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The Reason the Freeway Phantom Has Been Hard to Catch · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So somewhere in Washington, D.C. right now, there is a
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: very real chance that the only DNA evidence capable of
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: identifying one of the city's most notorious serial killers was
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: destroyed simply because, well, someone forgot to fix a leaky roof.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It really is just a staggering reality to confront,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Because when we picture unsolved homicides, our minds naturally drift
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: to these criminal masterminds. We picture meticulously planned operations.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Right, like perpetrators who somehow outwit teams of brilliant detectives.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. I mean, we've been conditioned by decades of crime
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: thrillers to expect this grand, high-stakes game of chess between
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: good and evil.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But peeling back the layers on this specific case, the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: 50-year-old cold case of the Freeway Phantom, it reveals something
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: much more terrifying, honestly.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Because this perpetrator wasn't protected by genius.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: He was protected by water damage, missing paperwork, and just
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the slow grinding decay of the very institutions that were
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: built to catch him.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And that is exactly what we are going to explore today.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: The documents we are analyzing provide an audit, essentially, of
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the systems we rely on to maintain a civilized society.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And if you are listening as a curious learner, you
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: are about to see how real-world justice is sometimes thwarted
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: not by a criminal mastermind, but by a bureaucratic black hole. Today,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: we are taking a deep dive into a stack of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: sources detailing a catastrophic failure of justice.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our mission here is to dissect the terrifying spree
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: of the freeway phantom and meticulously track the chain of
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: institutional errors that derailed the pursuit of justice.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: It's maddening negligence that allowed a monster to slip completely
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: through the cracks.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: So if we look at the facts of the spree itself,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: they are just harrowing. We are looking at a 16-month period.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Right, beginning on April 25, 1971, if I'm looking at
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the timeline correctly.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, April 25, 1971, and ending on September 4, 1972.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And during this time, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area was
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: stalked by an unidentified predator. The targets were six young
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: black girls.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And they were young, right, ranging in age from 10
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to 17 years old.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Yes. And that specific demographic, young black girls in the
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: early 1970s, it highlights a profound vulnerability.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, these weren't adults engaged in high-risk behaviors.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: These were just children and teenagers going about their daily routines.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: They were walking home from school, running errands in their
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: own neighborhoods.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: And the violence inflicted upon them was absolute. The source
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: material indicates they were abducted, raped, and strangled to death
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: by the same individual.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: God, it's so heavy. But, um... What elevates the psychological
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: terror of this case is the geography of where they
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: were actually found.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Right, the disposal sites.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, their bodies were discovered along freeways in and around Washington, D.C.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: And we have to understand that the choice of disposal
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: site in a serial homicide case is never arbitrary.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a deliberate choice.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Heavily deliberate. It's dictated by the perpetrator's operational comfort and, frankly,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: his psychological needs.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what I always struggle to understand. How does
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: that practically work? Because to me, a freeway is like
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: an artery.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Right. That's a good way to look at it.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: It's commuters. It's commerce. It's constantly in motion. It's usually
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a symbol of travel and connection.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: But he turned it into this twisted public dumping ground,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: almost to taunt the city. So my question is, how
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: does a predator operate so frequently and so openly in
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: a major metropolitan area for over a year without being spotted?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I mean. You would think the sheer volume of headlights
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: alone would act as a deterrent.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: You would think so. But to understand the mechanics of that,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: we have to look at the intersection of urban planning
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and predatory behavior.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Urban planning? Really?
