March 27, 2003
Joe Berger (AP)
Mike Philips was found dead in his neighbor's home on the morning of Tuesday, March 26, 2003. At this time, the cause of death is unknown. An autopsy has been performed, and there was no evidence of a heart condition or other illnesses. The case is open for investigation.
March 29, 2003
Joe Berger (AP)
New details have emerged about the death of Mike Philips. An audio cassette was found and analyzed. The transcript of the audio cassette is shown below.
Transcript:
Hello. I am Mike Phillips, a thirty-two year old software developer. If you are listening to this cassette, I will already be dead. Let this cassette also serve as a warning for all people. If you receive a strange email, do not open it. This all started back in January of this year. One night, I was browsing through my email. My wife was having a night out with her friends, so I was home alone. I saw a strange looking email. The address was nobody that I knew, and it appeared to be a string of random characters. The email goes as follows: 17&:$26gshdjjsie6389$-/%|<@মন তত্ত্বাবধায়ক.cx. The name of the email service was written in a foreign language. After running it through the web translator, it was revealed to mean "mind-taker". When I opened the email, there was what appeared to be a file attachment. It was a video, and it was simply titled "મૃત્યુ.exe". I translated again. This time, the word was revealed to mean "death". I am the kind of person who loves horror movies, and because of the strange titles, I assumed this was some foreign horror movie that I had not yet seen. I clicked the play button, and immediately the video cut to a woman walking down the street. The quality was very poor, almost like a cheap home video camera. The video displayed a time stamp. One strange thing about this time stamp was that it appeared to be present time, 12:34 A.M. The camera zoomed in on the woman, who I could see was my wife. I began to get a little bit freaked out at this point. As I watched, a man began to approach her from behind. He was wielding a knife. The man thrust the knife into my wife's neck, killing her instantly. The man then bent over my wife's dead body, and began to slice the top of her head off. He removed the brain out of my wife. Then, the man did something that I will never forget. He lifted the top of his head open. He removed his own brain, and put the brain of my wife in the cavity where his old brain had been. He then put his old brain into my wife's head. As soon as he did this, my wife's body disappeared into thin air. I called the police immediately. Five minutes later, the police knocked on my door. Just as I went to let them in, the video deleted from my computer. I told the police everything that had happened. They did not believe me. They took a breathalyzer test, and it showed that I was drunk. The police left without even doing one bit of investigating. Weeks past, and my wife did not return. At night, I began getting strange dreams. Some of these dreams involved me being stabbed. Other times, I was the one doing the stabbing. Sometimes, I would wake up in fits of extreme terror, and see a shadow creeping outside my window. At the beginning of March, I saw the shadowy figure almost every hour and minute of my day. I became paranoid and I began having insomnia. Right now, it is 3:51 A.M. I can't sleep. I think I am next.
This is the last time that Phillips can be heard speaking in full. What follows is the rest of the audio transcription.
Muffled footsteps can be heard. The footsteps approach the recording device. The sound of a knife cutting through bone can be heard, as well as muffled grunting and squelching noises. The audio recording abruptly ends.
April 1, 2003
Joe Berger (AP)
After careful analysis of the audio cassette, the death of Mike Philips and his wife Ann Philips have both been ruled homicides. It is thought that these murders are linked with the murders of four women in 2002. No suspects have been found, and the killer is still at large.