← Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood
Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood
175. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders - Part II
01:41:37
The Phantom Killer Strikes
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Hello, delicious friends, and welcome back to who did what Now? The history podcast. That is not your history class. With me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. And this is part two of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders. When in 1946, over a span of ten weeks, a killer or killers stalked lovers lanes, spreading fear and panic throughout the region, which, of course, was spurred on, unsurprisingly, by the press. Now, this again is part two, so if you haven't listened to part one, you're gonna want to go do that because that gives us our context and the first attacks. Now, again, this is our blanket, blanket warning. It's just best to do it again. Your blanket trigger warning. This is a series of attacks and murders from 1946. I am going to be as clinical as possible when discussing attacks and injuries. However, if you feel uncomfortable, if you feel like this is going to cause you any distress whatsoever with the discussion of murder, violence against men, women, children, sexual assault and suicide. Suicide. These are all going to be discussed in this episode. And if this is going to cause you any issues, I'm going to suggest gently that you exit stage left and we'll catch you next time. That being said, this is a series on 1940s crime that we are covering this month because what better way to start the new year than with 1940s crime? Specifically. Mainly so I can do this voice and a few other reasons. There's actually considerably less jibber jabber in this episode. Specifically because. Specifically because I have a lot to get through. This is information dense. So get a snack, get a blanket, curl up. If you've got a task that's gonna require an hour or more to do, then roll on up because this is. This is. This is gonna be a lot. Okay, so without further ado. I know Katie, quit your. Not chibble jubble and fact me. And fact you I will, because all the sources are listed in the previous episode. Now, without further ado, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. Texarkana was still celebrating the end of the war as spring approached in 1946. The town quickly letting the attack on the couple on Lovers Lane, Mary Jean Leary and Jimmy Hollis, fade into a convenient memory. Something from the past by a stranger passing through, perhaps, or. Or even a targeted attack on the couple. But yeah, it was in the past. Spring was nearly here, and the general consensus amongst townsfolk and police alike was peaceful and somewhat optimistic. Even the Texarkana Gazette would write, in good weather. Families in nice residential sections sit on the front porches with the supper, sipping iced teas. They swung on porch swings, rocked in rockers and spoke to neighbors walking home from a movie or from church. Few people locked doors or windows. The only shades pulled down were in bathrooms or bedrooms. All in all, it was just a normal springtime in texarkana. It was the 24th of March, 1946, and rain had been bucketing down in Texarkana since the night before with no intention of stopping a lone motorist who for the record, was never publicly identified. And he is braving the downpour at around quarter past eight. So 8:15 that Sunday morning, most likely heading to work or to church. It's. It's Sunday, you know. Or perhaps because he didn't want to be identified, he was leaving somewhere slightly more unsavory, like a brothel on the outskirts of town. I'm just floating the idea. Okay, okay, listen. Things are about to get dark, so let's have a moment of humor. So as he's traveling, he sees a car parked beside Rich Road, which is now South Robinson, which is about like 300ft away from Highway 67 west for people who like their geography. At first he thinks the 1941 Oldsmobile sedan is stuck in the mud, you know, because the rain and all. Then as he's approaching the vehicle, he sees a couple who appear to be asleep and being a Good Samaritan, he parks up, gets out of his car and goes on to check on what he believes are a stranded couple. Maybe they need a lift into town. Maybe they need a tow. Who knows? The would be rescuers concern soon turned to shock when he finally got close enough to see the couple slumped in the sedan. The sight of blood forced the man to retreat back to his own car and and speed into town where he alerted the police. So because the Oldsmobile was parked about a mile outside the city limits, this fell under the jurisdiction of County Sheriff Bill Presley. William H. Presley from the previous episode. We've met him before. And he is accompanied to the scene by Jackson Neely Ronalds, the Texarkana chief of police on the Texas side. Sheriff Presley made his way to the crime scene on Rich Road with the chief in tow. When they arrived at the scene, they found two victims in the blood stained Oldsmobile sedan's back compartment. Sidebar There are going to be very few sidebars in this because I don't simply have time. So I tried to find a crime scene photo because like, this is the time period where you get crime scene photos. They're everywhere. Right. And I was looking not for any sense of morbidity or to look at the bodies, but honestly, to have a better understanding of the car. Because the old Medeal sedan, the One that's the 1941, it had three versions, and they were all slightly different. So I was trying to, like, understand the positioning in the car because they're different. And that's. It kind of threw me off because I don't. I don't know vehicles that well. So, in the sedan, the male victim's body was in a kneeling position on the floorboard between the front and back seats. His forehead was resting on crossed hands. His pockets were outturned as if emptied. The female victim was face down on top of a blanket on the back seat, and beside her was her open purse or handbag. Both of the victims appeared to be fully dressed, and both had been shot in the back of the head. Blood from the pair had seeped from one of the sedan's rear doors and stained the running board. Now, evidence collection. It was always going to be difficult with the rain, but even more so, it was hindered by the crowd that was amassing at the crime scene. Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster. Even still, the two lawmen were able to spot bloodstains some 20ft away from the vehicle, enough not to have been washed away by the downpour. So much, in fact, that Presley and Runnells determined that one or both of the victims were slain on the sandy loam and then put back in the car. So this would mean that the crime scene was staged, but for why? To cover up the motive with the outturned pockets and open purses that could easily be assumed to be a robbery? Was it to delay discovery of the bodies? Or was there any relevance to the manner in which the victims were posed? The lack of details in this is frustrating, and that's without more discrepancies that we will get to in a minute. So the female victim, she was face down. Was she in a specific position? Was she splayed? Was she curled up? Was she posed in a manner that was meant to embarrass or shame her? Or was she posed in a manner to cover up and save her dignity? Was there shame? Was there fear? Right. The male victim was in a kneeling position with his head resting on his crossed hands. Like, does that symbolize remorse or shame? Like, on your knees, facing your hands? Like, again, is. Is it remorse? Is it dignity? Why? Like, we don't have enough description of how the female victim's body was? Was Positioned. And that to me is an issue, but I feel like it's one of those things where old timey cops were like, well, let's not be too graphic about this. It did not take long for the sheriff and the police chief to identify the victims, probably because there was a massive crowd who went, I know that car. Richard Griffin was a 29 year old veteran who had served in the USCB's Construction Battalion and was discharged in November 1945, two months after the war had ended. Richard, at the time of his death, had been living at home with his mother on Robison's Court on Texarkana's Walnut Street. Pollyanne Moore was 17 years old. A recent graduate of Atlanta High School. She had been working at the Red River Arsenal as a checker since July 1945. Pollyanne had not been living at home. She had actually moved to Texarkana and was staying with her cousin Ardell at a boarding house on Magnolia Street. Now staying in a boarding house or a rooming house was very common for young women at the time because it gave them somewhat level of independence but also protection like they were supposed to be respectable if they were staying in these, in these places. Now Pollyanne