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, because the highway system, by its very design, creates
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: liminal spaces.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Liminal spaces? Like transition areas?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. These are transitional zones meant for passing through, not
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: for lingering. While a freeway is incredibly busy, it is
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: also defined by speed and tunnel vision.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, because drivers are focused on the road ahead.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Right. They aren't looking at the shadows on the shoulder. Furthermore,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: a freeway provides rapid mobility.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So it's an escape route.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: The infrastructure itself acts as an escape vector. A perpetrator
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: can enter the system, utilize the shoulder for disposal, and
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: merge back into the anonymity of traffic moving at 60
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: miles per hour within seconds. Wow.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So the speed of the city effectively creates a blind spot.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: The killer is just leveraging the concrete and the momentum
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of the traffic as a shield.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And doing so indicates a chilling level of confidence. By
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: turning these public arteries into a dumping ground, the killer
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: is making a huge statement of impunity.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: He's showing off.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: He is signaling to law enforcement and the public that
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: he can operate on the edges of their daily commute
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: without any interference.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: And we also have to view this through the historical
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: lens of the early 1970s.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Right. Things were different then.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Very different. The conceptual framework for understanding a serial killer,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the psychological profiling, recognizing signature behaviors, you know, the behavioral
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: science units, all of that was in its absolute infancy.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So they didn't have the tools to link these things
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: together quickly.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: No. Cross-jurisdictional communication was rudimentary at best. making it incredibly
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: difficult for law enforcement to quickly recognize a connected series
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: of highly organized crimes.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, here's where it gets really interesting. Because if
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure of the freeway shielded his movements, the specific
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: items he took from the victims, they really peel back
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the curtain on his psychology.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: They absolutely do.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The sources note that the killer took mementos. But it's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the nature of these items that stands out to me.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: He didn't take jewelry. He didn't take money.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: No, he took Seemingly worthless items.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Right. He took hair curlers, shoelaces, and even a school textbook.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the distinction between a souvenir and
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: a trophy. That is critical in behavioral analysis.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's the difference?
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Well, a souvenir is typically taken to remember an experience, right?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: It's often something given or acquired passively. A trophy, however,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: represents a victory.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, like a hunter.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It represents dominance and conquest. In cases of serial
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: sexual homicide, the offender is often driven by a need
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: for absolute control.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And the act of murder is the ultimate expression of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: that control.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, but that act is fleeting.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So the trophy allows them to extend that control long
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: after the event is over.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The item becomes a psychological conduit. The physical object
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: is compartmentalized by the killer, and he imbues it with
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: the memory of the assault.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: God, that's dark.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: By possessing it, he can continuously relive the fantasy and
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: the reality of the crime. The mundane nature of the items,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: the hair curlers, a textbook, that is what makes it
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: so profoundly disturbing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Because they are objects of deep, everyday innocence.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Yes. Taking a textbook from a murdered teenager isn't just
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: about taking a physical object. Right.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: It's a symbolic theft.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: It is the theft of her youth, her future, and
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: her identity.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: It's a complete assertion of power over the most innocent
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: aspects of her life. And, you know, this need to
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: assert power wasn't just limited to the victims.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: It extended directly to the police. He actually left a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: note in the pocket of one of the victims.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: A taunting note.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the text from the source material is jarring.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Let me read it. He wrote, This is tantamount to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: my insensitivity to people, especially women. I will admit the
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: others when you catch me, if you can.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Analyzing the linguistics of that note offers a very clear
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: profile of the offender's self-image.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: It's so weirdly formal.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: The vocabulary is incredibly revealing. Using the word tantamount in
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: a handwritten note stuffed into a victim's pocket is highly unusual.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels incredibly forced. Like, it reads like someone
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: who is desperately trying to sound educated or philosophical about
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: their own brutality.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a deep-seated grandiosity. He is attempting to
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: project intellectual superiority.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Over the cops.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Over everyone. He isn't merely committing a crime. He is
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: framing it as a philosophical manifestation of his, quote, insensitivity.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: And by explicitly stating especially women, he is codifying his misogyny.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Making sure the authorities understand the specific hatred driving his actions, yes.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And then that final line, if you can. It transforms
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the entire investigation into a sick game.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: He's daring them.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: He's mocking them. He is feeding his own ego by
