Oklahoma Sexual Assault Task Force Provides Update On Untested Rape Kits

Oklahoma has more than 7,000 untested kits, 3,000 of those kits are just from Tulsa. For the past several months the Sexual Assault Task Force has been working to figure out what to do with backlogged rape kits.

Tulsa Police Department has all of the information for those 3,000 kits which means they know where they are, they know what day they were brought in and they have a reason for why they weren't tested but now they are working with other agencies across the state to solve this problem and get more offenders behind bars.

Maggie Zingman's daughter, Brittany Phillips, was raped and suffocated inside her Tulsa apartment in 2004. The evidence police gathered from the scene wasn't enough to find her killer.

“I thought at least it will be solved within a year and now we are heading towards the 14th anniversary and it’s still unsolved,” said Zingman.

Zingman advocates for states to be more proactive in handling rape cases so they can work to bring answers to victims,

“I can’t change what happened with Brittany, but I am going to fight as hard as I can to change these laws,” said Zingman.

Tulsa Police Sargent Jillian Phippen is working with other Oklahoma law enforcement agencies to figure out how to lessen the backlog in cases that the state has accumulated.

“As a task force we know it’s quite daunting. we have over 7,000 as a state,” said Sgt. Phippen

During a meeting this week, the task force broke into two sub-committees. One is going to work towards creating one sexual assault kit for the entire state. The other will look at how to decide which backlogged kits get tested first.

“All of that is going to move forward to the victim finding justice as well as us being able to complete our investigation,” said Sgt. Phippen

Brittany's rape kit was tested because it was part of a murder investigation, but Zingman hopes by finding a way to test these kits, other victims will get the closure that she never DID.

“Nothing is going to change the hole I have inside of my heart but the more I can help other people than that hole just lessens a little bit,” said Zingman.

There's no mandate to test these kits at this point. The task force is just developing ideas on how to best proceed.