Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: The Freeway Phantom

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

When six young girls are found murdered, their similarities link them all to one killer. With no witnesses and no leads, investigators are still asking who is The Freeway Phantom over forty years later.  If you have any information regarding to the abduction and murders of Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nenomoshia Yates, Brenda Woodard or Diane Williams please call Metro Police at 202-727-9099 or send an email to [e-mail] For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-freeway-phantom/

Hi, crime junkies. I just want to drop in quickly and say thank you. I should have expected it, but it blew me away. Nonetheless, your outpouring of support for Brit is unmatched. I mean, within hours between comments and emails, we have 15,000 messages from you guys. And I'm going to make sure every single one of those gets to Brit.

Brit is still doing well, still recovering. And just as a reminder, you are going to hear Brit's voice on this episode and through the rest of May. We had these pre-recorded, so I hope you enjoy. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And the story I have for you today is about six victims

whose similarities, both in life and in death, led police on a manhunt for a nefarious killer, a killer whose identity remains a mystery to this very day. This is the story of the freeway phantom. MUSIC Just after 7 p.m. on April 25th, 1971, a single mother of eight, Allentine Spinks, is walking back to her Washington, D.C. apartment after spending a few hours visiting her sister in nearby Maryland, and that's when she runs into her 13-year-old daughter Carol.

Now Allentine is livid to see Carol, because Carol and all of her siblings know that under no circumstances are they allowed to leave the apartment while she is out. So she demands to know what Carol is doing out, and Carol explains that Valerie, her oldest sister, was hounding her and her siblings to run to the 7-Eleven for her, and she went because Valerie just, like, wouldn't let up. And Carol was like, okay, fine, she got fed up and was like, okay, I'll go. I mean, that totally sounds like an older sister thing to do. Totally.

Anyway, Allentine is upset as she tells Carol, look, you're already out, go get what you need from the store, and then you and I are going to have a discussion when you get home. Only Carol doesn't come home. Allentine waits and waits, and after three hours, her anger turns to worry. She starts calling friends and family members to see if they've heard from Carol, but no one has. She then picks up the phone and calls the 7-Eleven that Carol said she was going to. The clerk tells Allentine that, yes, Carol was in there, and based on the time on the

receipt, it was about 7.40 p.m. The clerk said there was nothing unusual about his interaction with her, she just bought some stuff and then left. How far was the 7-Eleven from their apartment, like, I guess how long should it have taken her to get home? Well, based on the book on this case by Blaine Pardo and Victoria Hester called Tantamout, the pursuit of the freeway Phantom serial killer, the 7-Eleven was about seven blocks from their apartment.

So once Carol left the store, I mean, you're talking like 20 minutes tops for her to get back home. So again, after three hours, you can imagine everyone is starting to get really worried because now it's past 10 p.m. Carol should definitely be home by now. Right. Frantic, Allentine calls the local DC police and tells them that her daughter is missing, and the police tell her something we've heard way too many times in missing person

cases. The police say, you know, she probably just ran away, she's going to turn up soon. But Allentine knows that Carol wouldn't run away, so she insists and finally detectives come to take her statement, but that's pretty much all they do. They make note of the incident and file it away, and nothing happens for six whole days. No phone calls, no sightings of her, nothing. That is until day six, May 1st. That's when an 11-year-old boy walking along Route 295 stumbled across the lifeless body

of a young girl. The boy flagged down a passing police car, and eventually detectives were dispatched to the scene, and they found a deceased young girl laying face up, fully clothed, but missing her shoes. Once the body is taken for autopsy, the medical examiner determines the victim was sexually assaulted, beaten, and ultimately died of strangulation. And once authorities make the connection between Carol's disappearance and this discovery, Allentine confirms that the victim is her 13-year-old daughter, Carol Denise Spinks.

