John Phillips (Jack of Diamonds, Rhode Island)

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Speaker 1 Our card this week is John Phillips, the Jack of Diamonds from Rhode Island. At 19 years old, John's positive energy was so contagious that those around him nicknamed him Sunshine.

Speaker 1 He spent his free time fishing with his dad, playing baseball, and helping neighbors with their yard work.

Speaker 1 And in the grand scheme of life, it felt like his story was just beginning.

Speaker 1 But in reality, his story would come to a tragic end on an October night in 1986 when John was found dead, killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 1 His death was ruled a suicide, and for about 15 years, the case was considered closed. But in 2001, everything everyone thought they knew about this case changed.

Speaker 1 And they realized perhaps it wasn't so open and shut after all.

Speaker 1 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 1 It was 6:30 a.m. on October 28th, 1986, when two police officers sat down for breakfast at their usual spot in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Speaker 1 The morning was unfolding like any other until a man walked into the diner and rushed toward the officers' table.

Speaker 1 He told them that he was driving with his wife in the parking lot across the street when he noticed something strange out of his window.

Speaker 1 And when he got closer and realized that it was a body lying on the concrete, he went over to the diner because he noticed the officers' police cars parked in the lot.

Speaker 1 Abandoning their breakfasts, the cops followed this witness across the street to where the fully clothed body of a man was lying slightly curled up on his side, almost in the fetal position.

Speaker 5 I mean, the scene itself, you know, it's just, there's a wow factor to it. You know, I mean, there was definitely a dramatic flair to it.

Speaker 1 That was Captain John McCoy McCoy with the North Kingstown Police Department. The victim in the parking lot had suffered a gunshot wound to the right temple.

Speaker 1 And strangely, there was also this arsenal of weapons all around the body. I mean, rifles, handguns, hunting knives, and ammunition.

Speaker 1 Newspapers at the time reported anywhere from half a dozen to 15 weapons were there. And they were all around and underneath this man.

Speaker 1 Some of the weapons were even stuffed into his pants pockets and and waistband.

Speaker 5 While this activity is going on, a younger person happened to come from walking from one of the neighborhoods close by and recognized that, hey, that looks like John Phillips, who lives down in the Pottawamit area.

Speaker 5 In that particular area, a lot of the kids knew each other. When we find out he's from Pottawamit, we don't have an address.
So an officer is sent down there to kind of knock on some doors.

Speaker 5 He eventually finds out that John Phillips lives in Pottawamit.

Speaker 1 It was John's sister Carol at the time getting ready for school who answered the door.

Speaker 4 It was a North Kingston police officer and he asked if

Speaker 4 there was a parent home.

Speaker 4 So I got my mother.

Speaker 4 I knew something was wrong. At 17, I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 4 It's seven o'clock in the morning and they need a parent. They need an adult.
And I just knew it. They said that we have a body.
You know, we believe it to be your son.

Speaker 1 John's mom, Mary, had to go to the scene and be the one to confirm that it was her son. And she had to answer a heartbreaking question.
Could John have done this to himself?

Speaker 5 And, you know, her response was, it possibly could be.

Speaker 1 Carol's not sure why her mom responded that way. Maybe shock, maybe she just didn't know.
And in that moment, anything seemed possible.

Speaker 1 But really, she said her mom wouldn't have been the right person to ask that question to.

Speaker 1 Carol said that at the time, her parents had been divorced for about seven years and John lived with their dad.

Speaker 1 In the years leading up to his death, John didn't see Mary often and they weren't really that close.

Speaker 1 The way Carol saw it, if someone else in her family had been called to identify the body, they probably wouldn't have said that. Carol saw John more often and had a closer relationship with him.

Speaker 1 And she said that he wasn't depressed. I mean, sure, he struggled a bit after his parents' divorce and ended up dropping out of high school, but he seemed like he was getting back on track.

Speaker 1 He had just started working full-time for a construction company and he was getting into a routine.

