February 22, 1946 Friday night, a remote
country road outside the city of Texarkana “I don’t want to kill you, fellow, so do what I
say.” said the man brandishing the gun. He wore a white pillowcase with eye slits cut into it.
Twenty-four-year-old Jimmy Hollis stared at the man in disbelief. His date, nineteen-year-old Mary
Jeanne Larey clutched Jimmy’s arm in terror. The man pointed the gun, ready to fire. Jimmy and Mary
Jeanne followed orders and got out of the car. The city of Texarkana is half in Texas and half
in Arkansas. In the 1940s the city was an odd mix of rural and urban, quiet and bustling. The
general mood of the city was peaceful; confident. World War II was over and America was getting
back to normal. No one was prepared for the events that occurred during the spring of 1946.
The evening began with a double date, Jimmy and Mary Jeanne and Jimmy’s brother Bob and
his girlfriend. The four of them went to the Strand Theater in downtown Texarkana
to see a monster movie, the House of Dracula. After the movie, the couples went their separate
ways. Jimmy drove his father’s Plymouth to Richmond Road, a remote country road
about a mile outside of the city. This area was popular with locals as a lover’s lane.
Jimmy and Mary Jeanne were canoodling when a bright flashlight suddenly shone on them. A
creepy stranger in a pillowcase mask armed with a gun demanded that they get out of the car.
After a few seconds, they realized that this wasn’t a prank so they obeyed him. The masked man
then snarled at Jimmy to take off his britches. At first, Jimmy refused, but Mary Jeanne urged him
to comply. Jimmy removed his slacks and stood awkwardly in his boxers. The gunman suddenly
slammed his pistol twice into Jimmy’s head. A loud cracking sound rang through the air.
Mary Jeanne thought Jimmy had been shot. Later she would learn that the sound was his skull cracking.
The gunman ended up letting Mary Jeanne go, but then chased her down the street,
and hit her with the flashlight. When finally he went back towards Jimmy,
Mary Jeanne bolted. She ran about half a mile (.80 km) until she reached a house. She hammered
on the door, screaming for help. Thankfully the residents woke up and called for help.
First to arrive at the crime scene was Bowie County Sheriff W. H. Presley and three Texarkana
patrolmen. The gunman was long gone. Both victims were transported to Texarkana Hospital. Jimmy was
in critical condition, he ended up being diagnosed with multiple skull fractures. He would spend
the next 3 months receiving treatment for his injuries. Mary Jeanne was released the next day,
after receiving stitches for a scalp wound. However, she was deeply traumatized,
suffered nightmares, and would ultimately leave the state, to live with relatives in Oklahoma.
Both Jimmy and Mary Jeanne were questioned by the police and their stories were generally
consistent except for one detail. Jimmy described their attacker as a 6 foot (1.8 meters), tanned
white male under 30, while Mary Jeanne claimed he was a light-skinned black man.
The police had no motives, and no suspects, although one published report claims that six
people were arrested and released after questioning. This was the first crime,
but it wouldn’t be the last. March 24, 1946
A rainy Sunday morning, a remote country road outside the city of Texarkana
Around 8:30 A.M., a motorist passed a 1941 Oldsmobile sedan parked beside
Rich Road and saw two figures inside who “looked like they were asleep.”.
Concerned, he stopped and got out to investigate. He quickly realized the two people weren’t asleep,
they were dead, slumped in pools of blood. He got back in his car and raced to town, where he
alerted the city police. The police called Sheriff Presley since the car was parked on county turf,
roughly a mile (9.6 km) outside city limits. Sheriff Presley along with Jackson Runnels,
chief of police on the Texas side of Texarkana were first on scene. They found a man and woman
posed in the back of the Oldsmobile. The man knelt in front of the backseat, his forehead resting
on crossed hands which lay on the backseat. The woman was sprawled facedown on the backseat. Both
victims were fully clothed. Both had been shot in the back of the head with a .32-caliber pistol.
Despite the rain, there were huge bloodstains on the ground, about
20 feet (6 meters) away from the car. The lack of a gun at the scene ruled out murder-suicide. The
bloodstained dirt suggested that the couple had been slain outside, then returned to
the car. The victims were soon identified as twenty-nine-year-old Richard Griffin and his
girlfriend seventeen-year-old Polly Ann Moore. Texarkana’s two mayors pressed for the crime to
be solved quickly. Sheriff Presley and Police Chief Runnels immediately launched a full-scale
investigation, collaborating with Arkansas side Police Chief Richard Giles, the Miller
County Sheriff, the Arkansas State Police, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. A Texas
Ranger also came to assist in the investigation. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot to go on,
rain and then morbid locals who came to view the crime scene obliterated any potential evidence.
By the end of March, the authorities had questioned some 50 witnesses. The couple
had been seen dining at a cafe around 10 pm with Griffin’s sister Eleanor and her boyfriend
the night before, but the authorities couldn’t account for their time after that.