According to reporting in People Magazine by Jeff Trusdell, the medical examiner also determined that Carol was killed two to three days before her body was discovered. She had undigested food in her stomach, which meant that she was actually kept captive but alive, enduring unimaginable horror for at least three days after she disappeared. Did they get any evidence they could use from the autopsy, like semen or any kind of DNA to use to find out who did this? According to Sheryl Thompson's reporting for the Washington Post, there was an unknown hair which they were able to determine was from a black male and green synthetic fibers

found on Carol's body, but I mean, we're talking 1971, so they just didn't even have the technology to test for DNA or anything like that, so unfortunately little attention was paid to the evidence. They had to do old-fashioned police work to try and find their killer. And investigators start by interviewing Carol's friends and family, and though no one saw Carol get abducted, several people were sure that's what had to have happened because they say they knew Carol and she wouldn't willingly go into a stranger's car. The community tries to be helpful and they send tips to police, but nothing gives authorities

that lead that they need as to who might have done this. The investigation was quickly cooling off. Within just two months, they were basically out of leads and tips, but then they got a new lead in the worst possible way. Another girl went missing from the same neighborhood as Carol. On July 8, 1971, 16-year-old Darlinia Denise Johnson left her home around 10.30 in the morning, and as she was leaving, she reminded her mother Helen that she wouldn't be home that night because she was going to be chaperoning an overnight trip where she worked at the

Oxon Hill Recreation Center. But Helen never heard from Darlinia the following day, and she immediately knew something wasn't right, so on July 9, she filed a missing persons report with the Washington Metro Police Department and once again, they didn't take it seriously. No. All police did was confirm that she didn't show up for work, they filed a report, and moved on. Days passed and the family got little help from police, and by July 12, help was too

late. According to Sheryl Thompson's reporting, that's the day a man pulled off the shoulder of I-25 to deal with some car trouble, and that's when he noticed the body of a young woman laying off the side of the road. This man calls police right away and officers are dispatched to the area and report back a 10-8. Oh, what's a 10-8? Well essentially, a 10-8 means that they found nothing and they're moving on.

So this guy made it up? Oh no. Apparently, when the officers responded, they didn't bother to get out of their cars to see if there was a dead body, they literally just drove past the area and were like, nope, nothing to see here, false alarm. And they kept ignoring multiple calls about this. If it happens once, okay, that's kind of sketchy, twice is like mm-hmm, but like multiple calls, they just kept-

Yeah, at some point they're like, hey, there's probably something here we're not seeing, this isn't some like elaborate hoax. Just maybe we should look a little bit more into this. Yeah, but- Oh my goodness. No one gave this any attention until the calls started getting angry. Well yeah, there's a body on the side of the road. Yeah, people were driving by more than once, still seeing the body out there after they

knew they'd called it in. So it wasn't until July 19th, Brett, 11 days after Darlene was last seen, that police finally dragged their butts out to the scene and when they did, they found the body that the caller had initially described. Just 15 feet from where Carol Spinks' body had been found on Route 295. The victim was fully clothed and just like Carol, missing her shoes. By the time they got to the scene, identification was near impossible because the body had been out in the summer heat for days and the state of decomposition was severe.

I'd like to make a clarification on that statement. By the time they went to the scene and actually investigated- Yeah, oh, can you imagine what they would have to work with if they actually like responded to the very first call? So ultimately the Emmys' autopsy was inconclusive, but they did find foreign hairs again, again from a black male, and they also found blood under her fingernail suggesting that she fought her killer. Darlene's mother, Helen, was able to confirm what investigators already suspected by identifying

the victim's clothing and she identified it as her 16-year-old daughter, Darlene. Are investigators linking these cases because of how similar they are? Well, not quite. Researchers stated early on that there was no evidence linking the two murders, but the families and friends of the victims on the other hand couldn't ignore the similarities and they felt unprotected by police, and that feeling only grew when a third girl goes missing. On July 27th, 10-year-old Brenda Crockett is playing outside of her Washington, D.C. home with her siblings when her mom, Ruth, ascends her to go out and get dog food for

their three dogs, Ringo, Rex, and Romeo at the nearby Safeway, and this is around 8pm. Ruth tells her to bring a sibling along with her and then Ruth goes back inside, but Brenda doesn't take anyone with her, and she doesn't come back. Within an hour, Ruth is frantic. She is painfully aware of the similarities between Brenda and the two other murdered girls, who were also young, black, and walking alone when they were abducted. So Ruth doesn't waste any time and she doesn't bother calling police just to get the same BS response from them that her daughter ran away.