and Richard had been dating for around six weeks since early 1946. And before you ask, no, no one thought the 12 year age difference was at all an issue. The couple had spent much of Saturday 23rd March together. They had been spotted at a cafe around 2pm on West 7th Street. Later that evening they visited another cafe on the same street, this time with Richard's sister Eleanor and her beau, J A Proctor. Now I did read in one of the many, many articles and reports that that after that, like even later on that the couple had gone to a midnight movie and then to a diner for a snack, after which they left. Now I couldn't find, found like corroborating evidence for that in any of the official files, but like I have seen it in two or three places, so we don't know. What we do know is that their date ended Sunday morning with Richard Griffin and Pollyanne Moore leaving separately. Both were loaded up into ambulances. Richard was brought to the Texarkana Funeral Home and Pollyanne was taken to the Hanner Funeral Home in Atlanta, Texas and they were 32 miles apart. Pollyanne was taken to the Hanner Funeral Home in Atlanta, Texas and they were 32 miles apart. Now remember when I mentioned discrepancies earlier? Well, strap in. What everyone does agree on is that both victims were shot in the back of the head with a.32 calibre pistol. There was no weapon found at the scene and as such a murder suicide could be ruled out. However, earlier reports stated that each victim was shot once bullet. Later reports claimed that Richard had in fact been shot twice. Then there was another report published decades later and filled with so many errors. Consecutively, one after another in a row. It says that they were both shot twice. Which is like nothing contemporary. Nothing contemporary even suggests that both of them were shot twice. But of course it's. It's in so many podcasts and articles. Because it's more dramatic, I guess. But wait, there's more. The ballistic accounts include one, two and several cartridge cases found in and around the vehicle. But an FBI memo states that only two shell casings and one slug were recovered from the scene. I'm not done. There was an FBI memo from 15 May 1946 that stated no useful fingerprints were retrieved from the car. However, seven months later, another FBI document requests a comparison of suspect prints with the, and I quote, unidentified latents found at that crime scene. And if you guessed that the forensic confusion would end there, you guessed incorrectly. Try again next time. There were conflicting reports regarding the possible sexual assault of Pollyann Moore. An FBI memo said that her corpse was delivered to morticians for embalming without any tests for sexual assault. The 17 year old was discovered in a state of well dress as opposed to undress. And the Texarkana Gazette reported that her corpse was examined by a local physician who ascertained that she had not been, and I quote, criminally assaulted. Criminal assault was a common euphemism for rape back in the day. However, there were four Texas Ranger files that state the girl was in fact raped. And later articles would suggest even further injuries. Two months after her death, newspaper articles would claim that Pollyanne had been horribly mutilated by a sex maniacal killer in 1954. Journalists would report that the girl had been where they got the information. Well, whoms to say? Maybe they got it from one of the rangers. Maybe they pulled it out their arses. Whoms to say? Then of course we have the FBI report which yeah, it says that both victims were shot in the vehicle or. But local authorities, their reports say that they were shot outside the vehicle and then brought back in. But of course. And allegedly the blood found on the sandy loam was tested and it was concluded that it could only have been Pollyann Moore's, not Richard Griffin's. But here's the thing. We don't have an Autopsy report. So we can't confirm what happened to that poor girl. What we do know is that the authorities believed, the local authorities at least believed that she had been raped. And the amount of hoopla surrounding the crime scene meant that it was compromised. Which was par for the course back then. But with a double murder on their hands, the Texarkana authorities knew that they were in above their heads and they needed help. It became a multi agency endeavor. Bowie county teamed up with Miller county police force and the Texas Rangers sent one of their top men. You heard me. Top men. Texas sent in Jimmy Gere, Texas Ranger, the day after the bodies were discovered. Naturally, everyone was shocked at the double murder, but it hadn't been connected to the earlier crimes. The attacks on Mary Jean Leary and Jimmy Hollis. Not yet. And it hadn't really affected people on a grand scale, like they were still out and about living their lives. And the authorities were searching for leads like they questioned nearly 60 potential witnesses in three days, including the staff and patrons of the nearby Club Dallas. And they even put up a $500 reward for useful information. Unfortunately, as we know, money is a great incentive for people to lie. And the police here, they're swimming upstream against a hundred false leads. The inquest merely stated that the couples were murdered for reasons unknown by people or persons unknown. And then everyone just moved on with their lives. It was Palm Sunday, 1946. So that's the Sunday before Easter. So during Lent. Heathens, sorry, cradle Catholic. So just after April 14, G.H. weaver was traveling with his wife and their son from their home in Summerhill Road and were heading to Prescott, some 40 miles northeast of Texarkana. The family had not gotten far when they were met with the sight of a man's body laying on the north shoulder of the North Park Road. The bloody clothes and lack of movement left no doubt in their minds that the man was dead. And so they continued on. Just 600ft up the road to the house of Harvey Word, who immediately called Bowie County Sheriff's office. The officers arrived on the scene and quickly confirmed that the man was in fact dead and a victim of homicide. The victim was carrying his ID in his pocket and as such was easily identified. And he wasn't a man. He was a boy. 16 year old James Paul Martin from Kilgore in Texas had been shot four times. Now, discrepancies sometimes. You will see his age listed as 17. He was three weeks shy of his 17th birthday. He was still 16 when he was murdered and he had been shot four times. One bullet entered his face just to the left of his nose. Another had gone through the back of his neck and exited through the front of his head near his right ear. A third bullet had pierced his shoulder from behind and there was a final bullet wound in his right hand. Like that. That's a defensive wound. Police reconstructed the scene, concluding that James Paul Martin had raised his hand in defence. He was shot in the face first and then he had been shot from behind as he tried to flee. Police were able to follow a trail of blood that led to a roadside fence across North Park Road and into Springlake Park. The teenage boy had managed to crawl towards the road, trying to escape, trying to find safety, but he did not survive. And he had only been in town since Friday. Like this is Sunday morning. See, his family had moved to Kilgow, but they had previously lived in Texarkana for years. And so he was in visiting and he was staying with his friend Tom Albatran on Locust Street. Now, Tom informed investigators that his friend had what he called a date the night before with longtime friend Betty Jo Booker. That same morning, 15 year old Betty Jo Booker's mother Bessie was worried. She was supposed to have been at a sleepover with friends, but she hadn't arrived. At 6 o' clock that morning, her friends had called Betty Jo's bandleader and her mother, trying to figure out where she was. Betty Jo had been playing saxophone with a local band, the Rhythm Aires, at a dance at the Veterans of Foreign wars building. Whenever she played and was heading anywhere afterwards, she always dropped her saxophone at home. This time she had not. And so her anxious mother called the authorities and Tom Alberton confirmed that James Paul Martin was supposed to pick Betty Jo from the dance and bring her to the sleepover. And he referred to this as the date. I'm not, not sure that's much. Let's not get into it. Anyway, with the teenager missing, police and volunteers alike searched for her. The body of Betty Jo Booker was discovered by three of her friends several hours later. Brothers George and James Boyd and Ted Shawby. The boys found their friend behind a tree near Morris Lane, which connects Summerhill and Richmond roads. Now, this was about a mile and three quarters from where her date had been found. Betty Jo. She had been shot twice. One bullet had penetrated her face, just like Martin's to the