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The Texarkana Moonlight Murders: The Unsolved Case of the 1946 Phantom Killer?by Michael NewtonNotes on Texarkana and Atmosphere During CrimesSo it was that by 1946, a Texarkana policeman could say that his town was “calloused to murder.”23Read?more?at?location?235Top of FormBottom of FormAs Lyn Blackmon observed, in the Texarkana Gazette, “In good weather, families in nice residential sections sat on their front porches after supper, sipping iced tea. They swung on porch swings, rocked in rockers and spoke to neighbors walking home from a movie or from church.... Few people locked their doors or their windows. The only shades pulled down were in bathrooms or bedrooms.”33Read?more?at?location?279Years later, W. E. Atchison—a sixteen-year-old on the Texas side of State Line Avenue in 1946—told the Gazette, “If you wanted to go to someone’s house after dark, you had to call them first and let them know you were coming.” TheRead?more?at?location?599Top of FormBottom of Form“Jack the Ripper” slayers in Atlanta (1911) and Manhattan (1915); the Axeman of New Orleans (1918–19); the “Toledo Clubber” (1925); New York City’s “3X” killer (1930); and Cleveland’s “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run” (1934–38). In rural America, axe-wielding home-invaders had claimed twenty-six lives in six attacks spanning as many Midwestern states, betweenRead?more?at?location?607Top of FormBottom of FormSeptember 1911 and December 1912. Meanwhile,Read?more?at?location?609Top of FormBottom of FormAs researcher Wayne Beck reports, “Many students who were especially incensed by the killing of two fellow students were conducting their own search. Armed young couples were parking on lonely roads hoping the mad killer would try an attack on them.”48Read?more?at?location?801Top of FormBottom of FormNewspapers did their part to fuel the panic. On April 16, 1946, the now-defunct Texarkana Daily News christened their city’s elusive gunman the “Phantom Killer.”Read?more?at?location?804Top of FormBottom of FormDissension aside, the authorities still did their best. Patrols were conducted in cars, on foot, and on horseback, while well-armed decoys parked on rural lover’s lanes, hoping to draw the Phantom within range.Read?more?at?location?819Top of FormBottom of FormThe local Lions Club matched that pledge, and more offers followed, totaling $4,280 by April 20.Read?more?at?location?839Top of FormBottom of FormOne action not concealed was the issuance of a special notice on April 18. It read: WANTED FOR MURDER WANTED person or persons unknown, for the murder of Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, on or about April 13, 1946, in Bowie County, Texas. Subject or subjects may have in their possession or may try to dispose of a gold-plated Bundy E-flat Alto saxophone, serial #52535, which was missing from the car in which the victims were last seen, when it was found abandoned about 1.55 miles from the location of the boy’s body, and about 3 miles from the location of the girl’s body. This saxophone had just been rebuilt, replated, and repadded, and was in an almost new black imitation leather case with blue plush lining.Read?more?at?location?850Thirty years later, speaking to the Arkansas Gazette, Mahaffey acknowledged, “We were just crazy, you know. We cared nothingRead?more?at?location?1269Top of FormBottom of Formabout what kind of hysteria we were creating or anything like that. And people began to circulate rumors as to who the Phantom might be, and every eccentric fellow in town was suspect, and rumors grew and everybody was suspicious of everybody else. Just as these things would quiet down, another one would break out, and we certainly played it for all it was worth.”16Read?more?at?location?1270Black Man as SuspectBoth victims said that their attacker had been six feet tall and masked, but Hollis said he was a “young white man, under thirty,” whereas Mary Jeanne claimed that he was an African American—a “Negro,” in the parlance of the day, if not some more demeaning term. statement. Some of them badgered her, as Mary Jeanne told Lucille Holland, stubbornly insisting that she knew the gunman’s name and was protecting him, an allegation she denied for the remainder of her life. Another possible reason for downplaying Larey’s report of a black assailant was purely practical. Racial segregation was a fact of life in Texarkana in the 1940s, spawning paranoia and sporadic incidents of violence. Most recently, during America’s war against fascism, black resident Willie Vinson had been accused of “assaulting” a white woman. A racist mob seized Vinson on July 13, 1942, dragging him through Texarkana behind a car, before he was hanged from a cotton gin winch.23 Whether Sheriff Presley and his deputies were consciously attempting to avert more bloodshed, or were simply skeptical of Mary Jeanne’s account, her mention of an African American attacker was not publicized until mid–May, by which time all the bloodletting was finished and the Phantom Killer had retired.Read?more?at?location?122“In fairness to Bill [Presley],” Elliott recalled, a quarter century later, “he and his people went back and checked and corroborated every ounce of detail he [Sammy] had given us.” The likeable suspect was blameless.Read?more?at?location?1414Top of FormOther SuspectsOn the same day that the missing teens resurfaced, word arrived from Corpus