Though the police didn’t note a connection between the Hollis-Larey attack on February 22
and the Griffin-Moore murder on March 24, some uneasy locals did. However, hysteria had not
gripped the city. Yet. April 14, 1946
Palm Sunday, a remote country road northeast of Texarkana in Nevada County, Arkansas.
At 6:00 A.M. the Weaver family was driving on North Park Road when they spotted a man’s
body lying on the north shoulder. They quickly drove to the nearest house to
call for help. The victim was soon identified as seventeen-year-old Jimmy Martin of Kilgore,
Texas, a town about 105 miles (170 km) away from Texarkana. Jimmy had been shot 4 times.
Investigators soon discovered that Jimmy had been in town visiting friends. The night before
he had a date with fifteen-year-old Betty Jo Booker. He had arranged to pick her,
after a dance at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) hall. Betty Jo played saxophone at
the dance with a local band, the Rhythmaires. Friends saw the couple leave together. Authorities
confirmed that Betty Jo had never made it home. A search started with local volunteers helping
out. Around noon, three friends of Betty Jo found the missing girl's body behind a tree
near crossroads about 1.75 miles (2.8 km) from Jimmy’s death scene. She had been shot twice.
Jimmy’s missing Ford Club coupe. --which had the key in the ignition--was
found near the entrance to Spring Lake Park about 1.25 miles (2 km) away from his body
and 3 miles (4.8 km) from Betty Jo’s body. Jimmy and Betty Jo had been last seen alive at
2:00 am on Sunday, as they left the VFW hall. They had planned to visit Spring Lake Park, another
popular lovers’ lane. A resident living near Betty’s Jo crime scene reported hearing a gunshot
around 5:30 am. The police found .32 caliber shells and a couple of slugs around Jimmy’s car.
The FBI joined the investigation as well as more Texas Rangers. FBI ballistics tests would reveal
that the shells had microscopic markings matching the weapon used to kill Richard Griffin and Polly
Ann Moore. Several fingerprints were collected from the car that didn’t belong to Jimmy or
Betty Jo. The fingerprints were compared to FBI and local files, but no matches were made. For
the third time, authorities had little to go on. A second double murder and the fact it occurred
quickly after the first shocked the town. The death of Betty Jo, well known and well-liked,
horrified local teens. The nightlife of Texarkana slowed to a crawl. Families set
early curfews for their teens and barricaded themselves in their homes. Hardware stores sold
out of dead-bolt locks, guns and ammo. Reporters from newspapers around the
world descended upon Texarkana. On April 16th, hoping to outsell the competition,
the Texarkana Daily News named the city’s serial gunman the “Phantom Killer.” The
name caught on and everyone began using it. Since the start, there had been some power
struggles between the different law enforcement agencies over information and the best way to
proceed with the investigations. The second double murder further intensified pressure on
authorities. They conducted patrols and even had decoys park on lovers’ lanes,
hoping to catch the killer in the act. But the Phantom never showed. Some three hundred persons
were detained for questioning—ex-con, drifters, those with reputations, however,
no one could be linked to the crimes. Local groups pledged money to be used as a reward
for tips leading authorities to apprehend the killer. By April 20th, reward money totaling
$4,280 or some $60, 200 in today’s money had been promised. Tips poured in, but they led nowhere.
May 3, 1946 Friday evening, the Starks farm
about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Texarkana. After a hard day’s work thirty-seven-year-old
Virgil Starks relaxed in his living room armchair, with a heating pad tucked behind
him to soothe his aching back. He listened to the radio as he read the Texarkana Gazette. His wife,
thirty-six-year-old Katy Starks, who had already dressed for bed in a nightgown lay on the bed in
an adjacent room. She suddenly heard a noise and yelled for Virgil to turn down the radio.
Then she heard the sound of breaking glass. Thinking that Virgil had dropped something,
Katy went into the living room. As she reached the doorway,
she saw that Vigil was standing. Suddenly, he slumped back into his chair. Katy raced over to
her husband and lifted his head. Blood spilled onto her fingers. Virgil had been shot twice
through a window behind him, by a gunman standing on the front porch of the Starks’ farmhouse. Katy
had not seen the shooter or heard gunfire. She ran into the kitchen call for help.
The Starks had an old hand-crank telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. Katy lifted the receiver,
cranked the handle twice, then staggered back as two bullets slammed into the left side of
her face. Several of her teeth shattered and went skittering across the kitchen floor. Dazed,
Katy dropped to her hands and knees. The gunman hammered on a kitchen window, trying to get into
the house. Katy pushed past her pain, got to her feet, and stumbled through the house to make it
out the front door. From there, Katy barefoot, wearing a blood-soaked nightgown ran across
Highway 67 to the nearby house of her sister and brother-in-law, but they weren’t home. So Katy
ran another fifty yards (46 meters), to the next house. A few neighbors transported the bleeding,
semi-conscious Katy to Michael Meager Memorial Hospital where she immediately went into surgery.