She goes out on her own to search the streets for her daughter. But meanwhile, back at the Crockett's home, the telephone rings. Brenda's younger sister, 7-year-old Bertha, answers the phone, and on the other line is her sister, Brenda. Brenda is crying and saying that a white man picked her up and took her to Virginia. And Bertha is just confused, so she hangs up. What? She hangs up the phone?

Yeah, I mean, of course, in hindsight, this call is really important, but you have to think Bertha is just 7-years-old. She's confused more than anything and doesn't understand what's going on. Like, I mean, I think about it. Her mom probably didn't even tell her that she thought her sister was missing or could be a victim of something like the other girls. I mean, again, she is 7. I have to imagine her mom's like keeping her calm, like, hey, I'm just gonna go check

something. I'll be back. Right, right. And like, thinking back, like, when I was 7, I wasn't really aware of crimes that were going on in my neighborhood or whatever. And I don't know if I'd tell my kids, like, May, if she's 7, if something like that was happening either, you know? No, again, and you don't even know anything bad, right?

Like, you're nervous, but you're probably trying to tell yourself that nothing's wrong. And so the last thing you're gonna do is like, freak out, you're like 7-year-old. So when she hangs up, again, I truly think she just had no idea what was going on and was like, well, this doesn't make sense. But you know, it really doesn't matter anyways, because Brenda just calls right back. This time, Brenda's stepfather Theodore answers the phone. And Brenda repeats the same thing through tears, a white man picked her up, took her to Virginia, and was going to send her home in a cab.

Confused and scared, her stepfather asks her repeatedly where she is. And instead of answering his question, Brenda asks, quote, did my mother see me? Like, while she was out looking for her, did she pass Brenda and not even know it? Investigators think it's possible, or they think there is another possibility that maybe Brenda's mom would have recognized the man that took her, and maybe that man was still with Brenda telling her what to say. What do you mean? Well, according to a 2019 People Magazine Investigates episode on this case, investigators

feel confident that the call was scripted. And if it was, it gives them some insight into who the caller might really be, because if he's the one giving her cues, you know, tell them a white man took you, tell them I'm in Virginia, tell them you're in Virginia. And investigators think that they can confidently say he's not a white man, and he's also not in Virginia. Right. So the call is there to throw him off, throw everybody off his trail.

Still, besides speculation, it doesn't give investigators much to go on. And just nine hours after Brenda made that final phone call at about 5 a.m. on July 28, a hitchhiker discovered a child's body laying just off Route 50 in Prince George's County, Maryland. Brenda and just like with the other girls, she was fully clothed, but missing her shoes. After the family positively identified Brenda's body, she was taken to the medical examiner where it is confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted and ultimately died from strangulation. Like Carol and Darlenia, there were foreign hairs from a black man found on her body.

And she also had some green synthetic fibers. And although they were years away from being able to test it, semen and blood was also found on her body. Now after the discovery of Brenda's body, it was the first acknowledgement in the media of a connection between the three victims and they dubbed their predator the freeway phantom. The media and now police were starting to realize that this is far more than a coincidence and they were in fact dealing with a serial killer and this guy was escalating.

Investigators noticed that the time between abduction and then the time he was holding the girl's captive was getting smaller and smaller. I mean, Carol was abducted and held for days, Darlenia was abducted two months later and held for a shorter period of time. And now just a week after Darlenia's body was found, Brenda was abducted and killed that very same night. They thought for sure their killer was going to strike again and soon. But days turned into weeks with no other abductions or murders and slowly the community began

feeling the slightest bit of normalcy that is until October 1st. Just when another Washington DC girl went missing. Around 7pm, 12 year old Nina Moshe Yates was sent on an errand by her father William. He sent her to get like a couple of items from the Safeway that was literally one block from their apartment. Nina Moshe's father waits and waits and he begins to realize that something is wrong. He searches the streets and asks neighbors if they've seen his daughter but no one had.

