Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / The Freeway Phantom

Transcript

The Freeway Phantom · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Between 1971 and 1972, six young girls vanished from the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: streets of Washington, D.C., often during the most ordinary moments,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: like walking to the store, heading to work, or simply
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: trying to get home. And one by one, their bodies
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: appeared after each disappearance, showing signs of strangulation and the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: disturbing murder that took place. What followed was one of
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the largest investigations Washington had ever seen. But more than
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: five decades later, the identity of the person who murdered
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: those girls has yet to be identified. And all we
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: have is a mysterious moniker. This is the story of
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the serial killer known only as the Freeway Phantom. My
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: name's Ben.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked and Grim.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A true crime podcast. Warning. The following podcast contains graphic
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: content and material intended for.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: A mature audience. Listener discretion is advised.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So Nicole and I were just having a bit of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a debate or not a debate, but a conversation where
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we're scratching our heads, if you will. We know we've
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: mentioned it to Patreon subscribers, but what we do say
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: on the actual show and what we say in Patreon
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: can sometimes get blurred. And so we're really confused if
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we've ever mentioned or not that I'm writing a book
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: here on the podcast.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You sure here on the. Oh, I see. I was like,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: you're writing a book here on the podcast. You worded
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that funny.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Well, if I've mentioned.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: If you've mentioned it on this said podcast.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yes. I know we've mentioned it over on Patreon, but
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: have we mentioned it on the actual like publicly released podcast?
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Ben's writing a dope book.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I am. It's a psychological thriller and it's, I've been
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: going for a while. I took about a, I don't know,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: four or five month break and I'm getting back into
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: it and the writing is going really good and it's
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: flowing and I'm enjoying it and I can't wait until
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it's done.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's super cool actually.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Today, later on today, I think I'm going to go
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: have a beer and keep writing. I like to go
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: out to like a restaurant or bar or a pub
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and just sit down, whether it's in the corner or
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: at the bar or something, just sit down with a beer.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I like background noise when I work.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, see, I can't do that. Cause then I just like,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I'll hear like conversations and then my mind goes astray,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: basically down a rabbit hole in that conversation. Then the next, like,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know how you do it.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Well, it has to be a specific kind of noise.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It's got to be background. If I can hear, if
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: there's a table that's a little bit too loud and
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a little bit too close and I can hear their conversation,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it's annoying. It distracts me. That's why I like to
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: find like, if I can go sit in the back
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: corner or something, you know, away from people and it's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: just like buzzing white noise almost.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: That I love.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: But look at you, hey, you're just so like prestigious.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: You just go to a, mysterious cafe that serves beer
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: and you're in the corner with your fancy new glasses
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: and you're writing a book.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I don't go to cafes.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Bar?
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Restaurant?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I go to the dark dingy bars. Not necessarily like
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: dingy bars, but like just like atmospherical bars. You know
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: what I mean?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Sit in the corner and like find a pub, that
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. And I'm writing.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I get the like dingy thing because especially with editing
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and stuff, I like love editing in like a bat cave.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Like I want it to be like So like the
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: only thing I see is just like the glow from
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: my laptop.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Like you're Batman in the Batcave?
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: No. I just like darkness for that. Yeah.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Batman.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I'm Batman.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: That's what you're telling us is Nicole is Batman. That's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: all I'm getting out of this.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Okay. That's all you heard. Okay.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Now that being a fact, that means you're also Bruce Wayne.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Tie me into some of this money you got. Let's
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: live the life here. Come on now. Um, also speaking
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of living the life, you can live the life. If
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you sign up over on Patreon, just like we have
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: with some pretty cool people who did this past week,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Cambry Hernandez, for example, uh, Tareen Webb, Jessica Grafe. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Mary Hayko, all signed up over on Patreon to get
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: that exclusive behind the scenes. They get ads free. And
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: of course, as we were debating if we actually talked
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: about my book or not on the live show or
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: if it was over on Patreon, you get that inside
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: scoop many a times before we ever talk about it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right on, right on, right on.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So thank you very much for signing up. And if
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you guys want to join too, check out the description
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: in the link of this podcast. The link in the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: description of this podcast. There we go. And you too
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: can sign up. And chat with us and hang out
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: over there. But I think that's enough chit-chat for now.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Do you want to get into the show?
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I do, but I don't.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: You're hesitant today. You don't seem like you want to
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: hear this story.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm already pissed off.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: What's pissing you off already?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I just hate when people do such horrendous crimes like
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: this and get away with it. I don't know. There
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: isn't much more that would make me more angry than that, really.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Understandable. Understandable. It sucks when we don't know. I do.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I've said it before and I'll say it again. I
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: do like mysteries because it gets the mind working. You
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: can theorize. You can start trying to put the pieces
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of the puzzle together yourself. I love that aspect. But
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I also the other side of the coin is exactly
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: what you're saying. Here we have a serial killer who
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: gets away with murder. And I don't like that.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: It's not OK. But let's let's hear it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, but I think with that,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I think we should just dive in.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: OK, whether you're ready for it or not. Here we go.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: In the spring of 1971, Washington, D.C. was a city
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: under quite a bit of pressure. Anti-war demonstrations over Vietnam
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: were intensifying, the homicide unit was overwhelmed, and many Black
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: residents east of the Anacostia River already had a long
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: history of distrust towards the police. The Metropolitan Police Department
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: was still majority white, while residents in neighborhoods such as
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Congress Heights often felt caught in an uncomfortable position. heavily
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: policed in some circumstances, but poorly protected when they actually
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: needed help. The reasons behind that distrust was rather complicated
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and shaped by years of radical inequality of the time,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: with changing neighborhoods and difficult interactions between police and the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: communities that they served. And it was there, on Waller
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Place in southeast Washington, that 13-year-old Carol Denise Spinks lived
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: with her mother, Alan Teen, and several siblings. Carol was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: a seventh grader at Johnson Junior High School. She stood
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: barely five feet tall and had an identical twin sister
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: named Carolyn. Now, Carolyn was the more outgoing twin, while
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Carol was quieter and more reserved. But still, she liked
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: many ordinary things, too, like playing jacks, jumping double dutch,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: hula hooping, and spending time with her sisters and walking
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to the nearby store. On Sunday, April 25th, 1971, Allentine
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: left home to visit a nun on the other side
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: of the city. Before leaving, though, she instructed the younger
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: children to ensure they stay inside. Now, Carol's 24-year-old sister, Valerie,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: lived across the hall of the apartment complex and needed
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: some groceries from a 7-Eleven on Wheeler Road, just across
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the Maryland line in Prince George's County. The store was
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: about seven blocks away, and children in the neighborhood regularly
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: made the walk alone. So Valerie asked Carol to go
