After more than 50 years, Indiana police have closed one of the state’s most shocking cold cases. The alleged perpetrator of the murder of Phyllis Bailer, 26, who was killed on July 17, 1972, while traveling in a car with her three-year-old daughter from Indianapolis to Bluffton, Indiana, has been identified. According to investigators, mother and daughter were on their way to visit the woman’s parents, but they never arrived at their destination.
That same evening, worried, Bailer’s parents reported her missing. The next day, a woman driving in Allen County made a tragic discovery: she found Phyllis and the child in a roadside ditch. The mother was dead and the body showed signs of violence; the daughter was miraculously unharmed. A few hours later, the victim’s car was found abandoned with its doors open in Grant County.
For decades, the case remained unresolved. But the breakthrough came thanks to advances in the field of forensic genetics. By analyzing DNA recovered from the victim’s clothing, stored for more than half a century in potential evidence files, investigators traced it back to Fred Allen Lienemann, who was 25 years old at the time of the events. “DNA testing did not exist in 1972, and it wasn’t until the early 1990s that it became a common investigative tool,” Indiana State Police said. Lienemann had a criminal record and was charged with murder in 1985. That year he was himself killed in Detroit. Had he still been alive, authorities explained, he would have been formally charged with the murder of Phyllis Bailer.
