Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 175. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders - Part II

Transcript

175. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders - Part II · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hello delicious friends, and welcome back to Who Did What Now?
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The history podcast that is not your history class with
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: me your host Katie Charlewood, history hard and reader of books.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And this is part two of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: when in nineteen forty six, over a span of ten weeks,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a killer or killers stocked lover's lenes, spreading fear and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: panic throughout the region, which of course was spurred on
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: unsurprisingly by the press. Now, this again is part two,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't listened to part one, you're gonna
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: want to go do that because that gives us our
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: context and the first attacks. Now again this is our
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: blanket blanket warning. It's just best to do it again,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: your blanket trigger warning. This is a series of attacks
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and murders from nineteen forty six. I am going to
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: be as clinical as possible when discussing attacks and injuries. However,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: if you feel uncomfortable, if you feel like this is
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: going to cause you any distress whatsoever, with the discussion
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of murder, violence against men, women, children, sexual assault and suicide,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: these are all going to be discussed in this episode.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And if this is going to cause you any issues,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to suggest gently that you exit stage left
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch you next time. That being said, this
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: is a series on nineteen forties crime that we are
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: covering this month because what better way to start the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: new year than with nineteen forties crime. Specifically, mainly so
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I can do this voice, and a few other reasons.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: There's actually considerably less gibber jabber in this episode, specifically
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: because specifically because I have a lot to get through.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: This is information dense, So get a snack, get a blanket,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: curl up. If you've got a task that's gonna require
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: an hour or more to do, then roll on up.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Because this is this is this is gonna be a lot. Okay,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So without further ado, I know, okay, quit you're not gibble
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: jabble and fact me and fact you. I will because
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: all the sources are listed in the previous episode. Now,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: without further ado, I also did comfortably good. Then let's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: begin to Tixarcana was still celebrating the end of the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: war as spring approached in nineteen forty six, the town
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: quickly letting the attack on the couple on Lover's Lane,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Mary Jean Larry and Jimmy Hollis fade into a convenient memory,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: something from the past by a stranger passing through, perhaps,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: or even a targeted attack on the couple. But yeah,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it was in the past. Spring was nearly here, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the general consensus amongst townsfolk and police alike was peaceful
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and somewhat optimistic. Even the Texarcana Gazette would write in
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: good weather, families in nice residential sections sit on the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: front podges with supper sipping as teas. They swung on
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: porch swings, rocked in ruckers, and spoke to neighbors walking
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: home from a movie or from church. Few people locked
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: doors or window The only shades pulled down were in
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: bedrooms or bedrooms. All in all, it was just a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: normal springtime in Texarcana. It was the twenty fourth of
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: March nineteen forty six, and rain had been bucketing down
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in Texarcana since the night before with no intention of stopping.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: A lone motorist who for the record, was never publicly identified,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and he is braving the downpour at around quarter past
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: eight so eight fifteen that Sunday morning, most likely heading
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to work or to church. It's Sunday, you know, or
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: perhaps because he didn't want to be identified. He was
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: leaving somewhere slightly more unsavory, like a brothel on the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: outskirtsled down. I'm just floating the idea. Okay, okay, listen,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: things are about to get dark, so let's have a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: moment of humor. So, as he's traveling, he sees a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: car parked beside rich Road, which is now South Robinson,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: which is about like three hundred feet away from Highway
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: sixty seven West for people who like their geography. At first,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: he thinks the nineteen forty one old mobile sedan is
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: stuck in the mud, you know, because they're rain and all.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Then as he's approaching the vehicle, he sees a couple
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: who appear to be asleep, and, being a good Samaritan,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: he parks up, gets out of his car, and goes
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on to check on what he believes are a stranded couple.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe they need a lift into town, maybe they need
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a toe who knows the would be rescuers concern soon
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: turned to shock when he finally got close enough to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: see the couple slumped in the sedan. The sight of
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: blood forced the man to retreat back to his own
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: car and speed into town. Where he alerted the police.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So because the Oldsmobile was parked about a mile outside
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: the city limits, this fell under the jurisdiction of County
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Bill Presley. William H. Presley from the previous episode
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: we've met him before, and he is accompanied to the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: scene by Jackson Neeley Runnelds the Texarkhan, a chief of
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: police on the Texas side. Sheriff Presley made his way
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: to the crime scene on Rich Road with the Chief
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in Toll. When they arrived at the scene, they found
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: two victims in the blood stained Oldsmobiles sedan's back compartment sidebar.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: There were going to be very few sidebars in this
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: because I don't simply have time, so I tried to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: find a crime scene photo because like this is the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: time period where you get crime scene photos. They're everywhere, right,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and I was looking not for any sense of morbidity
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: or to look at the bodies, but honestly to have
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: a better understanding of the car. Because the old Medial Sedan,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the one that's the nineteen forty one, it had three
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: versions and they were all slightly different. So I was
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: trying to like understand the positioning in the car because
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: they're different, and that's it kind of threw me off
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: because I don't know vehicles that well. So in the sedan,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the male victim's body was in a kneeling position on
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the floorboard between the front and back seats. His forehead
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: was resting on crossed hands, his pockets were outturned as
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: if emptied. The female victim was faced down on top
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of a blanket on the back seat, and beside her
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: was her open purse or handbag. Both of the victims
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: appeared to be fully dressed, and both had been shot
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: in the back of the head. Blood from the pair
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: had seeped from one of the sedan's rear doors and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: stained the running board. No evidence collection It was always
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: going to be difficult with the rain, but even more
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: so it was hindered by the crowd that was amassing
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: at the crime Zne. Good news travels fast, but bad
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: news travels faster. Even still, the two lawmen were able
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: to spot bloodstains some twenty feet away from the vehicle,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: enough not to have been washed away by the downpour,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: so much, in fact, that Presley and Reynolds determined that
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: one or both of the victims were slain on the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: sandy loam and then put back in the car. So
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: this would mean that the crime scene was staged. But
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: for why to cover up the motive with the outturned
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: pockets and open parts, it could easily be assumed to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: be a robbery. Was it to delay discovery of the bodies?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Or was there any relevance to the manner in which
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the victims were posed? The lack of details in this
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: is frustrating, and that's without more discrepancies that we will
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: get to in a minute. So the female victim, she
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was faced down? Was she in a specific position? Was
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: she splayed? Was she curled up? Was she posed in
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: a manner that was meant to embarrass or shame her?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Or was she posed in a manner to cover up
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and save her dignity? Was their shame? Was their fear right?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: The male victim was in a kneeling position with his
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: head resting on his crossed hands, Like does that symbolize
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: remorse or shame? Like on your knees facing your hands?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Like again, is it remorse? Is it dignity? Why? Like?
