▶ Watch Video: Meet the DNA “detective” who helped solve a decades-old cold case
A suspect has been identified in an Indiana murder that occurred more than half a century ago, officials said.
Phyllis Bailer, 26, was traveling from Indianapolis to Bluffton, Indiana on the evening of Friday, July 7, 1972, the Indiana State Police said in a news release. Bailer had her three-year-old daughter in the car. They were going to visit Bailer’s parents, police said, but the pair never arrived in Bluffton, and Bailer’s family called police to report her missing.
The next morning, Bailer’s car was found in Grant County, Indiana, abandoned with the hood up on the highway, according to police. About an hour later, a woman driving in nearby Allen County found Bailer and her daughter in a ditch on the side of another road. Bailer was dead and her daughter was unharmed, police said.
An autopsy determined that Bailer had been fatally shot and sexually assaulted. The Allen County Police and Indiana State Police investigated the case.
DNA testing was not available in 1972, and did not become more common for law enforcement to use until the early 1990s, the Indiana State Police noted. After the murder, a partial DNA profile was developed from Bailer’s clothing. The state police did not specify when the DNA profile was created.
That DNA profile was used to eliminate the main suspect in the case. As DNA testing continued to improve, the Indiana State Police’s Cold Case Team continued to work on the case, authorities said, and in 2024 they developed a “much stronger DNA profile,” again from Bailer’s clothing.
That DNA profile was taken to Identifiers International, a forensic genealogy company in California. The combined resources of the company and the cold case team were able to identify a suspect in the case in early 2025.
The suspect was identified as Fred Allen Lienemann, who would have been 25 at the time of Bailer’s killing. He was a match for the DNA found on Bailer’s clothes, the Indiana State Police said. The two had no known connections. Lienemann had a long criminal history, including a charge of first-degree murder in May 1985, police said.
Investigators discovered that Lienemann had been murdered in Detroit in 1985. If he had been alive today, he would have been charged with Bailer’s murder, the Indiana State Police said, and the case would have been prosecuted by the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office.
“Phyllis Bailer never made it to Bluffton to visit her family,” Indiana State Police public information officer Sergeant Wes Rowlander said on social media. “After years of questions, this family finally has answers about what happened to her.”