He finally makes it to the Safeway where he sent her and he learns that she had in fact made it there. But where she went after she made her purchases is a complete mystery. Like she disappeared into thin air somewhere along her one block walk home. He calls his ex-wife and Nina Moshe's mother to tell her what's going on and her mother reports Nina Moshe missing to Metro police that very night. Tragically though, no investigation could even get started. Within a couple of hours, a hitchhiker stumbles upon a body just off the shoulder of Pennsylvania

Avenue southeast in Prince George's County, Maryland, and the body is quickly identified as 12 year old Nina Moshe Yates. She is found fully clothed with her shoes still on. According to several articles, Nina Moshe was transported to the Baltimore Medical Examiner and they determined that she was sexually assaulted and her cause of death was strangulation. And unsurprisingly, there are also green synthetic fibers and unknown hairs from a black male present on her body. So do the police have any idea what these green fibers could be from?

They can tell it's some kind of carpeting either from like a rug or maybe a car interior. Beyond that, like they can't make any determination. And even the hairs, like even though they all look like they were potentially the same, there's no way to say that conclusively. So besides these like few commonalities linking hers to the other cases, police really don't have anything to go on. They've spoken to friends and family members and gotten some tips, but none of them pan out.

And then another girl goes missing. And this is where things start to get really bizarre. On the evening of November 15th, 18 year old Brenda Denise Woodard leaves Cardozo High School in Washington, DC, where she attends night classes. A male classmate named Sherman Mitchell leaves with her and the two of them grab a bite to eat at this place called Ben's Chili Bowl. And after around like 10, 30 p.m., they get on the bus home, but Brenda actually has to take a second bus to get to her house.

So once they reach the stop, they say goodbye to one another and she boards the second bus on her own. Around 12 a.m., Sherman calls Brenda's apartment to make sure she got home safely. But her roommate that's there says that she never came home. Worried, her roommate calls Brenda's parents who actually live just across the street to let them know she's missing. Now, Brenda's mom is worried, but not panicked. I mean, she's 18 at the time.

She has her own apartment. Right, right. And like, yes, there's a serial killer on the loose, but all the victims had been young cousin Brenda. So I'm sure that didn't even like cross their minds. It didn't. So Brenda's mom honestly goes back to sleep and in the morning just heads off to a doctor's appointment expecting to hear from Brenda sometime that day.

But on her way to the bus, Brenda's mom sees a wig laying on the road that catches her eye because it looks exactly like the wig that Brenda wears. This sighting weighs on her and at some point in the day, she hears news of a body found off Route 202 and her worry just grows. Call it mother's intuition, but Brenda's mom knows in her gut that that body that was found is her daughter. She is so sure of this that as soon as her husband gets home that day, she tells her husband, she thinks their daughter is dead because of that wig and she just can't get

it out of her mind. Now, of course, her husband tries to be reassuring. He's like, listen, I am sure it's not Brenda, but I'll call the police anyway. And you know, just so you have like some semblance of calm, like we'll figure this out. So he calls police. But when they arrive at their home and show them the photo of the woman who was found dead earlier that morning, Brenda's mother's fears were confirmed. The victim was their daughter.

Police had found Brenda's body at 5 a.m. on November 16 and like all of the others, she was fully clothed, but she had her shoes on, but there were also marks on her neck like she had been strangled. Now, those are some similarities to the other cases, but Brenda's case is different than the other victims in some ways too. Different how? Well, according to Don McLeod's article for the Spokane Chronicle, the medical examiner determines her cause of death was actually a stab wound to her chest.

And in total, she had been stabbed six times. On top of that, she was still strangled and sexually assaulted. She had defensive wounds and it was clear that she tried to fight her attacker. Despite these differences, though, just like the others, she had unknown hairs from a black male found on her body as well as those same green synthetic fibers. So it is the same guy. Well, if the evidence wasn't convincing enough that it was, the killer had actually left a note on her body.

