that she's going to have a violent end. And while still under her hypnotic spell, she discovered that she had been murdered in a previous life.

a life in which she had been a nun in Germany. Now, this was something that she found out that she had in common with her temple friend, Helen. So this is Helen we talked about earlier. Helen had also been a German nun in a previous life. So under hypnosis, they're like, oh my gosh. So under the temple's belief system, these two women believed that they were linked across multiple lifetimes. Like they were meant to meet again because in the last lifetime, they were both nuns together. Okay.

So Karen did still have some friends outside of the temple at this point in her life. She wasn't totally cut off. And one of the closest of those outside friends was a college professor in North Carolina named Jerry McDuffie. Now, Jerry was a guy that to all her Chicagoland friends, she referred to as her out of town fiance. And when he visited her in Chicago and sat in on some of the temple's classes with her, Jerry was disturbed by what he observed.

So her one friend who she's like, oh, he's my out of town fiance. It's just a joke, but they're close friends. He comes in to town and he goes to her ceremonies with her and he, um,

is disturbed. He tries to talk to Karen, says, hey, I think you should maybe leave the temple and the people associated with it, but she wasn't having it. The temple was her new family. But Jerry believed he was the older, wiser, more perceptive of the two of them. And he was also growing concerned about some of the changes that he was seeing in his friend Karen, or perhaps not changes so much as qualities that had been lying dormant or hidden back in North Carolina when she lived near him.

But in the big, bad metropolitan spread of Chicago, these qualities were now emerging as a liability out of Karen. And what we're mainly talking about here is how naive Karen was. Her ready willingness to trust and take things and people at face value. So he was like, basically he told her, hey,

I think that you're being lied to. I don't think any of this is real. And she was like, no, no, no, this is all real. Jerry thought that the temple's attitudes toward sex and drug use were too free and permissive. And he felt that some of the temple members represented what he saw as bad elements in society and that Karen was exposing herself to potentially harmful people and not just at the temple, but outside of it, too.

He learned about the time that a stranger from off the street had approached Karen and offered to paint her portrait and

And so she then allowed the stranger to come into her apartment with her alone and paint her. Okay. Karen was a confident, headstrong young woman who was like many young adults without a lot of life experience who don't see or aren't willing to accept that they may be naive or reckless or inexperienced. No one really likes to be told that they're naive. How old is she again? She's in her twenties at this point. Okay.

And when Jerry tells her, hey, I think you're being naive, she doesn't like it. And a growing rift begins to develop between Karen and her old friend Jerry. So her one friend that wasn't really a part of the temple, she is now fighting with because of the temple. And this pushes Karen further into the bubble of the temple. It's hard to feel like your once out of town fiance doesn't support your new way of life.

But this loss of a friend didn't last long because while all of this was going on, a man named Peter moved in next door to Karen. And Peter was new in the building. He lived in the apartment above Karen's. And in his first few weeks at the complex, the two neighbors became fast friends. So now she makes another friend outside of the temple. Early in the evening of October 2nd, 1980, Karen knocked on Peter's door and asked him if he was up for a game of cards.

He invited her in and from 7 p.m. until about 9, Karen and Peter played cards followed by several rounds of mastermind. Now during the board game, Peter mentioned that he needed to press some clothes and Karen offered him use of her iron. So after they finished playing, Karen led him back to her apartment where she loaned him the iron and then he returned back to his unit to do his ironing. About an hour later, Peter came back with the iron to return it to Karen.

Now, when Karen came to the door, she had the phone receiver to her ear and was engaged in a conversation. So she kind of gestured a thank you to Peter who was privy to a small piece of her conversation, whoever she was talking to.

Okay.

Karen told her that everything was fine. After school, Karen got a ride home from a classmate, and then in the evening, she went to her usual astrology class at the temple. Karen hung around the class uncharacteristically late that night.

At around 10 p.m., the temple's receptionist offered to drive Karen to her car, which was parked about two blocks away. And Karen accepted the offer. It was dark out. It was late. But when the receptionist asked her to wait just 15 to 20 minutes for her to tie up loose ends and close up shop, Karen began to kind of grow impatient. She said, it's OK. I'll just walk. It's no big deal.