Speaker 4 He was a very, very happy person. He loved, loved life.
He loved friends. He loved people.
He loved life.

Speaker 4 The elderly lady in the neighborhood, he mowed her lawn. He fixed her fence.
He would do anything for anyone. He was just really kind, you know, really helpful.
Just, just, he was a really good kid.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, Carol was not at the scene to tell detectives any of that. She and the rest of her family were interviewed after the identification.

Speaker 1 So the assumption that morning was that though the scene looked bizarre with all of these weapons everywhere, this was likely a suicide.

Speaker 1 But detectives still had to do their due diligence until the ME's official ruling.

Speaker 1 In the Providence Journal, at the time, detectives said that investigators were, quote, quote, treating the case as a homicide, although the shooting might have been accidental, unquote.

Speaker 1 So detectives stayed focused on the scene itself and the surrounding area.

Speaker 1 In their initial canvas, they didn't get much from an investigative standpoint, but people did seem surprised at John's death because they all agreed that he was a good kid.

Speaker 5 Everybody seemed to like him. No matter who you talk to, who I've talked to, John was always like the life of the party.
He had his ups ups and downs but it wasn't as like this was going to happen

Speaker 1 while those conversations were happening around 8 30 a.m a strange connection was made to another reported crime just a few minutes from where john's body was discovered police got a call from a guy named richard or rich as most people knew him He wanted to report a break-in at the house he was watching for a friend over on Woodlawn Drive.

Speaker 1 Rich, who was 18 at the time, said that when he got to the house that morning, he found that a sliding door had been shattered and someone had been inside the house.

Speaker 5 At that break-in, it's discovered that multiple firearms had been taken from that particular home.

Speaker 5 The person who had reported it and had been watching over the house, when asked if there was a suspect in the break-in, he provides the name John Phillips.

Speaker 5 In short order, they were able to figure out that the firearms that were with John did in fact come from that Woodlawn address. So that was the connection that was ultimately made.

Speaker 1 Now, Rich and John knew each other, but they weren't super close. Rich said he had just run into John the night before and invited him to come hang out with a couple of his other friends at the house.

Speaker 5 Kind of a rainy, dismal night. Around seven o'clock, this guy, Rich, sees John walking down the road, knows John, pulls over and says, hey, do you want to come watch the World Series game?

Speaker 5 Now, again, this this is the seventh game of the World Series, the big game for any Red Sox, you know, fans here.

Speaker 5 We're supposedly going to break the Bambino curse, you know, the Mets versus the Red Sox.

Speaker 5 And John agrees to get in the car.

Speaker 1 Before heading to the Woodlawn house, Rich and John went over to John's dad's place where John grabbed a couple of wine coolers, two wine coolers to be exact, from the kitchen, and then they headed to the watch party.

Speaker 5 It wasn't like a rager. You know, it was a bunch of people watching a game and having a few drinks.

Speaker 1 According to the partygoers, they were watching the game and having a good time when all of a sudden, around 10 p.m., they realized that John was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Rich looked around for a little bit, but when he didn't find John, they all just assumed that he'd walked home.

Speaker 5 John walked everywhere. That was his style.
So I guess it wasn't out of the ordinary for John to do that.

Speaker 5 Whether or not he said bye, everyone that I've had the privilege of speaking with basically said no, they didn't hear, you know, bye-bye. See you later.
That he just wasn't around.

Speaker 5 And they give that 10 to 10:30 timeframe as to when he's nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 Carol told us that John would have planned to get back to his dad's that night between 10 and 11 p.m.

Speaker 1 But sometime between 10:30 and 11, witnesses in the neighborhood heard a loud bang.

Speaker 1 And unlike the rest of the party goers, John never made it home.

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Speaker 1 After the ME performed an autopsy, the cause of death was officially ruled as a single gunshot wound to the right temple.

Speaker 1 At the time, the Providence Journal reported that the fatal bullet probably came from either a.38 caliber or a.357 caliber revolver, both of which were found with with the body and collected for testing.