This on the scene discovered a note folded up in the pocket of Brenda's coat that was draped over her body. Now police didn't tell people about this note at first, but eventually it was published in several articles, including in Del Quentin Wilbur's reporting for the Washington Post. And here, Brett, I'm going to have you read what it said. It said, quote, this is tantamount to my insensitivity to people, especially women. I will admit the others when you catch me if you can, the freeway phantom, end quote. But there's something puzzling about this note, because by comparing Brenda's handwriting

to the note, experts are able to determine that she was actually the one who wrote it. And more than that, the writing is neat, not shaky. And according to handwriting experts, the writing indicates that Brenda was not under stress when she wrote it. How? Well, that's the question on police's minds as well. And they think the only explanation is that Brenda had to have known her killer. They think that it's even possible maybe the killer pretended that this was some kind

of bad prank or something, and Brenda went along with it, only to realize later that this wasn't just a tasteless joke. They also think that's the reason for the stab wounds, that perhaps Brenda figured out that she was in danger and ran or fought and the killer had to subdue her. So if they think Brenda knew her killer, do they have any suspects? Not that they're publicly talking about at the time, no. And interestingly, after Brenda's murder, the abductions and murders stopped cold. For months, the freeway phantom just stopped, and unfortunately, so did the leads in this

case. I mean, it seemed like no one saw anything, and it took 10 months, but that is when the phantom strikes again. On Tuesday, September 5th, 1972, around 10pm, 17-year-old Diane Williams is visiting her boyfriend James, listening to his new records, when she realizes it's almost her curfew and she better hurry home. James walks Diane to her bus stop, says goodbye, and she gets on her bus. The ride should have taken her back to her parents' DC home well before her 10-30 curfew.

So when she misses it, Diane's mother Margaret called James and basically tells him, like, you better let Diane know she needs to get her butt home. But Diane's boyfriend's like, this can't be right, like she's not here, I left her at the bus stop, headed right to you. So her mom's confused, but like she waits, and honestly at this point, like a little angry, like she thinks Diane is still just late, like maybe, again, maybe they all ran over, who knows, but she's gotta be home any time. But as time ticks by, her mom starts to realize something could be really wrong, and that

anger turns to anxiety, and Diane's parents report her missing to Metropedy that very night. But by 8am the next morning, a body is found off Interstate 295. The victim was fully clothed, and her tennis shoes were laying near her body inscribed with the name Diane on the heel. According to an Associated Press article published in the Baltimore Sun, Diane's body was transported for autopsy, and the medical examiner confirmed that, like the others, her cause of death was strangulation.

Seaman is found on her body, but it's unclear to the examiner if she was sexually assaulted, or if there could have been consensual sex, since Diane had been with her boyfriend just before she disappeared. So it's important to note that several articles report that James is adamant that they were not intimate that evening. Like all of the other cases before hers, hair is from a black male, and those green synthetic fibers were present. And just like some of the times before, the killer begins taunting the family.

According to Diane's sister, Patricia, Diane's mother Margaret reportedly got several phone calls in which a man's voice on the other end just says, quote, I killed your daughter. But once again, the bizarre tauntings lead nowhere. Police and the community got ready for another wave of killings, but days passed and then weeks and months, and to this day, Diane is the last confirmed victim of the freeway phantom. Who prayed on young black females all from middle class families living in similar or same DC neighborhoods who were all walking alone when they were abducted is still a mystery. Now all of these girls had something else in common, too, something that might just

be happenstance, but is a little too coincidental not to mention. Four of the six victims shared the middle name Denise. According to Don McLeod's reporting for the Spokane Chronicle, a psychologist has speculated that the killer may have had a fixation on the name Denise or even just the letter D. So again, while Neo Mosia Yates and Brenda Crockett don't fit this fixation, it's still something that stuck out to me again for four of the six to have that in common is just kind of bizarre. So was Denise a popular name at the time?

It was super popular at the time. So I guess to your point, like maybe it's nothing. And police actually don't think that this theory has legs because in their minds, like how does the killer know these girls' middle names? Like he's not like driving around asking people middle names and then abducting them, which kind of makes sense to me. You would feel like you'd see more people being like, yes, some random dude in a car just like rolled up and was like, hey, what's your middle name?

Right. But there were a couple instances where you mentioned that the police were wondering if the victims knew their killer. I mean, like you said, they're all from the same area, some even the same neighborhood. So I mean, I think about how many times I'm just in the yard and Mae does something. I'm like, Mae Eloise, anybody walking by could just hear her middle name just because I'm trying to get her attention. I mean, it's not that far fetched in my opinion.