Half an hour later, Helen, her friend from the temple, rang Karen's apartment and Karen could hear her phone ringing from the front door of the apartment building just as she was stepping in. So she's coming home from the temple. Helen begins calling and she rushes in to answer. So she rushes across the hallway to hurry up and answer and she completely neglects to close the front door of the building, which was kept locked like only people who lived in the building could get in. Well, she doesn't close the door. She leaves it open to rush into hers.

Karen picks up the phone just in time and talks to Helen for about 20 minutes. Before they said goodnight, the two friends made plans to meet the next morning at around 11 a.m. to go to the flea market together. Now, sometime in the night at around 1 a.m., Karen's next door neighbor, Muhammad, this is not Peter who lives above, this is Muhammad who lives next door, heard what sounded like an argument coming from Karen's apartment.

He turned down the volume on his TV set because he was still awake and moved closer to the wall to try and figure out what all the commotion was about. Kind of funny because...

- It's funny how you just like spy on other people, you know? - Right. - Like I wonder what they're arguing about right now. - What's going on? - What's going on? - He couldn't make out what was being said, but he could hear two voices speaking loudly, angrily, and there were pounding noises. Like there was something clearly going on. These noises persisted and got louder. So Muhammad walked out of his door and walked to Karen's front door and knocked on it. At which point the talking and the pounding stopped. There was silence.

He waited a minute, literally counting out the seconds in his head. And when no one came to the door, he returned to his apartment and resumed watching TV. Maybe this was just enough to be like, hey, you're being loud. Yeah, like knock it off. Yeah. But he noticed as soon as he turned the volume on his TV back up, the loud voices and pounding kind of started up again. Okay. But rather than get into it with people who were already worked up, Mohammed just went to bed, just passed right out.

The next morning, Karen didn't show up to the flea market where Helen was waiting for her. Remember, they had made plans at 11. When Helen still hadn't heard from Karen half an hour after their meetup time, Helen grew irritated that her supposed friend didn't even have the courtesy to call and let her know, hey, I'm running late.

But then as more time passed, Helen's umbrage turned to concern. She began to consider the possibility that Karen had gotten into an accident or something. She was hurt. Okay.

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Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash husband. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash husband spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash husband. Rules and restrictions may apply. Helen enlisted her husband Dominic to drive to Karen's place while she stayed home by the phone. So she's like, you go check on her and I'll stay home just in case she calls.

and Helen asked Dominic to keep his eyes peeled along the way for signs of Karen's car off the road in the event that it had broken down or she had crashed. But when Dominic finally did see Karen's car, it was in the driveway of her apartment house where it had been all along. This is normal. Now, knowing that he still needed to go in and check on Karen, Dominic gained entry into the building, but Karen wasn't answering her door. He then knocked on the door of Karen's neighbor, Mohamed.

and told the neighbor what was going on, how Karen had missed this appointment with his wife, and they were worried that something had happened. Have you heard anything? Did you see anything? And indeed, Muhammad had. He told Dominic about the strange events from the night before. And then Peter, Karen's new friend neighbor from upstairs, comes down and approaches the two men. He's like, what's going on? Hearing of the situation, Peter was also concerned about Karen.

Now there was a window above Karen's front door, but it was kind of high up. Nobody had access to a ladder at this moment, but Dominic has an idea. He says Peter could stand on Muhammad's shoulders and peek into the apartment to see if they can see anything. So Muhammad, who was more sturdily built than Peter, kneeled down and then the second man climbed up on his shoulders as Muhammad slowly eased his way into a fully upright position. Peter balanced himself as he looked inside Karen's apartment. Now,

All I can see, he reported, is that the gas burners on the stove are on. So, yes, but he couldn't see anything else. So Mohammed lowered himself to the floor and Peter dismounted his neighbor, got off his shoulders. Dominic then called his wife to report that Karen's car was still in the driveway and they just looked in and the gas burners were on. So everyone agrees, okay, it's probably time to call police. Like she's not answering the door. Maybe there's been a medical emergency. I don't know where this is going, especially the way you started this. I have no idea. I don't know what's going on.

Good. No idea what's going on. So Officer Kenneth Wise of the Oak Park Fire Department was the first one dispatched to Karen's apartment. And unable to access the apartment from outside the building, he got a stepladder and forced open one of the windows leading into Karen's apartment. Now, after entering, Officer Wise took only a few steps into the living room when all of a sudden everyone's fears came true. Dang it.