One bullet had pierced Katy’s cheek and exited behind her ear. Doctors found another bullet
wedged under her tongue. Katy survived her injuries, but hadn’t seen the gunman
and couldn’t describe him to the police. As soon as they received word of the crime,
the police, sheriff, and Texas Rangers quickly descended on the Starks farmhouse to collect
evidence, dust for prints, and take pictures. The gunman had clearly gotten in, his footprints
were on the linoleum. Katy had left a trail of blood and teeth during her mad dash to escape.
When Virgil was shot his heating pad had shorted out and burst into flames, scorching his chair.
It was still smoldering, however, Virgil’s corpse wasn’t burned because it had fallen to the floor.
Disturbingly, investigators found a few bloody handprints, suggesting that the killer had
deliberately dipped his hand in Virgil’s blood and creepily decorated the wall. No robbery occurred,
cash and Katy’s jewelry were left untouched. As law enforcement combed through the evidence,
some came to the conclusion that the Starks slaying had been committed by a different
criminal. The first 3 crimes had happened on the Texas side of town, while the Starks lived in
Arkansas. A.22 instead of a .32 was used and the killer had changed his MO. Some claimed that it
was a copycat killing. Also, there were rumors that Virgil had an affair with one of his
relative’s wives and the shooting was revenge. As can be imagined the latest slaying whipped
Texarkana into a frenzy. Rumors spread, altercations, fights, and shootings rose
in the area, residents’ tempers were hair-trigger. Police spent a lot of time investigating tips that
led nowhere as people made accusations against anyone they disliked or considered ‘weird’.
Arkansas State Policeman Max Tackett realized that every time the Killer Phantom struck,
a car had been stolen, then later abandoned. Weeks after the Starks attack, the Texarkana
police located a car stolen the same night as the Martin-Booker murders. On Friday, June 28,
policeman Tackett staked out the stolen car until someone came back to it. That person turned
out to be twenty-one-year-old Peggy Swinney. When arrested and questioned, Peggy revealed
that she was a newlywed, earlier in the day she had married Youell Swinney, who had a history
of counterfeiting and car theft. Her husband was currently some 25 miles (40 km) away in Atlanta,
Texas, trying to sell another stolen car. The couple had a stormy, violent relationship and
had once gone on a cross-country spree of stealing cars and picking up hitchhikers.
Within a few days, the police had tracked down Youell and arrested him for car theft. While being
arrested Youell made some curious and possibly incriminating statements that suggested he was
a murderer. During another interview with Peggy, the police lied saying that they were holding
Youell for murder. Peggy then confessed that her husband was the Phantom Killer and offered
several details about the Martin-Booker murders. Police were able to independently verify some of
her details. However, Youell’s fingerprints didn’t match the prints found at any of the crime scenes.
Peggy’s stories kept changing across several more interviews. Police believed she was withholding
some facts due to fear of incriminating herself. Eventually, Peggy recanted her
original confession. Because she was an unreliable witness, and they only had circumstantial evidence
the police couldn’t arrest Youell for murder. Also, by law in 1946, Peggy could
not be forced to testify against her husband. But the police could and did charge Youell with
violation of his 1945 parole. Also, he was charged with a third felony for his recent car theft.
Youell was found guilty and on April 18, 1947 sent back to jail for life as a habitual offender.
Meanwhile, for most of the summer of 1946, the city of Texarkana remained on high alert and
the authorities continued to investigate. Old police files include a list of 1,047 “persons
of interest” that where investigated in the months after the Starks attack. Eventually,
as there were no further attacks, outside law enforcement, as well as the media slowly withdrew.
The public relaxed their vigilance. The Phantom Killer never struck again.
Over the next couple of years, a few people involved with the cases would be sent anonymous
letters claiming that the wrong man was fingered and the real murderer was still out there. The
letters dropped hints, but it’s not known if the police ever followed up on these leads.
After the Supreme Court made judgments in the 1960s which altered the legal rights of
criminal defendants, Youell and thousands of other convicts disputed their prior convictions. Youell
challenged the courts saying that his sentence should have been no longer than 10 years and he
shouldn’t have received the habitual offender charge. Ultimately, after serving 26 years,
in 1973 a judge granted Youell writ of habeas corpus and ordered his release. Sadly, Youell
went back to his criminal ways and was in and out of jail for the next 20 years. He only stopped
committing crimes after suffering a stroke. In 1993, a writer researching a book about
the Phantom Killer tracked down Youell Swinney at a Dallas nursing home. Youell bragged about some
of his crimes but angrily denied being the Phantom or having anything to do with the murders. He died
the next year at age seventy-seven. The Phantom Killer murders are still considered unsolved.
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