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WILKES-BARRE — Several times, Pauline Bailey turned and stared out the window while her friend, Judy Lorah Fisher, passionately talked about new information and unverified tips.
Pauline is the mother of Phylicia Thomas, who went missing on Feb. 11, 2004. Her body has never been found. Her killers remain unknown.
Pauline and Judy sat with me and reporter Ed Lewis at the Times Leader last week to discuss the case. As Judy detailed information and tips she has received since the last time we spoke, Bailey listened — often turning away to stare out the window, gazing perhaps, into a dream world and hoping she would awaken and the last 15-plus years would have been just a nightmare.
But what remains is reality. Pauline is a 63-year-old brokenhearted mother who lives to one day give her daughter a proper burial — bringing some closure to the case that has gone unsolved for nearly 16 years.
Phylicia Thomas went missing Feb. 11, 2004, and is presumed murdered. Her remains have never been found, despite many searches. She was 22 at the time.
And while nearly 16 years have passed since she was last seen at a party in Hunlock Township, the hope to find her and bring those responsible to justice remains strong.
As Judy and Pauline talked about the case, they shared a resolve that they know who is responsible for Phylicia’s death. They still can’t understand why the case remains unsolved. They claim there were 17 people at the party where they allege Phylicia was brutally murdered and then carried out of the trailer in a bloody blanket and taken God knows where.
Yet, they say, nobody has come forward to tell what they know.
“Why doesn’t anybody care?” a tearful Pauline asked. “It’s my daughter.”
How or why Phylicia got caught up in a seedy, drug-filled world is as much of a mystery. So Judy and Pauline are left with trying to piece together all of the bits and pieces of information to try to find something — anything — that might solve the case and, more importantly, lead to finding Phylicia’s remains.
This is not a pretty story. The case is unsolved, there are no public updates on the status of the investigation, and almost 16 years later, Pauline is no closer to knowing what happened to her daughter or why.
So what is left for Pauline to hope for?
Judy and Pauline would like to sit down with investigators and share the information they have received. They feel it would be beneficial for all to sit around a table and discuss the case. They feel something positive might come of a meeting like that. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. Maybe there are dots that can be connected.
Pauline says she has no answers and she wants — make that deserves — answers.
“We’re not questioning the investigators,” Judy said. “We just want to help.”
Pauline also recalled Jennifer Barziloski, a friend of Phylicia’s, who went missing in June 2001. It was along Roaring Brook Creek on April 2, 2010, when two boys found a human skull, identified by dental records as the skull of Barziloski, who was 18 when she was reported missing. But nothing more since.
Pauline has previously said she believes Phylicia was killed because she was asking questions about Barziloski’s disappearance.
Last year, several searches were conducted with certified cadaver dogs. Judy said the dogs got several “hits,” but after considerable digging on the site near where the trailer stood, nothing was found.
State police have said they conducted a search with cadaver dogs trained to detect human remains, but no “hits” were recorded.
Every February, on the anniversary of Phylicia’s disappearance, a vigil is held on Patriot Square in Nanticoke. And each year, hope is renewed that Phylicia will be found and the vigils will end.
At every vigil, Pauline has given an impassioned speech, asking anyone to come forward with information about her missing daughter.
“We love her and we will never forget her,” Bailey said before the 2018 vigil began. “And we will find her and we will say goodbye to her. I just can’t understand how those who did this have not been found. They could still be out there somewhere.”
Indeed they could be.
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