Inside of Karen's apartment, he saw, lying face down on the carpet in a pool of her own blood, the battered body of Karen Ann Phillips. She was wearing nothing but her nightgown, which had been lifted up and was clinging to her upper body. And from what they could see, 24-year-old Karen had been beaten to death. Oh my gosh. But there was another heartbreaking element to this murder. Both of Karen's hands.

were identically configured with the tips of her thumb and forefinger pressed together into a circle and then the three other fingers loosely stretched out. That's weird. In the Kriya Yoga religion, this is a signal that means the peaceful acceptance of death. So this means that Karen was beaten and then knew she was going to die and put her hands like this on her own. Okay, so I was going to ask...

Did she put her hands like that on her own? Or were they staged? Or were they staged? Police think she did it on her own. Okay. So looking at the rest of the scene, they noticed that Karen's stereo turntable was still spinning with a prayer record on the platter, a TV set.

and a lamp had fallen to the floor, evidence that a struggle had taken place before the attacker had subdued her. Once emergency personnel arrived and the apartment door was propped open, Dominic actually looked inside the apartment and

instantly regretted it. Like that's not a scene you want to see. It's horrible. He dropped to the ground in horror. Karen was taken to West suburban hospital where she was officially pronounced dead before being transferred to the morgue for examination. Now police canvassed the neighborhood telling everyone on the block to contact the police. If they remember seeing anything unusual, quote, no matter how silly it might seem.

Meanwhile, a forensic team was carefully processing the apartment and the area around the building. The back door to Karen's apartment was locked from the inside and reinforced with a chain lock, so it was not likely that the killer had entered there. Inside of the apartment, there was a table lamp that had a dried reddish-brown substance on it resembling blood. Outside the building, in some bushes, police recovered a tire iron with dried blood and hair crusted into it. That...

was later determined to be the murder weapon in tandem with strangulation. So Karen also had several non-fatal stab wounds to her head and the right side of her body. Hairs were collected from the palms of Karen's hands as well from her body and back at the apartment, her bedsheets.

Four unidentified latent prints were lifted from inside of the apartment and 15 additional prints were lifted from the apartment's front door. This isn't something you get away with. I mean, there is blood everywhere. There's DNA everywhere. When you beat someone to death, it's not like...

Some sly, subtle thing. Right. At the medical examiner's office, semen was found along with evidence of sexual assault. A rape kit was collected and an autopsy was performed. The following Monday evening, detectives Robert Shiana and Ronald Grego at the Oak Park police station were sitting with Karen's friend Helen when their phone rang. Shiana picked it up and on the other end of the phone, a male voice began speaking.

I read about the murder of the woman in Oak Park in the paper today, said the man. You'll probably think this is silly, but I had a dream. Do you want to hear it? Sure, said the detective, getting his notepad and pen into position. I had the dream on Saturday evening, said the man on the phone, the same night that Karen was murdered and apparently at around the same time. And in the dream, he continued, I saw a man bludgeon someone to death.

Shiana asked, can you describe the man? The other man on the phone said he was blonde with short, straight hair. He had fair features and he was square built, not muscular, but solid. He was about five foot five to five feet, seven inches tall. And he was wearing a terry cloth short sleeve shirt with two or three horizontal lines across the chest.

We're getting pretty descriptive right now, aren't we? He keeps going. The man had brown or reddish pants.

And he was an easygoing guy and felt comfortable with the person that he was killing. The man continues, the victim, I believe, was struck while lying down or crouching and seems to have been hit on the side of the head and possibly on the right hand. Instantly, I mean, suspect number one, right? I'm sure this is exactly what the police are thinking as well. Right. So the man continues, the victim also seems to have

Not given a lot of resistance. Maybe she has an air of acceptance or peace about her death. An air of acceptance or peace. Much like Karen, whose hands signaled the acceptance of impending death.

But something had just changed in the man's description. The caller now was gendering the victim as a she, while just earlier in his description, the victim didn't have a gender. He just said a person was bludgeoned. But the man continued on. This attack was unexpected because the attacker was quite calm and at ease with her beforehand, but then quick and brutal during the attack. The victim was struck a number of times. The last impression I have of the attack was the bludgeon striking, bleeding flesh and a lot of blood flying everywhere.

He also goes on, I want to say the victim was black, but that's not so clear to me.

