One Decade Later, the Mystery of Baby Kate Remains

[XLFD]

Ten years ago today, a four month old baby girl named Katherine Phillips went missing.  Her mother, Ariel Courtland, reported shortly after 1 PM that the infant's father, Sean Phillips, had taken off from the Birch Lake Apartment complex with their baby in the back seat.  Mr. Phillips would be confronted two hours later by police outside of his home, officers finding various effects of the child who would be dubbed Baby Kate in the pockets of Phillips' shorts and trunk of his car.

Baby Kate herself would never be found, and ten months later, when Sean Phillips would go to trial under the charge of unlawful imprisonment of Baby Kate, he would not give any hint of her whereabouts, suggesting through his attorney and a mysterious jail note that an unlawful adoption may have taken place.  The jury didn't buy it, and he was sentenced for 10-15 years in the 'trial of the millenium' for Mason County, covered statewide and nationally.

The year after his trial, a well-publicized search for the body of Baby Kate was conducted in an area around Modjeski Road in Grant Township by dozens of volunteers.  A pair of shoes that Phillips owned had soil and plant materials that suggested this area may have been visited the day of the disappearance; the location was close enough to allow a brief stop by Phillips on his way back to home.  Nothing was found.

Nevertheless, Phillips (above) carried on corresponding with Baby Kate's mother while in prison and wrote what many have deemed a confession letter late in 2012.  The letter would be used against him in a second trial for the open murder of Baby Kate, prosecuted by the Michigan Attorney General's Office in 2016.  Despite not having a dead body, nor any solid clue as to what may have actually happened to it (if there even was a dead body), the jury decided that Phillips was guilty of second degree murder, Judge Peter Wadel assigning him 19-45 years served concurrently with the earlier sentence.

While most officials and other people believe that a conviction of murder brings closure to the case of the missing infant, the underlying mystery of Baby Kate's disappearance lives on by the silence of Sean Phillips as regards to what happened when he was presumed alone with Baby Kate on a pleasant summer afternoon ten years ago today.  Disclosure of a location by Phillips might actually allow him the ability to get out of prison earlier than the 29-60 years he currently faces (minus ten years served), yet he remains mute, allowing a factually dubious letter speak for him and a defense at two trials that suggests there may have been an adoption or Ariel Courtland was lying about what happened.

This has led to some persistent theories that look at Phillips' continued silence on the matter as proof that he is protecting someone other than himself by not coming out with the full truth.  Several plausible scenarios still exist a decade after the disappearance dealing with black market adoptions and the possibility that Baby Kate's death happened before Phillips visited Courtland.  These become compelling once one learns that Courtland often offered conflicting testimony throughout the hearings and trials, stories that varied from her interviews with police ten years ago today. 

Baby Kate and the full truth in this case has been missing for ten years, let's hope we can eventually find where both lay.  Read more here.

[Willy]

Well written article X, plus thanks for all of the information you linked to this article. This situation never made any sense but the only conclusion I can draw from this is that he was involved with the baby's  disappearance. The baby must be dead because why would anyone confess to killing the baby and then spend the rest of their life in prison if there was any possibility she was still alive. 

[XLFD]

Sure, he was involved with the disappearance, but I think that both Annette Smedley and David Glancy, acting as his attorneys in the first and second trials, would tell you (if they weren't silenced by professional ethics) that Sean Phillips restricted them from offering defenses that would implicate Baby Kate's mother along with him.  Also, one can't help notice from reading the report and investigations, trial transcripts and errata that the police and prosecutor weren't willing to go that route either.  They made the calculation that convicting Phillips would be sufficient with what they had; if they went after Ariel too, they would lose their star witness and her credibility as a victim, the only one who reported Phillips had the baby with him.

Whichever scenario holds to be true (if we ever learn the truth), it will provoke a few questions regarding why.

[Willy]

He certainly has the time to think over his decisions.If your correct then the police and prosecutor did not do their jobs plus he was convicted on  some very flimsy evidence. I wonder what would have been the outcome if he had not written that letter. It's to bad the family still doesn't know the truth. It's hard to believe Baby Kate would be almost 11 years old now. Talk about bad parenting.

My guess is that Phillips is sporting a few tattoos by now and possibly some  body piercings.