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: We don't have enough description of how the female victim's
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: body was positioned, and that to me is an issue.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: But I feel like it's one of those things where
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: old timey cops were like, well, let's not be too
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: graphic about this. It did not take long for the
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: sheriff and the police chief to identify the victims, probably
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: because there was a massive crowd who went I know
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: that car Richard Griffin was a twenty nine year old
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: veteran who had served in the usc b's Construction Battalion
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and was discharged in November nineteen forty five, two months
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: after the war had ended. Richard, at the time of
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: his death, had been living at home with his mother
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: on Robinson's Court on Texarkana's Walnut Street. Pollyanne Moore was
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: seventeen years old, a recent graduate of Atlanta High School.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: She had been working at the Red River Arsenal as
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: a checker since July nineteen forty five. Pollyanne had not
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: been living at home. She had actually moved to Texarkana
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and was staying with her cousin Ardell at a boarding
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: house on Magnolia Street. Now, staying in a boarding house
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: or a rooming house was very common for young women
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: at the time because it gave them somewhat level of
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: independence but also protection, like they were supposed to be
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: respectable if they were staying in these in these places
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: is now Polly Anne and Richard had been dating for
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: around six weeks since early nineteen forty six, and before
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: you ask no, no one thought the twelve year age difference.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Was it all an issue. The couple had spent much
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of Saturday, the twenty third of March together. They had
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: been spotted at a cafe around two pm on West
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Seventh Street. Later that evening, they visited another cafe on
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the same street, this time with Richard's sister Eleanor and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: herbo Ja Proctor. Now I did read in one of
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the many many articles and reports that after that, like
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: even later on, that the couple had gone to a
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: midnight movie and then to a diner for a snack,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: after which they left. Now, I couldn't find like corroborating
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: evidence for that in any of the official files, but
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: like I have seen it in two or three places,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: so we don't know. What we do know is that
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: their date ended Sunday morning, with Richard Griffin and Pollyanne
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Moore leaving separately. Both were loaded up into ambulances. Richard
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was brought to the TEXA Connor funeral home and Pollyanne
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: was taken to the Hanner Funeral Home in Atlanta, Texas,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and they were thirty two miles apart. Pollyanne was taken
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: to the Hanner Funeral Home in Atlanta, Texas, and they
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: were thirty two miles apart. Now, remember when I mentioned
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: discrepancies earlier, Well strap in. What everyone does agree on
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: is that both victims were shot in the back of
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the head with a thirty two caliber pistol. There was
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: no weapon found at the scene, and as such, a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: murder suicide could be ruled out. However, Elviier report stated
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that each victim was shot once, but later reports claimed
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that Richard had in fact been shot twice. Then there
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: was another report, published decades later and filled with so
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: many errors consecutively, one after another in a row. It
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: says that they were both shot twice, which is like
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: nothing contemporary. Nothing contemporary even suggests that both of them
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: were shot twice. But of course it's it's in so
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: many podcasts and articles because it's more dramatic, I guess.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. The ballistic accounts include one, two
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and several cartridge cases found in and around the vehicle,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: but an FBI memo states that only two shellcasings and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: one slug were recovered from the scene. I'm not done.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: There was an FBI memo from the fifteenth of May
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty six that stated no useful fingerprints were retrieved
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: from the car. However, seven months later, another FBI document
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: requests a comparison of suspect prints with the and I
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: quote unidentified lightens found it that crime scene. And if
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: you guess that the forensic confusion would end there, you
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: guessed incorrectly. Try again next time. There were conflicting reports
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: regarding the possible sexual assault of Polly Anne Mooor. An
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: FBI memo said that her corpse was delivered two morticians
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: for embombing without any tests for sexual assault. The seventeen
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: year old was discovered in a state of well dress
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: as opposed to undress, and the Texarkana Gazette reported that
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: her corpse was examined by a local physician who ascertained
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: that she had not been and I quote criminally assaulted.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Criminal assault was a common euphemism for rape back in
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the day. However, there were four Texas Ranger files that
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: state the girl was in fact raped, and later articles
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: would suggest even for the injuries. Two months after her death,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: news paper articles would claim that Polly Ann had been
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: horribly mutilated by a sex maniacal killer. In nineteen fifty four,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: journalists would report that the girl had been where they
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: got the information? Well, whom's to say? Maybe they got
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it from one of the rangers, Maybe they pulled it
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: out their arses. Whoms to say? Then, of course we
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: have the FBI report, which, yeah, it says that both
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: victims were shot in the vehicle, but local authorities, their
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: reports say that they were shot outside the vehicle and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: then brought back in. But of course, and Allegedli's. The
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: blood found on the sandy loam was tested and it
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was concluded that it could only have been Polly Anmour's,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: not Richard Griffin's. But here's the thing. We don't have
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: an autopsy report, so we can't confirm what happened to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: that poor girl. What we do know is that the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: authorities believed the local authorities at least believed that she
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: had been wrapped, and the amount of hiplas surrounding the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: crime scene meant that it was compromised, which was par
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: for the course back then. But with a double murder
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: on their hands, the Texarkana authorities knew that they were
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: in above their heads and they needed help. It became
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a multi agency endeavor. Bowie County teamed up with Miller
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: County Police Force, and the Texas Rangers sent one of
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: their top men. You heard me, top men. Texas sent
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: in Jimmy Gear Texas Ranger the day after the bodies
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: were discovered. Naturally, everyone was shocked at the double murder,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: but it hadn't been connected to the earlier crimes, the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: attacks on Mary Jean Larry and Jimmy Hollis not yet
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and it hadn't really affected people on a grand scale.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: They were still out and about living their lives, and
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the authorities were searching for leeds like They questioned nearly
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: sixty potential witnesses in three days, including the staff and
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: patrons of the nearby Club Dallas, and they even put
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: up a five hundred dollars reward for useful information. Unfortunately,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: as we know, money is a great incentive for people
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: to lie, and the police here they're swimming upstream against
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: one hundred false leads. The inquest merely stated the couples
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: were murdered for reasons unknown by people or persons unknown,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and then everyone just moved on with their lives. It
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: was Pam Sunday nineteen forty six, so that's the Sunday
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: before Easter, so during Lent Heathens sorry cradle Catholic. So
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: just after April the fourteenth, G. H. Weaver was traveling
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: with his wife and their son from their home in
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Summer Hill Road and were heading to Prescott, some forty
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: miles northeast of Texarkana. The family had not gotten far
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: when they were met with the sight of a man's
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: body laying on the north shoulder of the North Park Road.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: The bloody clothes and lack of movement left no doubt
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: in their minds that the man was dead, and so
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: they continued on just six hundred feet up the road
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: to the house of Harvey Ward, who immediately called Bowie
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office. The officers arrived on the scene and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: quickly confirmed that the man was in fact dead and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: a victim of homicide. The victim was carrying his ID
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: in his pocket and as such was easily identified, and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a man. He was a boy, sixteen year
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: old James Paul Martin from Kilgore in Texas, had been
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: shot four times. Now discrepancies sometimes you will see his
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: age listed as seventeen. He was three weeks shy of
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: his seventeenth birthday. He was still sixteen when he was murdered,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and he had been shot four times. One bullet entered
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: his face just to the left of his nose. Another
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: had gone through the back of his neck and exited
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: through the front of his head near his right ear.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: A third bullet had pierced his shoulder from behind, and
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: there was a final bullet wound in his right hand.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Like that, that's a defensive wound. Police reconstructed the scene,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: concluding that James Paul Martin had raised his hand in defense.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: He was shot in the face first and then he
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: had been shot from behind as he tried to flee.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Police were able to follow a trail of blood that
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: led to a roadside fence across North Park Road and
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: into Spring Lake Park. The teenage boy had managed to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: crawl towards the road trying to escape, trying to find
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: safety when he did not survive, and he had only
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: been in town since Friday, like this is Sunday morning. See,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: his family had moved to kilgarl but they had previously
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: lived in Texarcana for years, and so he was in
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: visiting and he was staying with his friend Tom Albatrin
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: on Locust Street. Now Tom informed investigators that his friend
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: had what he called a date the night before with
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: longtime friend Betty Joe Booker. That same morning, fifteen year
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: old Betty Joe Booker's mother, Bessie, was worried. She was
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: supposed to have been at a sleepover with friends, but
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: she hadn't arrived. At six o'clock that morning, her friends
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: had called Betty Joe's bandleader and her mother trying to
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: figure out where she was. Betty Joe had been playing
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: saxophone with the local band, the Rhythmires, at a dance
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Building. Whenever she played