left of the nose, the other through her chest. Betty Jo was fully dressed. Her coat was buttoned all the way up and her right hand was in her pocket. That girl was paused. That is a pause but it's more respectful in her pose. Like, it's very casual. Oh, my hand's in my pocket. James Paul Martin's car was discovered near the main entrance of Spring Lake park, three miles from Betty Jo's crime scene and a mile and a quarter from his. The keys were still in the ignition. Unlike the previous murder, the police had a more accurate time frame. The couple had last been seen at the end of the dance at the VFW hall at 2am and a resident of Morris Lane had heard a gunshot around 5:30am now, here's the thing about gunshots in Texas and Arkansas. That's not that surprising. So it wouldn't have specifically raised any flags at the time. But in conjunction with this other information, it all marries together. So that's like three and a half hours. Almost six cartridge cases and four projectiles were discovered around the teenage boy's car, all from a.32 caliber pistol and all with the same markings as the weapon used to kill Richard Griffin and Pollyanne Moore some three weeks prior. Several unidentified fingerprints were discovered on the car as well. But the FBI could not confirm if they had the killer's prints on file. But they had enough markers that if the police had a suspect, they could compare and possibly catch. So, unsurprisingly, things get messy when it comes to info with Betty Jo's body. Sheriff Bill Presley had told the papers that apart from being shot, the body had not been abused. However, other papers would share that both victims showed signs of struggle and one even claimed that the girl had been bruised and lacerated. If you look at the crime scene photos of this case, there is no way to know that from the photos alone. Anyway. What the sheriff was trying to do was not leak details to the press as to not impede the investigation because whatever happened with Pollyanne, Betty Jo's body was examined by pathologists. Betty Jo Booker's vagina was swabbed and tested positive for semen. No foreign pubic hairs were discovered amongst her own. However, semen was found on her pubic region. A saline solution wash of James Paul Martin's penis showed that he had not ejaculated. And as such, the semen found on and in Betty Jo's body could not be his. With this information, authorities ruled out consensual sex and concluded that the teenage girl had been raped by her murderer. The assault had been withheld from press along with the discovery of the young man's pocketbook. It wasn't even withheld. I mean, it was withheld from the Press. But it wasn't just withheld from the press, Right? The. The pocketbook. Sheriff Presley found it and then didn't tell anyone else about it. Like, very few investigators knew about the existence of this because he was keeping things very close to his chest. What was not discovered, however, was Betty Jo's E flat alto saxophone, a Bundy model, serial number 52535. The description was sent to pawn shops and music stores across the tri state area just in case it surfaced. Like it's, it's an instrument like that's worth money, you know, if you're short on cash, it makes sense to just pawn it off, get something from it, you know. Now I'm going to take a minute to talk about the victims because they're often mentioned, like, just to further the story of the killer, like they become footnotes in their own murders. But these were real loving people, teenagers whose lives were cut short because some arsehole wanted to cause pain, to fuel his fantasies. Like it's not a simple robbery or a crime of convenience. Like there's nothing to gain here except his own gratification. So James Paul Martin, he was born in Smackover, Arkansas. He had three older brothers. Like he was the baby of the family. His family ran an ice business, but they located to Texarkana because his mother felt it was a safer place to raise a family. And this boy, Hugh was quiet, a hard worker, and he even went to the same elementary school as Berry Jo. And they both attended the same church, the Beech Street Baptist Church, every single Sunday. They knew each other since kindergarten. Now, a lot of the times when they frame this, they say he was 17 and she was 15, he was 16. He was three weeks off his 17th birthday and she was about two months off of her 16th birthday. They were 16 and 15 and they were really close in age. After completing ninth grade at Arkansas Junior High School, he transferred to the Gulf Coast Military Academy and then he enrolled in the Kilgow high school in 1945. Classmates would say that he was incredibly sweet and kind and that he had no enemies. Betty Jo Booker would have been 16 in the June of that year. A milestone this amazing girl was stopped from reaching. She was a junior at Texas High School, a member of the Delta Beta Sigma sorority, and she was friendly and outgoing and popular. She's the definition of. She'd light up her room, you know. She was a straight A student and a gifted musician. Like, she was such an accomplished saxophone player that professional musicians were encouraging her to enter a career in music. But Betty Jo, she was more practical in her consideration for career choices. She wanted to be a medical technician. She played sax because she loved music. She enjoyed it, but she wanted a career that was more stable. Unlike James Paul Martin, she hadn't moved much with regards to Texarkana. A year earlier, her widowed mother, Bessie, had remarried, and they moved in with her stepfather, Clark Brown. Crossing the border from Texas to Arkansas, like, still in Texarkana, but just on the other side of the street, really. Friends, family, and fellow musicians were all a bit surprised that the teenagers had driven to Spring Lake park, because, like typically, Gerry Aitkens of Gerry Aitkins and the Rhythm Airs would drive the female band members home. Right. That was sort of a deal that he had with their parents. They were like, you can play, but he has to get you back occasionally. Ernie Holcomb, who was another saxophone player on the Rhythm Airs, would take that responsibility on April 13th, that Saturday night, Ernie was supposed to drive all four female players home. But Betty Jo declined, saying that she was waiting for a friend. And earlier in the day, she had told friends that she didn't really want to go out with Martin, but she felt like she had to see him because they'd been friends since they were kids. So he picked her up and was supposed to drive her, you know, home to drop off her saxophone and then onto the slumber party. Like, he told his friend that it was a date, and she told her friends that she wasn't romantically interested in him. Now there's so much we don't know. Was she trying to be nice and just accept a ride from him? When was she actually into him but didn't want to say because of propriety and social standards regarding women and girls at the time? Was he just being friendly, or was he hoping to take this crush to the park and show her the stars and maybe get a smooch or two? Like, was he just trying to do a nice thing, or was he expecting more? Or did he, as the quiet, shy guy, not think there was ever going to be any more of it? Did they deliberately go to the park or were they forced there? Again, we don't know, because these two kids were murdered. The double murder a month prior barely had a ripple effect on the twin city. But this, the attack and murder of these teenagers sent shockwaves through Texarkana. After the homicides at Springlake park, everything changed. Teens who had been so far unfazed were no longer sneaking out or parking in their father's cars. People were locking their doors and those associated with the victims were thinking and overthinking, searching for some clue about who could have done this. Even Gerry Aitkens and the Rhythm Heirs dissolved. And after the loss of Betty Jo Booker, they never played together again. The second double homicide had riddled Texarkana with panic and fear. It was now that the press gave the assailant his moniker, the Phantom Killer. I mentioned locking doors, but this went even further, actually. Stores were sold out of deadbolts and locks and screen door braces. Like every gun, every piece of ammunition was gone from the shelves. Hardware stores were cleared out. Anywhere you could get guns or ammo, that was cleared out too, I assume. Everywhere. I don't listen, your gun laws are not the strictest, and I feel like even less so. Back in 1946, some people even went full on Boy Scout and rigged up makeshift alarm systems, like full on MacGyver. You know, people were terrified and ready to shoot at anyone who showed up unannounced. Right? This was common. So I don't have an exact. An exact date for this, but at some point after Palm Sunday and before May 3, 1946, Imogen west and her husband Harold, they were at