Freeway Phantom - Forgotten Girls

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

On April 25th, 1971, 13-year-old Carol Spinks mysteriously disappeared from her neighborhood in southeast Washington D.C. Six days later, her body was discovered off a nearby freeway. Investigators assumed this was a one-off murder. Little did they know, Carol was the first victim of D.C.'s first serial killer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a podcast that takes you inside undercover investigations. In the second season, we've got an alphabet soup with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say, can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia? No, no, no. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm's deal. Alphabet Boys, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm deal. Alpha Bet Boys.

On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events.

Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Freeway Phantom is available each week on Wednesdays. To hear each episode add free and one week early, check out TenderfootPlus at TenderfootPlus.com. You'll listen to Freeway Phantom, a production of I Heart Radio, Tender TV, and BlackBarmads Foo. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or

individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those of I Heart Media, Tinderfoot TV, BlackBarmads Foo, or their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. My mother was very strict with us. So the rule is, when she leaves, the door is closed and locked, and you don't come out there dull. the door was closed and locked and you don't come out there door. Her favorite saying was, I don't give Jesus Christ knock on that door and say, open it. You better not open it. So that was

the root. We didn't open the door for anybody. We were playing around. We watched a TV everybody else was playing around. My sister Valerie knocked on the door. I think I told them at first don't say anything. She knocked harder. And I was like, what? She was like, open the door. And I was like, no, mom and not home.

Open the door. And I was like, what do you want? She said, I want one of y'all to go to store for me. I said, mom and not home, we can't come out. Baby said, no, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go because she didn't want us to start a fight. Her and Valerie went out. I guess about 20, 30 minutes, I'm like, she ain't back yet. I guess about 20, 30 minutes, I'm like, she ain't back yet. So I went across the hall where I knew my sister was Valerie to see if she was back and she was like, no. Now I'm getting scared because she not home and my mother gonna be coming soon. And I'ma get the worst of it because I'm the oldest. I told them to stand in the house. I'ma run up to the store. So I took the shortcut to go to the store.

It made it back. She still wasn't at the house. I was hollering at Valerie because I was upset and I was scared because she hadn't gotten back home and she sent her to the store. I don't know what to do. And the next thing I know was getting late in the evening. People just thought it coming around, from the neighborhood and the neighbors.

And then somebody was like, okay, we're gonna just go searching. Everybody was like in groups of fours and five, out looking. And I don't remember when the police came, but I remember that night detectives came. I didn't really think about the police, but when the detectives came, I really realized

this was big, you know, was serious. They never spoke to us, they talked to my mother. You know, I didn't really know what was happening, what was going on. It didn't make sense. And the only thing that I was not understanding period was, where is my sister? Why nobody found her?

What's going on? If you look up Freeway Phantom, you might find out a little bit about this strange and tragic case, but in all likelihood, you're not going to find out much. You'll learn that during the early 1970s, a serial killer murdered at least six young black girls in the Washington, D.C. area. You might learn their names. You might hear about a strange note left by the killer. You may even come across a few suspects, but not much else.

And that's what makes the case of the freeway phantom so very, very strange. My name is Celeste Headley. I'm a journalist, author, and longtime public radio host based in Washington, DC. Over the years, I've covered many stories of people of color going missing in this city, a phenomenon that absorbed the public consciousness in 2017 on social media. When the Washington, DC police department tried to raise awareness about missing children and teenagers by posting their images on social media, the campaign backfired, sparking some national outrage and fears of an epidemic of missing children of color. One of the most popular stories on our NBC app this week is about missing girls.

Our story debunks a fake report that 14 girls went missing from DC in just one day. DC police told us they're simply sharing missing person cases more often on social media. It all started when a post went viral all over social media, saying young black girls were going missing at an alarming rate in DC. And admits the firestorm, that particular post was proven to be untrue.