Speaker 1 Now, they did ultimately determine which gun was used, but McCoy doesn't want to share that detail with the public. The ME also noted that John had no defensive wounds.

Speaker 1 His blood alcohol level was 0.12%, which was indicative of social drinking. I mean, Carol remembered hearing the ME discuss this with her mom.

Speaker 4 She said that he didn't have any drugs in his system, that he had the equivalency of one wine cooler in his system,

Speaker 4 that he could not have pulled the trigger because the gun had never been fired. If he had pulled the trigger, he would have had residue on his hands.

Speaker 1 Captain McCoy declined to comment on this directly.

Speaker 1 We know John's hands were tested for gunshot residue and the guns were fingerprinted, but McCoy told us he didn't want to reveal the official results of those tests to the public.

Speaker 1 He said that it's atypical for an Emmy to discuss these kinds of details with family, but he wasn't on the case at the time, so he couldn't say for sure what conversations did or did not take place.

Speaker 1 It's also important to note that gunshot residue tests were conducted differently in the 80s, and they're not nearly as accurate or reliable as they are today.

Speaker 1 Carol also seemed to remember hearing that there were tire marks at the scene where John's body was discovered, and some local papers reported this detail as well.

Speaker 1 But again, McCoy wouldn't confirm confirm or deny that fact.

Speaker 1 What we know is that with the information they had at the time, investigators somehow came to the theory that John had left the party when everyone said he did.

Speaker 1 And then later that night, after all the partygoers had left, John returned to the house, broke in by shattering a glass door.

Speaker 1 stole several weapons, walked over a mile to the lot where he would later be found, surrounded himself with the weapons, and then shot himself, all with no witnesses seeing him.

Speaker 5 If something gets interjected, like a suicide, when people start to put the puzzle pieces to fit that particular narrative,

Speaker 5 the investigation kind of

Speaker 5 loses its course.

Speaker 1 Not everyone was buying that narrative, though.

Speaker 4 There's no way John did that.

Speaker 4 No way. I knew he didn't steal those guns.
John's not going to do that. He's going to get in trouble if he does that.
He's going to walk in with a bunch of guns. He's going to get arrested.

Speaker 4 He'll go to jail. That wasn't what path he was on.
I knew he didn't do it.

Speaker 1 So while investigators were processing evidence, Carol started some investigating of her own. And she was determined to provide and prove an alternate theory.

Speaker 1 From the get, she was suspicious of the other partygoers, particularly Rich. Also a 19-year-old boy named Ronnie and a 15-year-old girl named Diane.

Speaker 1 Now, there were two other partygoers there at the house that night, but it seems like they left pretty early on.

Speaker 4 Richard was a troublemaker. I never liked him.
He was very sketchy. He doesn't say much.
He's just really, he just stands, smokes his cigarettes. I don't know.

Speaker 4 There was just something about him I wasn't crazy about. And I'm still not.

Speaker 4 Ronnie was a punk. He wasn't a nice kid.

Speaker 1 He was not.

Speaker 4 Diane, they were like Bonnie and Clyde, those two.

Speaker 1 Much like detectives, Carol began by driving around the neighborhood to find people that could give her more information. And much like detectives, she didn't get much.

Speaker 1 When she spoke with the partygoers, though, she was able to pull a few new details out of them, or details that were at least new to her.

Speaker 4 I was told by Diane that John was swinging a handgun.

Speaker 4 While Diane and Ronnie were sitting on the sofa and Ronnie got mad at John, I said, that's a a lie. Because John wouldn't swing a handgun around.
He wouldn't swing a handgun.

Speaker 4 John had a lot of common sense.

Speaker 1 Diane also had a different story about where they first assumed John was when he was MIA.

Speaker 4 Diane asked Richard, where did John go? Richard said, he's passed out downstairs on the floor in the basement. Now, that right there is a complete lie.
A complete lie.