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: and was heading anywhere afterwards, she always dropped her saxophone
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: at home. This time she had not, and so her
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: anxious mother called the authorities, and Tom Alberton confirmed that
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: James Paul Martin was supposed to pick Berry Joe from
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the dance and bring her to the sleepover, and he
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: referred to this as the date. I'm I'm not sure
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that's much not going to it anyway. With the teenager missing,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: police and volunteers alike searched for her. The body of
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Berry Joe Booker was discovered by three of her friends
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: several hours later, brothers George and James Boyd and Ted Shawby.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: The boys found their friend behind a tree near Morris Lane,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: which connects Summer Hill and Richmond Roads. Now, this was
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: about a mile and three quarters from where her date
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: had been found Betty Joe. She had been shot twice.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: One bullet had penetrated her face just like Martin's, to
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the left of the nose, the other through her chest.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Betty Joe was fully dressed, Her coat was buttoned all
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the way up, and her right hand was in her pocket.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: That girl was posed. That is a pause, but it's
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: more respectful in her pose, like it's very casual on
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: my hands in my pocket. James Paul Martin's car was
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: discovered near the main entrance of spring Lake Park, three
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: miles from Beery Joe's crime scene and a mile and
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a quarter from his. The keys were still in the ignition.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Unlike the previous murder, the police had a more accurate
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: time frame. The couple had last been seen at the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: end of the dance the v W Hall at two am,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and a resident of Morris Lane had heard a gunshot
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: around five thirty am. Now here's the thing about gunshots
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in Texas and Arkansas, that's not that surprising, so it
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have specifically raised any flags at the time, But
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: in conjunction with this other information, it all marries together.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So that's like three and a half hours. Almost six
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: cartridge cases and four projectiles were discovered around the teenage
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: boys car, all from a thirty two caliber pistol and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: all with the same markings as the weapon used to
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: kill Richard Griffin and Polly Anne Moore some three weeks prior.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Several unidentified fingerprints were discovered on the car as well,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: but the FBI could not firm if they had the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: killer's prints on file, but they had enough markers that
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: if the police had a suspect they could compare and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: possibly catch. So unsurprisingly, things get messy when it comes
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to info with Betty Joe's body. Sheriff Bill Presley had
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: told the papers that apart from being shot, the body
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: had not been abused. However, other papers would share that
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: both victims showed signs of struggle, and one even claimed
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that the girl had been bruised and lacerated. If you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: look at the crime scene photos of this case, there
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: is no way to know that from the photos alone. Anyway,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: what the sheriff was trying to do was notake details
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: to the press as do not impede the investigation because
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: whatever happened with Pollyanne Beery. Joe's body was examined by pathologists.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Betty Joe Booker's vagina was swabbed and tested positive for semen.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: No foreign pubic hairs were discovered amongst her own. However,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: semen was found on her pubic region. A sealine solution
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: wash of James Paul Martin's penis showed that he had
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: not ejaculated, and as such, the semen found on and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: in Betty Joe's body could not be his. With this information,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: authorities ruled out consensual sex and concluded that the teenage
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: girl had been raped by her murderer. The assault had
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: been withheld from press along with the discovery of the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: young man's pocket book. It wasn't even withheld. I mean
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: it was withheld from the press, but it wasn't just
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: with held from the press right the pocketbook. Sheriff Presley
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: found it and then didn't tell anyone else about it,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Like very few investigators knew about the existence of this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: because he was keeping things very close to his chest.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: What was not discovered, however, was Betty Joe's e flat
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: alto saxophone, a Bundy model serial number five two five
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: three five. The description was sent to pawn shops and
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: music stores across the Tri state area just in case
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: it surfaced, like it's it's an instrument, Like that's worth money,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're short in cash, it makes sense
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: to just pawn it off get something from it, you know.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to take a minute to talk about
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the victims, because they're often mentioned, like just to further
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the story of the killer, like they become footnotes in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: their own murders. But these were real, living people, teenagers
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: whose lives were cut short because some arshoul wanted to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: cause pain to fuel his fantasies. Like it's not a
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: simple robbery or a crime of convenience, Like there's nothing
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to gain here except his own gratification. So James Ball Martin,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: he was born in Smackover, Arkansas. He had three older
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: brothers like he was the baby of the family. His
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: family ran an ice business, but they located to Texarcana
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: because his mother felt it was a safer place to
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: raise a family. And this boy, he was quiet, a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: hard worker, and he even went to the same elementary
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: school as Berry Joe, and they both attended the same church,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the Beech Street Baptist Church every single Sunday. They knew
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: each other since kindergarten. Now, a lot of the times
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: when they frame this, they say he was seventeen and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: she was fifteen. He was sixteen. He was three weeks
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: off his seventeenth birthday and she was about two months
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: off of her sixteenth birthday. They were sixteen and fifteen,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and they were really close in age. After completing ninth
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: grade at Arkansas Junior High School, he transferred to the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Gulf Coast Military Academy and then he enrolled in the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Kilgough High School in nineteen forty five. Classmates would say
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: that he was incredibly sweet in kind and that he
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: had no enemies. Betty Joe Booker would have been sixteen
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: in the June of that year. A milestone. This amazing
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: girl was stopped from reaching. She was a junior at
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Texas High School, a member of the Delta Beta Sigma sorority.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And she was friendly and outgoing and popular. She's the
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: definition of she'd light up her room, you know. She
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: was a straight a student and a gifted musician. Like
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: she was such an accomplished saxophone player that professional musicians
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: were encouraging her to enter a career in music. But
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Beery Joe, she was more practical in her consideration for
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: career choices. She wanted to be a medical technician. She
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: played sax because she loved music, she enjoyed it, but
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: she wanted a career that was more stable. Unlike James
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Paul Martin, she hadn't moved much with regards to text Arcana.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: A year earlier, her widowed mother, Bessie, had remarried and
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: they moved in with her stepfather, Clark Brown, crossing the
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: border from Texas to Arkansas. Like still in Texarcana, but
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: just on the other side of the street. Really, friends, family,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and fellow musicians were all a bit surprised that the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: teenagers had driven to spring Lake Park because like typically
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Jerry Aitkins of Jerry Aitkins and the Rhythmayres would drive
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the female band member's hope right. That was sort of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a deal that he had with their parents. They were like,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: you can play, but he is to get you back. Occasionally,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Ernie Holcombe, who was another saxophone player on the Rhythmayres,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: would take that responsibility. On April thirteenth, that Saturday night,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Ernie was supposed to drive all four female players home,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: but Beery Joe declined, saying that she was waiting for
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: a friend, and earlier in the day she had told
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: friends that she didn't really want to go out with Martin,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: but she felt like she had to see him because
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: they'd been friends since they were kids. So he picked
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: her up and was supposed to drive her home to
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: drop off her saxophone and then onto the slumber party.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Like he told his friend that it was a date,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and she told her friends that she wasn't romantically interested
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: in him. Now there's so much we don't know. Was
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: she trying to be nice and just accept a ride
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: from him. Was he actually into him but didn't want
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: to say because of propriety and social standards regarding women
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: and girls at the time. Was he just being friendly
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: or was he hoping to take this crush to the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: p and show how the stars and maybe get a
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: smooth or two like Was he just trying to do
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a nice thing or was he expecting more? Or did he,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: as the quiet, shy guy, not think there was ever
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: going to be any more of it. Did they deliberately
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: go to the park or were they forced there? Again,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: we don't know, because these two kids were murdered. The
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: double murder a month prior barely had a ripple effect
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: on the twin city, but this, the attack and murder
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: of these teenagers, sent shock waves through Texarkana. After the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: homicides at Spring Lake Park, everything changed. Teens who had
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: been so far unfazed were no longer sneaking out or
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: parking in their father's cars. People were locking their doors,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and those associated with the victims were thinking and overthinking,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: searching for some clue about who could have done this.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Even Jerry Aitkins and the Rhythmaires dissolved, and after the
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: loss of Berry Joe Booker, they never played together again.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: The second double homicide had riddled tix Arkana with panic
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: and fear. It was now that the press gave the
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: assailant his moniker, the Phantom Killer. Like I mentioned locking doors,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: but This went even further. Actually, stores were sold out
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: of dead bolts and locks and screen door braces. Like
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: every gun, every piece of ammunition was gone from the shelves.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Hardware stores were cleared out. Anywhere you could get guns
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: or ammal that was cleared out too. I assume everywhere,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and I don't that's in your gun laws are not
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the strictest, and I feel like even less. So back
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty six, some people even went full on
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: boy Scout and rigged up makeshift alarm systems like full