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: pick up some bread, five TV dinners, and soda for her.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: She gave her $ 5, with enough change left over for
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Carol to buy herself a drink. So Carol left, wearing
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: blue gym shorts, a red sweater, and brown socks. But
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: before reaching the store, however, she unexpectedly crossed paths with
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: her mother. Now, she was pretty angry. Alan Teen had
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: told Carol specifically not to leave home. But here they were.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: She was already out on an errand, so her mother
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: decided to allow her to continue that errand, telling Carol
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: to come directly home afterwards.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: But the sister probably didn't know that she was supposed
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: to stay home, hey? I'm assuming?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Assuming, yeah. So it was definitely a bit of a circumstance. Like,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you make sure you stay home, and then she's out,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and it's like, but you know what the auntie told
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: me I could go get this errand for? And she's like, okay, fine,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: do that. Like, you know, just. Maybe a little bit
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: of overstepping, maybe a little bit of misunderstanding, all mixed in.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But it was a fine situation. She said, okay, finish
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the errand, then go straight home. So Carol did that.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: She continued on towards the 7-Eleven she was going to. Now,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the store clerk there saw her in the store at
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: approximately 7.40 p.m. Carol then purchased the groceries and left.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: A second witness, a 14-year-old girl walking towards a store
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: with her mother and sister, remembered passing Carol as she
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: headed the opposite direction and carrying a grocery bag. And
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: that was the last confirmed sighting of Carol alive. She
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: never reached Waller Place. She didn't return home. Her family
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: soon began looking for her when she didn't. They contacted
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: friends and neighbors and called the store. And when they
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: still couldn't find her, Alan Teen reported Carol missing to
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Police. Now, missing child investigations in 1971 operated
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: very differently from today. There were no amber alerts or
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: immediate mass notifications. And police often assumed children who had
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: disappeared for only a few hours would eventually return on
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: their own. Carol was entered into the system as a
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: missing child, but there was no large-scale police search launched
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: that night. Her family was left to do much of
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: that immediate searching themselves. They were contacting Carol's friends and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: neighbors and retracing the short route that she had taken
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: home from that 7-Eleven, As the hours turned into days,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: more than 40 people from the community joined them, knocking
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: on doors and searching the surrounding streets. Police soon did
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: join the searching too. And there were leads, but nothing solid.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: One witness claimed to have seen two black men jumping
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: from a blue car and abduct Carol on Wheeler Road,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: supposedly while another girl, Deborah Harrison, was walking with her.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Now police located Deborah. She confirmed that she had briefly
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: walked with Carol. but denied seeing anyone abducting her. Soon,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: six days passed. It was on Saturday, May 1st. Children
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: were playing near the point where Interstate 295 and Sweetland
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Park came together. Traffic constantly moved nearby with Bowling Air
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Force Base, St. Elizabeth Hospital, and the Naval Research Laboratory
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: all in the surrounding area. And at approximately 2.46 p.m.,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: an 11-year-old boy wandered away from the others. and noticed
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: something among the tall grass and brush. It was a body.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: The boy quickly flagged down a passing police officer, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: soon detectives were at the scene. Now, three of them
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: arrived at Allentine's home tune to tell her that they
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: had found Carol. She was dead.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Gosh, that is just devastating.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Carol was still dressed in the red sweater, blue gym shorts,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and brown socks, and she had been wearing these when
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: she disappeared. but her blue tennis shoes were gone. Carol
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: had originally been laying face down when she was found,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: but was turned onto her back by a curious onlooker
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: before police were able to arrive to photograph her. Investigators
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: were therefore dealing with a crime scene that had already
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: been disturbed. Now, thorough examination of Carol's remains found that
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: there were abrasions on her hands and face. There was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: crescent-shaped marks along the left side of her neck, a
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: bloodied nose with a split lower lip. Not only that,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: but it was found that she had been raped and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: sodomized as well. Her cause of death was determined to
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: be asphyxia caused by manual strangulation.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So a fucking monster got a hold of her, basically.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Correct. Investigators collected hairs from several places, including Carol's clothing
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: and a hair barrette that did not appear to belong
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to her. They also recovered green synthetic fibers from her
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: shorts and from inside her underwear. Now, no semen was detected,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: but there was, however, blood beneath Carol's fingernails. The quantity
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: of that blood, though, was too small for investigators at
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the time to conclusively determine whose blood it was. But
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: it raised the possibility that Carol had scratched or fought
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: against her attacker, basically, defensively. Now, her autopsy produced another
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: troubling discovery. There was citrus fruit in Carol's stomach. Now,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: according to her family, Carol had not eaten citrus on
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that day that she disappeared. And more importantly, the medical
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: examiner estimated that she had been dead for only approximately
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: two to three days when her body was discovered on
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: May 1st. But Carol disappeared six days earlier.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Dang, I hate that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, what you're already realizing is the implication
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: behind this. Someone may have taken her somewhere, kept her
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: alive and fed her for several days before before eventually
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: killing her and leaving her beside the freeway. Detective Romaine Jenkins,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: who had recently become MPD's first female homicide detective, remembered
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Carol's case unfolding as Washington descended into the enormous May
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Day anti-war demonstrations. Officers throughout the city were being redirected
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: towards protests and mass arrests. Detective Jenkins remembered it very simply.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: If someone wanted to commit a crime in Washington at
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: that moment, It was an unusually good time to do it,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: because so many police resources were tied up elsewhere. And then,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: on Thursday, July 8th, 1971, a little more than two
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: months after Carol Spinks was found, another girl disappeared from
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: almost the same area. Darlenea Denise Johnson was 16 years
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: old and lived with her family at 3922 Wheeler Road
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: southeast in Congress Heights. only a few blocks from Carol's home.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: The girls had even attended the same school together, although
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: there was no indication that they had been friends or
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: anything like that, but they had certainly been at the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: same school. But that summer, Darlenia was working as a
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: youth counselor at the Oxon Hill Recreation Center, close enough
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to home that she could actually make the trip on foot.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And July 8th was supposed to be a longer workday
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: than usual. The Recreation Center was holding an overnight sleepover
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: for neighborhood children, and Darlenia was planning to stay there
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: after her regular shift, sometime around 10.30 to 10.45 a.m.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: She left home, wearing a green sweater over a blue blouse,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: blue shorts, and a red, white, and blue striped miniskirt.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Before leaving, she reminded her mother, Helen, not to expect
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: her home that night because of this sleepover. But Darlenia
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: never arrived at that recreation center. She never arrived for work.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And at some point that evening, her family learned that
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: she failed to show up for work, meaning she had
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: disappeared somewhere between leaving home and reaching that rec center.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So Helen began calling friends, neighbors, trying to work out
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: where her daughter had gone. But by the following morning,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Darlenia was still missing, and Helen filed a missing persons
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: report with MPD's 7th District. Soon possible sightings began to emerge.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: with one witness reported seeing Darlene get into an older
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: black vehicle driven by a black man. Other witnesses claimed
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: that she had been with her boyfriend, Alfred Holmes, giving
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: investigators two very different possibilities. Meanwhile, Helen began receiving disturbing
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: telephone calls. Apparently, someone repeatedly called the Johnson home at
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: unusual hours, saying nothing, simply just breathing heavily. into the receiver.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Ugh, that is uncomfortable.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And then came a final call, in which a man's