However, behind the social media frenzy was a certain reality that for decades, people of color, particularly women, have been abducted or killed across the capital region and their cases rarely resolved or even fully investigated. That fact may be why most people have never heard of the Freeway Phantom case. A case that involved six young black girls who were all kidnapped, killed, and discarded along the DC Freeways in the early 1970s. A case that was never solved and sadly quickly forgotten. But in the wake of the DC-missing girls' conversation, people started thinking about this case again. One of those people was fellow DC journalist Cheryl Thompson, who used to write for the Washington Post. While I was actually working on another story at the post, I stumbled across this press release of these six little black girls

and the photo struck me because it was in black and white. And so the first thing I thought of, oh my god, this is old. Like, what is this? And then you just saw these six faces of these six little black girls and you could tell by their hairstyle and, you know, the bows and their hair and it sort of gave me pause. And I was like, what is is this and where are these murders unsolved and so that's what sort of prompted me. In 2018 Sheryl published a groundbreaking article about this seemingly uncovered story and that's how we and thousands of others found out about the

freeway phantom case. She says the process was both difficult and significant. What it was about it again was the fact that, like, how could this be, like, six little black girls murdered in the nation's capital? And so then I started researching it and saw that there had been stories, some stories over the years, but it had mainly faded from public view.

I asked one of our researchers at the Washington Post to go back as they can you find some stories, some microfish from back in the early 70s when this happened. And there were stories, but we really hard pressed to find stories that focused just on these girls. In the early 1970s, it was the Vietnam War, and DC was the place where protesters came. There was a lot going on in the nation's capital during that time. So when murders happened, when killings happened, it made the news, but there were so many killings

at the time that they just didn't get the individual attention. Like when I found one of the cases, it was lumped in with some other homicides in the district. But that's just the way it was. I mean, this was the murder capital of the country back in the day. Cheryl decided to reach out to some people and she says her best sources have always been the detectives who worked on the case. I have called some of my sources over the years for stuff that might have happened 30 years ago and they remember details, right? I'm like, how do you remember this stuff? So I then reached out to Detective Jenkins, Romaine Jenkins, because I figured, man, this is a woman, a black woman, and I know

she had to take an interest in this for a lot of reasons, and some of which were the very ones that I mentioned. These kids could have been her daughters. Detective Romaine Jenkins was a name that we kept hearing. We spoke with one of the investigators, Romaine Jenkins, and she was like a family's deputy. There was also another woman by the name of Romaine Jenkins, who was a sex squad detective.

Pick apart those files that Romaine's got. It would be an exciting interview. Romaine Jenkins, she was one of the best. She knew all adult dealers, she knew all of your friends, she was friends with all of them. She got the latest school. She knew who poured the trigger. We decided to give Romaine Jenkins a call. Yes. And we soon realized just how much she knew about this case. I investigated many serial rape cases and none of them are like this. These are the this of some of the patterns somewhere but only pie that you have with these cases is the fact that they were young black females. As it turns out,

Romaine was the lead investigator on the freeway phantom case in the 1980s. That was almost 10 years after the case went cold. And she was the right person for the job. Romaine had an impressive resume up to that point. As a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, back in the 70s, she was the first woman and the only woman for a long time in homicide. We told Romaine that we were looking into the freeway phantom case

and she agreed to sit down with us. But before we made a trip to DC to see her, we wanted to learn more about her life and how she eventually came to investigate this case. I am a native person from Washington, DC. I attended school here. I joined the Metropolitan Police Department June 21, 1965. And at that time, there were only about maybe 30 police females on the department and they were housed at something called the woman's bureau and they did mostly social work abandoned children missing children. Then they joined us with something called the youth division and that was the male counterpart of the woman's girlfriend,

and I stayed there for two years, and I basically investigated cases involving battered children, juvenile offenders. We did missing persons and things like that, and then homicide decided they needed a female to handle their baby deaths and abortion cases, because at that time abortion was illegal in the District of Columbia.