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: on Maguiva. You know, people were terrified and ready to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: shoot at anyone who showed up unannounced. This was common.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: So I don't have an exact and exact date for this,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: but at some point after Pam Sunday and before May third,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Immagen West and her husband Harold, they
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: were at home one evening on the corner of East
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: third and Walnut Street. Yeah there's Walnut Street again. They're
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: doing whatever couples do in the evening, and Harold spot
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: someone looking through their window. Without gepping a beat, Harold
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: grabs his gun and rushes to the kitchen door. But
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: like gun in hand, he's fumbling with the latch and
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: his gun goes off. Now no one was hurt, but
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: by the time he got outside, the prowler was gone.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: There's a panic, there's a self imposed curfew, like people
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: are bolting the doors and shooting at anyone unidentified right,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: like they're terrified. Like the bustling streets, you know, any
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, dances or bars or movie theaters,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: like people just stop going, like they force themselves into
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: their home after dark, like they're just gone. And even
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the police, if they were showing up anywhere, they would
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: show like it's the fuzz, Like they would like let
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: people know that they were there and they weren't to
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: some random person, even if they were going out to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a call out that had happened. Right, Sometimes they would
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: just blare their sirens to show it was them and
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: not a murderer, which fair, very fair. Now, the cops
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: they they were admittedly struggling. They had a city on
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: high alert, fear seeping through every corner of the community,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and they had zero leans in this manhunt, but help
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: was on the way. When it gets to the point
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: that you've got two double murderers and a masked attack,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: people start start paying attention, and the lone Star State
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: would provide seven additional Texas Rangers, four technical experts, and
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: eight highway patrolmen. Last, but certainly not least, they sent
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the ranger Captain Manuel trasazas lone Wolf Gonzanis. I am
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: going to cliff notes him a bit here. He was
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: born in Spain to a Spanish father and Canadian mother
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: who were both naturalized American citizens living in Texas, but
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: had gone on holiday to Spain and out he popped.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And he he is a very interesting man, but honestly,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: we simply do not have the time to delve into
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: his life. But basically he was a big shot. He
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: was known for entering fights alone and exiting them alone.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Now he's called the lone Wolf right in this throughout
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the but like his nickname was originally given in Spanish,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: which is illobo solo, which I for one thinks sounds
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: much cooler. Like. For the record, my Spanish impression is
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: based entirely off of Antonio Banderis, who is a Spanish man.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, just so you know, this is me in
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: my Spanish Antonio Bandera's impression. So Gonzalez, he had a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: name for himself already and he was causing a star
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: when he arrived in Texarcana. He had and I'm gonna
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: say it, big dick energy. He was take charge, and
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: his sheer force of personality did take charge of anyone
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: who got too close. The man also like to fit
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: like we respect the drip in this household like. He
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: was not a tall man. He was five foot ten
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: and a half inches, because apparently that half matters. He
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: was adorned in his stetson, tailored Western attire and custom
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: made boots. Listen, I'm not into that think is you
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: know cops, but hmmm, he does. It does sound quite
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: quite an interesting character to look upon. On each hip.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: He wore an ornate sex shooter, a Coult single action
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Army Model one eight seven to three peacemakers and to
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: enable fast raw shooting from spring loaded holsters, the trigger
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: guards had been cut away. El Lobo Solo told journalists
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that he would stay in Texarkana until the madmen had
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: been caged or killed. And of course the press are
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: eating this up like media is just fueling the city's hysteria,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: writing headlines about sex maniac and phantom killer goes on
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: killing spree, right and then Waltz's Gonzales, Texas Ranger with
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: a commanding personality and a sweet sense of style, just
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: foreign enough to be exotic, but not so foreign as
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: to be scary. Some colleagues, I said what I said, right,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I said what I said. This is the South of
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty six. I said what I said. So, by
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the way, also, I hear that Texas would not like me,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: but Austin and Texas would like me. And so please
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: please don't ban me from your states. I still want
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: to come visit you and your rich, rich history. Back
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: to Gonzalez. Some colleagues felt that the Ranger Captain was
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: a publicity whore, more interested in looking good for the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: press than doing any actual investigating. He was often photographed
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: at the scene of a crime, and some locals grumbled
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that he seemed more interested in escoring pretty female reporters
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: around than doing any actual detective work. But for all
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: of the limelight loving, he was actually contributing to the case,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: like he wasn't just said in because he was pretty.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: At this point, the case had not just caught the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: ear of local media. No no, no no, no. Journalists traveled
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: in and the story like the story of the crimes
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: went not just national, but international. The press descended on
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the town like vulture circling a carcass and just waiting
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to get a nibble. They kept eyes on the case
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: of but the media's circus just helped fuel paranoia and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: panic in the town. The lone wolf ranger warned the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Textacana townfolk to not involve themselves in vigilanteism because like
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: everyone and their granny were armed, and groups of teenage
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: boys armed with deer rifles and a shipload of Bravardo
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: patrolled the back roads, driving around ready to confront the phantom,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: which for the record, was a damn stupid thing to do,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Like once to stop a panicky teenager shooting someone checking
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: on their cows at night? Like this is springtime? Is
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: it not like lambing season? And shit like people are
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: out you know. Anyway, the thing about paranoia is that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: it bred rumor propagation. Right the mill was toning, and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I tell you so many tall tales spread around town.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: The killer had been caught, he was hiding in jail.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: He had died somehow on the outskirts of town. Like
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: it got to the point that the police actually had
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to hold a press conference telling people to shot the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: fuck up, like stop gossiping. But this is a city
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: gripped by fear? Was the self imposed curfew? Enough? Were
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: their home secure? Could they drive to work safely? Did
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: they have enough firepower to stop an attack? And of
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: course when would the phantom killer strike next? Friday, the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: third of me nineteen days since the double murder of
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the teenagers, it was unusually dark for eight thirty pm
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: in May. The evening was warm in Miller County, just
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: ten miles northeast of TEXASNA, and by nine pm, Virgil
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and Katie Stark's farm was pitch black. The five hundred
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: acre farm and their home sat along Highway sixty seven.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: It was a fairly isolated farmhouse in rural Arkansas. Thirty
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: seven year old Walter Virgil Starks tended the farm with
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: his wife, Catherine Aila Strickland Starks, who was thirty six.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: He would go by Virgil and she would go by Katie.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Virgil also had a welding shop on the property. Neighbors
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: would often bring their broken farm equipment to Virgil to fix,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and because he clearly wasn't busy enough, Virgil had a
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: side hustle as a shade tree mechanic, basically doing car
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: repairs under the table, and like they're a farming family,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: it's May, it's springtime. They have clearly been up early
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: like farmers. They're up at the crackodolan and it is hard,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: heavy work. So by nighttime nine pm, Katie is in
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: her nightgown, lying in bed in the bedroom sort of
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: adjacent to the sitting room, and Virgil is sitting in
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: his armchair. He's got a heating pad on his back.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: It's aching, listen. He's already in his thirties and he's
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: doing heavy labor. He needs the heating pad all right.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: He's got the radio on, music is playing, and he's
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: settling in for the night, ready to read the paper,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the text Arcana Gazette. And Katie she thinks she hears
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a noise coming from the backyard of again, they're fairly
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: isolated farmhouse. But she's not sure if she's hearing something
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: or other. It's just in her head, and so she
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: calls to Virgil to turn the radio down so she
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: can listen. But before he gets it's the chance, she
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: hears the sound of what she thinks is glass breaking,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: thinking that Virgil has dropped something. She gets up and
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: goes through to the living room, and when she reaches
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: the doorway, her husband is standing up and then suddenly
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: his body is slumped in the chair. Then she saw
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: the blood. She rushed over to her husband so that
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: he was dead, and in a split second, ran to
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: the telephone. Virgil Starks had been shot twice in the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: back of the head by a gunman on the front
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: porch of the farmhouse. He had shot through the screen
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: and glass of the window. Kerry didn't see the shutter.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: She had gone straight from Virgil to the landline. The
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: phone was a crank model that was mounted on the
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: kitchen wall. She got to the phone, lifted the receiver,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: cranked the handle twice before two bills it's hit the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: left side of her face. One bullet entered through her
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: cheek and exited by her ear, and another went through
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: her teeth, shattering them and lodging under her tongue. The
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: impact caused her to stumble and fall on the floor,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: where several of her teeth lay shattered and in a moment,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to just assume, Fueled by adrenaline, she gets
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: on all four and manages to grab one of her
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: teeth with its gold filling intact. The killer was trying
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: to batter his way in through the kitchen window, and Katie,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: with a bullet lodged in her face and vision impaired