Christi, Texas, concerning a possible suspect in custody. The drama had begun on Thursday, April 25, when a thirty-year-old man entered a local music store and asked the clerk if she would care to buy an E-flat alto saxophone.Read?more?at?location?892Top of FormBottom of FormLater on May 2, with those memos in hand, the Lone Wolf laid all hope to rest. Calling the Corpus Christi lead “a complete wash-out,” he told reporters, “This man has been completely eliminated. Our duty is not only to apprehend violators of the law, but also to protect innocent persons. When we make an arrest in this case, and charges are filed, there must be no mistake. We must get the right man, or no man at all.”78Read?more?at?location?911Top of FormEvidenceOfficial documents report discovery of several unidentified fingerprints from Paul Martin’s car. The first mention of prints, in an April 20 memo from the FBI’s Dallas field office, says that “[a] latent print developed on the steering wheel of the car was not the print of the owner [Martin’s father] nor either of the victims,” then adds that “photographs of three inexplicable latent prints” were en route from Texas “to be searched against [the FBI’s] single fingerprint file.”12Read?more?at?location?479Top of FormBottom of FormThe end result was disappointing. On May 15, Hoover wrote to Garrison that “[t]he photographs were examined, but none of the latent impressions appearing therein contains sufficient detail to permit classification and search through the Bureau’s single fingerprint file. However, three latent fingerprints appearing in the photographs contain a sufficient number of characteristic points to permit identification by comparison.”14 Translation: the FBI could not tell if they had the killer’s fingerprints on file, but if officers caught him, comparison of the Martin-Booker latents with a living suspect’s prints could nail the gunman.Read?more?at?location?484Top of FormBottom of Formteletype to Washington from the FBI’s Dallas field office, dated April 20, reports “swab test of the vaginal passage of Betty Jo Booker positive in test for male seminal secretion. Saline solution wash of penis of James Paul Martin negative. No foreign pubic hairs present among pubic hairs of Betty Jo Booker. However they did contain male seminal secretion. Not definitely known if victim [Polly Ann] Moore had been raped.” Despite its previous uncertainty, the same document closed with a notation that “[n]o publicity [was] being given ... [to] the fact that victim Booker had been raped.”18Read?more?at?location?495Top of FormBottom of FormAnd yet, denial of the facts persists. The Texarkana Gazette, in its twenty-five-year anniversary series on the slayings, still denied that victims Moore and Booker suffered any sexual assault.23 Modern researcher Glenn Ferguson, based on conversations with retired investigators, recalled that “there’s always beenRead?more?at?location?508Top of FormBottom of Formsome question as to whether Betty Jo Booker was raped.” Her state of dress—coat buttoned, one hand in a pocket—contributed to that confusion, as did police claims that “she died quick without knowing it was coming.”24 Those doubts should be laid to rest by the discovery of semen on and inside her body, while the tests performed on Martin’s corpse refuted claims of consensual sex.Read?more?at?location?510Top of FormBottom of Formscene, withheld from reporters at the time—and, it seems, for nearly half a century thereafter—was a small address book Paul Martin carried, found by police “in a washed-out area not too far from his body.”30 Multiple sources claim that Sheriff Presley found the book himself and kept it secret even from other investigators.31 It did not name the killer, but would surface, after a fashion, in a suspect’s statement subsequently given to authorities. Aside from what was found at or around the murder scene, one item was conspicuouslyRead?more?at?location?532Top of FormBottom of Formmodel—serial number 52535—as not in Martin’s car or anywhere in Spring Lake Park, as far as searchers could discover. Its description and serial number were broadcast to music stores and pawnbrokers throughout the tri-state area, in hopes that it would surface when the killer needed cash.32Read?more?at?location?537That flashlight, with a red handle, later entered journalistic history. On May 29, the Texarkana Gazette ran a front-page photograph of it spanning four columns—the first-ever newspaper photo including spot color.14 The accompanying caption read: “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TWO-CELL FLASHLIGHT?—ThisRead?more?at?location?1038Top of FormBottom of FormThe blood submitted for examination also led investigators nowhere. On May 10, the FBI lab reported that “[a]s a result of grouping tests conducted on the human blood appearing on the pieces of linoleum, specimen Q1, it was ascertained that this blood was derived from an individual belonging to International Blood Group ‘O.’ The human blood contained in two vials, specimens Q5 and Q6 [from Virgil and Katy Starks], was determined to be derived from an individual belonging to International Blood Group ‘O.’Read?more?at?location?1123The Crimesprowler claimed six lives and left three other victims wounded, traumatized for life.Read?more?at?location?28Top of FormBottom of FormMary Jeanne Larey, was a nineteen-year-old divorcée described in newspaper accounts as a “lovely brunette,” her first marriage an unspoken casualty of the Second World War. TheyRead?more?at?location?56Top of FormToday, the site lies buried under asphalt, reconfigured as the parking lot of Texarkana’s Central Mall, but in 1946 it was a stretch of open, mostlyRead?more?at?location?58Top of FormThe lovers had been necking for a brief ten minutes, when a beam of light lanced through the driver’s window of the Plymouth. Startled,Read?more?at?location?61Top of FormHollis turned to find a hooded figure stooped beside the car. The mask was white, resembling a pillowcase with holes cut for the eyes and mouth. The prowler aimed his flashlight with one hand, a pistol with the other. His voice was gruff as he said, “I don’t want to kill you, fellow, so do what I say.”5 Hollis and Larey followed orders, stepping from the Plymouth on the driver’s side. The gunman eyed them for a moment through his mask, then snarled at Hollis, “Take off your goddamn britches.”Read?more?at?location?62Top of FormFour separate documents in Texas Ranger files describe Larey’s assault as an “attempted rape.”12 In fact, multiple sources now agree that Larey’s statement to police described an act broadly defined by law as “object rape”—in this case, penetration of the victim’s genitals by her attacker’s gun barrel.13Read?more?at?location?84Top of FormBTop of FormBBoth victims were shot with a .32-caliber pistol, and since no weapon remained at the scene, authorities ruled out a murder-suicide.Read?more?at?location?314Top of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormTop of FormThe worst—and possibly deliberate—confusion involves the matter of sexual assault against Polly Ann Moore. Her body was found fully clothed, according to newspaper reports, and an FBI memo states that Moore’s corpse was delivered to morticians for embalming without any tests performed for evidence of sexual assault. Contradicting those claims, an early report in the Texarkana Gazette stated that “[e]xamination of the girl’s body by a local physician revealed that she had not been criminally assaulted”—a common euphemism for rape in those more genteel days. Nonetheless, four documents from Texas Ranger files state categorically that Moore was raped, and further injuries are alluded to in later newspaper reports. Articles from May 1946 describe a “sex maniacal killer,” claiming that Moore had been “horribly mutilated.” Eight years later, reporter John Scudder wrote that Moore had been “horribly mistreated for what is believed to have been about two hours” before she was shot. A test performed on blood recovered from theRead?more?at?location?319Top of FormBottom of FormWhatever the precise nature of Moore’s injuries, two things are clear: authorities believed she had been raped, and they concealed it from the public.Read?more?at?location?328Top of FormBottom of FormBy March 27, authorities in Texarkana had questioned fifty to sixty potential witnesses in the Griffin-Moore case, including patrons and employees of Club Dallas, located near the a $500 reward offered for useful informationRead?more?at?location?400Top of FormBottom of FormThus far, authorities had drawn no link between the double murder of March 24 and the Hollis-Larey attack on February 22, but locals who recalled the first attack from coverage in the Gazette voiced criticism of the way in which that prior incident had been soft-pedaled. Would Griffin and Moore have ventured onto lover’s lane the night they died, if wider coverage had been given to the first attack? In fact, there was no reason to presume that they were ignorant of the event, which had been covered locally for two days after its occurrence. And, as subsequent events would prove, even a double murder trumpeted in headlines would not keep young lovers from their calling on the lonely roads outside of Texarkana.29Read?more?at?location?426Top of FormBottom of FormBetty Jo played saxophone at the dance with a local band, the Rhythmaires.Read?more?at?location?454Top of FormDazed, she dropped to all fours and managed to retrieve one tooth with gold filling intact.Read?more?at?location?933Top of FormTop of FormBottom of FormThat evening, J. Q. Mahaffey interviewed Dr. Anthony Lapalla, a psychiatrist employed at Texarkana’s Federal Correctional Institution, to obtain a profile of the Phantom Killer.Read?more?at?location?1156Top of FormBottom of FormNot everyone agreed with Dr. Lapalla’s view that one subject had committed all five slayings.Read?more?at?location?1185Top of FormBottom of FormGeneral Tom Clark, declared that “[w]hile there is no possible connection between these various cases, local officers believe, in the light of all the facts, that the same person is responsible for all of them.”50 The facts, as Hoover should have known, included positive balllistic matches in the first four deaths—a clear connection—but persistent doubts surround the Starks attack.Read?more?at?location?1186Top of FormBottom of FormPhantom Innocent of Starks MurderIn Miller County, Chief Deputy Tillman Johnson apparently shared that view, although he kept it to himself for over half a century. Speaking to Texarkana Gazette reporter Greg Bischof, Johnson said, “I felt like he [the Phantom] did not do the Starks murder. It would be hard to tie him to the Starks murder.”55 (In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 8, Johnson tried very hard to do exactly that, in 1946.) In private conversations with researcher Glenn Ferguson, Johnson alleged that “Mr. Starks had been carrying on an affair with one of his relative’s wives while this person was away in the military and that the shooting was in revenge for that. After she recovered Mrs. Starks would not discuss the incident with ANYONE and went to her grave with what she knew.”56Read?more?at?location?1205Top of FormBottom of FormAs for the other suspect, never publicly identified, Texarkana probation officer-turned-realtor and prospective author Mark Bledsoe said, in 2001, that the Starks attack was perpetrated by a local serviceman who had returned from duty overseas in early 1946. “The last I heard of him,” said Bledsoe, “was that he was residing in a mental institution in Milwaukee.”57Read?more?at?location?1211Top of FormBottom of FormMcSpaddenAt first glance, McSpadden’s death appeared to be an unfortunate accident, but Dr. Engler found “no bruises as there would have been had the man fallen under the train.” Instead, he reported “a deep wound two inches long on the left temple which was serious enough to have caused death.” Cuts on McSpadden’s hands, furthermore, “indicated that the victim had struggled with an assailant armed with a knife.” A coroner’s jury empanelled by Engler ruled that McSpadden had been slain by persons unknown and afterward placed on the tracks. Bloodstains on the highway, near theRead?more?at?location?1248Top of FormBottom of Formspot where he was found, supported that opinion.9Read?more?at?location?1252Top of FormBottom of Formlocals theorized that Earl McSpadden was the Phantom and had killed himself in a fit of remorse.11 British true-crime author Colin Wilson repeated the suicide theory in 1964, while claiming that McSpadden’s corpse was unidentified.12Read?more?at?location?1258Top of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormBottom of FormEvidence Against Youell Swinney“The laundry mark, read under a black light, said S-T-A-R-K. This shirt was taken to Mrs. Starks and she said yes, thatRead?more?at?location?1713Top of FormBottom of Formwas her husband’s shirt and pointed to a place on the front of the shirt where she remembered personally repairing it. But on reflection, the next day, she said she couldn’t be sure. She knew it would mean death for the suspect, based on her identification of the shirt, and she said she could not positively identify it. The name was spelled ‘Stark’ instead of ‘Starks,’ and any woman would have repaired a damaged place such as that on her husband’s shirt.”50Read?more?at?location?1714Top of FormBottom of FormIn 1971, Tillman Johnson said that numerous particles of “slag” were found in the khaki shirt’s pocket. “Max and I went out there [to the Starks farm] with a dozen pillboxes,” he told James Presley, “and collected samples at random. One or two samples corresponded with the slag in Virgil Starks’ welding shop.”53 And still, it was not enough.Read?more?at?location?1722Top of FormBottom of FormAnalysts could not decide if it originally read “STARK” or “STARR.” Early reports say the prints did not match.Read?more?at?location?1739Top of FormGlossed over in the later Tackett-Johnson interviews is the disturbing fact that Peggy Swinney gave at least three very different and contradictory accounts of the Martin-Booker slayings. According to one published source, two of the conflicting tales ran as follows (spelling and grammar unaltered):Read?more?at?location?1754Top of FormBottom of FormIn that version, related by Tillman Johnson, Peggy pointed out the site of Martin’s murder on a map, then accompanied lawmen to the scene, where she elaborated on her story with a description of Swinney emptying Martin’s pockets. According to Johnson, she also provided other “additional details that could only have been known to someone present at the killings.” Johnson noted that discrepancies in criminal confessions are not unusual. “When you take statements from people like her,” he said, “and it’s exactly the same every time, something would be wrong.” And, while Johnson insisted that Peggy’s various statements “squared with the evidence,” we must acknowledge the radical shift in her stories that changed her from an innocent, distant bystander to a direct eyewitness.Read?more?at?location?1780Top of FormBottom of Formthis time, polygraphs were coming into use, and we took her down to Austin and had her tell the story over again to a man who was considered to be the leading authority on polygraphs. He said she was telling the truth.”65Read?more?at?location?1790Top of FormBottom of Form1917.66 Invention of the polygraph as recognized today is credited to John Augustus Larson, a Canadian immigrant who earned his master’s degree in 1915, withRead?more?at?location?1795Top of FormBottom of Formyears later, he earned a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California at Berkeley. Larson joined the Berkeley Police Department that same year, 1920, and began experimenting with a “deception test” based on blood pressure, pioneered by William Marston.Read?more?at?location?1797Top of FormBottom of FormConfronted with the statements from his bride, Swinney continued to deny participation in the Phantom’s crimes, professing innocence. “Then,” according to Tillman Johnson in 2001, “one night, out of the blue, he says, ‘OK, I’ll tell you all about it.’ But by the time we got everything ready to take his confession, he’d changed his mind.”73 At that point, the frustrated officers opted to do it the hard way: with “truth serum.”Read?more?at?location?1827Top of FormBottom of FormBy this time, his family had gotten him a lawyer. He and the girl were looking at the electric chair, and they [Swinney’s relatives] did their best to save them.”76Read?more?at?location?1841Top of FormBottom of FormTwenty-four years later, Johnson spun a very different tale for Carlton Stowers. “We got him there,” Johnson said, “and the doctor injected him with too much of the stuff, knocking him out cold. That was the biggest mistake we ever made.” Once revived, Swinney refused any further injections and clammed up tight.Read?more?at?location?1843Top of FormBottom of FormYears later, Tillman Johnson told Glenn Ferguson that he had found a witness who could place the Swinneys in Spring Lake Park on the night of April 13–14, 1946, but the informant was an African American (discredited by race alone, for many white jurors) and himself had briefly been a suspect in the case.78Read?more?at?location?1848Top of FormBottom of FormHardly indicative that Texas Rangers thought Max Tackett’s suspect was “The One.” Others who never accepted the Swinney solution were Sheriff Bill Presley and J. Q. Mahaffey, at the Texarkana Gazette.93 The most obvious hole in the case against Swinney involves fingerprints. For all of their attempts to make him talk, with marathon interrogations and with drugs, neither Max Tackett nor Tillman Johnson ever described any attempts to match Swinney’s prints with latents collected from the Starks or Martin-Booker crime scenes. It seems literally inconceivable that no one took a moment to perform that relatively simple task—or, if they lacked the skill, to palm it off on Hoover’s FBI. And yet, if even one print from their suspect had been found at either scene, he would have been sewn up beyond the help of any lawyer in that day and age, dispatched to the electric chair at Huntsville. Today, thanks to release of the FBI’s file in 2006—and despite excision of Swinney’sRead?more?at?location?1897Top of FormBottom of Formname from the relevant memos—we know that his prints matched none recovered from any of the Phantom’s crime scenes.Read?more?at?location?1904Top of FormBottom of FormIf Youell Lee Swinney was the Phantom, he apparently left no prints at any of the murder sites, while someone else must have deposited the fingerprints still unidentified today.Read?more?at?location?1907Top of FormBottom of FormInvestigations Post-Swinney ArrestOn December 13, 1946, as fear of the Phantom was fading, a typewritten letter arrived at the home of Clark Brown, stepfather of Betty Jo Booker. Typed all in capitals, it read:Read?more?at?location?1942Top of FormBottom of FormLocal authorities maintained their vigil well after the rangers had moved on. As Tillman Johnson later told reporter Carlton Stowers, “One of the things we kept doing long after the killings ended was to patrol the country roads where youngsters continued to go parking, despite all the warnings we’d been giving. One night, around midnight, I was driving down this dirt road and came up on a couple. I walked up to their car and tapped on the window and said, ‘Don’t you kids know that you could get yourselves killed being out here this time of night?’ This young girl just smiled at me and replied, ‘Don’t you know you could have gotten yourself killed?’ And with that she raised this big ol’ pistol to the car window.”3Read?more?at?location?2174Top of FormBottom of FormOn the night of October 8, 1946, an unknown gunman shot and killed another couple, Lawrence Hogan and Elaine Eldridge, while they were parked on a quiet lane in Dania Beach, Florida.Read?more?at?location?2183Top of FormBottom of FormElizabeth Short, a would-be actress from Massachusetts, nicknamed the “Black Dahlia” by journalists after her fondness for dressing in black. Despite widespread investigation, fifty-odd false confessions, and six books naming various suspects (one penned by this author), the crime remains officially unsolved today.16Read?more?at?location?2246Top of FormBottom of FormL.A., on January 22, 1947, Miller County Sheriff W. E. Davis wrote to FBI headquarters, seeking assistance with another suspected homicide from 1946. Davis headed his letter “Re: Unknown subject, Virgil Starks, victim; murder May 3, 1946, Texarkana, Arkansas,” but any relevant connection to that case was excised by bureau censors before they released the document to public scrutinyRead?more?at?location?2260Top of FormBottom of FormBill Presley tried a new angle of attack on May 2, 1947, as noted in another FBI memo from Little Rock that read: Sheriff W. H. PRESLEY, Texarkana, Texas, has requested this office that a search be made of the applicant fingerprint cards at the Bureau for one [two lines deleted]. If these fingerprints are located, it is furtherRead?more?at?location?2373Top of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormIn fact, Bill Presley had contacted local agents and the Little Rock field office on November 13, requesting assignment of a bureau fingerprint expert to Texarkana, stating his belief that “the only remaining possibility of an immediate solution in the case is through the identification of the subject through the unidentified latent fingerprints.”73 To that end, ten bureau leaders conferred on November 18 and unanimously approved Presley’s request, sending not one, but two print experts for a two-week marathon examination of fingerprint cards. The minutes of that meeting