In the fall of 2019, Sarah Jane Willard, a 29-year-old female from Coral Springs, Florida, embarked on a journey that would tragically be her last. She left her apartment on October 28, 2019, a detail her husband recounted to the police. It wasn't entirely unusual for her to travel to meet friends she had connected with online. However, after six weeks with no contact, her husband and mother grew increasingly concerned and reported her missing in December 2019.
The last known financial transaction she made was at a Pizza Hut on November 1, 2019, though the location remains unknown.
The investigation into her disappearance eventually led law enforcement to the residence of Phillip Allen York in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Willard had met York online. On Valentine's Day 2020, investigators made a grim discovery in the backyard of York's home on Sweetbriar Street in the St. Martin community: the buried remains of Sarah Jane Willard. An autopsy would later reveal that she had died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
Phillip Allen York, who was 54 at the time of his arrest, was taken into custody and charged with her murder. He was also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, stemming from a prior conviction for malicious wounding in Virginia, where he had served a ten-year prison sentence for stabbing a woman. The investigation into Willard's death was a collaborative effort between the Jackson County Sheriff's Department and the FBI Safe Streets Task Force.
On September 19, 2022, Phillip Allen York pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. For the murder of Sarah Jane Willard, he was sentenced to life in prison. He received an additional ten-year sentence for the weapons charge. The District Attorney described the murder as a 'heinous crime driven by the defendant's selfish sexual desires,' stating that York believed no one would come looking for his victim.