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: by her own blood, said fuck this for a game
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: of soldiers. It was run or die. She first turned
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: to run out of the kitchen, but the killers there, well,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: he is currently breaking in through that window, and so
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: she lunged, like knowing her own house, like this is
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: where they say that in your own home you always
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: have the advantage because you know it. She lunged through
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the master bedroom, along a hallway, through a second bedroom,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: out through the living room, across the front porch, and
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: out through the front door and into the yard, leaving
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a trail of blood and broken teeth behind her. She ran.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Katie ran to the highway barefoot, her nightgown drenched in
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: her own blood. She ran across the pitch black highway
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to the nearest house, that of her sister Betty Iona
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and her brother in law, Jeff. She banged on the
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: island's door, but there was no sign of life, and
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: instead of waiting, she ran to the next house. One
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet away that of Av Prayter. So
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: she had lost a lot of blood at this point,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: and so she was weakly knocking on the door. Av
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: answered the door, rifle in hand. Katie managed to gasp
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Virgil Is dead before collapsing. AV shot his rifle into
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the air, a signal amongst the home and community. A
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: neighboring farmer, Elma Taylor, showed pretty soon after, and together
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: they took the semi conscious Katie to Michael Meagher Hospital.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Katie Starks would survive the ordeal, but she didn't see
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: her attacker and as such couldn't provide a description to
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the authorities at the crime scene. The trail of blood
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: gave the authorities a path to follow. The blood evidence
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: allowed investigators to reconstruct how the shooting unfolded and also
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the position the gunman had been outside. In his rush
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: to leave the scene, The killer had dropped a two
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: cell flashlight with a red handle on the ground outside
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the window. There were also fingerprints and a palm print
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: found on the scene, along with shoe prints in the linoleum,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: along with three cartage cases and two bullets from a
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifle that were sent to the FBI.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: For testing, and some of these prints on the wall,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: like it's noted that there are handprints, as if the
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: killer had put his hands on the blood, like on
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Virgil's blood and then touched the wall, which is I
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: have a theory, but it's I'm not going to get
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: into it right now. So when authorities arrived, like the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: room was smoky, because when Virtil was shot, the heat
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: pack shorted, burst into flames and scorched part of the
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: chair and sort of smoldered into the room. And even
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: like the Arkansas State Police, like they had reported seeing
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: like a car on the side of the road, like nearby,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: but they didn't think it was anything like that important
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: because when they returned the next morning, that car was gone,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Like they just didn't think about it or check on
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: it anyway. Bloodhounds, there's blood. They bring in the bloodhounds,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: led by Chief Henny from Hope in Arkansas. He led
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: with the bloodhounds. They led investigators from the Starks farmhouse
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: to the highway, then across the pavement and another half
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: mile away where the scent suddenly stopped right and here
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: like is they'd seen this car, like it's still far
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: enough away from all of these sort of houses and
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: buildings that nobody thought to check anyway. So here where
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the scent ended, they found tire impressions in the mud,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: and so they took plaster casts of the impressions of
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: the tracks of the killers get away vehicles, and the authorities.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: They ruled out robbery, I mean apart from like, there's
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: blood prints all over the walls and the furniture, but
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: there was and the quote is a considerable amount of
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: cash in the house untouched, along with Katie's jewelry. Right.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: The police were puzzled though, like because this attack it
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: didn't match the previous sprees, like the mo the modus operandi.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: It was like, this was an older, married couple at home,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: not young lovebirds out in a secluded area. And the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: gun used was different like before it was a thirty
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: two pistol and this was a twenty two caliber rifle,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and the killer shot Katie instead of raping her. This
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: led to some investigators and later on officials believing this
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: to be a standalone case. That being said, this is
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: like pre mind Hunter formal profiling here, like the term
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: serial killer didn't even exist yet, Like I'm fairly certain now,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: doctor Anthony Lapala. He was a psychiatrist at Texarkana's Federal
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Correctional Institution, and he believed that the killer was one
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and the same for all of the Texarcana slayings, and
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: that he said, he changed his method of execution, like
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: from the secluded rendezvous spots because they were being patrolled,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: like between that and the self imposed city curfew and
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the mounting police pressure. Like that, he changed it because
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: his hunting ground was no longer available, so he changed
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: it to a different hunting ground. Like The doctor profiled
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the gunman as a white man around thirty to forty
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: years old, a sexual sadist who was clever, intelligent, and shrewd. See,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that because even when you take
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: someone like the Golden State killer, he wasn't necessarily very clever.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: He just had a routine that he practiced until he
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: got it really good, you know what I mean, Like
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: it wasn't this amazing, And again I'm not. I don't
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: have time. I don't have time for side bus. So
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: doctor Lapla also ruled out that the suspect could have
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: been a black man on the grounds that an African
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: American criminal could not be that clever. Well, it wouldn't
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: be old timey psychiatre without a good old dose of
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: racism in there, eh. Like. Typically when it comes to crime,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of criminals, especially those involved in sexual assault,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: tend to do so within their own race, like that
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: tends to be. But a lot of that is like
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: social and cultural because it's closer to proximity and ease,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: you know. But anyway, regardless, Ell and also so back
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: to the killer. Now, there's an assumption that even now,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: the killer has to have a set routine, like this
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: is how they kill. This is how they do it.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Like you see it with things like BTK. You see
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: it with like the way that Dhalmer and Ted Bundy,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: like Tim Bundy legs his you know, middle parted brunettes,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: and like that's not always the case, right when you
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: think about the manner in which like he found his victims,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: they were secluded, which I think is the main goal.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Like he wants them to be alone to make it
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: easier for him to do what he wants to do.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: He wants to reduce the risk of being stopped, prevented,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: et cetera. And like many killers, they adapt in by
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: their mo o's, like for a whole host of reasons.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: In this case, his usual hunting grounds are barren. And
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you may ask, why didn't he assault missus Stark's Well,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: maybe he didn't mean to shoot her in the face.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe he was hoping to play with her right, maybe
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: he was hoping to cat and mouse like he'd done before,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: like we saw with Mary g Now, remember, if he
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: had been prowling around the house, he would have seen
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: that she was laying in bed in her nightgown. He
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: may not have accounted for her getting out of bed
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: so quickly. And then she ran to the phone like
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: that's when she was shot. She was shot when she
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: ran to the phone, like at this point, it's self
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: preservation above gratification. He didn't shoot her when she ran
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: to her husband's side. It was when she had the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: phone in her hand and was cranking like like he
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: had to stop. Like I think he was hoping to
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: have an easier access route into the house. But like
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: my theory, my personal theory is that he didn't like
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: anyone combating him, so that's why he always removed his
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: sort of primary obstacle, like so he always killed the
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: men first so that they couldn't be involved and he
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: would have more time to play with his victim, and
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: he didn't like it when Mary Jean stood up to him.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: And I feel like, and I think it's that thing
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: when he isolates his victims. It's so that he has
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: control and power, and he has that level of authority
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and fear, and so he wants them to whimper and
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: be weak. He wants to have that power and control.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: But like, here's yet again another woman who's going absolutely
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: fucking not. And so when it comes to the gun
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: as well, Like about the gun, we're in Texas in Arkansas,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: and I feel like anybody down there post war would
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: have more than one gun. It just feels like if
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: you've got one, you probably have a second right now.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure people were buying Ammo up, but maybe
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: maybe buying those thirty two calibers might raise some suspicion,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: or they could have been worried about raising suspicion, and
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: so they just went everybody knows in all the papers, right,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: everyone knows what kind of gun, so let's switch it up.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Or maybe because he knew he would have to attack
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: people in their homes, their rifle was a better I'm
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: a gun expert, but like would a rifle will be
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: better shoulding from the distance? Like would that be a
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: better option for them? Anyway, the killer may have been
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: bolder like during an attack, but that doesn't stop him
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: being paranoid like. And also this is like the first attack,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: which is on the Arkansas side of Texarkana and the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Starks farmhouse, right, it's fairly isolated. If Katie hadn't been
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: a woman of action, who knows, you know, when they
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: would have been discovered. And one more thing, right, I'm
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: gonna columbo it right. I don't know if this is
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: relevant in any way, because I was looking up all
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: of the photos of the victims and one thing I
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: noticed is that all of the women were brunette. Again,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's any relevance whatsoever, but it's
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: just something I noticed. But anyway, here authorities they're worried