So Romaine went to work in homicide. She was there for approximately four years investigating battered children and abortion cases. After about four years in the homicide squad, I went to the seventh district, because at that time they decided they wanted to put police women in uniform and Put them in the patrol division and at that time I was a Supervised I was a sergeant because I made sergeant when I was in homicide

So they wanted to see if females could supervise males in the patrol division I went to the seventh district and that was quite an experience. Everything was totally new to me, but I made it through. During this time, Romaine got married and started a family. She eventually decided being a patrol officer wasn't what she wanted. So she applied for sex squad, which investigates sexually heinous crimes. And I stayed there 10 years as a supervisor. And from there I went to the US Attorney's Office which investigates sexually heinous crimes. And I stayed there 10 years as a supervisor. And from there I went to the US Attorney's Office

where I supervised seven detectives, and we handled cases. We worked up cases for the US Attorney's Office. And that's basically what I did. That's basically my career. It was wall and homicide in the early 70s that remained first heard about the so-called Freeway Phantom murders.

Though other officers were assigned to the case, she helped canvas neighborhoods and became intimately familiar with the case details. Years passed and remained heard little about the Freeway Phantom. 15 years after the murders in 1987, Romaine decided to reopen the case herself while working in the U.S. Attorney's Office, and it ended up becoming the case that would consume Romaine's career and life to this day. When we told Romaine we were investigating the Freeway Phantom case, she revealed to us that she had held on to boxes and boxes of evidence, case files, and other documents,

even after retiring from the MPD. Now at 80 years old, Romain still has those stacks of boxes sitting in her bedroom or scattered across her living room floor. We asked her if we could talk to her in-person and look through some of the boxes. At first, she was hesitant, But after we talked about our mutual desire to solve these murders, she started to open up, and eventually she agreed to an in-person interview. So the 10-foot team met up with me in DC

and we headed to our house. In the podcast Alphabet Boys, we take you inside undercover investigations. I'm Trevor Aronson, and in our second season, we have an Alphabet Soup with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case. At the center of this story is Flavio, but who is Flavio? I see movies with arm dealers on TV. Okay, I'm going there for CIA, but I'm gonna die. When I land, there's Flavio in a suit. It's like follow me.

And he slams down his badge in my passport. And I'm like, uh, something's going on here. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say, can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia? Not certified grenades, a lot of ammunition. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm steal, who are the cops, who are the criminals,

and is anyone really who they claim to be? Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town?

From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We've spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things,

but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find at a time. Okay. We got you. Now we can take him back up the first. No, you can be a man that you got him back.

Leave me. Okay, because you either go downstairs, they'll probably end up going downstairs. Okay, you want to sit at the table? No, sit at either go down stairs, they'll probably end up going downstairs. Okay, you want her to sit at the table? No, sit on right here on the floor. Okay. I'm in Roman Jenkins' home in Washington, DC,

not far from where I live. In her home, Roman has what's likely the largest collection of documents on the Freeway Phantom case. Open, open those up. Okay, I'm gonna open them up for you. All right, I will just pull them out and we can take a look at what's here.

This is Brenda Croquet. Oh my God, she looks, this is the one that, was she the one that was barefoot? That's a 10-year-old. She's tiny. Just a tiny baby. She was the one that went to the store barefoot. And the only way she was identified with her mother identified with the clothing. That's all they had.

The amount of information we came across was astounding. She had crime scene photos, original police reports, suspect lists. Most of this, we had never seen before. We asked remain how she came to acquire all of these documents. Basically by talking to detectives who were on the actual scenes of the cases, a lot of them gave me their notebooks,

their notes, some had copies of files, they gave me that. Going to the police department, like Prince George's County, they turned over all their files to me because they micro-fished the file so they didn't need the hard copies and they were going to dispose of them. So I said, well, I'll take them. So that's how I inherited a lot of that information. Then with the cooperation of the FBI, they assigned a case agent to work with me and I was allowed to go into their files. Will they assign me an office and a desk and one of their investigators and I will go to the FBI building every day and read through documents and they'd make copies of whatever I needed. Also with naval investigative services, they were getting ready to get rid of some files, so I was able to make copies of the things that they had.