home one evening on the corner of east third and Walnut Street. Yeah, there's Walnut street again. They're doing whatever couples do in the evening, and Harold spots someone looking through their window. Without skipping a beat, Harold grabs his gun and rushes to the kitchen door. But like, gun in hand, he's fumbling with the latch and his gun goes off. Now, no one was hurt, but by the time he got outside, the prowler was gone. There's a panic. There's a self imposed curfew. Like people are bolting the doors and shooting at anyone unidentified, right? Like they're terrified. Like the bustling streets, you know, any sort of, you know, dances or bars or movie theaters. Like people just stop going. Like they force themselves into their home after dark. Like they're just gone. And even the police, if they were showing up anywhere, they would shout out like it's the fuzz. Like they would, like, let people know that they were there and they weren't just some random person. Even if they were going out to a call out that had happened, right, Sometimes they would just blare their sirens to show it was them and not a murderer, which fair, very fair. Now, the cops, they, they were admittedly struggling. They had a city on high alert, fear seeping through every corner of the community, and they had zero leads in this manhunt. But help was on the way. When it gets to the point that you've got two double murders and a masked attack, people start paying attention. And the Lone Star State would provide seven additional Texas Rangers, four technical experts and eight highway patrolmen. Last but certainly not least, they sent the ranger captain, Manuel Trazazas Lone Wolf Gonzales. I am going to cliff notes him a bit here. He was born in Spain to a Spanish father and Canadian mother who were both naturalized American citizens living in Texas, but had gone on holiday to Spain and out he popped. And he, he is a very interesting man, but honestly we simply do not have the time to delve into his life. But basically he was a big shot. He was known for entering fights alone and exiting them alone. Now he's called the Lone Wolf right in this, throughout this. But like his nickname was originally given in Spanish, which is English, Elobo Solo, which I for one think sounds much cooler. Like for the record, my Spanish impression is based entirely off of Antonio Banderas who is a Spanish man. So yeah, just so you know, this is me and my Spanish Antonio Banderas impression. So Gonzalez, he had a name for himself already and he was causing a star when he arrived in Texarkana. He had, and I'm gonna say it, big dick energy. He was take charge and his sheer force of personality did take charge of anyone who got too close. The man also liked a fit like we respect the drip in this household. Like he was not a tall man. He was five foot ten and a half inches because apparently that half matters. He was adorned in his Stetson, tailored western attire and custom made boots. Listen, I'm not into the thing is, you know cops, but he does, he does sound quite, quite an interesting character to look upon. On each hip he Wore an ornate six shooter, a Colt single action army model 1873 peacemakers. And to enable fast draw shooting from spring loaded holsters, the trigger guards had been cut away. El Lobosolo told journalists that he would stay in Texarkana until the madman had been caged are killed. And of course the press are eating this up. Like media is just fueling the city's hysteria. Writing headlines about sex maniac and phantom killer goes on killing spree. Right? And N Waltz's Gonzalez, Texas Ranger with a commanding personality and a sweet sense of style. Just foreign enough to be exotic, but not so foreign is to be scary. Some colleagues. I said what I said, right? I said what I said. This is, this is the south in 1946. I said what I said. So by the way, also I hear that Texas would not like me, but Austin in Texas would like me. And so please, please don't ban me from your states. I still want to come visit you and your rich, rich history. Back to Gonzales. Some colleagues felt that the Ranger captain was a publicity whore, more interested in looking good for the press than doing any actual investigating. He was often photographed at the scene of a crime and some locals grumbled that he seemed more interested in escorting pretty female reporters around than doing any actual detective work. But for all of the limelight loving he was actually contributing to the case. Like he wasn't just saying Nkzi was pretty. At this point, the case had not just caught the ear of local media. No, no, no, no, no. Journalists traveled in and the story, like the story of the crimes, went not just national, but international. The press descended on the town like vultures circling a carcass and just waiting to get a nibble. They kept eyes on the case, of course, but the media circus just helped fuel paranoia and panic in the town. The Lone Wolf Ranger warned the Texarkana town folk to not involve themselves in vigilantism because like, everyone and their granny were armed. And groups of teenage boys armed with deer rifles and a shitload of bravado patrolled the back roads, driving around ready to confront the Phantom, which for, for the record, was a damn stupid thing to do. Like, what's to stop a panicky teenager shooting someone checking on their cows at night? Like this is springtime, is it not? Like lambing season and sht like people are out, you know? Anyway, the thing about paranoia is that it bred rumor propagation, right? The rumour mill was turning and I tell you, so many tall tales spread around town. The killer had been caught. He was hiding in jail. He had died somehow on the outskirts of town. Like it got to the point that the police actually had to hold a press conference telling people to shut the fuck up. Like stop gossiping. But this is a city gripped by fear. Was the self imposed curfew enough? Were their home secure? Could they drive to work safely? Did they have enough firepower to stop an attack? And of course, when would the Phantom killer strike? Next. Friday, 3rd May, 19 days and the double murder of the teenagers. It was unusually dark for 8:30pm in May. The evening was warm in Mellor county, just 10 miles northeast of Texarkana. And by 9pm, Virgil and Katie Stark's farm was pitch black. The 500 acre farm and their home sat along Highway 67. It was a fairly isolated farmhouse in rural Arkansas. 37 year old Walter Virgil Starks tended the farm with his wife, Catherine Isla Strickland Starks, who was 36. He would go by Virgil and she would go by Katie. Virgil also had a welding shop on the property. Neighbours would often bring their broken farm equipment to Virgil to fix. And because he clearly wasn't busy enough, Virgil had a side hustle as a shade tree mechanic. Basically doing car repairs under the table. And like, they're a farming family. It's May, it's springtime. They have clearly been up early. Like farmers. They're up at the crack of dawn, like, and it is hard, heavy work. So by night time, 9pm, Katie is in her nightgown, lying in bed in the bedroom sort of adjacent to the sitting room. And Virgil is sitting in his armchair. He's got a heating pad on his back. It's aching. Listen, he's already in his 30s and he's doing heavy labor. He needs the heating pad, all right? He's got the radio on, music is playing, and he's settling in for the night, ready to read the paper, the Texarkana Gazette. And Katie, she thinks she hears a noise coming from the backyard of, again, their fairly isolated farmhouse. But she's not sure if she's hearing something or whether it's just in her head. And so she calls to Virgil to turn the radio down so she can listen. But before he gets the chance, she hears the sound of what she thinks is glass breaking. Thinking that Virgil has dropped something, she gets up and goes through to the living room. And when she reaches the doorway, her husband is standing up. And then suddenly his body is slumped in the chair. Then she saw the blood. She rushed over to her husband, saw that he was dead, and in a split second ran to the telephone. Virgil Starks had been shot twice in the back of the head by a gunman on the front porch of the farmhouse. He had shot through the screen and glass of the window. Katie didn't see the shooter. She had gone straight from Virgil to the landline. The phone was a crank model that was mounted on the kitchen wall. She got to the phone, lifted the receiver, cranked the handle twice before two bullets hit the left side of her face. One bullet entered through her cheek and exited by her ear, and another went through her teeth, shattering them and lodging under her tongue. The impact caused her to stumble and fall on the floor where several of her teeth lay shattered. And in a moment, I'm gonna just assume, fueled by adrenaline, she gets on all four and manages to grab one of her teeth with its Gold filling