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: voice told her, quote, I killed your daughter before hanging up.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, this guy is a sick, sick man.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: He is. Helen reported the calls, but investigators had no
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: practical way to trace them, and the identity of the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: caller was never established. Then on Monday, July 12th, police
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: were given something far more concrete. At about 5.45 p.m.,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a highway employee whose vehicle was having trouble stopped along
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Interstate 295, close to the Sweetland Parkway and the area
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: where Carol Spinks had been discovered. In the grass below
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the roadway, he saw what appeared to be a human body,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and so he contacted police to report it. Officers were dispatched,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: but instead of walking the embankment, they apparently checked from
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the roadway and saw nothing from the car. So they
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: radioed back that nothing was found, and left. Now apparently
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: this was not the first time someone had reported the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: possibility of a body being in that area either. And
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: days passed in the July heat. Eventually, one of the
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: people who had reported the sightings returned and was shocked
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: to discover that the body was in fact still there.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Charles Bonin, an off-duty DC police sergeant, was informed of this.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: And on July 19th, Bonin went to the area on
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: his motorcycle and searched the roadside himself. And he found
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the body. It was lying only 15 feet from the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: place where Carol Spinks had been found in May.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, that is bizarre. So what were they, did
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: they actually go and search? Because that's kind of like,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: makes you a bit angry.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Well, you have to think, okay, this body was dumped
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: in long grass and brush sort of thing off the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: side of the road. The officers pulled up their vehicle.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Purely speculation. Perhaps didn't even get out
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of the vehicle and only looked out the window along
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the road. Didn't see anything and left.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Holy. Okay. That person that reported that and like later
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: went back and still saw it there. Like I would
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: be freaking pissed.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No kidding.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Like, like almost not even willing to accept that. people
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: do their job, I guess. I don't know. I would
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: just be so freaking angry.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Personally, I might be turning to a news source of
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: some sort. I would be reporting it to police, make
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: sure they're out there, but then I would also report
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: it to a news source that, hey, police aren't doing
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: their job right now.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Like someone in your team, I'd be making a report
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: to the police. I'd be going to the news sources,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: making sure this is public knowledge and that something is
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: done about this.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Because it almost, it actually gives, makes you feel a
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: bit scared. Yeah. You know, that something like that's reported
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: and then it just never- For sure.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately, I got to play devil's advocate here. And
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: you got to remember the time that they're in. There
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: is a lot of turmoil going on at this time.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of police resources being tied up in
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: different things. Not to say it's an excuse, but you
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: have potentially very busy people. very tired, very exhausted officers
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: on duty.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: I get that, but a body being reported is something
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: that you have to take pretty seriously.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Definitely. Like I say, not to say it's an excuse,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: but at least to give an idea of the time
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: that they're in. Now, investigators... When they arrived, the decomposition
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: was severe, and they could no longer identify the victim
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: by looking at their face, and the medical examiner had
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: to obtain fingerprints under rather difficult conditions to establish that
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the remains were in fact those of Darlenia Johnson. Her mother, Helen,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: was also able to recognize the clothing that she was
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: found in, as Darlenia was still wearing the outfit that
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: she left home in. But her brown loafers, her brown shoes,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: were missing. Now, the condition of her body had unfortunately
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: destroyed some of the most important answers investigators were hoping
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to find. The medical examiner could not determine Darlenea's cause
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: of death, could not establish a reliable time of death,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and could not determine whether she had been subject to
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: sexual assault or rape either. Hairs that did not belong
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: to Darlenea were nevertheless recovered from her shorts, sweater, underwear,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: hair barrette, and hair. And investigators also found blood beneath
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: her fingernails and on her barrettes, but there was too
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: little available for useful testing. If officers had located her
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: when they first had the calls come in on July 12th,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: those findings may have been very different, but instead a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: week of exposure to heat and weather had potentially erased
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the evidence that could explain exactly how Darlenia died. Now,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: despite the similarities in the situation, police did not officially
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: declare that Carol and Darlenia had been murdered by the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: same person. Darlenia's cause of death was unknown. And unlike
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Carol's case, decomposition prevented investigators from establishing the same clear
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: evidence of rape. But the similarities, they were still striking.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Both girls were young and black. They lived only blocks apart.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: They went to the same high school. They disappeared while
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: traveling through familiar streets and were found along I-295, near St.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Hospital, and were both missing their shoes. Now, in
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: regards to Darlene's murder, police scrutinized Alfred Holmes, who is
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Darlene's boyfriend, because several witnesses claimed that she had been
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: with him. Investigators repeatedly questioned him and even administered something
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: called sodium pentanol, which is commonly, or was commonly called
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: truth serum. It's essentially just an anesthetic and it doesn't
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: force people to tell the truth. But regardless, Alfred maintained
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: that he had not seen Darlene since July 4th, four
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: days before she actually vanished. And he was eventually dismissed
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: as a suspect. At almost the same time, another killing
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: added to the fear, though. 14-year-old Angela Denise Barnes, also
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: from Congress Heights, disappeared while walking home from a friend's house.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Her body was found roughly 25 miles south of Washington,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: near Route 228 in Waldorf, Maryland. Angela had been shot
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: in the back of the head rather than strangled and
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: showed no known evidence of sexual assault or violence, and
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: she still had her shoes on. Investigators could not know
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: yet whether those differences meant anything, but another young black
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: girl from the same community was found dead. By July 21st,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: residents had enough. About 75 people gathered outside Carol Spinks'
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: apartment building for a press conference. Calvin Rolerk, publisher of
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the Washington Informer and president of the Washington Highland Civic Association,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: accused police and the media of treating crimes in southeast
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Washington differently from crimes in wealthier communities. Helen Johnson summed
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: up the frustrations more simply, describing residents as, quote, Now
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: police defended their response, saying patrols had been increased with
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: vehicles and even helicopters. And they also announced the creation
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of a seven-member task force to investigate the murders. It
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: seems the neighborhood finally had a dedicated investigation. But another
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: child was about to disappear, and this time, She didn't
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: live anywhere near El Carol Spinks or Darlenea Johnson. On Tuesday,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: July 27, 1971, 10-year-old Brenda Faye Crockett was spending the
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: warm evening outside near her home on 12th Place NW,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: not far from Cardzaro High School. Brenda stood only about
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: four and a half feet tall. She had dimples, enjoyed church,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and posing for photographs. She was remembered by her teachers
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: as being responsible and dependable. That evening, she still had
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: pink foam rollers in her hair while she played outside
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: with other neighborhood children. At around 8 p.m., Brenda's mother,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Reetha Crockett, asked her to walk to a nearby Safeway
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: grocery store for typing paper and dog food for the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: family's three dogs, Ringo, Rex, and Romeo. The store was
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: roughly five blocks away. Ritha did not want her daughter
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: walking there alone and told Brenda to take either her
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: young sister Bertha or one of the neighborhood children with her.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Brenda agreed, but despite that, she still left by herself anyways.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: About half an hour passed. Then an hour. When Brenda