Speaker 4 A, he had a wine cooler in his system. B, John never passed out because he never got so, John never really got intoxicated.

Speaker 4 He might drink four or five beers and get like giggly and laughing and have fun.

Speaker 4 That's what he was about, having a good time and having fun, not about getting in trouble, not about people getting hurt. That's not what John was about at all.

Speaker 4 He did not pass out on the basement floor. Then she asked again where John was, and Richard said, oh he left

Speaker 1 at this same time john's dad gardner was asking some of his own questions too his were to the parents of the partygoers unfortunately gardner is now deceased but carol was able to tell us how those conversations went my father asked diane's mother what time did diane get home that night because she said she got home at nine o'clock that's what she told the police She said Diane got home late.

Speaker 4 She got home at 11.30 and she was on restriction for two weeks because of it.

Speaker 1 Now, when we asked Captain McCoy about these claims, he said he wasn't on John's case at the time.

Speaker 1 So he doesn't know what, if anything, detectives did with most of these details, or if they're anything more than hearsay.

Speaker 1 McCoy did say that he was aware of these conflicting details from Diane, but said that it could be attributed to the fact that she was so young at the time of the incident.

Speaker 1 Regardless, the inconsistencies made Gardner suspicious. So he decided to walk the same path that his son allegedly took that night.

Speaker 4 So my brother had long socks on with Reebok sneakers and fuzzy laces kind of that you would pick stuff up on. My father had the same sneakers.

Speaker 4 My father put the same pair of socks on and he walked the tracks. By the time he got to

Speaker 4 where they lived, his laces and his socks were covered in those burrs.

Speaker 1 Covered.

Speaker 1 Gardner figured if John had walked that path that night, like everyone was implying he did, he should see the same thing on his shoes.

Speaker 1 So Gardner asked detectives if he could have John's belongings back to check, but they declined, likely because there was still an active investigation going on.

Speaker 1 When the family did get John's clothes back about a year later, after the case was closed, Carol said that there were no burrs to be found. But a lot of time had passed at that point.

Speaker 1 The clothes had already been processed by investigators, so there was no way to really know if at one point some burrs were present.

Speaker 1 From there, the family kind of reached the end of the road with what they could figure out on their own. And it seemed the same was true for detectives.

Speaker 1 It took more than eight months, but the ME did officially rule the manner of death as a suicide on July 16th, 1987.

Speaker 1 And for 15 years, most people on the force put John's story aside, except for one person.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was something about actually living it, about being one of the first people at the scene with such a dramatic flair, as Captain McCoy put it. Maybe that stays with you.

Speaker 1 Because in 2001, one of the original responding detectives decided that he needs to take another look at the case.

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Speaker 5 I think he just felt some work needed to be done on it and then passed it to my chief. He then took a look at the pictures and the story surrounding it and just something just didn't sit right.

Speaker 5 He's like, wow, you know, there's some things that really need to be kind of looked into here.

Speaker 5 At which time the department made an effort to pitch this to the medical examiner's office to get the death certificate overturned, allowing us to try to get answers for the family.

Speaker 5 Because, meanwhile, you know, they were asking for answers for all these years. And

Speaker 5 this is just our attempt to hopefully try and give them some answers.

Speaker 1 Once the ME changed the status of John's case to pending further investigation in 2001, North Kingstown PD called John's family back into the station.

Speaker 4 My mother, my father, my sister, and myself came in and sat and they said that they were reopening the case and we were excited about it.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, according to McCoy, things didn't get rolling quite as quickly as detectives hoped.

Speaker 5 And they tried their attempts to work on it from 2001 to 2008. But the nature of the beast being the small town, small resource that we have, you know, not making excuses.

Speaker 5 But, you know, things come in and we try to work it as hard and as long as we can. There's a lot of like, you know, knocking on some doors, trying to talk to some people that were around that time.

Speaker 5 But as far as like formal interviews and recordings, that doesn't really happen.