Now, Detective Shiana's interest was piqued. He wanted to know more about this man that was calling and why he seemed to know what he knew. So he tells the man on the phone, why don't you just write this down and we'll drop by and pick it up later. On the other end of the phone, this sounded fine to the man who then provided his name and address. His name was Stephen Linscott and he was a 26-year-old Bible student at the Emus Bible College. Which I feel like if he did it,

He wouldn't have said to come by and pick this up unless he's just an insane narcissist and he needs to insert himself. Exactly. Which I mean, it's possible. Well, when police figure out who Steve Linska is, they discover that he was one of the people who'd been contacted during the door to door neighborhood canvas following Karen's murder because he lived with his wife and two children at the Good News Mission in Oak Park.

Now, the Good News Mission was a halfway house for ex-convicts transitioning back into society, but Linscott wasn't an ex-con. He was actually a counselor and provided services on site where he also lived. But the address of this mission, which Linscott called home, was also right next door to Karen's apartment building. So literally the building over.

Linscott and his family had apparently moved to town only a month before Karen's murder. So police wasted little time in paying Linscott a visit. They're like, okay, whatever is going on, he lives right next door to her. And now he's called in basically describing the death. And they want to pick up the written statement from him. Some additional details in his written statement included, and I'll just quote it directly from the note.

As I dreamt, the first stage was very clear, but I woke up as I sensed a change come over the person and I tried to shake off the dream and go back to sleep. I went to sleep again and dreamt of the attack. After this, I woke up and was very disturbed because of the vividness of the dream. I thought I heard a noise in the front room of our apartment, so I got up and went out and came back and then went back to sleep.

Concerning the second stage of the dream, the attack is striking down on the victim. She is below his waist, then below the knees, and does not give much resistance to this attack. Now, this next part of the story is different depending on who you believe. But the way the story went, as it was later written by police, was...

They wrap up this and the police officers at the scene read the note, then ask Linskitt why he hadn't described the murder weapon. And Linskitt reportedly answered that he thought the murder weapon was a blunt object that resembled a tire iron. Okay. But this conversation was never recorded and Linskitt later on would deny that he ever said this. He said, I never said it was a tire iron. Okay.

Anyway, back at the station, the detectives received the note, read it, and discuss it with their colleagues. There were several consistencies between what Linscott had described in his dream and the actual crime scene, enough for them to decide to take the discussion to the state attorney's district office. All parties now involved with the investigation felt it was important to pursue Linscott further and bring him in for interrogation. He has now become suspect number one.

So Detective Shiana called Linskett that afternoon and taking care not to let Linskett sense that he was a suspect, told him that they'd consulted a dream expert and wanted to talk to him further, get some more information. So Linskett agreed to come down for the interview and he arrived at the Oak Park police station the next afternoon. When he showed up,

Okay. This is weird. This is, I don't know, keep going. Okay.

table where another man was having his Miranda rights read to him, Detective Grego turns to Lynn Scott and says, do you see that? That's routine. Everyone gets their rights read to them when they give a statement. It's a formality. That man just had his house burglarized and he's giving a statement. This paved the way to get Lynn Skitt to let down his guard for when they would read him his rights in the interrogation room. And once his rights were read, they jumped right into it.

So let's talk more about this dream, said Detective Shiana, who led the interrogation. Lenskit begins. So Friday was a normal day for me at school. I worked on my car in the afternoon, then I completed my homework assignments. Then it was evening and I studied for a bit and then I talked to some of my neighbors. My wife went to bed before me at around 1030 and I joined her about a half hour later.

And was she still awake at this time? Asked the detective, wondering if the man's wife could vouch for any of this, like give him an alibi. And Linscott said, no, she was already asleep. After they go through some more details about the dream, actually like getting really detailed saying what is the killer's sex life like, get into his head, what's his psyche? And Linscott's kind of going along with it. Police tell him, okay, we're very interested in your dream from a psychic standpoint and we'll need to talk to you again soon.

The next day, when Detective Shiana reached out again to Linskitt, it seemed that Linskitt was starting to get wise to the investigator's suspicions. Okay. He just straight up asked police if he was a suspect. He's like, okay, I know that, like, I had this dream and I'm willing to help you guys, but am I a suspect? The detective emphatically denied that that was the case. No, no, no, you're not a suspect. We just need your help. And can you do that? Can you... Lie? Can you lie? Police can, yeah. Like...

during an investigation. Okay, okay. Shiana then, under the guise of wanting to provide transparency, asked Linscott to write down any questions or concerns that he might have and bring them by the station. Also, the detective added, we'd like you to help us make a composite sketch of the assailant in your dream.