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: still had not returned home, Ritha began searching the surrounding streets.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Other relatives joined her, while Bertha remained at home with
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Brenda's stepfather, Theodore Codwell, in case Brenda called. At approximately 9.40 p.m.,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the telephone rang, and Bertha answered. It was, in fact,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Brenda on the other end. She was crying. She was upset.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: She told her sister that a white man had picked
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: her up, and she said that she believed she was
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: somewhere in Virginia. But she also said not to worry
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: because the man was going to send her home in
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a cab. She could not give Bertha an address or
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: anything that would allow the family to actually find her.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And then the call ended. Roughly five minutes later, at
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: around 9.45pm, the telephone rang again, and this time Theodore answered.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: It was Brenda again. She repeated that she was in Virginia,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and was inside a house with a white man. Theodore
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: tried to get as much useful information from her as possible,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: asking exactly where she was, and eventually telling her to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: put the man on the telephone. But Brenda didn't. Instead,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: she asked Theodore a strange question. Quote, Did my mother
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: see me? Theodore didn't understand. If Brenda was really somewhere
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: in Virginia, how could Ritha have seen her? He asked
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Brenda again to let him speak with the man, but
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: she said the man was outside. And then Theodore said
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: what he heard as heavy footsteps approaching in the background,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and Brenda's voice dropped. Well, she said quietly, I'll see you.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And then the call ended. When Ritha returned from searching,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: she learned about the calls, and they contacted police, reporting
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Brenda missing to MPD's 3rd District. Investigators had no way
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to trace the calls, but the story Brenda had given
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: them immediately raised questions. Virginia was nearby, yet vague enough
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to start a search in almost any direction, and her
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: question about whether her mother had seen her was even
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: harder to explain. It raised the possibility that whoever had
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Brenda was worried that Ritha had seen him with her daughter,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: or that Brenda herself had glimpsed her mother searching nearby.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So police began considering whether the information Brenda had given
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: was something she had been instructed to say as a diversion,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a red herring. But ultimately, the answer to where Brenda
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: had actually been did not come that night. At around
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: 5 a.m. on July 28th, a 24-year-old hitchhiker named Donald
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Ray Carter was traveling near Chevrolet, Maryland, and he spotted
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a body on a grassy rise beside the Johnson-Hanson Highway, U.S.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Route 50, near the Killingworth Avenue exit. It was Brenda.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: She'd been left only about nine miles from home. Her
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: body was lying face up, her arms were raised above
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: her head, and investigators were called to the scene, and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: they considered whether that position suggested that she'd actually been
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: thrown or pushed from a moving vehicle. She was still
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: wearing the clothes that she'd left home in, although several
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: pink curlers were missing, and her shoes were also gone.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: A scarf was tied in a knot tightly around Brenda's neck.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: She had been raped, and she had been strangled.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this is just too much. Okay, and
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: that call, because it would give you so much hope,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I feel like, but also so little at the same time.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: It would. It would leave you feeling helpless, I'd imagine.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Completely confused. But like also, okay, like she's still alive.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, but what can you do? Not much.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: And then it's the next morning that she's found like
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: this then.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now investigators also documented a small contusion on the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: left side of her scalp. And her bare feet drew
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: particular attention because they were remarkably clean. Described in many accounts,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: in fact, almost as... like pristine as if they had
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: been washed before her body was discarded but there was
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: also physical evidence discovered too investigators found blood mixed with
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: semen in brenda's underwear although forensic testing in 1971 could
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: not identify who it belonged to small hairs were recovered
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: from the palm of her right hand But there was
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: too little material for a meaningful comparison. And black textile
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: fibers appeared consistent with the scarf around her neck. But
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: more importantly, green synthetic fibers were recovered from Brenda's blouse, shorts,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and underwear. Investigators had seen fibers like these before. The
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: same type of green synthetic material had been recovered from
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Carol Spinks' clothing. And that connection changed things. Carol and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Darlenea had disappeared from the same small area of southeast Washington,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: allowing police to wonder whether geography alone explained those similarities.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: But Brenda lived across the city in northwest Washington, yet
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: she had disappeared during another routine trip to a store,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: was found in Maryland beside a major roadway, was missing
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: her shoes, and now carried those same unusual fibers. Whatever
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: was happening was no longer confined to to Congress Heights.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And for the first time, investigators had heard the voice
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: of one of the missing children while she was still
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: in the hands of whoever had taken her as well.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: For a little more than two months after Brenda Crockett's murder,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: there was no new deaths. But then came Friday, October 1st, 1971.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Nina Moshea Yates was 12 years old and was known
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: to her family and friends as Nina. She lived with
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: her father, William Yates. and her siblings as well in
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: an apartment on Benning Road in Washington. William worked in construction,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and Nino was the second oldest of four children. Her
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: stepmother had recently given birth and was still at the hospital,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: so that evening William planned to visit her and the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: new baby. Before leaving, he asked Nino to make a
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: quick trip to the neighborhood Safeway for sugar, flour, and plates.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what he was planning, but to me
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it sounds like making a cake.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: A cake of sorts, yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Now, Nino was mature and dependable, and the store was
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: at the end of the street. At approximately 7pm, Nino
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: left the apartment wearing brown shorts, a sweatshirt, and white
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: tennis shoes. She made it to Safeway without any known trouble.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Employees later confirmed that she had entered the store and
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: purchased the groceries. But when William returned home from the hospital,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Nino wasn't there. He began checking with friends, neighbors, and
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: hurried to Safeway himself, too. Employees there told him that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: his daughter had already been there and left. William contacted
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Nino's mother, but she'd not seen her either, and the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: family reported the 12-year-old missing. But there was also no
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: time for the search to begin. Because at approximately 8.45 p.m.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: that night, 15-year-old hitchhiker Stephen Patopi was traveling along Pennsylvania
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Avenue Southeast, just across the district in Prince George's County.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: when he noticed a body laying in the tall grass
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: beside the eastbound roadway. It was Nina. Her body was
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: only about three-tenths of a mile into Maryland, roughly 1,500
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: feet from the Washington line. Rain had been falling on
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and off that evening, yet her clothing and body were
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: still dry beneath the grass. Less than two hours had
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: passed since she left home, and depending on exactly where
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: she had been killed and left beside the roadway, Whoever
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: dumped her may have gone only minutes before Stephen arrived
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and found her body.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Seriously? Like she was basically killed before she was even
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: able to be reported missing?
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Holy.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Nina was still dressed, but her white tennis shoes, well,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they were still missing.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, and this sick fuck has like a foot fetish
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: of shorts, I think.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some sort of trophy or something, clearly. Investigators found...
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: A single brown loafer nearby, though. The discovery immediately drew
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: attention because Darlenia Johnson had been wearing brown loafers when
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: she disappeared, and both of hers had been missing when
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: her body was recovered. But investigators were never able to
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: establish that the shoe belonged to Darlenia, or that anything
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: had to do with the murder either. Now scattered near
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Nino were her house keys, $ 2. 91 and change, and a
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: bag of sugar. The autopsy showed that Nino was raped...