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: daring the entire justice system to stop him. But, I mean,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that kind of arrogance usually requires a foundation, right?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: You don't taunt the police unless you feel incredibly secure
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: in your ability to evade them.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: That is a very valid point. And that security often
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: stems from geographical comfort.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Right. Knowing the turf. Exactly.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The source material indicates that the abductions were heavily
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: clustered in a specific area of Washington, D.C.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Which means something in behavioral science, right?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Yes. In the field of geographic profiling, this is a
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: massive red flag. Geographic profiling relies on the premise that
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: human beings, even serial offenders, are generally creatures of habit.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: We operate within spatial comfort zones. We go to the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: same grocery stores, take the same roads to work.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We are predictable. And this is modeled using a
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: distance decay function.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Distance decay.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Generally, an offender will commit crimes close enough to their
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: anchor point, usually a home or a workplace, to feel
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: secure and familiar with the escape routes. But far enough
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: away to create a buffer zone so they don't draw
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: immediate suspicion right to their front door.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: So when multiple abductions cluster tightly in a specific neighborhood,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: it strongly suggests the perpetrator has intimate daily knowledge of
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: that area.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: They know the blind spots.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: They know the traffic flow, the times when the streets
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: are empty. They know it like the back of their hand.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the prime suspect identified in the sources,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Robert Askins.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, Robert Askins.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And when you look at the overlap between Askins' background...
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and the geographic data, it is almost impossible to ignore.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: The correlation is striking.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Because Askins was a patient at St. Elizabeth's, which was
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: a psychiatric facility located right in the epicenter of where
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: these abductions were occurring.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Right in the hot zone.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't just a random patient struggling with mental
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: health issues. The sources say he was already a convicted killer.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: The convergence of those data points presents a textbook suspect profile.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It's wild.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: You have a male individual residing precisely within the geographic cluster.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: You have a documented history of legal violence, which satisfies
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the behavioral requirement of having the capacity to kill.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And his presence in a psychiatric facility indicates profound psychological instability.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Which aligns perfectly with the deeply disturbed nature of the
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: crimes and that taunting note we just discussed.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: But this is where the system begins its slow collapse,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and I express utter disbelief here. I really struggle to
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: wrap my head around how someone like that, a convicted
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: killer on a psychiatric hold, could have the freedom of
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: movement required to abduct, Assault and dispose of six victims
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: over 16 months.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: It sounds impossible by today's standards.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: It sounds completely negligent.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: But the psychiatric landscape of the 1970s was vastly different
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: from today.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: St.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth's was a massive institution.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it was huge.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Huge. And at various points in its history, the protocols
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: regarding patient monitoring, ground privileges, and work furloughs were significantly
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: looser than modern standards.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Really, for convicted killers.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was not uncommon for patients, even those with
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: violent histories, to be granted passes to leave the facility
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: for work or social reintegration during the day, provided they
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: returned at night.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So he could just walk out.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: If an individual possessed a baseline level of cunning, manipulating
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: those curfews and exploiting the blind spots of the institutional
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: oversight would be entirely feasible.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yet despite having a suspect who perfectly fit the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: physical location... the psychological profile, and the criminal history. The
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: authorities could never collect enough evidence to charge him.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: And that is a frustrating reality about the law.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: It really highlights the difference between a detective knowing someone
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: is guilty and proving it in court. There is this
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: massive chasm between knowing someone committed a crime and a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: prosecutor actually getting a conviction.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: That chasm is the defining feature of the American justice system.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: The burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: What the investigators had with Robert Askins was a mountain
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: of circumstantial evidence.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But not hard proof.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Circumstantial evidence requires a jury to make an inference
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: to connect it to a conclusion of fact. Being in
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: the neighborhood is circumstantial.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Having a violent past is circumstantial.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: You can infer he did it, but you don't have
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: the smoking gun.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: You don't have the DNA match.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Without physical, direct evidence, a fingerprint on the victim,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the victim's blood on his clothing... an eyewitness placing him
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: at the scene of the abduction, or the discovery of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: the stolen trophies in his room, a competent defense attorney
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: will systematically dismantle the prosecution's case.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Because they'll just argue coincidence.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: They will argue coincidence, they will argue institutional bias against
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: a psychiatric patient, and they will easily introduce reasonable doubt.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And prosecutors know this.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: They do. They cannot pull the trigger on an indictment