intact. The killer was trying to batter his way in through the kitchen window. And Katie, with a bullet lodged in her face and vision impaired by her own blood, said, fuck this for a game of soldiers. It was run or die. She first turned to run out the kitchen, but the killer's there. Well, he is currently breaking in through that window. And so she lunged like knowing her own house. Like this is where the say that in your own home you always have the advantage because you know it. She lunged through the master bedroom, along a hallway, through a second bedroom, out through the living room, across the front porch, and out through the front door and into the yard, leaving a trail of blood and broken teeth behind her. She ran. Katie ran to the highway barefoot, her nightgown drenched in her own blood. She ran across the pitch black highway to the nearest house, that of her sister Betty Iona and her brother in law, Jeff. She banged on the island's door, but there was no sign of life. And instead of waiting, she ran to the next house, 150ft away, that of AV Prater. So she had lost a lot of blood at this point and, and so she was weakly knocking on the door. AV answered the door, rifle in hand. Katie managed to gasp, virgil is dead. Before collapsing. Av shot his rifle into the air, a signal amongst the home and community. A neighboring farmer, Elmer Taylor, showed pretty soon after, and together they took the semi conscious Katie to Michael Meager Hospital. Katie Starks would survive the ordeal, but she didn't see her attacker and as such couldn't provide a description to the authorities at the crime scene. The trail of blood gave the authorities a path to follow. The blood evidence allowed investigators to reconstruct how the shooting unfolded and also the position the gunman had been outside. In his rush to leave the scene, the killer had dropped a two cell flashlight with a red handle on the ground outside the window. There were also fingerprints and a pamprint found on the scene, along with shoe prints in the linoleum, along with three cartridge cases and two bullets from a.22 caliber rifle that were sent to the FBI for testing. And some of these prints on the wall, like it's noted that there are handprints, as if the killer had put his hands on the blood, like on Virgil's blood, and then touched the wall, which is, I have a theory, but it's, I'm not gonna get into it right now. So when authorities arrived, like the room was smoky because when Virgil was shot, the heat pack sorted, burst into flames and scorched part of the chair. And sort of smouldered into the room. And even, like, the Arkansas State Police, like, they had reported seeing, like, a car on the side of the road, like, nearby. But they didn't think it was anything like that important because when they returned the next morning, that car was gone. Like, they just didn't think about it or check on it anyway. Bloodhounds. There's blood. They bring in the bloodhounds. Led by Chief Haney from Hope in Arkansas. He led with the bloodhounds. They led investigators from the Starks farmhouse to the highway, then across the pavement and another half mile away where the scent suddenly stopped. Right. And here, like, is where they'd seen this car. Like, it's still far enough away from all of these sort of houses and buildings that nobody thought to check anyway. So here, where the scent ended, they found tire impressions in the mud. And so they took plaster casts of the impressions of the tracks of the killer's getaway vehicles. And the authorities, they ruled out robbery, I mean, apart from, like, there's blood prints all over the walls and the furniture. But there was, and the quote is, a considerable amount of cash in the house untouched, along with Katie's jewelry. Right. The police were puzzled, though. Like, because this attack, it didn't match the previous sprees. Like the M.O. the modus operandi. It was different. Like, this was an older married couple at home, not young lovebirds out in a secluded area. And the gun used was different. Like before. It was a.32 pistol, and this was a.22 caliber rifle. And the killer shot Katie instead of raping her. This led to some investigators and later on officials believing this to be a standalone case. That being said, this is like pre mindhunter formal profiling here. Like, the term serial killer didn't even exist yet. Like, I'm Fairly certain now, Dr. Anthony Lala, he was a psychiatrist at Texarkana's Federal Correctional Institution. And he believed the killer was one and the same for all of the Texarkana slayings. And that he said he changed his method of execution, like, from the secluded rendezvous spots because they were being patrolled. Like, between that and the self imposed city curfew and the mounting police pressure like that, he changed it because his hunting ground was no longer available. So he changed it to a different hunting ground. Like, the doctor profiled the gunman as a white man around 30 to 40 years old, a sexual sadist who was clever, intelligent and shrewd. See, I don't necessarily think that, because even when you take someone like the Golden State killer, he wasn't necessarily very clever. He just had a routine that he practiced until he got it really good, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't this amazing intel. Anyway, again, I'm not, I don't have time, I don't have time for sidebars. So Dr. Lapala also ruled out that the suspect could have been a black man or on the grounds that an African American criminal could not be that clever. Well, it wouldn't be old timey psychiatry without a good old dose of racism in there, huh? Like, typically when it comes to crime, a lot of criminals, especially those involved in sexual assault, tend to do so within their own race. Like that tends to be. But a lot of that is like social and cultural because it's closer to proximity and ease, you know? But anyway, regardless. And also ick. So back to the killer. Now there's an assumption that even now the killer has to have a set routine like, this is how they kill, this is how they do it. Like you see it with things like btk. You see it with like the way that Dahmer and, and Ted Bundy, like Tim Bundy likes his, you know, middle parted brunettes. And like that's not always the case, right. When you think about the manner in which, like he found his victims, the were secluded, which I think is the main goal, like he wants them to be alone to make it easier for him to do what he wants to do. He wants to reduce the risk of being stopped, prevented, etc. And like many killers, they adapt and vary their MOs, like for a whole host of reasons. In this case, his usual hunting grounds are barren. And you may ask, why didn't he assault Mrs. Starks? Well, maybe he didn't mean to shoot her in the face. Maybe he was hoping to play with her, right? Maybe he was hoping to cat and mouse like he'd done before. Like we saw with Mary Jean. Now remember, if he had been prowling around the house, he would have seen that she was laying in bed in her nightgown. He may not have accounted for her getting out of bed so quickly. And then she ran to the phone. Like that's when she was shot. She was shot when she ran to the phone. Like at this point it's self preservation above gratification. He didn't shoot her when she ran to her husband's side. It was when she had the phone in her hand and, and was cranking like, like he had to stop. Like, I think he was hoping to have an easier access route into the house. But, like, my theory, my personal theory is that he didn't like anyone combating him. So that's why he always removed his sort of primary obstacle, like, so he always killed the men first so that they, like, couldn't be involved and he would have more time to play with his victim. And he didn't like it when Mary Jean stood up to him. And I feel like. And I think it's that thing when he isolates his victims. It's so that he has control and power and he has that level of authority and fear. And so he wants them to whimper and be weak and he wants to have that power and control. But, like, here's yet again another woman who's going, absolutely fucking not. And so when it comes to the gun as well, like about the gun, we're in Texas and Arkansas, and I feel like anybody down there post war would have more than one gun. It just feels like if you've got one, you probably have a second right now. And I'm sure people were buying ammo up, but Maybe, maybe buying those.32 calibers might raise some suspicion, or they could have been worried about raising suspicion and so they just went, everybody knows. It's in all the papers, right? Everyone knows what kind of gun, so let's switch it up. Or maybe because he knew he would have to attack people in their homes, the rifle was a better. I'm not gun expert, but, like, would a rifle be better shooting from the distance? Like, would that be a better option for them anyway? The killer