So early that Friday evening, Linscott was back at the station for another interview. Sitting down with the police and a sketch artist, Linscott really squeezed his memory for the haziest of details from his now week old dream. It had been a week since Karen had been murdered.

And the process of this sketch dragged on for an hour and a half. And when the sketch was complete, it looked an awful lot like Steve Linscott himself. Okay. Which seemed to explain why the sketch artist was looking at Linscott so intently through the process. Like you are basically just describing yourself.

A bit later, the assistant state attorney entered the room to sit on in the interview as Detective Shiana asked Linscott to go through his dream yet again one more time, which would have been at least the fourth time he's now telling police this dream.

Linscott agreed, but with reluctance. The detectives kept asking him to provide details of things that didn't appear in the dream. How does she know her assailant? They asked. Linscott would then be pressed to just outright speculate. They're like, well, how'd she know? And he says, well, that wasn't in the dream. And they're like, hey, but what do you think?

And he says, I don't know. Maybe he came by to pick up something. Maybe he was selling Amway or something. I don't know. That wasn't in my dream. He sat for a moment, aware of how frustrated he was becoming. Again, he asks, do you suspect me of this crime? All three men who were present stammered at the same time until it was the assistant state attorney who spoke up. We don't suspect you. They explained that they just needed to eliminate their star witness in case it went to trial. And Linscott bought it.

And while Linscott was being interviewed, unbeknownst to him, his wife Lois was paid a visit by two plainclothes policemen accompanied by the senior assistant state attorney. They downplayed that her husband was a suspect, their only suspect in fact, and used the ruse that they were trying to gain more insight into the case while also making sure to eliminate her husband. They asked Lois about her husband's religious beliefs and if he ever used drugs. They learned that Linscott had once experimented with drugs and

but then had a dramatic conversion to Christianity. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax, and think about...

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash husband, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash husband now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash husband. While they collected more background information on Steve Linscott from his wife, police also looked around the apartment and casually examined the soles of Linscott's shoes. So basically, they're just doing... Yeah, I mean, they think he did it, which I...

I don't blame them at this point. I mean, how do you come in? That's pretty suspicious for someone to be like, hey, I know exactly what happened.

So Lewis was never cautious or apprehensive while these men were in her apartment because she trusted the police. So she had no reason to believe that she was being misled. She really didn't think that Steve was a suspect. They just thought he was helping in the case. But by 1030 PM that evening, her husband had been at the police station all day and she still hadn't heard from him. So she didn't know what to think. She decided to reach out to the one person who she felt she could trust for guidance. Childbirth.

Chaplain Russell Stroop, who was the director of the Good News Mission where Linscott lived and worked. Stroop's advice to Lewis was tell him to get out of there right away and not to get involved with this any further. Like he's helped enough. He said the dream. That's it. He needs to come home. Now, back at the station and what had turned into a full blown interrogation, Linscott had been repeatedly denied requests to phone his wife until just before midnight.

When he finally was allowed to call her and was able to connect with her, Lewis told her husband about how the police had dropped by. They were probing in his background, asking her questions, snooping around. She says, listen, I talked to Chaplain Stroop and he says to leave immediately and don't get further involved.

When Linscott hung up the phone, he announced to detectives that he was done speaking to them and he was going to head home. This is when everything turned. You're not going anywhere, Detective Shiana told him, confiscating his keys and wallet. The ingratiating tone of the interrogators had now turned hostile. That's when Linscott realized what was happening. He realized that he was a suspect, their main suspect, and he needed to talk to Chaplain Stroop. I don't know. I mean...

for some reason, part of me thinks this guy didn't do it. I, it sounds so stupid because it seems so obvious, but I guess it's, let's see where this goes. So chaplain Stroop shows, shows up and he says, listen, they want DNA samples. And the chaplain says, then give them the DNA samples. If you haven't done anything, it will clear you. You can cooperate. And then we will go home. The detectives then proceeded to grill and skip for another two hours before

before putting him into their patrol car and taking him down to West Suburban Hospital to collect blood and saliva samples. So he has been there all day. They're taking these samples because this man is now their prime suspect. And it was also an opportunity for them to pass by the crime scene so they could point it out and gauge Linscott's reaction.

and Linscott's reaction was he expressed that he thought the murder had occurred in the building on the other side of his, and that the actual location was new information to him. He didn't know it was that building. He thought it was the other one, but no one was buying a word he was saying by now. After getting the samples, they take him back to the police station, and Linscott's car was impounded and searched. So they're like, okay, also we're taking your car. Collected from the overhead dome light inside the car was one light brown hair, the same color and length as Karen's.

