Coffee With Missy: The Murder of Roberta Snider

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

October 1, 2025

Roberta Lee Snider was 69 years old, married to her husband Phillip for 53 years, when she disappeared during what was supposed to be a trip to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, in early January 2018. Roberta was a devoted Elvis Presley enthusiast, and the trip itself seemed, at least at first, like a fitting reason for the couple's absence. What actually happened to her would take months to untangle, four separate and increasingly implausible accounts from her own husband, and an elaborate undercover operation built around fast food coffee and a fabricated romance before the truth finally came out.

A Long Marriage and a Planned Trip

Phillip Snider, a retired carpenter, and Roberta had spent more than five decades together by January 2018, living in Hartville, Ohio. According to Phillip's initial account of events, the couple set out for a road trip to Graceland so that Roberta, whom he claimed was suffering from cancer, could visit the iconic destination one final time before she died.

A Story That Began Falling Apart Almost Immediately

Phillip's first account of what happened to Roberta claimed that she had choked on phlegm near Graceland, that an ambulance had responded and transported her away, and that she had subsequently been cremated. When investigators went looking for any record of such an ambulance call, none could be found, an absence that immediately cast doubt on the entire story.

A Second Version, Then a Third

Confronted with the lack of any ambulance record, Phillip revised his account, now claiming that Roberta had actually died somewhere between Columbus and Cincinnati, well before they ever reached Tennessee, and that he had wrapped her body in trash bags and disposed of it in the Tennessee River rather than continuing on to Memphis as originally planned. When surveillance footage later surfaced showing Phillip checking into a Memphis hotel entirely alone, this account collapsed as well, and he offered yet another version, this time claiming Roberta had actually died back at their home in Ohio, and that he had placed her body in his truck and disposed of it in the river at some point during the drive south.

An Undercover Officer Named Missy

With each new version of Phillip's story falling apart under scrutiny, and with investigators unable to secure a confession through conventional interrogation, the Hartville Police Department turned to a more unconventional approach. A 50 year old undercover officer began befriending Phillip directly, meeting him regularly for coffee at a local Burger King he was known to frequent. The officer, posing under a persona that included the name Missy, told Phillip she was caring for her own dying mother, a detail designed to build an emotional rapport and shared sense of grief between them. Over the course of several weeks of these recorded meetings, the officer's careful, patient approach began to pay off, with Phillip growing increasingly comfortable and forthcoming during their fast food coffee dates. At one point during this extended undercover operation, Phillip Snider, still only weeks removed from his wife's actual death, proposed marriage to the undercover officer.

A Confession Over Coffee

It was during these recorded conversations with Missy that Phillip finally provided his real account of what had happened to Roberta. He admitted that following an argument on January 2, 2018, he had placed a shop cloth over her head while she slept and struck her twice with a two pound stake hammer. He then described disposing of her remains in a dumpster located in Bullitt County, Kentucky, evidence that led investigators to believe her body had likely ended up in a landfill, a location from which recovery would be effectively impossible.

Physical Evidence That Matched the Confession

Once Phillip's actual account came to light, investigators moved to corroborate it with physical evidence. A search of the couple's home turned up bloodstained fabric matching Roberta's DNA inside a plastic tub kept in Phillip's basement, and a cadaver dog brought in to examine the same tub alerted to the scent of human remains. DNA testing confirmed that blood found on a piece of sweatshirt fabric recovered during the investigation belonged to Roberta, and additional bloodstains matching her DNA were discovered on a loveseat cushion inside the home, physical evidence that lined up precisely with the confession Phillip had given to the undercover officer he believed was a genuine romantic prospect.

A Guilty Plea and a Judge's Condemnation

In August 2018, Phillip Snider pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse. As part of the arrangement, he agreed to lead authorities to the Kentucky location where he claimed to have disposed of Roberta's body, though investigators have said they never expect to actually recover her remains given how thoroughly the passage of time and the nature of a landfill disposal would have destroyed any physical trace of her. At sentencing, Stark County Common Pleas Judge Frank Forchione did not mince words in addressing Phillip directly, telling him that the hottest places in hell are reserved for people like him. Phillip received a sentence of 20 years to life, and he remains incarcerated at the Richland Correctional Institution in Mansfield, Ohio, with parole eligibility not arriving until 2038, when he would be in his nineties.

A Case Built on Patience

What makes the Snider case particularly notable within the broader landscape of unsolved and cold homicide investigations is the specific method that ultimately cracked it open. Rather than relying on a traditional interrogation, or on forensic evidence alone, investigators recognized that Phillip's own need for companionship and connection, so soon after killing his wife of more than five decades, represented an exploitable vulnerability. The resulting weeks of recorded coffee meetings, culminating in an actual marriage proposal to a woman who did not exist in the way Phillip believed she did, produced the confession that physical evidence alone might never have secured, given how thoroughly Roberta's remains had already been placed beyond any realistic hope of recovery.

What Remains

Roberta Lee Snider's body has never been found, and investigators believe it likely never will be, lost somewhere within a Kentucky landfill following her husband's initial disposal of her remains in a dumpster in Bullitt County. Her case stands as a striking example of how far some investigations must go to secure any form of accountability when physical evidence alone proves insufficient, relying instead on an elaborate, weeks long undercover operation built around fabricated companionship to finally draw out the truth from a man who had already told three other stories in an effort to avoid it.

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