may have been bolder, like during an attack, but that doesn't stop him being paranoid, like. And also, this is like the first attack, which is on the Arkansas side of Texarkana and the Starks farmhouse, right? It's fairly isolated. If Katie hadn't been a woman of action, who knows, you know, when they would have been discovered. And one more thing, right? I'm going to Columbo it, right? I don't know if this is relevant in any way because I was looking up all of the photos of the victims and one thing I noticed is that all of the women were brunette. Again, I don't know if that's any relevance whatsoever, but it's just something I noticed. But anyway, here, authorities, they're worried. Is it a copycat or is the phantom killer murdering people in their homes? Has the killer escalated? And is anyone in their town safe? Walter Virgil Starks was laid to rest at 2.30pm on Monday 6th May, in Hillcrest Cemetery, Bowie County. Katie, still recovering in hospital, was unable to attend the service. The Starks had been married for 14 years, and as far as I could discover, they had no children. Katie, she survived and even remarried some nine years later to Forest Jerome Sutton. She would continue to live in Bowie county until her death at the age of 84, after which she was buried next to Virgil in Hillcrest Cemetery. After the attack on the Starks, the investigation turned into one of the largest manhunts in the region's history. There were 47 officials all together, like from county sheriff departments, Texas Rangers, state police, and even FBI agents and state troopers, too. So you have all of these different forces coming together and trying to work together to solve this crime and to prevent more from happening. However, all of these authorities and agencies were on different radio frequencies, and communication was slow, which is. Which is not ideal. So to combat this, they brought in a teletype machine and a mobile radio station into Texarkana to improve coordination. Like, this was cutting edge technology at the time when. Which shows, like, just how seriously the government was taking it. Like, this was not cheap, right? They were. They were spending money for this. The reward fund kept growing. Like, Virgil's father, Jack, even offered a $500 reward for info on his son's death or that would lead to the capture of those who committed it. Now, the reward fund itself, for all of the crimes, it had gone to $10,000. Like, which, in today's money, $166,216.41. That's. That's a lot of moolah, isn't it? Right. So this, for the record, went unclaimed. So. Right. Tips and leads were pouring in from all across the nation, and investigators are checking everything by hand. This is analog. Like, the FBI were checking bullet casings and fingerprints against their data. And of course, like, so you're trying to compare and contrast all across the entire country. And, like, you've got jurisdiction issues. You've got all this red tape. Now. Now, see, see sidebar, sidebar. You're getting a sidebar because I read all 1118 FBI memos and documents pertaining to the case. And let me tell you. Let me tell you. The bureaucracy. The bureaucracy on top of all the paper records, checking by eye. It's. It's. It's a lot of work. And to make matters worse, right, the leads are coming in. False leads are coming in. Because, again, money is a great incentive for people to lie. So money breeds greed. And so you've got false info, false confessions, the whole shebang and at one point, a neighbour sees lights flashing at the Starks farmhouse, which at this point has been abandoned. And so he calls the police. They arrive, right? So a bunch of police officers arrive and they arrive, guns are drawn and they surround the farmhouse. So, yeah, they're surrounding the farmhouse, guns drawn, like come out with your hands up situation and out steps. I swear to Lone Wolf himself with a lady photographer from Time Life because he's reenacting the crime scene observation for the magazine. What now? Now I see why people were getting mad at. But anyway, El Lobo Solo has an idea utilizing all of these teens in the area, right? So they decided it would be a great idea because what they noticed is that these crimes were happening in roughly three week intervals and they were always at the weekend, sort of Friday, Saturday. These were. Yeah, Friday, Saturday, these are the prime killing spots, right? Like these weren't happening on a Wednesday, they were happening at the weekend, right? So what they decide to do, because you've got these teenagers ready to throw themselves in the line of fire anyway, they had the teenagers act as bait, right? Acting as couples. They would park in lovers lane spots, right? All throughout Texarkana, like. And so they're trying to lure the killer out. So they're just like pretending to be a couple. And so like the cops would sort of park a little bit away and watch. Or sometimes they'd be hiding in the trees above, which that part I really love. I'm like, they're just up there in the trees. Like, what are they gonna do, jump down on them? Like Assassin's creed? Like, pooh, pooh, what are you doing? Anyway, they're just, they're really good at climbing trees down, down that side of the country. So the sub police, that being said, thought that this idea was a bit risky to, you know, use actual children as bait. And so they used dummies instead of. Now they were doing this sort of from that three week period after the last killing and they were doing it night after night and they kept trying this trick but no avail. Like, first of all, who's to say that this guy, you know, isn't a cop, right? I'm just spitballing here, like, what if he knows how the authorities are working and that's how he knows how to get away with it. Also, he's been doing this for a while, so he might be well aware if someone is a couple. Like if he's stalking couples to find the right ones to kill. Like, obviously he doesn't want those who are going to Give him too much resistance. So if he's watching them and they're just not properly acting the way he wants them to act, like, yeah. Also when they're getting these teenagers to act as bait, are they just sitting in the car or are they making teenagers make out in a car to catch a killer? Like, what are they doing? Like what? Honestly, what though? Like, the Twin City, it's crawling with plain clothed detectives. You've got rangers, you've got patrol cars. Like, like everyone's on high alert. So it's no wonder that the person might not do that right now. Like the assumption was that he'd gone dormant like a moth in winter. Like maybe he'd skipped town or maybe he was injured or in jail or XYZ. So by the autumn fall of 1946, the panic had died down in town. But the search, it was always done. And these officers, like they are sifting through buckets and buckets of paperwork. Which brings me to Detective Max Andrew Tackett from Arkansas State Police. An analytical investigator with a great sense of pattern recognition. Now, Detective Max here, he had picked up on a trend that no one else had noticed. He spotted that in the days leading up to a major attack, a car had been reported stolen from. And then after each attack, the stolen car was discovered abandoned, like in the same area in Texarkana that it had gone missing from. Which is weirdly specific. Right. For example, a car was stolen and returned to Robison street, which is around Robert Griffin's murder. Right. And around Betty Jo Booker's murder, a car was stolen from a friend of her parents and was later abandoned. Right. And there's a few more cases where this, this occurs, but those were the two most that stuck out to me because these have connections to the victims because Robert Griffins was living on Robinson street and Betty Joburg is a friend of her parents. Like there, there's connections there. So Tackett, he had a hunch and he followed it. He staked out a car that was stolen or reported stolen with the help of Milton Mosier from Hope, Arkansas. And what do you know, a lady came to retrieve the car. A1 Peggy Lois Swinney. Mrs. Peggy Lois Swinney, her surname was a new one. New that day, in fact, June 28, 1946, she had married Yuhl Lee Swinney in Shreveport, Louisiana. 