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: is it a copycat? Or is the phantom killer murdering
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: people in their homes? Has the killer escalated? And does
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: anyone in their town safe? Walter Virgil Starks was laid
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: to rest at two thirty pm on Monday, the sixth
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of May in Hillcrest Cemetery. Bowie County. Katie, still recovering
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: in hospital, was unable to attend the service. The Starks
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: had been married for fourteen years, and as far as
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I could discover, they had no children. Katie she survived
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and even remarried some nine years later to Forest Jerome Sudden.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: She would continue to live in Bowie County until her
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: death at the age of eighty four, after which she
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: was buried next to Virgil in Hillquest Cemetery. After the
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: attack on the Starks, the investigation turned into one of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the largest manhunts in the region's history. There were forty
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: seven officials all together, like from county sheriff departments, Texas Rangers,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: state police, and even FBI agents and state troopers too.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: So you have all of these different forces coming together
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: and trying to work together to solve this crime and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: to prevent more from happening. However, all of these authorities
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and agencies were on different radio frequencies and communication was slow,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: which is which is not ideal. So to combat this,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: they brought in a teletype machine and a mobile radio
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: station into Texarkana to improve coordination. Like this was cutting
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: edge technology at the time, which shows like just how
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: seriously the government was taking it like this was not cheap, right,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: they were there were spending money for this. The reward
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: fund kept growing, like Virgil's father Jack even offered a
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: five hundred dollars reward for info on his son's death
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: or that would lead to the capture of those who
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: committed it. Now, the reward fund itself for all of
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: the crimes, it had gone to ten thousand dollars like
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: which in today's money one hundred dred and sixty six thousand,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: two hundred and sixteen dollars and forty one cents. That's
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of mullah, in't it. Right? So this,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: for the record went unclaimed. So right, Tips and leads
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: were pouring in from all across the nation, and investigators
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: are checking everything by hand. This is analog like the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: FBI were checking bullet casings and fingerprints against their data.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: And of course, like so you're trying to compare and
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: contrast all across the entire country, and like you've got
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: jurisdiction issues. You've got all this red tape. Now now
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: see say sidebar, sidebar, You're getting a sidebar because I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: read all one thousand, one hundred and eighteen FBI memos
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: and documents pertaining to the case. And let me tell you,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: let me tell you the buroc we say, the bureaucer say,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: on top of all the paper records checking by aye,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's a lot of work. And to make
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: mattals worse, right, the lads are coming in, false leads
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: are coming in because again, money is a great incentive
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: for people to lie. So money breeds greed, and so
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: you've got false info, false confessions, the whole shebang. And
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: at one point a neighbor sees lights flashing at the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Stark's farmhouse, which at this point has been abandoned, and
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: so he calls the police. They arrive, right, So a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of police officers arrive, and they arrive, guns are drawn,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: and they surround the farmhouse. So yeah, they're surrounding the farmhouse,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: guns drawn, like, come out with their up situation and downsteps.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: I swear to fuck Lorne Wolf himself with a lady
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: photographer from Time Life because he's re enacting the crime
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: scene observation for the magazine. But now now I see
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: why people were getting mad at But anyway, Elbo Solo
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: has an idea utilizing all of these teens in the area, right,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: So they decided it would be a great idea because
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: what they noticed is that these crimes were happening in
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: roughly three week intervals, and they were always at the weekend,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: sort of Friday Saturday. These were yeah, Friday Saturday. These
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: are the prime killing spots, right, Like, these weren't happening
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: on a Wednesday. They were happening at the weekend. Right,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: So what they decided to do, because you've got these
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: teenagers ready to throw themselves in the line of fire. Anyway,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: they had the teenagers act as bait, right, acting as couples.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: They would park in lovers lane spots right all throughout Texarkana, like,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: and so they're trying to lure the killer out. So
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: they're just like pretending to be a couple and so
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: like the cops would sort of park a little bit
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: away and watch, or sometimes they'd be hiding in the
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: trees above, which they that party really love them, Like
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: they're just up there in the trees. What are they
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: going to do? Jump down on them like assassin's creed,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Like what are you doing? Anyway, They're just they're really
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: good at clemming trees down down that side of the country.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: So the police, that being said, thought that this idea
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: was a bit risky to, you know, use actual children
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: as bait, and so they use dummies instead. Now, they
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: were doing this sort of from that three week period
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: after the last killing, and they were doing it night
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: after night, and they kept trying this trick, but no vail. Like,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: first of all, who's to say that this guy, you know,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: isn't a cop? Right, I'm just spitballing here, Like what
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: if he knows how the authorities are working and that's
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: how he knows how to get away with it. Also,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: he's been doing this for a while, so he might
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: be well aware if someone is a couple, like if
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: he's stalking couples to find the right ones to kill,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Like obviously he doesn't want those who are going to
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: give him too much resistance. So if he's watching them
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: and they're just not properly acting the way he wants
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: them to act, Like yeah, ohso when they're getting these
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: teenagers to act as bait, are they just sitting in
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: the car or are they making teenagers make out in
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: a car to catch a killer? Like what are they doing? Like? What? Oh,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: is they whip though like the Twin City, it's crawling
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: with plain clothes detectives, you've got rangers, you've got patrol cars,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: like everyone's on high alert. So it's no wonder that
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the person might not do that right now, Like the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: assumption was that he'd gone dormant like a moth in winter,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: like maybe he'd skip down, or maybe he was injured
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: or in jail or x y z. So by the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: autumn fall of nineteen forty six, the panic had died
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: down in town, but the search it was always a lot, right,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: and these officers like they are sifting through buckets and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: buckets of paperwork, which brings me to Detective Max Andrew
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: tack It from Arkansas State Police, an analytical investigator with
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: a great sense of pattern recognition. Now Detective Max here
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: he had picked up on a trend that no one
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: else had noticed. He spotted that in the days leading
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: up to a major attack, a car had been reported
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: stolen from a and then after each attack, the stolen
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: car was discovered abandoned, like in the same area in Tixar,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Canada that they had gone missing from, which is weirdly specific. Right.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: For example, a car was stolen and returned to Robinson's Street,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: which is around Robert Griffin's murder, right and around Berry
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: Joe Booker's murder. A car was stolen from a friend
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: of her parents and was later abandoned, right. And there's
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: a few more cases where this occurs, but those were
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: the two was that stuck out to me because these
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: have connections to the victims because Robert Griffins was living
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: on Robinson Street and Berry Joe Bicker it's a friend
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: of her parents. Like there, there's connections there, So tack it.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: He had a hunch and he followed it. He sticked
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: out a car that was stolen or reported stolen, with
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: the help of Milton Mosier from Hope, Arkansas. And what
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: do you know, a lady came to retrieve the car.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: A one Peggy Lois Swinney. Missus Peggy Lois Swinney. Her
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: surname was a new one knew that day. In fact,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: June twenty eighth, nineteen forty six, she had married ewle
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Lee Swinney in Shreveport, Louisiana. Twenty nine year old Yule
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Sweeney was a petty criminal known to police for theft, burglary,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: selling counterfeit coins, et cetera, and his father, this may
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: shock you, was a Baptist minister, which really just added
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: scandal to the whole affair. Yule was six foot tall, stocky,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: with a light hand and like so he fit the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: description of who it could be, and authorities were how
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: bit skeptical about him because his crimes that he was
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: involved in her known for weren't necessarily violent crimes, and
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: all the evidence they had was circumstantial. But what they
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: do have right now was twenty one year old Peggy
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: in a stolen car. So Peggy was his wife now,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: and they were like, let's let's lock her up. Basically,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: she was detained in lieu of bond and they thought
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: holding her in a cell her husband would come and
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: get her. Spoiler alert, he did not. So she was
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: asked where he was and she said, oh, he was
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: looking to see about a car in Atlanta. Now there
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: is the possibility that Yosweeney married Peggy, so the fuzz
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: couldn't make her testify against him because there's a thing
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: called marital privilege. Right. So he was the prime suspect,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: and he was in areas where crimes occurred, and he
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: had the right attributes, but Texas lost. Marital privilege can
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: be invoked by a spouse of a criminal, meaning you
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: cannot force a wife or husband to testify against their spouse,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: like you cannot comply them to do so. It is
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: a marital privilege to withhold any right to testify, right,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, it wasn't that much of an issue
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: because like he just left her in jail and they
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: basically catch him like hot, like he's stealing a car
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: or they catch him, right, and when he's arrested, like
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: he asked the deputy. He's in the car and he
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: asks him, and this is really suspicious, right, He's like,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: what do you think they'll do to me for this?