That's true. Well, and you know, kind of on that point, like I also think the fact that no one ever saw this guy kind of lends itself to the theory that maybe he didn't stick out to anyone because he was known around the neighborhoods and maybe if he was known to not just the people in the neighborhood, but like the victims specifically, they wouldn't have put up a fight. Maybe they would all accept a ride from him again, they're all walking or going somewhere when they're abducted.

According to a 1972 article for the Daily News titled Phantom of the Freeway, police are feeling the pressure from the community and they make it known that they're not just sitting on their hands. In that article, Lieutenant Joseph O'Brien gave a statement regarding their investigation and Bert, I'm going to have you read what he said. It says, quote, our officers have talked to more than 1000 persons, but no one is in custody. You can't just lock someone up on suspicion.

What we've been doing is questioning people who previously have been picked up for sex offenses. We've checked out hundreds of sex offenders and each time we arrest someone for rape or child molesting, we go into the possibility that this could be the freeway phantom, end of quote. Is it just me or does that statement feel kind of defensive yet? Not just you. It kind of comes off that way to me too.

And honestly, I think it's because the families of these victims are very vocal at this point about their feelings towards the quality of police work on the cases. Evander Spinks, who was one of Carol Spinks's sisters, told the Washington Post, quote, you better bet that if these had been white girls, the police would have solved the cases. They didn't care about us. All the cases involving white girls get publicity, but ours have been forgotten. End quote. This is something we see over and over again is so prevalent in marginalized communities,

whether it's race, occupation, drug addiction, sexual orientation, what have you. If someone doesn't fit the mold of what society deems a worthy victim, their stories are often forgotten. But tips have rolled in and police say that they're checking them all out, but none of them ever lead to any suspects. So just when the investigation seems to stall completely, in March of 1974, there's a really strange turn of events. Two former DC police officers, Tommy Simmons and Edward Selman, are charged with murdering

a 14-year-old girl named Angela Denise Barnes, whose body was found in the summer of 1971 just off a highway. Are they thinking these two are the freeway phantom? Well, not exactly. The media jumps on the similarities, and early on includes Angela Barnes as one of the freeway phantom victims, but there are a couple of distinct differences. Most notably, Angela Barnes was shot, not strangled. Her age where her body was found and the timeline all fit with the freeway phantom killings,

so the media just kind of ran with it. But after police investigate, they definitively state that she was not a victim of the freeway phantom after all. So after ruling, Simmons and Selman out, the case once again goes cold. Until according to an Evening Sun article published on December 19, 1974, five men were arrested in connection with a series of rapes. They were dubbed the Green Vega Rapist based on witnesses and victim statements that basically say that there were multiple men and they would abduct their victims in a Green Vega.

These men were suspected in at least 500 rapes, more like a thousand in the DC area, a literal rape gang. And so when investigators learn about this, their ears kind of perk up since the freeway phantom victims were all sexually assaulted. The Green Vega Rapists were all black men in their early 20s, and remember based on those hairs found on the victims and that called to Brenda Crockett's family where she was told to say a white man took her, police had long suspected that they were actually looking for a black man in his early 20s, but up to this point, they'd always assumed it was

just one man. But problems start to arise after the arrest of these gang members, and that's because after details start coming out, sorting the truth from fiction becomes almost impossible. You see, once members of the gang caught wind that they could cut a deal by ratting out their fellow gang members, they all started singing like canaries. The problem was some of the details didn't match the crimes, like for instance, one of the gang members, this guy Melvin Gray told authorities that another member drove Carol Spinks to his apartment where she was held captive for a week.

