TADP Episode 28 – True Crime – Phylicia Thomas missing




The armchair detective podcast show

Summary:  <br> <br> Phylicia Albina Thomas has been missing since February 11 2004 from Lake Township Pennsylvanian. She is described as being 5 feet 6 inches tall. She is a Caucasian female with brown hair and blue eyes. Both of her arm are scared due to dog bites and she freckles on her face. Phylicia is also a cigarette smoker. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing a rust colored wool sweater, a blue colored polo with the words pump and pantry on it and white pants and grey nike sneakers, a blue pump n pantry had and a homemade hemp necklace.<br> <br> Phylicia had finished her shift at the Pump-N-Pantry at approximately 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. on February 11, 2004. According to her co-workers, she was in good spirits when she left work. Afterwards, she went to her home in the vicinity of the 100 block of Route 118 in Lake Township, Pennsylvania. Her boyfriend, Ed Rudaski, says he was sleeping on the couch and woke up when she came in. They had a brief conversation and she asked him for a beer. He told her the beer was outside in his all-terrain vehicle (ATV), then he went back to sleep on the couch.<br> <br> When Rudaski woke up again an hour later and went to their bedroom, Thomas was not there. He drove his ATV to a friend's house, thinking she might be there, but she was not, so he went back to their home to wait for her return. She has never been heard from again. Rudaski believes Thomas left their residence of her own accord. There was no sign of forced entry to the house, and he heard no suspicious noises.<br> <br> Investigators believe Thomas's disappearance is suspicious. Rudaski has cooperated with the investigation and is not being called a suspect. The man who gave Thomas a ride home from work the evening of her disappearance has also been interviewed and cleared of suspicion. She was carrying her cigarettes with her at the time she went missing.<br> <br> Searchers found some mysterious notes while looking for Thomas. The notes alluded to a body which was supposedly behind the Mountain Fresh Supermarket in Pike's Creek, Pennsylvania. Police looked in that location but found nothing. The supermarket is only about a tenth of a mile from the Pump-N-Pantry where Thomas worked.<br> <br> Investigators searched the home of Steven Allan Martin, a friend of Rudaski's, for evidence relating to Thomas's disappearance. They would not say what, if anything, that they found. Martin claims he called the Rudaski/Thomas residence shortly after 11:30 p.m. on February 11 and spoke to Thomas. He says he asked to speak to Rudaski and she told him he was sleeping. This would corroborate Rudaski's version of events.<br> <br> Curiously, Martin is connected to the case of another missing young woman from Lake Township. He is the last person known to have seen Jennifer Barziloski, his girlfriend's eighteen-year-old sister, before she disappeared from Edwardsville, Pennsylvania in 2001. Shortly after she vanished, her friend, Phylicia Thomas, told her mother that she believed she knew what happened to her and that she knew who was responsible. Then, in 2004, Phylicia herself vanished without a trace. Then, in April 2010, Jennifer's skull was located in Hunlock Township. No other remains were uncovered. The cause of death is undetermined but her family believes she met with foul play. Her and Phylicia's cases remain unsolved. Some media accounts suggested that Thomas and Barziloski's cases were connected, but authorities have found nothing to support this hypothesis beyond the fact that the two women were friends and Martin was the last person known to have contact with them. He is, however, considered a person of interest in both cases.<br> <br> One of Martin's associates was Hugo Selenski, who was charged with several counts of murder after human remains were found in his backyard. Selenski confessed to several killings, including the murder of Hyun Jong Song,