Speaker 4 And then we'd get called in here and there, whatever. But my father had enough, you know, two years would go by and then they call us in again.

Speaker 4 And then months would go by and then they call us in again. And then three years would go by.

Speaker 5 It kind of stayed kind of in limbo based on the facts that you see there until about 2008 when it was reviewed, you know, by myself.

Speaker 5 You know, you just take one look at it in its totality and you're like, wow. I'm reading statements and you're going like, where's the?

Speaker 5 And you're just like, you're wanting to do better, to do more.

Speaker 1 McCoy said that it was pictures of the body and the discovery site that really stuck out to him. He didn't think it looked like the fatal shot was fired there in that parking lot.

Speaker 1 To him, it looked much more like the body was placed there.

Speaker 5 I mean, you just see the pictures of the scene and you automatically have 101 questions. And then you read the report and you got 101 more.

Speaker 5 I mean, if your main suspect in this break-in is John, he's going to walk these guns in October in Rhode Island,

Speaker 5 dark,

Speaker 5 multiple, you know, long guns and everything that from that point to where he was. you know, through neighborhoods or on the streets or even on a trail for that matter.

Speaker 5 I mean, I think your automatic assumption is when you see that as an investigator, like, you know, something right. I think it'd be difficult to walk and I think it'd be difficult not to be seen.

Speaker 1 After that first glance in 2008, McCoy decided to dive in headfirst. He wanted to try and nail down exactly what happened that October night in 1986, which at this point was around 22 years ago.

Speaker 1 He started by putting the entire case file in chronological order. And then he called in all the previous detectives who had ever touched the case.

Speaker 5 Really honestly, I didn't get much of anything to really explain how even like this became a suicide in the first place.

Speaker 1 So McCoy went back to the Phillips family to get a more thorough victimology. And after that, he began methodically reaching out to everyone mentioned in the case files.

Speaker 1 But unfortunately, he still didn't get much. McCoy said he spoke to the other partygoers multiple times, some more than others.

Speaker 1 He wouldn't give us the specifics of those conversations, but he did say that they pretty much stuck to the same story that they told in 1986, that they're all watching the game together at the Woodlawn house.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly, around 10 o'clock, John was just nowhere to be found. Despite McCoy's best efforts, it was still hard to make progress.

Speaker 1 But he believed that someone out there could give him the answers he needed. So to find them, in 2011, he decided to create a Facebook page for John.

Speaker 5 You're thinking, oh, we're going to put this on social media. We're going to get all these wonderful tips.
Nothing. Facebook garnered absolutely no leads whatsoever for me.

Speaker 5 The department hasn't shied away from any platform to try to bring attention to this case. in hopes that maybe that one phone call will come in.

Speaker 5 And, you know, because a lot of these hinge on just literally that one detail.

Speaker 1 when we asked mccoy he said that with the information he has now there are no official persons of interest in john's case but he'd like to hear from rich diane and ronnie because he believes that they maybe even unknowingly have information that could aid him in his investigation

Speaker 5 i'm convinced that they know exactly what I need to know, the final puzzle piece to bring closure to the Phillips family and tell them exactly what happened to their son, their brother, their uncle.

Speaker 1 And Carol seems to stand in agreement with that.

Speaker 4 I said to Officer McCoy, I looked at him one of the last times I saw him, and I said, I believe that Richard, Diane, and Ronnie hold the key.

Speaker 1 So of course, we tried to contact them ourselves. We sent texts to any phone numbers we could find connected to Ronnie, Rich, and Diane.
We left multiple voicemails, sent Facebook messages.

Speaker 1 But we never heard anything back. Though McCoy wants to hear from these individuals, he's wary about getting tunnel vision.

Speaker 1 He doesn't want to waste time focusing on the same people that the detectives before him did and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Speaker 1 In the 16 years that he's been on this case, he has interviewed over 100 people for information.