Now not only was Carol not held for a week, but he also described her as about 18 when we know Carol was 13 years old. That's just one instance. They on more than one occasion get facts wrong and even have alibis for some of the murders that they were confessing to. So are they responsible for these murders or no? I mean, technically, it's possible, and it really depends on who you ask. Some investigators wholeheartedly believe the Green Vega rapists are their guys, and others

wholeheartedly believe that while they're actual monsters, they did not commit the freeway phantom murders. And again, at this point, it's still too early to test any DNA that they might have to say either way conclusively. And something that just sticks out to me is like, again, while all of these guys are like horrible humans and completely capable of murder, there's something about those taunting notes and the use of like, again, the killer gave himself the name freeway phantom. To me, that kind of just feels like one narcissistic person, like someone who's getting off on

taunting the victim's families and being the freeway phantom. If the Green Vega rapists are responsible, why only taunt and leave notes for six of their victims when again, they could have 500 to 1000? Right, right, I agree. I mean, clearly not an investigator over here, but that does seem more like a signature of like a single killer. Well, and there is one investigator who agrees, this guy named Lloyd Davis. According to Blaine Pardo and Victoria Hester's book, Detective Davis just can't get on board

with the Green Vega rapists being the freeway phantom. And so he starts digging into a man that's quickly become a suspect to him. That man's name is Robert Askins. And Robert sticks out to Detective Davis as a suspect because he had a long history of violence towards women and was recently arrested on two charges of violent abduction and rape. Robert's violence towards women began early at just 19 years old when he stabbed a sex worker and just days later poisoned five women at the same brothel and ended up killing a 31 year old sex worker named Ruth McDonald.

At the time, he was sentenced to St. Elizabeth's psychiatric facility, but was released just four years later. Now curiously, St. Elizabeth's is right off of Route 295 where some of the freeway phantom's victims were found. And it's in the Congress Heights neighborhood where the first two victims lived. This guy had run-ins with the law throughout his life. But what really caught Davis's attention was that in 1978, Robert, who was now in his 50s, was identified in two brutal rape cases which had striking similarities to the freeway

phantom cases. In one, Robert forced his victim to write a note, which we know the freeway phantom did at least once. And he also held his victims captive, which we know the freeway phantom did in several instances as well. Robert also abducted his victims using his car, just like the freeway phantom was believed to have done. While those are just similarities, a few other things jump out at Davis as well.

Like Robert worked previously as a police informant and would have spent enough time around officers to maybe mimic their lingo well enough to impersonate an officer? We know that Robert definitely posed as a police officer at least once to lure one of his victims, a woman named Gloria McMillian, away with him. And so Davis points out that a young black girl, especially in the 70s, like all the freeway phantom victims, would have most likely been compliant if someone acting as a police officer approached them. So there is a world in which they didn't know the guy.

Like maybe they previously had thought, but the guy impersonated someone in a position of power. Right. And Robert's car was also the same make and model as an unmarked police car. So that coupled with, you know, a badge, maybe a false sense of authority? To a 10, 13 year old girl, yeah. It'd be believable that this guy was a cop. So Davis's theory is that the freeway phantom poses a police officer in order to either gain

their trust or elicit authority and control over his victims. Now this isn't just like a theory that Davis had, like he put work into like proving it. And it turns out that Robert's time sheets, like based on looking at those, he was able to definitively prove that he was not at work during any of the freeway phantom abductions. So again, it's not concrete evidence, but his criminal record show that he was definitely capable of these heinous crimes. Plus, you don't have an alibi for the abductions. Like it's a good circumstantial case.

And in another bizarre twist, according to Blaine Pardo and Victoria Hester's book, a search of Robert's home revealed a court document in his desk drawer that used a familiar and yet unusual word, Tantamount, which was in the note from the freeway phantom left with Brenda Woodard's body. Right. And it caught Detective Davis's eye because it is an unusual word, definitely not one you hear every day. And wouldn't you know it after interviewing co-workers of Roberts, Davis's investigation

revealed that this unusual word was a word that he used not just like once or twice, but on like a regular basis, if he was trying to stress the importance of something again, hardly a smoking gun, but it was just too coincidental to overlook. And it's just one more piece of proof to Davis that he's on the right track with Robert Askins for three whole years. Robert Askins was the prime suspect for Detective Davis, but ultimately without the use of DNA, he had no way to connect him to the freeway phantom killings. Robert Askins always denied involvement in the freeway phantom murders, and he died while

incarcerated in 2010 at the age of 91. Though there are some people who think the person or persons responsible for these murders are locked up. To this day, there have been no convictions related to the six confirmed victims of the freeway phantom. So obviously all this happened back in the early 70s. DNA evidence wasn't really a thing, like a glimmer in anybody's eye back then. But it's 2022 now.