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: Which implies, it does imply that he did something worse
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: than just steal cars. While he was in custody, Active
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: searched his previous residencies. In a rooming house where they
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: had stayed, they found a shirt with a welding slag
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: on it and the names Stark. Right now, again, what
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: an interesting connection. It's got welding slag on it and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: it appears to have been taken from Virgil Stark's welding shop,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: and it has part of his name on it. They
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: found other items that they believed belonged to the victims,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: trophies if you will, now Peggy, Peggy, she I'm not
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: gonna say she was singing like a canary. Like. She
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: told police a lot of stories that sort of supported
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: the idea that Ule was the phantom killer. Like again
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's all circumstantial, but it did paint
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: quite a picture. She told them that he had previously
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: owned a thirty two caliber pistol that was now missing,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: and that he had used it to threaten her. Now, Peggy,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: she had a troubled upbringing, like she was one of
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: nine children. And so there were two stories that come out.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: There's one that Peggy said, and there's one that the
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: investigators say. Peggy says that she met Yule when she
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: was in jail and he was visiting another girl, and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: that you know, sparks flu investigators or one investigator says
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: that Peggy was a twenty one year old sex worker
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: in Texarkana, like working in a brothel and that's where
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: she met him. So Peggy's stories they wobbled a little,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: and she didn't directly say that Yule was the murderer.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: And she never incriminated herself the first time she gave
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: a statement. When he was arrested, however, Peggy told police
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: that you had left her in a car in near
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: spring Lake Park on the evening of April's or thirteenth
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and fourteenth. They had bought twelve bottles of beer on
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: the wet side, and they had been drinking before they
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: went to spring Lake Park to rob someone. And so
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: that's where this goes. Now. On the third statement, she
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: gives like there's a time where Peggy leads officials to
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: like an area like not bang On, but very very
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: close to where James Paul Martin's car had been, and
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: she was able to lead them over to this clump
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: of trees where they'd found like a heal impression from
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: a heigled shoe, Like she was like, oh, and I
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: was over here, so like in that second statement, actually,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: so she claimed that you'll had you know, she was
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: in the car, she was drinking, and he had taken
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: the little boy and little girl off somewhere while she
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: stayed drinking in the car, where she fell asleep only
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: to be woken by gunshots. And You'll had returned to
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: the car excited and wet, to the knees. So she
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: talks about on the third of May, the couple were
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: staying in a motel and you'll had left only to
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: return with blood over him. Right, He whipt himself with
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: a towel and put it under the mattress. The police
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: found the bloody towel. Now they didn't actually test it
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: for like blood type or anything, but they found a hill.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, actually actually initially doing the During the second statement,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: she said that he had taken the saxophone and then
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: he had sold it in Corpus Christie. Now it wasn't
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: news that the saxophone had been had been missing, like
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: everyone was looking for it, but there was no record
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: of ever being sold because like the Samur numbers a
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: right there. So when she makes her final statement, however, right,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: she told investigators that the saxophone had been discarded, right,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: so effectively he threw it over a fence. She's like,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: here's where he threw it. He was thinking maybe going
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: back for it later. The saxophone was found months later
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: in the area where she said it was, and it
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: was close to where Berry Joe Bicker's body was discovered.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: But it was like hidden under like leaves and brush.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: So she also incriminated herself at this point because Peggy
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: told investigators that she had robbed the teenage boy, she
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: had emptied his pockets and discarded like what was in
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: them into a nearby ditch because there wasn't anything of value,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and she included in this statement Martin's pocketbook, something that
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Bill Presley hadn't even shared with other officers. Here's the thing, however,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: Peggy didn't know about Mardle privilege, and once she did,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: she recanted everything and claimed that she had made it
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: all up because she was scared of you all, and
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: that she told the cops what they wanted to hear.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: Without Peggy's testimony, the evidence against her new husband was
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: purely circumstantial. It was strong with his suspicious statements and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: the theft part, but without the guns involved in the crime,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: or a confession or an eyewitness statement, the DA didn't
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: feel that the case was strong enough for a jury,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: and if they tried to use Peggy's previous statements, the
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: defense had the angle of this was an abused woman
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: coerced into lying out of fear. Now. One investigator said
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: basically that Peggy wasn't smart enough to invent consistent lies.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: What he actually said was a line that I'm going
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: to be using in the future when people say stupid
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: things to me, because I think it's funny. Peggy's bread
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't baked, the elevator didn't go to the top, like like,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: it's it's funny. It's mean, but it's funny. So like,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: the idea is that she was either telling the truth
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: or she was being fed the information. So the authorities
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: they wanted to put Yullswiney away, but they didn't have
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: enough evidence to convict him for the Moonlight murders. They
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: were convinced, or some were convinced, that he was the
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: phantom killer, but they didn't want to risk an acquittal,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: and of course double jeopardy. Double jeopardy basically means that
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: if you are acquitted of a crime, you cannot be
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: tried for the same crime twice, right, So they charged
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: him with the biggest charge they could against grand larceny,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: grand theft, oro car theft. He was an habitual car
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: thief and that's not all. He had previously violated parole
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: what was it back in forty five, which he had
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: also violated from a crime that he'd had in nineteen
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: forty one. This is what I'm going to call a
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: back or conviction. This was a way of putting him
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: behind bars. Not quite the justice they wanted, but putting
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: him away. And in nineteen forty seven, and you repeat,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: a funeral law carried a life sentence. So basically, yeah,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: if you do it a lot where you're going to
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: the clink. And on April eighteenth, nineteen forty seven, you'll
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: Lee Swinney was pronounced a habitual offender and sentenced to life.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: And so he returned to Huntsville Prison. And Peggy she
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't charged. She was granted a divorce from Mule Swiney,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: and she disappeared into the wind. But she passed away
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight in Dallas, and she was buried
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: under her maiden name, Peggy Lois Stevens. She never did remarry,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: I guess sometimes once enough. Yuo Sweeney, for the record,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: did not spend the rest of his life behind bars,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: because after twenty six years in prison, his conviction was
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: overturned on appeal via habbyas Corpus in nineteen seventy three. Basically,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: he didn't have proper representation back in nineteen forty one
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: for one of his earlier sentences, and as such the
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: habitual offender like that was now void. So he managed
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: to remarry like in prison, of course he did, right,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: So he remarries and he ends up dying in a
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: nursing home in nineteen ninety four from cancer. AnyWho with
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: YOUO behind bars? Authorities breathed a sigh of relief. They
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: had caught their man, or had they will Lone Wolf Gonzalez,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: He certainly didn't think so. Like he continued searching for
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the fantom as late as nineteen sixty, Like, there is
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: a lot, there's a lot of documents in this and
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: like one of the files of correspondence, like it has
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: a person's of interest list of one forty seven names. Now,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: of course there was a master list on which Yu'll
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Sweeney is on it, but he's like one of the sixty.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: Like the thing with this is it's like a jigsaw
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: with a piece that's like almost right, but it's not
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: quite because there are issues with this. Yule's Prince didn't
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: match any of the crime scenes. In fact, the fingerprints
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: at the murder sites are still unidentified to this day. Right,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: I I have a consideration of a theory, though we
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: do have a theory, especially with the earlier prince. It's
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: that what if it's just terrible police work and compromised
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: crime scenes, Like what if the fingerprints are just people
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: who don't know better and you are like, oh, I've
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: touched this and then I've leaned against the wall, Like
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: what if it's just the cops, or what if it's
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: an onlooker who accidentally leaned against the car, like you know,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: that's where I think, Like that's that. I'm just saying
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: it's a possibility due to the contamination of the crime scene. Okay,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm floating the idea. But here's an interesting one.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: In May nineteen forty six, twenty one year old ex