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: and found that enough force was applied to her neck
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to cause serious internal damage, including broken esophagus, making her
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: cause of death strangulation. There was also a small injury
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: to her forehead while fingernail marks on her neck and
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: face suggested that a struggle against her attacker had taken place.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Investigators recovered hairs that did not belong to Nino from
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: her underwear, sanitary pad, sweatshirt, and jeans. And once again,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: There were green synthetic fibers on her clothing. But there
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: was another detail that investigators found particularly strange. Nino had
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: apparently been undressed at some point and then dressed again.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: In fact, her sanitary pad had been put back incorrectly.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Near the body was a tire impression, believed to have
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: been made by a relatively small vehicle. Police photographed it,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: but unfortunately the mark wasn't clear enough to make a
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: usable cast. But the next morning brought another clue. A
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Safeway employee found a grocery bag containing the flour and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: paper plates Nino had purchased lying near the sidewalk in
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the 1900 block of Benning Road along the route that
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: she would have taken home. Detective Lewis Richardson believed that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the abandoned groceries could mark the place where Nino had
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: been forced into a vehicle. Because if she had voluntarily
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: accepted a ride, he reasoned why would she have left
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: part of her groceries behind?
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: That makes sense.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Then a neighborhood witness remembered something. He had seen Nino
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: getting into a blue Volkswagen with Maryland license plates. They
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: said at first the sighting didn't seem suspicious because Nino's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: mother drove a similar vehicle, and Nino was known as
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: extremely shy and avoided strangers. Investigators began locating cars matching
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that description, and ultimately seized and examined approximately 25 different vehicles,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: but none produced evidence connecting its owner to Nino's murder.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: By now, investigators could no longer comfortably treat these deaths
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: as isolated crimes. Carol Sprinks, Darlene Johnson, Brenda Crockett, and
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Nino Yates all disappeared while moving through ordinary parts of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: their daily lives. Bodies had been left near major roadways.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: They were missing shoes. Carol, Brenda, and Nino carried strikingly
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: similar green fiber evidence while the forensic examination repeatedly produced
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: foreign hairs. The investigation soon expanded to roughly 40 investigators,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: bringing together Metropolitan Police, Prince George's County Police, Montgomery County Police,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Maryland State Police, and even the FBI. The murders were
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: finally receiving widespread attention. And soon, the press gave the
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: unknown male perpetrator, this serial killer, a name. The Freeway Phantom.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: By November 1971, the name Freeway Phantom was already circulating
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: through Washington, and families with teenage daughters were being warned
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: to take precautions. Brenda Denise Woodward was 18 years old.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: She had recently moved out of her parents' home on
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Maryland Avenue Northeast after some disagreements at home, temporarily staying
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: with a friend across the courtyard. But Brenda still visited
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: her family regularly and remained especially close with her younger siblings.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: After hearing about Nino's murder, Brenda had even called her
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: mother and warned her to keep a close watch on
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the younger girls. Brenda had spent the summer working as
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: a counselor for the Department of Recreation and had begun
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: thinking seriously about becoming an elementary teacher. In the meantime,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: she was attending evening classes at Cardoza High School, studying
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: practical office skills, including typing and shorthand. On Monday, November 15, 1971,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Brenda spent part of the day babysitting at a friend's
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: house before visiting her family. She ate with them, listened
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: to records on her new record player, and asked whether
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: her younger sister, Diane, could drive her to school. Now,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: her father didn't think Diane had enough driving experience, so
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: he offered to take Brenda himself. He dropped her off
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: at Cordoza at approximately 6.30pm. Before Brenda could get out,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: he told her that if she had any trouble getting home,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: that she could call and he'd come pick her up.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Her class ended shortly before 10 p.m. Brenda left with
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: a classmate named Sherman Mitchell, and the two went to
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street Northwest for something to eat.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Sherman often drove Brenda home, but his car was being
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: repaired that night, so they were using public transportation instead.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: At about 10.25 p.m., they boarded a D.C. transit bus
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: near 8th and H Street Northeast. Brenda got off to
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: transfer to another bus that would take her directly towards
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Maryland Avenue while Sherman continued on his route. After reaching
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: his stop, he went to a grocery store to get
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: some change for a dollar and called Brenda's home to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: make sure that she arrived there safely. But her housemates
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: said that she hadn't come home. In fact, Brenda never
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: made it home. It was at approximately 4.50 a.m. on
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: November 6th, 16th when Chevrolet police officer David Norman was
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: patrolling near a service road connecting the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Route 202, close to Prince George's General Hospital, when he
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: noticed what appeared to be a person lying beside the road.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: A coat covered much of the body, and for a moment,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Norman thought that the person might actually still be alive,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: But when he shone his flashlight towards her face and
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: received no response, that's when the realization began to set in.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: She was laying on her back with her hands clasped
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: behind her head. She carried no purse for identification, but
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: her school books were scattered nearby. Rings remained on her finger,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and a green ribbon was in her hair. The afro-style
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: wig she'd been wearing was missing from her head. It
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: was recovered roughly 30 yards away near the Landover Road,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and her clothing was immediately suggested that someone else may
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: have dressed her after she was attacked. She wore a
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: black and white checkered skirt, black turtleneck sweater, and black boots,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: but the sweater had been put on inside out, and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: her skirt was not properly zipped up. Her burgundy or
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: maroon velvet coat had been draped across her body, and
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: she was still wearing her shoes. The remains were soon
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: identified that it was, in fact, Brenda.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Just to confirm, all of these have happened in the
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: one year, hey?
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: 1971? This is all 1971, yes. Oh, this person is
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: just going nuts. And I just hate how he just
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: almost just discards them like they're just nothing. Really, like
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: on the side of the road, hey?
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: That's, yeah, exactly what it is. And it doesn't seem
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: like he's really trying to hide anything. He knows they're
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: going to be caught dumping in the same grounds even.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Just dumping them, discarding them like nothing. I don't know.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Like, obviously them getting murdered is devastating. But then, yeah,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: just like the dumping, them being found on the side
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: of the road too. It just like..