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: without the hard science or the direct link to back
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because the tragedy is that that
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: hard science might have actually existed. We just will never
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: know because of how the evidence was handled.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, the handling of the evidence is the darkest part
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: of this story.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: The sources confirm that the Metropolitan Police Department, the MPD, eventually, quote,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: purged these cases. The vast majority of the evidence was
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: permanently lost or intentionally destroyed.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: This is where the narrative shifts from the terrifying actions
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: of a predator to the catastrophic negligence of the state.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: There was a 2009 interview with Washingtonian Magazine with Detective
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: James Tranum, who actually worked on this cold case.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, Tranum is a key figure here.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: He described the homicide evidence warehouse as a grandmother's attic.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: He admitted that police intentionally destroyed obsolete files because they
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: simply were not thinking ahead.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about historical context. To understand
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: how this level of destruction occurs, we have to look
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: objectively at the forensic realities of the 1970s and 1980s.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, but it's hard to be objective
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: when you hear grandmother's attic used to describe the only
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: remaining links to six murdered children.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I agree. It is entirely indefensible by modern evidence management standards.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: But in that era, forensic biology was severely limited.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: What did they have back then?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: They relied primarily on serology, specifically ABO blood typing and
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: secretor status.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, blood types. Right.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: So if detectives collected a biological sample from a crime scene,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: say a fluid sample or a bloodstained garment, The laboratory
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: could tell them if the perpetrator was blood type A, B, AB,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: or O.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And that's it.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. Once that test was completed, the perceived evidentiary
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: value of that sample was considered exhausted by the investigators
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: at the time.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Because they couldn't see the horizon. They had absolutely no
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: concept that DNA testing was going to be a thing.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Precisely. They could not fathom a future where a microscopic,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: degraded flake of skin could be amplified using polymerase chain reaction...
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: to generate a genetic profile unique to one individual on
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: the planet.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: It sounds like sci-fi to them. It was.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: So you have a precinct administrator staring at a warehouse
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: overflowing with cardboard boxes. Space is at a premium.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Budgets are stretched.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: New homicides are occurring every single week. They look at
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: a box from 1972. They determine that the blood typing
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: is already documented in the paper file. And they conclude
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: the physical swabs are just taking up space.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It's like cleaning out a messy garage. But instead of
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: throwing away old junk, you're throwing away murder files. Yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: They treated human lives and the pursuit of justice like
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: obsolete paperwork.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: By throwing away what they thought was useless, they tragically
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: sabotaged the future of the investigation.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating lack of foresight.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of evidence itself.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Evidence is not just data for the present moment.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: What is it then?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: It is a physical preservation of history. When you destroy
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: the physical history, you permanently sever the path to the truth.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't merely administrative short-sightedness that doomed this case.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: It was the literal, physical decay of the building that
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was meant to protect that history.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: The facilities themselves were failing.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Big time. The D.C. Inspector General's office investigated this specific
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: MPD warehouse, and the findings in the sources are appalling.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: The conditions were deplorable.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: They documented a leaking roof, water-damaged files, and uncontrolled temperatures
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: inside the facility.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: The environmental conditions described in that report are the absolute
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: antithesis of evidence preservation.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Because of the moisture.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Moisture and heat. DNA is a robust molecule in a
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: controlled environment, like a freezer, but it is highly susceptible
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: to degradation when exposed to the elements.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And the source specifically notes that the heat may have
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: destroyed whatever DNA samples actually managed to survive those initial purges.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Yes. Heat accelerates a process called hydrolysis.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Hydrolysis.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: It's where the chemical bonds of the DNA backbone basically
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: begin to break down and snap. Furthermore, a leaking roof
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: introduces moisture, and moisture breeds bacteria and fungi.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Which eats the DNA.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Microorganisms will aggressively consume biological material. A damp, hot
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: warehouse is essentially an incubator designed to obliterate genetic evidence.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So it's the ultimate butterfly effect. A simple, mundane, deferred
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: maintenance issue, like... a leaking roof that a city planner
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: didn't fund.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Or a broken thermostat that a maintenance worker ignored.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Right. And it creates an environment that destroys biological material.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: That destruction erases a DNA profile, which means a match
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: can never be run through modern databases.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And that failure to make a match effectively grants immunity
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: to a serial killer.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: The structural integrity of a building directly dictated the outcome
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of a multiple homicide investigation.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I really need to push back hard here, though, because...