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Army Air Force machine gunner Ralph Bowman turned himself into
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: the LAPD worry that he was the Phantom killer. So
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: he had woken up on May third in San Francisco,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: his rifle was missing and no recollection of the previous day,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: and so panicked hearing basically information on the news that
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: described him like six blah blah, and he was like, oh,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: that sounds like me. What if I did this? He
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: basically blacked out, and so he ended up hitchhiking to
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: La so that he could tell the laped in anyway,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: I told you I went national, so Bowman. He had
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: previously been diagnosed with psycho as psycho neurotic, and he
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: suffered combat trauma from the Second World War, so it's
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: more that he was just disturbed. Then on the seventh
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: of May, a man's mutilated body was found sprawled along
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the Kansas City Southern Railroad track about sixteen miles north
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: of Texarkana Errow Clifton mcspadden. He had been run over
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: by a freight train, severing an arm and a leg.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: Rumor spread. Was he fleeing the phantom or was he
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: the phantom? So unsurprisingly there's an autopsy. The coroner's inquest
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: showed a puncture wound in his head that was either
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: a stab or a gunshot. It was one or the other,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: and due to the lack of bleeding, his body had
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: been placed on the tracks after death, right, so clearly
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: someone was trying to cover up this. So those are
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: like some considerations. Two years after the murder, there would
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: be another odd turn in the Phantom case. On November fifth,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, Henry Booker Doody Tennyson was an eighteen
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: year old freshman at the University of Arkansas of Fayetteville,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: and he had swallowed a lethal dose of poison, thus
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: ending his life. He left behind three notes, none of
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: which have ever been published in full, and he left
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: them for whomsoever found his body. So he ended his life,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: but he did not do so in his own room.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: He was in a bedroom, just wasn't his own. So
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: the first note left a top addresser like in the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: bedroom he was found in, was a poem slash riddle
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: titled My Final Word. Within it were cryptic clues to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: opening a strong box that had been found in Tennyson's
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: room because it had no key year lockin. There was
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: like a whittle and a puzzle and a scavenger hunt,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: but the police decided not to bother with that and
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: just smashed it open instead. The second note confessed to
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: the Phantom Killer shootings, including the Starks. A third note,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: a typed third note found a while later by one
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: of the sheriffs, contradicted everything in the previous notes and
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: said to disregard all previous notes, and that he was
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: looking for a way or a reason for ending his life,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: and that he really loved comics and pulp fiction as
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: in pulp books, not as in Quentin Tarantino's movie. So
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: Tennyson was from a wealthy family and they did not
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: ever make a public statement. But here's the thing if
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: you're a wealthy family in the South is you don't
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: make statements. That wasn't a thing back then. You just
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: kind of swept it under the rug and stay quiet.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: But here's the kicker. Doody had an alibi for the
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: night of the Starks crime. He was playing checkers with
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: his friend James Freeman. And also his prince didn't match
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: any found at the scene, and he couldn't drive at
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: the time of the murders. His brother only taught him
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: to drive the summer of forty seven, like over a
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: year after the Phantom struck. Now that's not to say
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: that he couldn't have an accomplice. And it's six foot three.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: He was the right height and build. So he and
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: his friend James were oddballs and games actually lived near
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: the Starks residents, and Dudy here he was vaguely connected
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: to some victims, right, So he worked as an usher
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: at the Paramount theater which Mary Jean Leary and Jimmy
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: Hollis had attended. And also he had played in the
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: same band as Betty Joe Like he played trombone like.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: They weren't friends, but they were close in age they
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: sort of knew each other. Even with these tenuous connections,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: In all likelihood, Henry was just a troubled young man
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: who was possibly gay in an era that just didn't
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: accept it. Many referred to him as strange, a euphemism
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: for homosexual at the time. This, along with whatever demon's
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: he was battling in his own head, may have caused
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: him to end his life. Over the years, many suspects
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: and leads were chased in the Phantom case, and even
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: when they had someone behind bars, they still weren't sure,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: and to this day, the texarkanomen like murders are still
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: unsolved and in a move that surprises absolutely no one.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, a slasher sort of docu drama
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: movie was produced by a Texa, Kanda born filmmaker and
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: was even filmed in the area right It was called
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: The Town That Dreaded Sundown. It's okay, We'll call it
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: a docudrama. Is being kind. It's it's vaguely adjacent to
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: the truth, and there are many many liberties taken with
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: the story, but of course none of us are shocked.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: But to this day, no one has been charged or
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: definitively named as the Phantom Killer, and the text a
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: Kana Moonlight Murders are now just another one of America's
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: cold cases. Mary Jean Larry, Jimmy Hollis, Polly Anne Moore,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: Richard Griffin, Berry, Joe Booker, James Paul Martin, Walter Virgil Starks,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: and Katie Strickland Stark Sutton still haven't received justice, and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: they might never, and so ends our story of the
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Textar Khan of Modlight Murders feel free to rate and
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: review five stars if you liked my retelling of the tale.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: If you didn't like it, you can keep it to yourself.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: Now what's interesting is this? I mean, I thought it
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: was going to be longer. It's actually not as long
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: as I was anticipating. But I deliberately reduced sidebars, and
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: I there's certain things I didn't talk about here as well,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: like there was a whole poison letter thing going on,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: where like very Joe's stepdad was receiving letters, and so
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: was Gonzales and it was like a whole thing. But again,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of people try and insert themselves into investigations
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: and some people are just oursehols. So here's the thing.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's a disservice to victims to only discuss
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: them and the footnotes of their own crime, like we
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: should have something about them. And yeah, this isn't as
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: long as I was initially anticipating it to be. That
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: being said, the original one would have been two and
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: a half hours, and I'm I am not recording a
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: two and a half hour podcast for y'all, because like,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: that's that's not fair. I mean I could. I'm already
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: starting to lose my voice after this because I've been
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: talking for at least three hours trying to get this together,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of work behind the scenes that
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: gets to this because the amount of pronunciations I have
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: probably messed up, but I would like you to know
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: that I did try, and I did ask people from
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: the South, so if if I've got it wrong, I'm
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: gonna blame them. Although I'm pretty sure I pronounced kill
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: God is killed girl is something at one point. But yeah,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: that being said, I hope you enjoy this month of
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties crime because we're gonna be talking about nineteen
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: bodies crime and some gum true detective work and so
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: on and so forth. And I guess it's a recommendation
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: time and again, still supporting friends and their stuff. So
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: if you know what, if you like D and D,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: there's a friend of mine, he has made a source book.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: It's in the beta right now. I'll put a link
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: down below. Actually it's a source book for crafting in
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: D and D. But it's about making crafting good, right.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting, so there's access to the better I'll
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: put the link in for that's your reading, and that
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: counts for watching. You know what I watched recently because
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: I needed something that was not murder related in my head.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: The Emperor's New Groove. You know what that film holds up.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: I enjoy it. It's a good film. I like it.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: Eartha Kit's in it. She's amazing, and so I forgot
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: how much of the movie I could quote, but yeah,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: watch The Emperor's New Group. It's fun. And for listening,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: apart from my dulcet tones, you know what I started
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: to listen to which was totally reasonable and definitely gonna
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: help me sleep better at night. Sick to death, like
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: it's one of those doctor death stories, and since they
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: haven't updated doctor death in a while, I was like, oh,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: this is interesting because it's not as if they don't exist.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: There's loads anyway, another point. Anyway, this is by The
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: Australian and it's it's been captivating thus far. Did I
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: say watching I did say watching the already impersonal groove. Okay, great,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: that is that And with that, I am going to
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: bid you good day Adios au revoir of is my Friends,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: bye bye