29 year old Yule Sweeney was a petty criminal known to police for theft, burglary, selling counterfeit coins, etc. And his father, this may shock you, was a Baptist minister, which really just Added scandal to the whole affair. Yule was six foot tall, stocky, with a light tan, and like, so he fit the description of who it could have been. And authorities were a bit skeptical about him because his crimes that he was involved in or known for weren't necessarily violent crimes. And all the evidence they had was circumstantial. But what they do had right now was 21 year old Peggy in a stolen car. So Peggy was his wife now. And they were like, let's, let's lock her up. Basically, she was detained in lieu of bond. And they thought holding her in a cell, her husband would come and get her. Spoiler alert, he did not. So she was asked where he was and she said, oh, he was looking to see about a car in Atlanta. Now there is the possibility that YO Sweeney married Peggy, so the fuzz couldn't make her testify against him because there's a thing called marital privilege, right? So he was the prime suspect and he was in areas where crimes occurred and he had the right attributes. But Texas law states marital privilege can be invoked by a spouse of a criminal. Meaning you cannot force a wife or husband to testify against their spouse. Like, you cannot comply them to do so. It is a marital privilege to withhold any right to testify, right? And so, yeah, it wasn't that much of an issue because like he just left her in jail and they basically catch him like hot. Like he's stealing a car. They catch him, right? And when he's arrested, like he asked the deputy, he's in the car and he asks him. And this is really suspicious, right? He's like, what do you think they'll do to me for this? Which implies it does imply that he did something worse than just steal cars. While he was in custody, detectives searched his previous residencies in a rooming house where they had stayed. They found a shirt with welding slag on it and the name Stark. Right? Now, again, what an interesting connection. It's got welding slag on it, and it appears to have been taken from Virgil Stark's welding shop. And it has part of his name on it. They found other items they believed belonged to the victims. Trophies, if you will. Now, Peggy, Peggy, she. I'm not gonna say she was singing like a canary. Like, she told police a lot of stories that sort of supported the idea that Yule was the phantom killer. Like, again, it's, I mean, it's all circumstantial, but it did paint quite a picture. She told them that he had previously owned a.32 caliber pistol. That was now missing and that he had used it to threaten her. Now, Peggy, she had a troubled upbringing, like she was one of nine children. And so there are two stories that come out. There's one that Peggy said and there's one that the investigators say. Peggy says that she met Yule when she was in jail and he was visiting another girl and that, you know, sparks flew. Investigators or one investigator says that Peggy was a 21 year old sex worker in Texarkana, like working in a brothel, and that's where she met him. So Peggy's stories, they wobbled a little. And she didn't directly say that Yule was the murderer and she never incriminated herself the first time she gave a statement when he was arrested, however, Peggy told police that Yule had left her in a car near Spring Lake park on the evening of April, sort of 13th and 14th. They had bought 12 bottles of beer on the wet side and they had been drinking before they went to Spring Lake park to rob someone. And so that's where this goes. Now on the third statement, she gives, like, there's a time where Peggy leads officials to like an area like, not bang on, but very, very close to where James Paul Martin's car had been. And she was able to lead them over to this clump of trees where they'd found like a heel impression from a high heeled shoe. Like, she was like, oh, and I was over here. So, like in that second statement, actually, so she claimed that Yul had, you know, she was in the car, she was drinking, and he had taken the little boy and little girl off somewhere while she stayed drinking in the car where she fell asleep, only to be woken by gunshots. And Yule had returned to the car excited and wet to the knees. So she Talks about on 3 May, the couple were staying in a motel and Yule had left only to return with blood over him. Right. He wiped himself with a towel and put it under the mattress. The police found the bloody towel. Now, they didn't actually test it for like blood type or anything, but they found a towel. Oh, yeah, Actually, actually initially, during the, during the second statement, she said that he had taken the saxophone and then he had sold it in Corpus Christi. Now, it wasn't news that the saxophone had been, had been missing. Like, everyone was looking for it, but there was no record of ever being sold because, like the serial numbers were out there. So when she makes her final statement, however, right. She told investigators that the saxophone had been discarded. Right. So effectively he threw over a fence. She's like, here's where he threw it. He was thinking maybe going back for it later. The saxophone was found months later in the area where she said it was. And it was close to where Betty Jo Booker's body was discovered, but it was, like, hidden under, like, leaves and brush. So she also incriminated herself at this point because Peggy told investigators that she had robbed the teenage boy. She had emptied his pockets and discarded, like, what was in them into a nearby ditch because there wasn't anything of value. And she included in this statement Martin's pocketbook, something that Bill Presley hadn't even shared with other officers. Here's the thing, however. Peggy didn't know about marital privilege. And once she did, she recanted everything and claimed that she had made it all up because she was scared of Yule and that she told the cops what they wanted to hear. Without Peggy's testimony, the evidence against her new husband was purely circumstantial. It was strong with his suspicious statements and the theft pattern. But without the guns involved in the crime or a confession or an eyewitness statement, the DA didn't feel that the case was strong enough for a jury. And if they tried to use Peggy's previous statements, the defence had the angle of this was an abused woman coerced into lying out of fear. Now, one investigator said basically that Peggy wasn't smart enough to invent consistent lies. What he actually said was a line that I'm going to be using in the future when people say stupid things to me, because I think it's funny, Peggy's bread wasn't baked. The elevator didn't go to the top. Like. Like, it's. It's funny. It's mean, but it's funny. So, like, the idea is that she was either telling the truth or she was being fed the information. So the authorities, they wanted to put Yule Swanee away, but they didn't have enough evidence to convict him for the moonlight murders. They were convinced, or some were convinced, that he was the phantom killer, but they didn't want to risk an acquittal. And, of course, double jeopardy. Double jeopardy basically means that if you are acquitted of a crime, you cannot be tried for the same crime twice. Right. So they charged him with the biggest charge they could against grand larceny, grand theft auto, car theft. He was a habitual car thief. And that's not all. He had previously violated parole. What was it, back in 45? Which he had also violated from a crime that he'd had in 1941, this is what I'm gonna call a backdoor conviction. This was a way of putting him behind bars. Not quite the justice they wanted, but putting him away. And in 1947, a new repeat offender law carried a life sentence. So, basically, yeah, if you do it a lot, you're going to the clunk. And on April 18, 1947, Yule Lee Swinney was pronounced a habitual offender and sentenced to life. And so he returned to Huntsville Prison. And Peggy, she wasn't charged. She was granted a divorce from YO Swinney, and she disappeared into the wench. But she passed away in 1998 in Dallas, and she was buried under her maiden name, Peggy Lewis Stevens. She never did remarry. I guess sometimes once is enough. Yule Sweeney, for the record, did not spend the rest of his life behind bars because after 26 years in prison, his conviction was overturned on appeal via habeas corpus in 1973. Basically, he didn't have proper representation back in 1941 for one of his earlier sentences. And as such, the habitual offender, like that was now void. So he managed to remarry, like, in prison. Of course he did. Right? So he remarries, and he ends up dying in a nursing home in 1994 from cancer. Anywho, with you behind bars, authorities breathed a sigh of relief. They had caught their man. Or had they? Manuel Lone Wolf Gonzales. He certainly didn't think so. Like, he continued searching for the Phantom as late as 1960. Like, there is. There is a lot. There's a lot of documents in this. And, like, one of the files of correspondence, like, it has a persons of interest list of 1047 names. Now, of course, there is a master list on which YO Sweeney is on it, but he's like, one of the 60. Like, the thing with this is. It's like a jigsaw with a piece that's, like, almost right, but it's not quite, because there are issues with this, Jules. Prints didn't match any of the crime scenes. In fact, the fingerprints at the murder sites are. Are still unidentified to this day. Right. I. I have a consideration of a theory, though. I do have a theory, especially with