A cold case involving a missing man is solved in Monroe County

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – A break in a nearly eight year old Monroe County cold case led to an arrest and an indictment.

Wednesday morning Sheriff Cecil Cantrell held a press conference about the case.

William E. “Pops” Phillips went missing over seven years ago.

Now, Jeffery Dewayne Kennedy, 54, was charged with his murder.

Last month, a Monroe County Grand Jury indicted Kennedy on a first degree murder charge in the cold case.

Investigators are releasing very little information about the investigation because it will be going to trial.

One thing we do know, is that it’s taken years of good police work to get to this day.

William E. “Pops” Phillips was 52 when he vanished in June of 2011.

He was reported missing six months before Sheriff Cecil Cantrell took office in 2012.

“We inherited that case. We met with the Phillips family and assured them that we would work as hard as we could to find out what happened to William E. “Pops” Phillips and we did and we worked diligently to do that,” said Sheriff Cantrell.

That work paid off, leading to a murder charge against Kennedy.

“All I can tell you without getting into my evidence that we do have against him, is we presented our evidence to the Monroe County Grand Jury in March and they came down with a true bill, where he has been indicted for first-degree murder.”

Kennedy is currently serving a 10 year sentence in Rankin County for a drug conviction out of Monroe County.

He’s been in custody since November.

“This June will be eight years that we’ve been working on this case and we worked on it hard. This case has been worked on very, very hard. A lot of man hours, a lot of agencies have been involved. MBI has been involved, the Amory Police Department, Chief Ronnie Bowen’s people, our investigators.”

One of those investigators is Rodney Starling.

He started working with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department as a criminal investigator and a narcotics agent a year after Phillips was reported missing.

That’s when he took it upon himself to get involved as a lead investigator in the case.

It’s now the first cold case he’s helped solve.

“It’s just one step closer to giving closure to the family. It’s not a conviction, it’s just an indictment, right now. Hopefully, down the road we will get a conviction,” said Starling.

Investigators are keeping a tight lid on information from the investigation to ensure that conviction.

“It took a long time to put it all together because when you get a cold case, it’s just hard to put everything together, but we finally did and we gathered a lot and a lot of evidence that will be presented in court when we have this trial.”

Sheriff Cantrell says the investigation is still active with possibly more arrests to come.

He also said Kennedy will be brought back to Monroe County, to be arraigned for first degree murder.