She Was Left Dead In A Ditch With Her Toddler On The Side Of The Road: 53 Years Later, Her Cold Case Has Been Solved
More than 50 years after an Indiana murder occurred, a suspect has finally been identified. On the evening of Friday, July 7, 1972, a 26-year-old mother named Phyllis Bailer was traveling from Indianapolis to Bluffton, Indiana. Her three-year-old daughter was in the car with her.
They were going to visit Bailer’s parents, but they never showed up in Bluffton. So, Bailer’s family called the police and reported her missing. The next morning, her car was found abandoned on the highway with the hood up in Grant County, Indiana.
An hour later, a woman driving by Allen County found Bailer and her daughter in a ditch on the side of the road. When police arrived on the scene, they determined that Bailer was dead, but her daughter was unharmed.
An autopsy showed that Bailer died of a gunshot wound and was assaulted. The Allen County Police and Indiana State Police investigated the case.
In 1972, DNA testing was not yet available and was not commonly used in law enforcement until the early 1990s.
A partial DNA profile was developed from Bailer’s clothing years after the murder, which eliminated the main suspect. Soon, the case went cold.
In 2024, the Indiana State Police Laboratory was able to develop a stronger DNA profile, which eventually led to the identification of Fred Allen Lienemann as the killer.
He was from Gross Point, Michigan, and would have been 25 years old at the time of Bailer’s murder. According to police, his DNA was detected on her clothing.
“The Indiana State Police Cold Case Team and the Allen County Police Department began working with Identifinders International, a forensic genealogy company in California, founded by Colleen Fitzpatrick,” stated the press release.
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“Forensic genealogy was utilized in conjunction with the DNA profile, and the killer was identified in early 2025.”
Lienemann did not have any known connections to Bailer, but he did have a criminal history that included car theft, police said. Additionally, he was born in the Anderson, Indiana, area, which is about 40 miles from Indianapolis.
During the investigation, police learned that Lienemann was murdered in 1985 in Detroit. A newspaper clipping from The Detroit News, dated May 1985, reported that two men had been charged with the murder of Lienemann. He was beaten to death that April and was 37 years old.
The two men were accused of beating Lienemann with a baseball bat and setting his body on fire in a dumpster.
If Lienemann were still alive today, he would be charged with Bailer’s murder, the Indiana State Police said. After years of questions, Bailer’s family finally has answers about what happened to her.
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