Linscott was then fingerprinted and although he expected now to go home he was taken back into the interrogation room where detective Grego told him point blank that he his partner and everyone else working the case knew that Linscott had killed Karen Phillips so just in this one day

things have now taken like a drastic turn. He says, the evidence you gave us tonight will convict you. But Linscott insisted he was innocent. In fact, he begged them to analyze the physical evidence so they could eliminate him. He's like, listen, I just dreamed the murder. I didn't commit the murder. Yeah.

Detective Shiana then pulled out crime scene pictures of Karen's battered body and held them up in front of Linscott's face. Linscott averted his eyes and turned away. The detective began shouting, playing bad cop, like in a scene out of a movie. You want evidence? He barked. What is that? That's a boot. You said the guy was wearing a boot. Linscott wasn't looking, but he could hear the detective angrily striking the picture with his finger each time he pointed at a detail and described it.

The detective loudly explained to Linscott that he had described almost every detail of the murder down to a T. He's like, listen, why would you think you wouldn't be a suspect? You described everything that happened. He then held up the sketch that Linscott had helped create hours earlier and said, it's you. You look at the sketch. It is literally you.

But when Linscott looked at the sketch again, he noted that now it looked even more like himself than it did when he last saw it because the artist had in the hour since added sideburns, a mustache and eyeglasses just like Linscott. So they had altered the sketch even more to look like him. They finished up with pointing out that Linscott was looking

literally wearing the exact shirt he described the murderer wearing. They're like, you walked in here wearing the shirt that you said the murderer was wearing. So by this time, Linska had been at the police station for eight hours and he'd had enough. As he got up to leave, Detective Grego also stood and with his imposingly large frame blocked the man's exit. The detectives warned him that the murder would be his burden to bear, that he'd have to live with it.

trying to get him to confess by continuing to play at his conscience. Shiana lowered his brow and said with disgust, the chances of you dreaming this dream, this is not a dream. This is a murder. This is technically impossible. Right. This was no dream to this girl. This girl is dead and you did it. But Linscott insisted he wasn't playing games. He's like, listen, there's nothing I have to live with. I didn't do this. Like I didn't do this.

I have absolutely no recollection of what you're telling me is actually something I could have done. So then the cops are like, okay, well, were you sleepwalking? Have you ever slept walked? And he's like, no, I don't sleepwalk. Like I didn't do this. Does he have a twin?

No. Oh, okay. So eventually without a confession or hard evidence, they couldn't hold Linscott any longer. So they let him leave. But over the next month, Linscott was trailed and kept under constant pressure or from his perspective harassed. I mean, they have his DNA. Does it match or not? I mean, I feel like that right there is pretty easy. Right. Does the DNA match or does it not? We'll get there.

On November 24th, 1980, that afternoon, Linskett was driving home and detectives Grego and Shiana turned on their flashers, made Linskett step out of his car and placed him under arrest for the murder of Karen Ann Phillips. He was cuffed and thrown into the back of the police car and taken back to the station where he was formally charged with rape,

armed violence, and first degree murder. His bail was set at $450,000 and he was sent to the Cook County jail to await trial. Now, a few months after his arrest, friends and supporters were able to raise the money to postpone and Linscott was freed pending trial, but that trial wouldn't begin for at least another year.

During the trial, among the scant evidence that was presented against Linscott, it was noted that the semen recovered from the victim could only have come from a non-secreter, which means that the individual's blood type cannot be determined from bodily fluids. So Karen's rapist and killer was a non-secreter and so was Linscott. And as we know, only 20% of the population are non-secreters.

But this was so early on that they couldn't test the DNA yet. Oh. So this is our issue here is they have a DNA. All right. And they can match it, but it's not for sure. A forensic expert called as a witness by the prosecution also testified that the head hairs found in Karen's apartment were consistent with Lynn's skits and

And the odds of two similar hairs coming from two different sources was one in 4,500. And the odds of pubic hairs found near the body and pubic hairs taken from linskit coming from two separate individuals was one in 800. So they're like, listen, it's...