the earlier prints. It's that, oh, what if it's just terrible police work and compromised crime scenes? Like, what if the fingerprints are just people who don't know better and who are like, oh, I've touched this, and then I've leaned against the wall? Like, what if it's just the cops? Or what if it's an Onlooker who accidentally leaned against the car, like, you know, that's where I think, like that, that. I'm just saying it's a possibility due to the contamination of the crime scene. Okay, I'm just, I'm floating the idea, but here's an interesting1. In May 1946, 21 year old ex Army Air Force machine gunner Ralph Bowman turned himself into the lapd worried that he was the Phantom killer. So he had woken up on May 3rd in San Francisco, his rifle was missing and no recollection of the previous day. And so panicked hearing basically information on the news that described him like sex, food, blah blah, blah, and he was like, oh, that sounds like me, what if I did this? He basically blacked out. And so he ended up hitchhiking to LA so that he could tell the LAPD in anyway, I told you, I went national. So Bowman, he had previously been diagnosed with psycho as psychoneurotic and he suffered combat trauma from the Second World War. So it's more that he was just disturbed. Then on 7 May, a man's mutilated body was found sprawled along the Kansas City Southern railroad tracks about 6, 16 miles north of Texarkana. Aero Clifton McSpadden. He had been run over by a freight train severing an arm and a leg. Rumours spread. Was he fleeing the phantom or was he the Phantom? So unsurprisingly, there's an autopsy. The coroner's inquest showed a puncture wound in his head that was either a stab or a gunshot. It was one or the other. And due to the lack of bleeding, his body had been placed on the tracks after death. Right, so clearly someone was trying to cover up this. So those are like some considerations. Two years after the murder, there would be another odd turn in the Phantom case. On November 5, 1948, Henry Booker Dudy Tennyson was an 18 year old freshman at the University of Arkansas of Fayetteville. And he had swallowed a lethal dose of poison, thus ending his life. He left behind three notes, none of which have ever been published in full, and he left them for whomsoever found his body. So he ended his life, but he did not do so in his own room. He was in a bedroom, just wasn't his own. So the first note left atop a dresser, like in the bedroom he was found in, was a poem riddle titled My Final Word. Within it were cryptic clues to opening a strong box that had been found in Tennyson's room because it had no key or lock and there Was like a riddle and a puzzle and a scavenger hunt. But the police decided not to bother with that and just smashed it open instead. The second note confessed to the Phantom killer shootings, including the Starks. A third note, a typed third note found a while later by one of the sheriffs contradicted everything in the previous notes and said to disregard all previous notes. That he was looking for a way or a reason for ending his life. And that he really loved comics and pulp fiction, as in pulp books, not as in Quentin Tarantino's movie. So Tennyson was from a wealthy family and they did not ever make a public statement. But here's the thing. If you're a wealthy family in the south, this is. You don't make statements. That wasn't a thing back then. You just kind of swept it under the rug and stayed quiet. But here's the kicker. Dude had an alibi for the night of the Starks crime. He was playing checkers with his friend James Freeman. And also his prints didn't match any found at the scene. And he couldn't drive at the time of the murders. His brother only taught him to drive the summer of 47, like over a year after the Phantom struck. Now that's not to say that he couldn't have an accomplice. And at 6 foot 3, he was the right height and build. So he and his friend James were oddballs. And James actually lived near the Starks residence and duty here. He was vaguely connected to some victims, right. So he worked as an usher at the Paramount Theatre, which Mary Jean Leary and Jimmy Hollis had attended. And also he had played in the same band as Betty Jones. Like he played trombone, like they weren't friends, but they were, they were close in age. They sort of knew each other even with these tenuous connections. In all likelihood, Henry was just a troubled young man who was possibly gay in an era that just didn't accept it. Many referred to him as strange, a euphemism for homosexual at the time. This, along with whatever demons he was battling in his own head, may have caused him to end his life. Over the years, many suspects and leads were chased in the Phantom case. And even when they had someone behind bars, they still weren't sure. And to this day, the Texarkana moonlight murders are still unsolved. And in a move that surprises absolutely no one, in 1976, a slasher sort of docudrama movie was produced by a Texarkana born filmmaker and was even filmed in the area. Right? It was called the town that dreaded sundown. It. Okay, well, calling it a docudrama is being kind. It's. It's vaguely adjacent to the truth. And there are many, many liberties taken with the story, but of course, none of us are shocked. But to this day, no one has been charged or definitively named as the Phantom killer. And the Texarkana moonlight murders are now just another one of America's cold cases. Mary Jean, Larry, Jimmy Hollis, Pollyanne Moore, Richard Griffin, Betty Jo Booker, James Paul Martin, Walter Virgil Starks, and Katie Strickland. Starks Sutton still haven't received justice, and they might never. And so ends our story of the Texarkana Midlight martyrs. Feel free to rate and review five stars if you liked my retelling of the tale. If you didn't like it, you can keep it to yourself. Now, what's interesting is this. I mean, I. I thought it was going to be longer. It's actually not as long as I was anticipating, but I deliberately reduced sidebars and I. There are certain things I didn't talk about here as well. Like, there was a whole poison letter thing going on where, like, Betty Jo's stepdad was receiving letters and so was Gonzalez, and it was like a whole thing. But again, a lot of people try and insert themselves into investigations, and some people are just arseholes. So here's the thing. I think it's a disservice to victims to only discuss them and the footnotes of their own crime. Like, we should have something about them. And yeah, this isn't as long as I was initially anticipating it to be. That being said, the. The original one would have been two and a half hours. And I'm. I am not recording a two and a half hour podcast for y', all, cuz, like, that's. That's not fair. I mean, I could. I'm already starting to lose my voice after this because I've been talking for at least three hours trying to get this together. Um, because there's a lot of work behind the scenes that gets to this because the amount of pronunciations that have probably messed up. But I would like you to know that I did try and I did ask people from the south. So if. If I got it wrong, I'm gonna blame them. Although I'm pretty sure I pronounced Kilgore as kilgur or something at one point. But, yeah, that being said, I hope you enjoy this month of 1940s crime, because we're gonna be talking about 1940s crime and some gum. True detective work. And so on and so forth. And I guess it's recommendation time and again. Still supporting friends and their stuff. So if you know what, if you like D and D, there's a friend of mine, he has made a sourcebook. It's in the beta right now. I'll put a link down below. Actually, it's a source book for crafting in D and D, but it's about making crafting good. Right? It's. It's pretty interesting. So there is access to the beta. I'll put the link in for. That's your reading and that counts for watching. You know what I watched recently because I needed something that was not murder related in my head? The Emperor's New Groove. You know what that film holds up? I enjoy it. It's a good film. I like it. Arthur Kitt's in it. She's amazing. And so I forgot how much of the movie I could quote. But yeah, watch the Emperor's New Griff. It's fun. And for listening, apart from my dulcet tones, you know what I started to listen to, which was totally reasonable and definitely going to help me sleep better at night. Sick to death. Like, it's one of those Dr. Death stories. And since they haven't updated Dr. Death in a while, I was like, oh, this is interesting. Because it's not as if they don't exist. There's loads of them. Anyway, not the point. Anyway, anyway, this is by the Australian and it's. It's been captivating thus far. Did I say watching? I did say watching already. Emperor's New Groove. Okay, great. That is that. And with that, I am going to bed you. Good day. Adios. Au revoir. Au revoir, my friends. Bye. Bye.