Speaker 1 He even went as far as a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania to talk to an inmate, but it didn't end up getting him anywhere.

Speaker 1 In fact, since 1986, there has never been any formal suspects declared in this case. And because it was initially ruled a suicide, some important pieces of evidence are no longer in police possession.

Speaker 1 Like, for instance, John's clothing was returned to his family and the stolen guns, all of which were recovered, were returned to their owner. So there's nothing McCoy can send out to be tested.

Speaker 1 McCoy wouldn't share his theory about the case with us or whether he thought John's death was an accident or a premeditated murder.

Speaker 1 But he did say that there are a number of ways that he can see the events of October 27th, 1986 playing out.

Speaker 5 When a case gets reopened like this one has, I think it can unnecessarily instill fear in the wrong people.

Speaker 5 We're not here to unnecessarily prosecute people. We just want to know the truth.
We're right there.

Speaker 5 It's just those people need to feel comfortable and know that people have their best interests at heart. I'm just looking to get the facts, the truth.

Speaker 5 And I agree with the Phillips family that that answer truly needs to come out sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1 Even with her suspicions, Carol said she's not angry. She doesn't want revenge.
She doesn't want karmic retribution. She just wants to know what happened so she can finally put all the rumors to rest.

Speaker 1 And she's been dealing with them for more than 38 years.

Speaker 1 I just, the biggest thing for me is just being

Speaker 4 able to say John didn't rob that house. He didn't steal the guns.
He didn't kill himself. He didn't do any of that stuff.
This is what happened. You know, I just would like to clear my brother's name.

Speaker 4 on that stuff. That's all I'm looking for.
Not looking for anything else. Just to clear his name.
And my message is, and I mean this with all my heart, I swear, and I absolutely mean it 100%.

Speaker 4 If someone came forth right now and said to me, Carol, this is what happened. I am so sorry.
I know it's been a long time.

Speaker 4 I know your hurt family's been hurt. You know, it's...

Speaker 4 I literally would thank them, give them a hug, and tell them, it's all right. I I appreciate you telling me.
That's all I wanted. I'm not looking for someone to be in trouble.

Speaker 1 Carol couldn't emphasize this point enough. She has a tattoo on her arm that says, never hold a grudge.

Speaker 1 Underneath it is John's signature and a bunch of X's and O's in his own handwriting from an old card that he'd wrote her.

Speaker 1 The quote is something that John once said to Carol that has stuck with her ever since.

Speaker 4 He told me a year before he died, don't you ever hold a grudge? It's poison to your soul. Grudges just eat at your soul.
I don't hold a grudge with anybody.

Speaker 4 I would love for someone to just to come to me and tell me. And I really mean that.

Speaker 4 I live by this, you know, and I really mean that when I say it would be the best gift just to know.

Speaker 1 If you have any information about the suspicious death of John Phillips in North Kingstown, Rhode Island in October of 1986, you can reach Captain McCoy directly at johnphillipsnk at gmail.com or you can call the North Kingstown PD at 401-294-3316 extension 8211.

Speaker 1 You can also send a direct message to detectives through the Facebook profile johnphillips nk.

Speaker 1 If you or someone you know is in crisis or feeling suicidal, please reach out for help by calling the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, where trained counselors are available 24-7 to provide support.

Speaker 1 The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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Speaker 7 He'll spend 12 minutes setting up, plugging in, and maneuvering. It's like using a fire hose to water a houseplant.
Get him a cordless vacuum.

Speaker 7 And with Amazon early holiday deals, you can save big on home electronics. Now Dustin can skip the project planning phase and go straight to tactical crumb elimination.

Speaker 8 20th Century Studios presents the upcoming comedy, Ella McKay, from Academy Award-winning writer-director James L. Brooks.

Speaker 8 Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles her family and work life in a story about the people you love and how to survive them, featuring an all-star cast including Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumale Ninjani, Iowa Deborey, Julie Kavner, with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 8 Ella McKay in theaters December 12th.