Nobody told me no, even the Metropolitan Police Department. There were people who still had information and they turned it over to me, so that's a mess. Information in the files. As Romain said, law enforcement was disposing of the original case files. Had Romain not tracked down and preserved these files, we would have no original documents to view today. This is significant because information in those boxes may provide new insight into the case. Throughout this podcast, we're going to reveal what we found in those boxes,

and maybe get one step closer to finding the freeway phantom. But first, we need to take a step back to talk about the basics. What were the freeway phantom murders? What happened? We need to go back to the beginning to fully understand this story. The truth is, there's not a ton of existing scholarship on this case. In our research, we came across only two books written about the freeway phantom. Most people have never heard of the first book, called The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom, published in 1983 by Wilma W. Harper. Ms. Harper is closely related to these cases, which you'll hear about later. In the book's preface, Harper explains why she wrote it, saying, quote,

When I first undertook the task of writing a social study of the families and friends associated with the Freeway Phantomantom cases in September, 1972, my one objective was to assist the police department in apprehending the killer or killers of the seven black girls who had been raped, murdered, and their bodies placed on the various highways around the city of Washington, D.C. It was my belief that the secret of who had killed the girls could be found in one or more of the social institutions frequented by these girls or by their parents. Throughout this podcast, Harper's words will take us back in time and provide us with a first-hand account of what it was like to live through these serial murders.

The second book we found was called Tantamount, the pursuit of the freeway phantom serial killer published in 2019. This book was written by a father daughter team of True Crime authors. I'm Blaine Pardo. I've written over 80 books. I write primarily science fiction, true crime, military history, political thrillers, things on those lines. This is a topic we've been writing about a lot about, which is true crimes, and we tend to focus

on the unsolved cases, especially serial killing cases that remain open. And I'm Victoria Hester. I've written a total of four true crime books alongside my dad and co-author Blaine. The thing that really got me into true crime books alongside my dad and co-author Blaine. The thing that really got me into true crime was actually my dad growing up. Our bonding moment was over the zodiac, which go figure that's a normal father-daughter thing. But ever since that I've been kind of hooked on true crime and it's fun to research, we enjoy the journey of research and then putting it all on the paper. We had just finished our book on the colonial parkway murders and we were looking for the next project to get into

and it was really a matter of let's look in the local vicinity because we like dealing with people we can go interview and spend time with. So we started looking in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C. to see if what open cold cases were out there. And there's a lot of them. I outlined a number of them for Victorians and OK, you get to pick.

This one was kind of an easy one to do in the case of the freeway fan. I'm looking at this one. It was like, OK, this one's got some meat to it. This is an interesting case. We asked Blaine and Victoria to walk us through the basics of the case, starting with the first victim. First one that disappeared was a 13-year-old kid

all doing these things. She disappeared on April 25, 1971. She's found on the Anacostia freeway, which is I-295. She's about 200 yards south of the city in Parkway, and her body's found by a group of children. It's a major freeway cutting right through the city. She had disappeared on the 25th, but wasn't found until April 30th.

So the next victim is Darlenia Denise Johnson. The reason why we put the middle names in with each girl is because it does play a huge role down the role in the investigation of the middle name Denise. So that's why we make a point to mention that. She was 16 when she disappeared on July 8th 1971. Her body was found July 19th 1971 in the evening. Her mother filed a missing persons report and her body was actually found on the Anacostia Freeway so the same freeway that Carol Spinks was found off of.

Brindafay Crackett was 10 years old. She disappeared on July 27th, 1971. Her body was found off of Route 50, which is one of the major thoroughfares in Chevrolet. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She had been left on the grassy shoulder of John Hanson Highway. She was found face up, and it was really only a short period of time after she had disappeared. So the killer had kind of shifted, at least from the first case, he's not spending as much time with the victims,

he's killing them and now just dumping them. Just over two months later, the fourth victim was discovered. Her name was Nina Mosha Yates. She was 12 years old and she was found on October 1, 1971. She was the seventh grader and she was a very quiet and well-behaved child. In the evening, she went to a safe way that was a few blocks away from her home to buy a bag of sugar at 8.45 pm. Then, a month and a half later, the fifth victim.