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The inspector general's report didn't just stop at water damage
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and heat.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: No, it went much further.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: They found severe security issues. High-value confiscated items were missing
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: from this warehouse.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: We are talking about narcotics and firearms.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, the missing contraband.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You can try to explain away a purged file from
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: 1975 by blaming a lack of scientific foresight. I get that.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But you cannot explain away missing guns and drugs. That
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: completely elevates this from a story of mere bureaucratic incompetence
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: or a bad HVAC system to a story of gross
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: negligence and potentially severe corruption.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: I agree completely. When narcotics and firearms are walking out
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the door of an evidence facility, the chain of custody
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: is irreparably broken.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Explain the chain of custody for people who might not
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: know the technical definition.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: The chain of custody is the legal paper trail. It
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: documents the seizure, custody, control, transfer, and analysis of evidence.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute foundation of admissibility in court.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Because if you can't prove who had access to the room,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: you can't prove the evidence wasn't tampered with.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The legal doctrine known as the fruit of the
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: poisonous tree dictates that evidence obtained illegally or mishandled severely
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: is tainted.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Meaning you can't use it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Right. If, by some miracle, a viable DNA swab from
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: the Freeway Phantom case had survived the heat, the water,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: and the purges, and the police used it to arrest
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: a suspect... the trial would be over before it began.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Because the defense attorney wouldn't even need to argue the science.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: No, they wouldn't.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: They would just point to the missing drugs and the
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: leaky roof.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: They would ask the jury a very simple question. They'd say,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: can you trust, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this swab
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: wasn't cross-contaminated, swapped, or tampered with in a facility demonstrably
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: chaotic enough to lose firearms?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And the jury would say no.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: The answer, legally, would be no. The state's case would
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: collapse under the weight of its own negligence.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? I mean, despite all
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of this decay, there was one final desperate attempt to
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: salvage the investigation using modern science, right? Yes.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: In Section 6 of our sources, it details an interagency
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: black hole that truly defies belief.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: In 2009, according to the Washington City paper, some surviving
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: DNA evidence from the case was actually located and sent
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: to the FBI for advanced analysis.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Bringing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation should have been
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the turning point for this case.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Right. You'd think the cavalry had arrived.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Transferring evidence from a struggling municipal warehouse to the premier
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: federal forensic laboratory in the country is exactly what you
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: want to see in a cold case.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: But the Metropolitan Police Department never received the results. And
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: they never got the physical sample back from the FBI.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: It vanished. The FBI basically swallowed the DNA sample and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: compounded the disaster. Detective train them. the man actively working
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the cold case and giving those interviews, he retired.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And the loss of institutional knowledge when a lead investigator
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: retires is a massive blow to any cold case.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Because they hold all the context in their head.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Complex investigations are often held together by the connective
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: tissue in a detective's mind, the nuances of interviews, the
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: unwritten context of older files. When they walk out the door,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: that context vanishes.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: But coupling that retirement... with the loss of a physical
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: sample by the FBI. That represents a systemic collapse at
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: both the local and federal levels.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it gets
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: even more frustrating.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: We have a situation where the MPD states the cases
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: are purged, right?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: But representatives from the neighboring Prince George's County Police Department
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: contend the murders are still being actively investigated.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Think about that for a second. It is like two
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: people driving the exact same car but each one is
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: yanking the steering wheel in opposite directions.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: One guy is trying to park it in the junkyard,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and the other guy thinks they're still in a high-speed chase.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: How does a multi-jurisdictional case function when the agencies don't
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: even agree if the case exists?