The odds are good that it was him. And on June 16th, 1982, a jury acquitted Steve Linscott on the charge of rape. But on the first degree murder count, Linscott was found guilty. Okay. And he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. But? But that wasn't the end of the story.

Three years later, the Illinois Appellate Court looked at the case and decided to reverse his conviction, contending that the proof of guilt was not legally sufficient. They're like, okay, well, your evidence wasn't for sure. It was just likely. And in November of that year, Linscott was released from prison after serving three years. But then in October of the following year, the state Supreme Court challenged the appellate court's decision, arguing that the evidence was in fact enough, and they reversed the reversal.

But then they remanded the case back to the appellate court for consideration and the appellate court reversed the conviction yet again. All right, give me some, I need some hard evidence here. Tell me what's going on. And during all of this, it comes out that at trial, the state knew it was not mentioned. There were a number of pubic and head hairs found in Karen's apartment and on her dead body that indicated that they came from a black male.

Now, Linskitt was not black and they knew this at trial. Justice moves really slow sometimes and they ordered a retrial. Then in 1992, with DNA now being a thing in the world, the swabs from the rape kit were processed for DNA and a profile of Karen's murderer was developed and the DNA did not match Steve Linskitt's. So 12 years after he was first charged, the charges against Steve Linskitt were finally dropped.

Though the state attorney did not outright pronounce him innocent. They just said there's insufficient evidence to retry him. It wasn't until 2002 that then governor of Illinois, George Ryan, officially pardoned Steve Linscott and cleared his name. So this entire ordeal all came about because of a dream. Yeah. So you're telling me that he really had a dream? Yes. That's just crazy. Like he actually had a dream and...

He didn't do it? Yes. So stories like this are so frustrating to hear because Karen Phillips murder could have been solved if the Oak Park detectives weren't so singularly focused on making a case against Steve. I mean, but come on, like, how do you not like, well, his dream and at

the time that they charged him, they knew that the hairs belong to a black male and they still charge Steve. A guy whose only mistake was thinking a dream might be significant enough to share with his local police. Last time I helped you guys out. Yeah. He's like never again. But Karen Phillips murder is not the only case like this. Many other similar crimes in Oak Park and the surrounding suburbs have gone unsolved.

unsolved. In fact, if you were murdered in Chicago any time between 1910 and yesterday, odds are against your murder ever being solved. Like Luella Veal-Sutters, a 36-year-old woman who was raped and fatally stabbed in the head inside of her own bedroom in 1973 just half the time

mile away from where Karen Ann Phillips was killed, her case never solved. Got it. Or 22-year-old Rita Hopkinson, who was raped and stabbed to death in broad daylight on a train platform in Oak Park in 1978, never solved. Or here's one you may have heard of, 24-year-old Kathleen Lombardo, who was cut down while jogging through her Oak Park neighborhood one summer in 1984, raped and stabbed to death in an alleyway. To this day, still unsolved.

24-year-old Deborah Sawyer in 1980 stabbed in the neck and sexually assaulted in her garage. Magdalena Acosta stabbed to death in her home in 1987. Cynthia Joan Chemler stabbed to death off a jogging path in 1993. All unsolved, all in the vicinity of Oak Park.

In fact, Oak Park's success at solving cold cases has been very low. In fact, there's little evidence Oak Park and some of the nearby towns and Chicago itself even work their cold cases. We don't know why. Who can say? But the current nonprofit that Murder With My Husband has the opportunity to donate to is End The Backlog.

which is a nonprofit that helps pay for tests to be done. Tests that can close cases, give answers, and maybe even serve some sliver of justice. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being the reason that Murder With My Husband can hopefully help out with these. You guys matter and you are helping in the true crime community. And that is the case of Karen Ann Phillips. I can't believe he had a dream. I'm just still blown away that he literally had a dream.

And he didn't do it. That he dreamed basically the whole murder. Okay. But to me, him being similar to the suspect was himself inserting himself in the dream. I guess that makes way more sense, actually. Way more sense. Like he had this dream. It was scary. But also, is this real? Is this premonition? Did he dream her murder? I don't even want to get into that because I'm just so confused. I don't know. I have no idea. And...

But also poor Steve, because the only thing he was guilty of is literally telling police. Why did she die? No one even knows why he killed her. Just to rape her? Right. Who was she arguing with? Right. We don't even know any of that. We still don't have any answers. No, there's no answers to all that. So what the heck happened there? That is our case. And I guess we will see you guys next time with another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.