Have they done any retesting with the DNA evidence? Britt, you are going to lose your mind. Oh no. When technology advanced, cold case detectives for Metro PD decided to begin their own reinvestigation into the phantom murders. Okay. But when they went to go pull the case files, they ran into a huge problem. They found that all of the files for the freeway phantom victims were completely missing.

I'm sorry, missing? And it gets worse. A now retired homicide detective who worked the case since day one says that the files were not just like carelessly lost, but intentionally destroyed. Okay. What? Yeah. You don't have to walk me through this.

So detective Romaine Jenkins was one of the detectives who worked on this. She was the first black female homicide detective in DC's Metro PD, actually. And this case sticks with her because she was also a young black female, not unlike the phantom's victims at the time. And in her early 20s, she was just a few years older than Brenda Woodard. So as a detective, I mean, inherently she wants to put this case to bed and get justice for these families. And police have been unable to do that.

And largely that's due to the mishandling of evidence. Detective Jenkins stated in a People Investigates episode about this case that when she formed a task force to begin a reinvestigation years after the murders, she recalls the files being labeled as quote destroyed. And from her account, she's like, that's not a good excuse for why these files were destroyed or again, even who okayed that. But again, like there's nothing she can do. It just like leaves her in this like less than ideal position to reinvestigate.

She says that on top of that, since the bodies were in different jurisdictions due to the close state lines that surround the DC area, there were multiple agencies involved. I mean, you had DC police, you had Maryland state police, you had the FBI. And I guess the FBI did have some files that they retained on the case. The initial reports and DNA samples were largely lost because they were handled poorly. And I guess the samples that haven't been lost or destroyed are being held hostage in a sea of like red tape. So again, the files from DC are gone.

There's some files with the FBI. We're hearing that there may be some evidence, but like for some reason, like getting it retested is like, like can't be released or something. Oh my goodness. Yeah, but why? I like, I can't figure it out. I mean, again, like even just to put it in a database, that's literally the least that could be done.

Yeah. And the last thing that I've seen on it was as of 2009, Teddy Khan did some reporting for the Washington Examiner that basically says at the time Maryland state police possessed DNA evidence, but inquiries to the Maryland police from DC cold case detectives have gone unanswered. So it's unlikely that the samples, if they even exist anymore, are of evidentiary value. So they could be like degraded or not enough to even test. I mean, it could be anything.

Yeah. But like, again, could you call someone back and let them know again, 2009 was the last we heard about this? Like, where do we stand today? Yeah. I mean, that's literally my next question. Where does this case stand today? Well, sadly, almost exactly where it stood in 1972, again, there are people who think

that they've put away the murderer or murderers, but because of the poor handling of evidence and TBD, the lack of response, we don't know if that's true. Romaine Jenkins, who may know this case better than anyone told people, investigates that whoever the freeway phantom is, she believes he is probably a black male was in his early to mid twenties during the crimes and that he most likely lived in the Congress Heights area near where his first two victims lived and that it's possible he had a military background. Beyond that, though, there are just theories, but the theories and possibilities on this

case are endless. I mean, you can really get sucked down a rabbit hole on this case much more than I could ever fit into one episode. I mean, there are some that speculate there is at least one other victim of the freeway phantom who was killed in the late 1980s. And there's web sleuth speculation that the prolific serial killer Samuel Little is responsible for these murders, which actually a weird side note. If you Google the freeway phantom, the photo associated with this case is a photo of Samuel

Little and I'm not sure how that happened because everyone in this case seems to agree it is not him. And when asked about the possibility of Samuel Little being the freeway phantom, Detective Bernie Nelson told WTOP reporters, quote, if it was him, he'd tell you, end quote, which honestly, I agree with with what I know about Samuel Little. Yeah. And again, there's only speculation left. And in order to give the family's closure, police need facts.

This case remains unsolved. And if you have any information, no matter how small, that could lead to justice for Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nina Moschia Yates, Brenda Woodard and Diane Williams, please call Metro Police at 202-727-9099 or you can send an email to unsolved.murderatdc.gov. To find all the source material for this episode, go to our website, cryingjunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So, what do you think, Chuck?

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