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: It doesn't function. What we are witnessing is the fatal
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: consequence of bureaucratic siloing.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Siloing? Like working in isolation?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. Law enforcement in the United States is intensely decentralized.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: You have municipal police, county sheriffs, state bureaus, and federal agencies.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: They don't talk to each other.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Rarely, effectively. They often operate on entirely different laboratory information
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: management systems, or LIMs. Their databases don't communicate naturally.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: And there's the human element of jurisdictional pride.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Perf wars. Jurisdictional friction is incredibly common. When agencies refuse
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: to communicate, or when the protocols for transferring evidence between
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: a local MPD and the federal FBI involve Byzantine paperwork
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: that gets easily misfiled, the evidence just falls into the void.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly what happened here.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: The FBI losing the sample is the ultimate manifestation of
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: this siloing. The left hand operates completely blind to the
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: right hand, and the case paralyzes.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: When you look at this entire 50-year timeline, you realize
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: that the freeway phantom remains a ghost. Not necessarily because
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: he was an untouchable savant.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: He was a predator who exploited the infrastructure of the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: city and the vulnerabilities of his victims, absolutely. But his
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: continued anonymity is not a testament to his brilliance.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: His anonymity is a testament to a cascading failure of
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the systems designed to catch him.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: It's just error after error.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: It is a failure of foresight in the 1970s. It
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: is the failure of building maintenance in the 1990s.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Leaky roof.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It is the failure of evidence security. And it is
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: the failure of interagency cooperation.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So being a well-informed observer of the justice system means
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: stripping away the Hollywood gloss. It means understanding that the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: system is incredibly fragile.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Extremely fragile.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: It does not run on magic or, you know, inevitable
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: moral arcs where the good guys always win. It relies
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: entirely on the meticulous, unglamorous administration of facts. Paperwork. It
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: relies on properly filled out paperwork, on functioning climate control,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: on secure locks. And on agencies actually talking to each other.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: When the administration of those basic functions fails, as it
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: spectacularly failed here, justice is unequivocally denied.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: It really forces a profound reevaluation of how we view
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: the foundation of law enforcement.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: We have to demand better.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: We must demand better funding, rigorous training, and strict independent
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: oversight for the most foundational levels of evidence management. The
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: integrity of the entire justice system rests on the physical
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: preservation of the truth.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to leave you with a final thought, something
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to really mull over, based strictly on the psychology of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: this perpetrator.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: We know, based on the sources, that this killer took trophies.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: He took deeply personal, mundane items, right?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: The textbooks, the shoelaces, the hair curlers.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Right, from these six young girls to relive his control
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: over them. Well, it has been 50 years. Given the timeline,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the perpetrator is likely elderly or deceased.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: The actuarial reality strongly suggests he is no longer living, yes.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Which means his possessions, his estate, would have been passed on, sold,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: or boxed up by his family.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: What if those missing items, you know, a textbook belonging
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to a murdered 12-year-old, a set of hair curlers, what
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: if they're currently sitting in a cardboard box in someone's
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: actual grandmother's attic today?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Hidden in plain sight.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Passed down, mixed in with old junk, completely forgotten by
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the family who inherited them. Would anyone alive today looking
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: at an old textbook in a dusty box even know
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that they're holding the only remaining evidence of the freeway phantom?