Brenda Denise Woodard was 18 years old. November 15, 1971, she disappeared. In evening, she had gone to a night class, left with a young man. They went to Ben's chili bowl in DC, which is this iconic restaurant. And she rode the bus to go home. And she was last seen around the eighth and eighth street intersections,

but her roommate reported by 1130 that she hadn't come home. She was found along the Baltimore, Washington Parkway as well by a Chevrolet Police Officer. She had been strangled and what was different with her, she had also been stabbed. And finally, the following year, the sixth and last confirmed victim. Diane Williams is 17. She was found on September 5th, 1972,

10 months after the last case with Brenda. Her body was found the very next day. She was reported missing by her father when he came home at 8 a.m. that morning. She had visited her boyfriend, which was pretty normal thing for her to do, and was told to be home by 10, 30 the night before. Her boyfriend escorted her to the bus stop, so we know that she got at least to the bus. If you think about it, so many of them are caught

going to a grocery store, running an errand. It's not like something that's a routine where he's following him for several days and knows their pattern and how to intercept them. These are all victims of opportunity. Six victims, all young black girls from around the same area, all disposed of in identical ways.

When we sat down with Remaine Jenkins, we asked her about her first involvement in the case. Well, at the time, when Carol Spinks was murdered, I was in the homicide unit. And at that time, I was the only female in the unit. I was interested in the case, but what happened was we were inundated with the Mayday demonstrations. From May 1st to May 5th, 1971, thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the Vietnam War.

This would become the May Day protests. Some 175,000 people from all walks of life with differing ideologies and purposes marched from the White House to the Capitol. More than 5,000 Metropolitan Police Department officers, including Romaine, were tasked with shutting down the demonstrations. By the end of the week, over 12,000 protesters had been arrested to this day, the largest mass arrest in US history.

And so I never got the chance to go and dig into the investigation like I could have. The first day I recall we were going out on the case and the division commander stopped me and said, where are you going? I said, well, we had a little girl murdered over in Southeast and we're going to to the neighborhood and we're going to work on the case. These is notice, is made a demonstration. This is a red alert for the police department. You will get involved in the demonstrations.

But Romaine went home that night and thought more about Carol Spinks. She was familiar with the neighborhood and something just didn't add up. The girls come from neighborhoods that are densely populated with black people. Their kids in and out. Their cars going up and down wheel a road you know there's never a time it's not busy so you could send your child to the store nobody was gonna bother your child or what the neighborhood never even thought like that no they were even safer because there's always somebody right that's

right and everybody knew everybody you know they said oh that's miss sorenzo's daughter it's time to be in the house. It's close and dark. I mean, and people look out for each other, you know? I've spent my entire career working in public media as a radio journalist and national talk show host. One of the things that I love about working for public radio is that I rarely have to report on crime. While we never neglect a story about terrorism,

mass shootings, or corporate malfeasance, individual crime stories don't generally get coverage. And I like that. I like that I don't have to dig into personal stories of infidelity or rage or greed, or interview family members who've just lost a loved one to a drive-by shooting. So you might wonder what I'm doing hosting a podcast series about a string of murders in Washington, DC, a city that had so many homicides in the early 1990s that it was known as the murder capital of the United States.

There's one easy answer to that question and one more complicated answer. The easy answer is that I'm so afraid of serial killers that I'm fascinated by them. They terrify me. I simply can't understand the kind of mind that would take a stranger's life for no reason other than because they enjoy it. That seems more than deranged to me. It seems inhuman. Serial killers are incredibly rare.

