The Castaway - Chapter 3

Okay, so Shelly Phillips was reported as a runaway in 1988. The first thing I had to do was obtain the original police report and find out what the circumstances were leading up to her disappearance. I drove to San Diego and obtained the report from the San Diego Police Department records bureau downtown.

I obtained the names and birth dates of Shelly's parents and then ran them in the computer to get a current address. They each had different addresses and it turned out they divorced a couple years after Shelly's disappearance and have both re-married since then. The father was in another state back east, but the mother was still in the San Diego area.

These phone calls are never easy to make. I had to call Mrs. Phillips, whose child went missing 14 years ago, and tell her the bad news. Shelly won't be coming home. I could only hope that she would find some relief in knowing that her daughter is not in any pain or suffering and the "waiting" was finally over. She had probably expected this phone call for many years, hoping it would never come, and then again, hoping it would.

Mrs. Phillips answered the phone like I imagine she would have on any other day - no concern, no expectations. When I introduced myself, her voice began to show some apprehension, but mostly curiosity. Then I told her I was calling about Shelly. There was a long silence... and then softly, "Is she dead?"

"Yes," I answered. "I'm sorry."

I heard a deep breath, a sigh of relief perhaps. There was no sobbing or hysterical reaction. It had been a long time and she had probably played this moment out in her head a hundred times. I made arrangements to come to her house the next day and gather some information. I arrived about 10am and we sat at the kitchen table. Mrs. Phillips was an attractive woman about 48-years old, but you could see the years of anguish had taken it's toll on her physically. She looked tired.

Mrs. Phillips told me that Shelly disappeared a couple of days before the Super Bowl, on January 29th 1988. Shelly had been invited by friends who had tickets. Shelly was a big Denver Brocos fan and they were playing the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII at nearby Jack Murphy Stadium (Now Qualcomm). But Mrs. Phillips didn't feel comfortable letting her 13-year-old daughter attend the largest sporting event of the year with a crowd of 70,000 people, so she told Shelly, "No." They argued about it and Shelly stormed out of the house. That was the last time Mrs. Phillips ever saw her daughter.

Mrs. Phillips told me that she and her husband suspected Shelly had gone to the football game and would return home soon thereafter to accept her punishment. But when they finally located Shelley's friends, they discovered that Shelley did not attend the Super Bowl and the friends had not seen or heard from Shelly in several days. The friends told the Phillips that they suspected Shelly was grounded again and unable to leave the house or call.

One of the friends then suggested that the Phillips search for a house located in nearby El Cajon. Without providing any specific details, they said that Shelly had been dating a 19-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton. They said Shelly often ditched school and went to the boys house during the day. The friends were unable to provide a name or an address for the boy, but they gave a general location and description of the house.

The Phillips made a report to the San Diego Police Department, who took the report as a voluntary runaway and entered Shelly into the system. With a city the size of San Diego, that's about all that gets done on a voluntary runaway case. There just isn't enough manpower to chase kids all over town who don't want to be home. The Phillips were pretty much in charge of their own investigation.

A couple of days later, Mr. Phillips was driving around El Cajon attempting to find the house described by Shelly's friends. A faded blue Oldsmobile pulled up next to him at a traffic light. Mr. Phillips looked over and saw two young men in the front seat with the trademark Marine Corps haircuts. Mr. Phillips gasped when he saw his daughter sitting in the back seat. He fumbled for the door handle and screamed, "Shelly!" He honked his horn and tried to put his car in park all at the same time.

Shelly casually looked over and spotted her father in the car next to her. A sudden look of fear came over Shelly's face and she shouted something at the two Marines. They looked at Mr. Phillips and then punched the gas and sped away in the Oldsmobile.

Mr. Phillips yelled, "No, wait!" And it seemed to take an eternity to get the car back into gear and give chase. The Oldsmobile was already so far down the road that Mr. Phillips was losing sight of it at the curve up ahead. Mr. Phillips had the gas pedal floored and he had the advantage of a more powerful Mercedes engine. He was slowly closing the distance on the much older Oldsmobile and he could start to see Shelly looking out the back window, watching her father gain the upper hand.

As Mr. Phillips came within a hundred feet of the Oldsmobile he wondered what he was going to do when he actually caught up to them. That thought, unfortunately, was quickly interupted by the sight of the Marine on the passenger seat leaning out the window and pointing something backward at Mr. Phillips. A brief second of disbelief by Mr. Phillips was suddenly confirmed by the "pop" of a handgun and the shattering of his windshield.

The bullet punched a hole dead center of his windshield and passed between the front seats. The smashing of the windshield however completely blinded Mr. Phillips and sent the car spinning in circles down the road. The force of the spinning car caused Mr. Phillips to be pinned against his door and all he could think of was how badly it was going to hurt when he crashed.

The Mercedes stopped spinning and came to rest against a curb. The Oldsmobile was gone. Shelly was gone.

Mr. Phillips reported the incident to the San Diego Police Department, but with no license plate and only a brief look at two generic looking Marines, there wasn't much information for them to go on. San Diego PD still considered Shelly to be a voluntary runaway.

As Mrs. Phillips finished telling me this story, she shook her head in disbelief. She said, "Shelly told those boys to speed away. She didn't want to come home. They tried to kill her father and she still didn't come home. She didn't even call us to see if her father was alright. How could our child hate us so much?"

Before I left Mrs. Phillips' house, I made arrangements for her to go to the Coroner's Office and provide a blood sample for DNA analysis. I told her that even though the dental records matched Shelly, we always prefer to collect DNA to be 100% sure.

After I left the Phillips home, I went straight to the Sheriff's Station back in Riversie County and saw the evidence technician. I told her I needed to see the green canvas bag that we found Shelly's remains in.

The canvas bag was broken into dozens of brittle pieces, but now I saw it differently. After listening to the story from Mrs. Phillips, I couldn't wait to get back here and confirm my suspicions. I sifted through the pieces of dirty canvas and found a couple of metal grommets, then a metal clasp. It was beginning to look very familiar.

I found a small piece of green canvas with faded black letters on it. "M.C.".

I found another piece with more letters. "U.S.".

My suspicions were confirmed. The bag that Shelly's body was stuffed into before she was tossed over the cliff onto Pete Garrity's property was a US Marine Corps, military duffel bag. That narrow road that curved through the hills above Garrity's house also happened to pass by the back entrance of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base twenty miles away.

I had a lead, a good lead. Now I had to figure out who those two Marines were in that faded blue Oldsmobile. I was getting closer but there was still a lot of work to do.