closed with a handwritten note from Hoover: “It should be remembered that Max Tackett who is very unfriendly has been appointed Chief of Police at Texarkana, Ark. We should not cooperate with him under any circ[umstance]s.”74 The bureau, in short, was prepared to let a killer stay at large, while salving Hoover’s ego.Read?more?at?location?2521Top of FormBottom of FormThe visiting G-men announced completion of their survey in Texas—5,184 fingerprint cards in all—on December 3, 1948.75 Much remained to be done, however, as the Arkansas State Police had another 800 cards, while Chief Tackett’s department held 11,700. Despite Hoover’s previous order, the technicians forged ahead in Arkansas and found Tackett cooperative. All in vain, though, since the epic project failed to match the Phantom’s latent prints.76Read?more?at?location?2528Top of FormBottom of FormOn April 1, 1949, the Bowie County Sheriff’s Department sent FBI headquarters a new list of 100 potential Phantom suspects, seeking fingerprint comparisons. Eighty-six were cleared, while fourteen were not found in bureau files.86 Another three-page list of names followed on April 26, with negative results.Read?more?at?location?2585Top of FormBottom of FormWhile Gonzaullas was peddling his gadgets in Dixie, on July 21, 1954, Detective Captain Wayne Bateman announced that a suspect had surrendered and confessed to the Phantom’s crimes in Shreveport, Louisiana. Robert Martin Chandler of Stamps, Arkansas, age “about thirty-six,” had turned himself in because his conscience “was bothering” him.Read?more?at?location?2717Top of FormBottom of FormTwo years later, in July 1956, workmen demolished an old school building in Spring Lake Park. In its attic, they found a man’s shirt, undershirt, and trousers marked with rusty-colored stains resembling dried blood. Could they have been the Phantom’s hunting garb? Packed off to the DPS crime lab in Austin, the garments were tested, reported to be free of bloodstains. Despite that verdict, Internet sources were still repeating the “bloody clothes” fable half a century later.Read?more?at?location?2723Top of FormBottom of Formlater.150 On June 24, 1960, FBI agents arrested Melvin David Rees in Hyattsville, Maryland, on charges of illegal flight to avoid prosecution. The charge in question dated back to January 1959, when Rees had forced a car occupied by Carrol Jackson, wife Mildred, and their two children off a rural highway in Virginia. He killed all four, raping Mildred in the process, later fleeing across country when he fell under suspicion for the mass murder. After his arrest, agents found Rees’s pistol and a diary detailing the crime at his parents’ home. Before trial in the quadruple-murder, Rees—dubbed the “Sex Beast” by reporters—was convicted of killing victim Margaret Harold, kidnapped during a drive with her boyfriend near Annapolis, Maryland, in June 1957. He received a life term in that case, then was sentenced to death in Virginia, but that sentence was later commuted to life. He died in custody, at a federal prison hospital, in 1995.151 At the time of his arrest, Rees intrigued Texas investigators, perhaps unaware that he was only thirteen years old in 1946.Read?more?at?location?2856Top of FormBottom of FormBetween the passing of Tackett and Presley, on May 9, 1971, the Texarkana Gazette concluded its twenty-five-year retrospective series on the murders with an article headlined “New Phantom lead checked.” According to that piece, a “recent lead ... involving a suspect now in prison, is being investigated by the Texas Rangers.” Ranger Sergeant Lester Robertson, reached by telephone in Dallas, confirmed that he was working the case with another ranger, Max Womack of Atlanta (Texas), but “declined to specify exactly what was being checked.”6 No names were mentioned in the article, but for anyone familiar with the case, the bulk of it clearly alluded to Youell and Peggy Swinney. Inasmuch as Sergeant Robertson had played a role in the original investigation, Max Tackett’s suspicion against Swinney, recounted in detail by the Gazette, hardly qualified as late-breaking news.7 The “new” lead, finally, went nowhere.Read?more?at?location?2906Top of FormBottom of FormTexarkana realtor Mark Bledsoe, researching a still-unpublished book about the Phantom’s crimes, traced Swinney to the nursing home in 1993 and found him wheelchair-bound, the victim of a crippling stroke. “When I talked to him,” Bledsoe later recalled, “he was coherent to a certain degree. Time has definitely had its effect. I videotaped the interview and it is hard to make out what is being said. You have to go more on the expressions. He spent some time bragging about his counterfeiting days and talking about being in and out of prison. But when I asked him about the Phantom murders, he became angry and denied that he’d had anything to do with them. He said, ‘I got off for that and I was cleared.’ He even refused to admit that he’d ever been married. It was spooky. He was in a wheelchair. I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it, being in the room with that person who had people in Texarkana so terrified.”Read?more?at?location?2989Top of FormBottom of FormTop of FormBottom of FormIn February 1999, an unidentified caller rang the home of victim Paul Martin’s brother, in Kilgore, Texas. As Tillman Johnson, then eighty-nine, told reporter Carlton Stowers, “Actually, it was his wife who took the call. She said a soft-voiced woman who sounded like she was in [her] late forties or early fifties asked if her husband had a brother murdered in Texarkana back in the ’40s. When she said he had, the caller said, ‘Please tell your husband that I want to apologize for what my father did.’” And with that, the connection was broken.44 Johnson went on to say, “It was almost a year later that I heard virtually the same story again. I was in church one morning, and someone came up to me after the service and mentioned something about my having been involved in the investigation of the Phantom Killer cases. A nephew of Virgil Starks was overheard the conversation. He came over and began telling me how his mother had received virtually the same call. He said she’d not paid much attention to it, figuring it was just some sick prankster.”45 Indeed, it may have been precisely that. No record exists of Youell Swinney siring a daughter—or any child, for that matter—but that only matters if Swinney was the Phantom. Viewed from another angle, if the Phantom killed Paul Martin but did not kill Virgil Starks, one of the calls, at least, must be a hoax or product of misinformation, drawn from media reports. Would any child of Texarkana’s slayer feel compelled to offer an apology for victims felled by other hands?Read?more?at?location?3105Top of FormBottom of FormLater in 2003, an Italian film crew passed through Texarkana, adding a segment on the Phantom to its documentary on small-town American life. Tillman Johnson, then ninety-two and the last surviving member of the team that stalked the killer, stood by his assessment of Youell Swinney as the prime suspect in three attacks, while reserving judgment on the Starks raid.Read?more?at?location?3118Top of FormBottom of FormCasey Roberts, TAMU-T’s media specialist and instructor for the class, told the Texarkana Gazette, “When the university administration expanded its mass communication program, they asked me if I had a courseto offer students for the summer. They wanted something more advanced than just studio production. This is what gave me the idea for a television documentary on this subject.”Read?more?at?location?3130Top of FormBottom of FormBased on the evidence available, Texarkana’s Phantom seems to have been a “mixed” offender, with sadistic overtones. His primary motive, it seems, was sexual violation of the female victims, either by “natural” rape or some other means. Published allusions to mutilation and protracted abuse, spanning two hours or more—if accurate—clearly indicate a desire to inflict pain and fear. Most serial killers evolve over time, learning from mistakes, adapting to achieve their goals more economically and to avoid capture. That evolution may explain the Phantom’s progress from attacks in lover’s lane to a nocturnal home invasion, although various investigators on the case separated the Starks attack from preceding crimes. Likewise, the change of weapons might represent an attempt to frustrate police—unless we accept Peggy Swinney’s tale that her husbandRead?more?at?location?3394Top of FormBottom of FormThe Texarkana Phantom, once again, appears to be a “mixed” offender. We have no way of knowing whether any of the victims knew their killer, but he kept a vehicle in working order, came prepared to kill in each case (hooded, armed, and carrying a flashlight), he engaged in conversation with the first surviving victims, sexually assaulted the female victims prior to killing them, and moved some of the bodies after death. Conversely, failure to retrieve spent cartridge casings might be deemed disorganized behavior, and the killer’s actions in the Starks home—if that was, in fact, a Phantom crime—suggest erratic, uncontrolled behavior.Read?more?at?location?3417Top of FormBottom of FormWas Youell Swinney the Phantom? Max Tackett and Tillman Johnson thought so, yet Captain Gonzaullas and other officers working the case pursued different suspects for over a decade after Swinney received his life sentence. DPS Director Homer Garrison went to his grave in May 1968, calling the Phantom’s crime spree “the Number One unsolved murder case in all Texas history.” Three years later, Weldon Glass—district attorney on the Texas side in 1946—still wondered if police had ever questioned the killer. “The Phantom might have gone through the mill,” Glass told the Gazette, “and then, on the other hand, he might not have.”23Read?more?at?location?3443Top of FormBottom of FormFBI’s extensive Phantom file before it was released to public scrutiny; if one of them was Swinney’s, nothing in that file connects him to the crimes in any way. Swinney admitted nothing to police, and they retrieved no evidence connecting him to any of the crimes. By all accounts, his bride’s confession was incriminating but changed significantly in successive recitations. We are told that she directed officers to Betty Jo Booker’s lost saxophone, but that instrument was only found by accident, three months after Peggy’s interrogation. Swinney’s supposed confessions to prison mates may have been fabricated—by them, to win favor with authorities, or by him, to enhance his reputation as a tough guy. If any fingerprints or other evidence from any crime scene had been linked to Swinney, we may take for granted that he would have been indicted, tried, convicted—and, most likely, executed. So, his guilt or innocence stands unresolved.Read?more?at?location?3449Top of FormBottom of FormDid