Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide detectives ended a two-day search Thursday night in Lancaster after finding the remains of two missing men on a large plot of land near 50th Street East and Avenue F. The men were identified as 61-year-old Ricky Phillips and 46-year-old Edward Perez, both from the Lancaster area.
The identification brought the missing-person cases into one investigation that had been active since Phillips was reported missing on Sept. 10 and Perez on Sept. 19. The bodies had been found earlier this week in a remote stretch of California desert, and detectives spent Tuesday and Wednesday digging at the Lancaster site next to a ramshackle home before wrapping up the search.
That search also reached a second property in the 43000 block of Blooming Park Street in Lancaster on Tuesday, showing that investigators were working more than one location as they tried to connect the missing reports to what was buried in the desert. Justin Pyon said the search was on “a large plot of land,” a description that matched the scale of the operation more than any tidy explanation of how the case fit together.
What still does not fit is the relationship between Phillips and Perez. Investigators said it was not clear what connection there was between the two men, even after their remains were identified, and there were no arrests. A man at the Blooming Park Street location was briefly handcuffed and put in a patrol car before being released, but the search ended with no public answer on cause of death and no indication of who, if anyone, will be charged.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said no further information would be provided because the cases are still under investigation. For now, the facts are limited but stark: two missing Lancaster-area men, two desert graves, and a search that closed without explaining how Phillips and Perez ended up there.