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: The level of disrespect.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: It just really does not sit good at all.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: It's like he's not viewing them as human. Now, her
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: autopsy showed extensive violence. It showed she was raped, strangled,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: and even stabbed. Her neck was bruised and a small
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: bone had been broken from the pressure applied even by
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: that strangulation. And in total, she had been stabbed six times,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: with the fatal wound penetrating the right side of her
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: chest near the breastbone. Several additional stab wounds were found
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: on her abdomen too. Some produced very little bleeding, suggesting
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that they may have been inflicted after she was already dead.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And defensive injuries indicated that Brenda had fought back against
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: her attacker. They also found forensic evidence that tied the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: scene to the earlier murders. Green synthetic fibers were recovered
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: from Brenda's socks and underwear. And investigators also collected hairs
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: believed to be that from a black person, from her coat, boots, shirt,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: and bra, along with two Caucasian hairs whose origin could
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: not be determined. They might have belonged to the killer,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: but they could have just easily have come from someone
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Brenda encountered normally, or someone who had handled the scene even.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: But there was one discovery that was recovered when investigators
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: searched the pocket of Brenda's coat that was significant. See,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: inside was a piece of white notepaper, cleanly cut from
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Brenda's own school notebook. And written on it was a message.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: And it read as such. Quote, This is tantamount to
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: my insensitivity to people, especially women. I will admit the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: others when you catch me, if you can. End quote.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And it was signed, Freeway Phantom.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. So he's just playing into his name now.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, that is such a piss off leaving a note
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: like that. It is.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So now this note, to top it all off,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, of course it was sent for handwriting examination.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: And FBI experts compared it to Brenda's known handwriting and
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: reached a disturbing conclusion. Brenda had written it herself.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, they made her write it. Yeah.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: So investigators believed the killer had dictated the words to her,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: making her write the note in her final moments.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: And Brenda was also very aware of who this killer
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: was because she had phoned the mom, right? To warn.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Now, oddly enough, the handwriting appeared neat and controlled with
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: no obvious trembling or frantic details. changes within it right
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: and that caused some detectives to wonder whether brenda initially
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: knew or trusted the person that she was with even
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: or whether she had been persuaded to write the strange
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: message before realizing what was even going on or maybe
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: promised something if she written the message who knows there's
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a plethora of reasons but for whatever reason she seemed
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: calm when writing it and none of those possibilities unfortunately
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: for asking why it was calm could really be proven.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Which is really odd because yeah you think Especially in
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: the bottom, like, who it's from, right?
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: You think that that would show some wavering or something.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Possibly, yeah. As soon as you understand, you know, who
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: this person is. Now, police, though, they did understand the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: value that this note held. So they did not release
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the entire message. The public was told about the catchphrase,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: catch me if you can, and the signature freeway phantom.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: But much of the wording was kept secret at the time.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: If somebody later confessed or claimed inside knowledge of the murders,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: investigators could ask for details that only police and the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: killer should know. And after Brenda's murder, the Freeway Phantom
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: investigation exploded in scale. A public hotline was overwhelmed so
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: quickly that its staff reportedly doubled from six operators to 12.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: And within only four days, police received approximately 4,000 calls
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: from many from women reporting strange men offering rides or
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: suspicious cars cruising through the southeast Washington area. Almost every
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: theory imaginable surfaced. Some wondered if it was a taxi
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: driver who was the killer. Others suspected a teacher or
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: school employee. Or because several victims carried the middle name Denise,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: there was even speculation that the killer was selecting girls
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: by name, though investigators dismissed that particular connection as only
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a coincidence. Investigators pressed forward and theorized too. They checked
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: men with histories of sexual offenses. They questioned residents and
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: examined escaped patients from St. Elizabeth's Hospital. And particularly because
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Carol Spinks and Darlene Johnson had been found nearby, that
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: was a bit more of a target. Police established roadblocks too,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: around important disposal sites and questioned motorists. And in early December,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: investigators tried something even more unusual. They dressed a mannequin
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: in clothing. matching Brenda Woodward's outfit. They gave it the
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: same hairstyle, placed four school notebooks in its arms, and
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: hoped that someone would remember seeing a sight like this
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and it would trigger a memory. But that display produced
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: nothing useful. Another lead involved a late model red Chevrolet
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Chevelle with chrome trim, and it was reportedly seen near
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: where Brenda's body was recovered. Police asked the public to
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: watch for similar cars, but that also didn't really lead anywhere.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Rewards grew, eventually reaching roughly $ 9, 000, and even a group
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: of Vietnam veterans began patrolling Washington in private vehicles. Yet
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: as weeks turned into months, calls to hotlines slowed, and
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the phantom seemed to have stopped. By 1972, investigators could
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: only speculate why, and one thought was that the offender
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: might have been transferred from a military base or even
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: jailed for another crime or committed to an institution. Meanwhile,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Washington had another enormous story consuming public and federal attention,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: the infamous Watergate. And by September, the freeway phantom murders
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: had largely disappeared from the headlines. It had been almost
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: 10 months since Brenda Woodward was killed. And on Tuesday,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: September 5th, 1972, it happened again. 17-year-old Diane Williams died.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: began what seemed like an ordinary final day of summer vacation.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Diane lived with her parents, Leon and Margaret Williams, and
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: five younger siblings on Holly Terrace Southeast in Congress Heights,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: near I-295. She was the oldest child and regularly helped
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: care for the younger ones. That summer, she had worked
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: for the Department of Recreation, opened a savings account, and
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: saved money for school clothes. That morning, diane collected her
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: paycheck from the recreation center and deposited it into the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: bank she went shopping with her family for school clothes
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and helped choose paint for a staircase they were redecorating
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that evening she cooked dinner a delicious meal of fried
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: chicken sweet potatoes rice and gravy during dinner diane's boyfriend
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: james called he had bought some new records and wanted
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: her to come over and listen to them her parents
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: allowed her to do so they agreed and The deal was, though,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: that she was going to be home by 10.30 p.m.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: So Diane borrowed the bus fare from her mother and left.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: But as 10.30 p.m. came, she wasn't home. After 11 p.m.,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Margaret called James. He told her that Diane had already left.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: In fact, he had accompanied her to the bus stop
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: near Martin Luther King Avenue in Howard Road and watched
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: her board the bus. The driver, Warren Williams, remembered her, too.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: At approximately 11 21 p.m diane boarded with about 20
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: other passengers most of them male warren believed she got
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: off at around 11 50 p.m near south capitol street
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: along with at least three other passengers from there diane
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: only had a short walk home through a dark parking
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: area and poorly lit streets So she definitely was going
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: to be home late. She missed her curfew. Several neighbors
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: reported hearing screams around midnight, and Diane never reached Holly Terrace.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: The following morning, Leon drove home from his night shift
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: at Lorton Reformatory, and along I-295, he noticed a truck
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: stopped between the highway and several men even nearby. He
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: continued home, where he learned that Diane was missing, and
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the family called police. The scene Leon had passed was
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the discovery of his daughter's remains.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness gracious. Okay.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: A truck driver had discovered Diane on a grassy embankment
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: beside I-295, just across the district line in Maryland. She
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: lay roughly eight feet from the roadway, fully dressed in
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: blue jeans and a yellow top. She was barefoot, but importantly,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: her shoes had not disappeared. They were found nearby with
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the shoelaces removed though. The name Diane was also written
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: prominently on the sole of one of those shoes. Diane
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: had been killed by strangulation. Investigators documented a bruise around