the Phantom murder Virgil Starks and/or Earl McSpadden? Tillman Johnson seems to have believed, at least in private, that the Starks attack sprang from a love triangle unrelated supported by omission of the case from several Texas Ranger documents listing the names of other Phantom victims. Against that argument, the FBI’s extensive file consistently includes Starks and his wife among the Phantom’s victims and includes no gossip (always eagerly received at bureau headquarters) suggesting another offender or motive. Never has the media, despite its many references to sexual attacks suppressed by the police in 1946, run any exposés of women scorned or hanky-panky in the Starks case. No proof of a love affair, much less a murder spawned by jealousy, is presently available—nor likely will it ever be.Read?more?at?location?3457Was the Phantom white or African American? The two surviving victims who observed him—hooded, in the dark, half-blinded by a flashlight’s glare—could not agree. Mary Jeanne Larey arguably had a closer look behind the Phantom’s mask, but in the circumstances, could she accurately judge his race from only lips and eyelids partially exposed?Read?more?at?location?3465Top of FormTop of FormBottom of FormBottom of FormDoodie TennisonOn November 5, 1948, H. B. “Doodie” Tennison swallowed a lethal dose of poison at a residence near the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he was enrolled as an eighteen-year-old freshman. He left behind three notes—none ever published in full—for whoever might find his body. The first, found on a dresser in the bedroom where he died, was a poem/riddle titled “My Final Word.” It offered cryptic clues to opening a strongbox recovered from Tennison’s room, keyless, wherein lay the solution to his suicide. Police ignored the rhyme and cracked the box by force.66 The second note began: “This is my last word to you fine people. Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would, too.” In fact, while the full note was kept under wraps, various newspaper accounts make clear that Tennison confessed to all theRead?more?at?location?2497Top of FormBottom of FormPhantom’s shootings, including the Starks attack.67 The third typewritten note, found a short time later by Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington County, contradicted the second. It read: “Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my life. As I think about it, it is none of these things. They are not the reason for this incident, there’s a much better point to it all. Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all the family can get down to their lives.”68Read?more?at?location?2503Top of FormBottom of FormTennison’s family, described as wealthy, made no public comment on his passing. Police discovered that Tennison was in Texarkana on May 3, 1946, but a sixteen-year-old friend recalled spending the evening with him, insisting that “Doodie” was never out of his presence from 7:00 P.M. until midnight, when news of the Starks shooting spread through town. Subsequent investigation proved that Tennison’s fingerprints matched none of the latents collected from Phantom crime scenes.Read?more?at?location?2508Top of FormBottom of FormTo be on the safe side, Sheriff Presley sent Tennison’s fingerprints to FBI headquarters, for comparison with the killer’s latent prints. The bureau’s lab excluded Doodie as a suspect on November 9.70Read?more?at?location?2512Town that Dreaded SundownEnter Charles B. Pierce, an Indiana native whose parents moved to Arkansas before his first birthday. As a child, Pierce met future Hollywood director Harry Thomason, best known for his television series Designing Women, Evening Shade, and Hearts Afire, as well as his friendship with governor and president Bill Clinton. With Thomason, young Chuck Pierce produced two home movies shot on an 8mm camera and never lost his fascination for filmmaking. In the 1960s, Pierce worked at several TV stations in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, while edging into Hollywood productions serving as set decorator on fifteen films and TV series between 1966 and 1971.25 In 1972, Pierce directed his first feature film, The Legend of Boggy Creek, a quasi-documentary relating tales of a Bigfoot-type creature reported around Fouke, in Miller County, Arkansas. Earl E. Smith wrote the screenplay, in his first of several collaborations with Pierce, and the film was shot on location, using “actors” recruited from among the patrons at a local filling station. Premiering at Texarkana’s Perot Theater, Boggy Creek earned $55,000 in its first three weeks, then went on to gross $25 millionRead?more?at?location?3005Top of FormBottom of FormThe reverse side of that coin was another strong box-office showing and eventual “cult” status, with Town widely recognized as a pioneering film in the “slasher” genre, later dominated by Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980), with their countless sequels and low-budget imitators.Read?more?at?location?3057Top of FormBottom of FormAnd The Town That Dreaded Sundown lives on. Each October since 2003, around Halloween (weather permitting), it caps a series of films shown outdoors at Spring Lake Park, sponsored by the Texarkana (Texas) Department of Parks & Recreation. According to Director Robby Robertson, the film’s fifth annualRead?more?at?location?3063 ................
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