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: her ribcage, abrasions on her left elbow, and fingernail marks
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: around her neck. Brown Caucasian hairs and hairs from a
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: black person were recovered, while now-familiar green synthetic fibers were
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: also discovered inside her bra. Her damp clothing suggested she
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: had remained on the embankment overnight, and the medical examiner
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: estimated that she'd been dead for at least nine hours,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: placing her death close to the time that she disappeared.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: The initial examination concluded that there was no evidence of rape,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: even though semen was found on her clothing, because her boyfriend, James,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that they had actually been intimate that evening. But
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: before Diane was embalmed, a mortician noticed something requiring further examination.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Additional testing reportedly found semen and foreign hair inside Diane's mouth,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: evidence that complicated the original conclusions considerably because this indicated,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: or at least suggested, that she had in fact been raped.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Diane became the sixth officially recognized victim of the Freeway Phantom.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Gosh, this is just wild listening to all this Shit,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: and knowing that, like, he had, they, it could even
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: be more than one, really. Like, I don't know. It
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: kind of almost seems like.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: It's more than one person. Could be more than one person, yeah.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Just hasn't been caught.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: And is getting away with this vile of acts. I know.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: By 1974, two years later, investigators had chased tips, suspicious cars,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: convicted offenders, psychiatric patients, and men who lived near the victims.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: But none of it had produced the identity of the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Freeway Phantoms. and then attention shifted towards a group already
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: responsible for a frightening series of crimes around Washington. This
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: group had become known as the Green Vega Rapists, named
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: for the green Chevrolet Vega associated with some of their attacks.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Their method had similarities investigators could not ignore. Women waiting
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: for buses or walking alone were approached by a man
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: who appeared friendly and offered them a ride. And once
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: a woman was inside the vehicle... Another man might be
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: picked up, or a weapon would appear, and the victims
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: would be driven somewhere isolated and raped. Investigators eventually believed
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: that at least five men were involved with this group.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: When police reviewed more than a thousand reports of sexual
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: assaults in the period, roughly 150 cases appeared similar enough
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: to warrant closer examination, and the overlap with the Phantom
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: investigation was in there and obvious. It was on February 11, 1973,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: when police stopped a Green Vega and questioned John Nathaniel Davis,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: who was subsequently identified by victims. Another member of the group,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Morris Warren, was arrested that April. Eventually, several members were
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: convicted and imprisoned at Lorton Reformatory in Virginia. And with
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: the Phantom case still open, MPD homicide detectives began interviewing
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the Green Vega prisoners at Lorton to see if there
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: was a connection with them and the Freeway Phantom. Then
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Warren started talking. He claimed the Green Vega group had
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: in fact been involved not only in rape and abductions,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: but also in several of the Freeway Phantom murders. According
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: to investigative accounts, Warren's implicated John Davis while denying that
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: he himself had participated in the killings. Now investigators needed
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to know whether Warren actually possessed information unavailable to the
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: public to try and make sure that there was a
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: real connection here. So they took him out and asked
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: him to show them locations connected with the murders. Warren
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: directed detectives to places he associated with Brenda Woodward, Darlenea Johnson,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Brenda Crockett, and Nino Yates. He pointed out streets, alleys,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: and areas where he claimed victims had been abducted or
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: bodies had been discarded, and some of what he said
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: sounded remarkably specific. For Detective Lewis Richardson, it was enough
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: to become convinced that investigators had finally reached the people responsible.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: But the problem was, Warren made mistakes. Some details he
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: supplied had already appeared in newspapers and therefore were not
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: proof of any sort of inside knowledge. And during one
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: attempted reconstruction, he reportedly confused locations connected to different victims.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, investigators had deliberately kept portions of Brenda
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Woodward's note secret for this exact reason. They asked him
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: to tell them what was in that note. What else
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: was said? Warren, unfortunately, didn't know what else was in
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: that note. There were also behavioral differences, too. The Green
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Vega attackers generally used guns or knives to control women.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Their known victims tended to be older than the Phantom's
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: youngest victims, and investigators had no established Green Vega pattern
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: involving manual strangulation, missing shoes, victims being washed or redressed,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: or unexplained green fibers repeatedly appearing on clothing. Physical evidence
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: just didn't solve it. Investigators compared hair samples from the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Green Vagaband members against hair recovered from the phantom victims too.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: And none matched. Also, Warren seemed to believe that other
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: gang members were actually negotiating their own deals with police
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: in prison. So he began cooperating partly to protect himself.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I was like, well, why would he even
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: say anything? Why would he want to have these murders
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: on him?
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: He's trying to, well, I mean, he's in prison.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: He's now working with them to try to get lesser
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Lesser sentence. Well, I'll admit to some other stuff if
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: you give leniency to me. And here's the thing. Prosecutors
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: were actually unwilling to give him complete immunity from possible
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: murder charges. So he's saying, oh, well, yeah, like, you know,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: if there's murder, like I didn't commit the murders, but
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you all about the murders and all these
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: people and give you all the information you need. But
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: they're like, well, if you're involved in murder, we can't
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: give you complete leniency. And so he shut down. After that,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: he started withdrawing his stories and allegations and all this
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: sort of stuff. He's saying that what he had told
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: them were fabricated events.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: That he kind of had read probably in the newspaper. Yeah.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: He admitted to lying basically in hopes of attaining favorable
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: treatment or maybe even getting released from prison.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Okay. So not saying that he did these murders, but
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: he was like aware of them basically.
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Well, he started off by saying, yeah, we were involved.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't kill anyone, but we were involved in them
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: trying to get leniency, even release. And then as soon
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: as he learned that he wasn't going to get released
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: or leniency, he's like, okay, well, I'm withdrawing all that.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: It wasn't true. I was lying. Gosh.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Now there was another problem too. Warren's cooperation had apparently
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: been promised confidentially. But during a Maryland election campaign, a
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: political candidate publicly announced that investigators had received important phantom
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: information from an inmate at Lorton. And once news of
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the prison informant became public, he stopped cooperating with them
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: altogether and denied having even supplied any of this information.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: He buttoned up completely. Which is kind of funny because
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: leave it to a politician like that and electoral campaign
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to fuck it all up.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this person is literally using this to his
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: advantage for his like political gains.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's dirty. Yeah.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: But all in all, investigators were left arguing over what
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: this all meant. Detective Lewis Richardson Warren had revealed too
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: much and then retreated once he realized how much legal
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: danger he faced potentially. But to other detectives, Warren was
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: a convicted offender who had collected details from newspapers, made
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: educated guesses, and tried to trade manufactured stories for freedom.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Then in 1976, after the Green Vega connection had been
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: investigated extensively, a grand jury determined that there was just
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: not enough evidence to indict anyone for the Freeway Phantom murders.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Richardson never abandoned the theory though. Years afterwards, he still
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: said that he personally believed the Green Vega men were responsible,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: even while acknowledging that Investigators had never assembled evidence capable
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of proving it beyond a reasonable doubt. The Green Vega
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: investigation had produced perhaps the strongest apparent breakthrough the case
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: had ever seen, but it ended exactly where the phantom
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: investigation had begun, with no one charged for any of
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: the six murders. In March of 1977, D.C. homicide detective
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Lloyd Davis arrived at work and was handed another sexual
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: assault suspect to interview. Homicide detectives were routinely checking offenders
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: against the Freeway Phantom case, and this particular man was
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: 58-year-old Robert Elwood Askins, a computer technician accused of kidnapping
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and raping a 24-year-old woman inside his Washington home. As
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Davis examined Askins' history, that's when the case became much
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: more interesting. Records showed violence stretching back nearly four decades.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: In 1938, when Robert was 19, he was accused of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: serving cyanide-laced alcohol to five separate sex workers, killing one
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: of them, named Ruth McDonald. Then another woman was fatally
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: stabbed short afterwards, and Robert was eventually declared criminally insane
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: and committed to St. Elizabeth Hospital in 1939. After his
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: release in 1952, He was accused of strangling 42-year-old Laurel
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Cook and accused of several other attacks on women as well.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: A late murder conviction was overturned, and by March 1958,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Robert was again free. By then, the 1970s, he had
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: built a far more ordinary-looking life, working as a computer
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: technician for the National Science Foundation. But the details of
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: his crimes that brought him back to the police station
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: were difficult for Davis to ignore in this instance. One
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: victim said Robert had forced her to write a note,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: then made her wash herself before he released her. Similar
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: behavior appeared in another assault, too. And in another incident,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Robert reportedly used a fake police badge to gain control
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: of one of his victims. Each detail seemed to echo
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: something from the Phantom murders. Brenda Crockett's strangely clean bare feet.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Evidence suggesting victims had been undressed and redressed, and especially
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Brenda Woodward being made to write the phantom's message herself.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: Then Davis found something even stranger. During the search of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Robert's house in the 1700 block of M Street Northeast,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: investigators found a written court ruling from one of Robert's
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: earlier criminal cases. In a footnote was a word that
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: immediately stood out. Tantamount. It was the same unusually formal
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: word that began Brenda Woodward's note. Davis began questioning Robert's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: co-workers at the National Science Foundation, and they reportedly told
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: him that Robert regularly used this word tantamount in everyday conversation.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: So investigators pushed harder. Searches reportedly turned up women's scarves,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: photographs of unidentified women and girls, jewelry, buttons, and earrings.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Investigators obtained a warrant specifically identifying Robert as the suspect
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: in the phantom murders, and even dug through his backyard
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: looking for evidence. Anything green inside his house or vehicle
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: became important, too, because forensic examiners now had formally connected
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: five of the six phantom victims through that same green
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: synthetic carpet fiber material. And when the comparisons came back
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: against Robert, things began to fall apart. None of the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: green fibers they recovered from his property matched the phantom fibers.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: The hairs recovered from the victims did not match Robert.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Physical evidence could not be linked to any victim. Even
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Robert's vehicle could not be connected to an abduction or
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: body disposal site. There were other inconsistencies, too. Robert had
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: been in his early 50s during the phantom murders, while
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: some investigators believed the killer was likely considerably younger. His
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: known victims were primarily adult women, while the phantom's victims
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: were younger children. His documented violence also involved multiple methods
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: rather than the phantom's more consistent pattern. Detective Davis remained convinced, though,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: that Robert was responsible. But unfortunately, the evidence couldn't prove it.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Robert was ultimately imprisoned for other kidnapping and rape charges,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and he was never charged with a single freeway phantom murder.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: He repeatedly denied being the killer and died in federal
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: prison on April 30, 2010, at the age of 91.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: By then, though, another enormous problem had crippled the investigation.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: When Romaine Jenkins was promoted to sergeant in 1987 and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: made the Phantom case a priority again, she began searching
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: for the original files and physical evidence. But unfortunately, much
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: of it was gone. Evidence had been destroyed and deteriorated,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: other material had disappeared in storage, and detective files were
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: incomplete or missing. So Sergeant Jenkins worked with the FBI
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and surviving investigators to reconstruct what she could from old notebooks,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Prince George's County records, Maryland State Police material, and FBI
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: files alike. In 1990, FBI analysts prepared a behavioral profile
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: suggesting the killer may have been between the ages of
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: 27 and 32 during the murders. They may have lived
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: or worked in southeast Washington, and might have initially appeared
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: trustworthy at least to some of the victims. It unfortunately
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: remained a profile and nothing more. And Sergeant Jenkins retired
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: in 1994 without solving the case. The investigation was revived
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: once again in the 2000s. Detectives reconstructed missing records, revisited
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: crime scenes, and pursued surviving biological evidence. The preserved semen
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: sample tested in 2002 failed to produce usable comparative DNA.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Hair evidence associated with Diane Williams was later submitted for
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: advanced testing, but no breakthrough followed. And that's where the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: murders remain today. Unsolved. Six official victims remain at the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: center of the case. Carol Denise Spinks. Darlenia Denise Johnson.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: Brenda Frey Crockett. Nina Moshea Yates. Brenda Denise Woodward. Diane Williams.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: The Freeway Phantom has become famous because nobody has ever
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: discovered his name. But the thing is, who we should
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: be remembering are those six girls. Because we do know
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: their names. And that's the story of the Freeway Phantom.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Unsolved serial killer who, if he was in his twenties,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: early thirties could very well still be alive today knowing
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: what he got away with.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Scary. They had some pretty strong like suspects though. Hey,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: both of those incidents, it seems like you would get
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: pretty excited thinking like you got the guy.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately not a single piece of evidence really connected. Well,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I shouldn't say a single, but there's no
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: real evidence. determining evidence no factor that really points towards
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: them no evidence no green fibers no no dna no
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: hair yeah it's only speculation really.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: But that's happened before where i feel like cases they
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: get solved so long um later right but they actually
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: had been suspects.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: At the time yeah i think there is potential for
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: this case to be solved because there is surviving dna
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: deteriorated as it is yeah i think as technology advances
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: within the next decade we might be able to extract
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: better dna from it still and who knows with genetic
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: genealogy still even advancing there might be a connection eventually
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: made in this.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Case this would be yeah i mean frick all of
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: the unsolved ones would be great to solve but yeah
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: with six murders it's like this one But then why
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: would this person have just stopped too, right? Like that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: always is in the back of my mind. Like they
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: probably did hurt more people.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: It's very likely.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: Because I feel you don't just kill six people and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: then just be done.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Some killers have aged out of it though.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Or they die or they could have died from something else,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: like a car accident or something.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Or gotten sick. Maybe he's hospitalized or whatever, became frail, weak.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe he got married. Maybe he found a significant other.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: And then was then in a relationship and couldn't hide
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: this anymore. Or maybe he got nervous with evidence that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: was being collected. Things like, oh, realizing DNA is going
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: to be a real thing in the future. And so
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: he doesn't anymore.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: There's a plethora of reasons why they would have stopped.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately, we'll never know if they stopped for those
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: reasons or if maybe they got stopped themselves.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: But yeah the victims too they were just so young
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: they were all so young yes they could have they
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: would still be alive like living their life today right.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: So exactly so yeah that was a interesting one to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: research that one kind of hurt a I, again, I
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: enjoy the mysteries. I enjoy thinking who could have done it.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: How could we solve this? But it hurts so much
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: when you have people who they were killed and we
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: don't know who did it.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: When these family members have to keep living on, knowing
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: that this bastard is out there just living their life.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So anyways, if you guys have thoughts in this case,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: feel free to reach out, hit the description of this podcast.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: You can find our social medias or contact information, our website.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: You can go to Patreon, talk to us there. I'll
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: just leave it at that today. We appreciate you. You're amazing.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: And until next episode.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Stay wicked.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: Transcript Emily Beynon Thank you.