According to the FBI, less than 1% of murders are committed by a serial killer, but we're also not very good at catching them. The founder of the Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit that collects information about murders, believes that a good number of unsolved homicides may have been committed by serial killers. So the chance to dig into both the mindset of such a killer and the techniques for finding them was very tempting. More importantly though, I couldn't understand why the freeway phantom had never been caught

and why most people have never heard of him. The phantom killed at least six young girls, probably more. The so-called son of Sam also killed six people, and there are a bunch of movies about him, and even an episode of Seinfeld. Ed Geen, the playing field ghoul who inspired the killers in Psycho, Silence of the Lams, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was convicted of killing two people, and may have killed as many as seven. This is not admiration for perpetrators with high body counts, but a legitimate question.

How could someone kill so many young girls and be forgotten? The freeway phantom is worth talking about because the larger issues that surrounded his killing spree still endanger the lives of girls and especially black girls. And before we go any further, we want to make an important announcement. After over 50 years of waiting, we believe the victim's family's deserve answers. That's why 10-foot TV and I Heart Media are matching the $150,000 reward offered by the Metropolitan Police Department. This brings the total reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or person's responsible for these murders to $300,000.

If you have information that may lead to the identification of the freeway phantom, it's time to speak up. Tips can be provided to MPD or Tenderfoot TV at tips at tenderfoot.tv. With all of that said, it's time we dig deep into this case. So to fully understand these murders, we need to examine the crimes individually, starting with the very first victim, Carol Spinks. In the podcast, Alphabet Boys, we take you inside undercover investigations. I'm Trevor Aronson. And in our second season, we have an Alphabet Soup with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case. At the center of this story is Flavio, but who is Flavio?

I see movies with arm dealers on TV. Okay, I'm going there for see, but I'm gonna die. When I land, there's Flavio in a suit. It's like follow me and he slams down his badge in my passport and I'm like, uh, something's going on here. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say, can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia?

Not specified grenades, a lot of ammunition. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm deal, who are the cops, who are the criminals, and is anyone really who they claim to be? Listen to Alphabet Boys on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology?

And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization

and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. We grew up at 1034 Walla Place, Southeast. Walla Place is on the top part of Valley Green infamous Valley Green. Very well known for a lot of activity, negative activity, but they're good people in the worst of places.

This is Evander Spinks, the older sister of Carol Spinks, the first victim. At the top of the episode you heard Evander talk about the night that her sister Carol went missing. I can't say my mother was the best person in the world, but my mother took care of us. We could not rip and run the street. We could not go anywhere. You better not talk about no boy. You stay very close to home. We played outside like any normal kids have races in the street, played kickball, double dutch, boy games outside. Waterplace was a well known street, but there were a lot of good families on that street. Things happened on that street that were bad, but we never witnessed anything.

Because we weren't out at night. Whatever happened we would find out the next day or through your friends. If they saw something or their parents saw something and they was discussing it with their girlfriend, the boyfriend, or you know how adults talk. It's always one of two kids hanging around listening, getting a scoop so that everybody else didn't know what was going on. But that's how we found out things. Never that we were involved around or near, because my mother didn't play that.

On April 25, 1971, the day Carol would go missing, the entire Spinks family, with the exception of their mother was home. I was home, 14. Carl and Carl and was home, 13. Time you was home, 12. One was home, 11. And Joseph was home, one or two years old. Carol and Carolyn Spinks were twin sisters.

Their nicknames were Bebe and Ye-ye respectively. They looked identical. They were identical. They could sometimes fool us, but me not that much because they had different personalities. Bebe Carol was more laid back and quiet. Carole and Ye-ye, a mouthpiece, and a social butterfly. But they stuck together. You wouldn't see one 10 feet further from the other one.

They were always together. My mom and all the brothers and sisters, they knew of the part, but some of our own friends that we had outside of the house, some of them knew, some of them didn't. Now, we dressed the light, we could forget it. This is Carolyn Spinks. She was incredibly close with her twin sister, Carol. Oh, we did all kinds of, we of course played dolls, did each other's hair.

We dressed it like we pulled the t-shirts, we jumped double-dutch, played jacks, all kinds of stuff. We did everything together. She was smart. She was very smart. She wasn't smart enough as I was. She was smart. She was funny.

Then she was my friend. She wasn't a smart mouth this I was. She was smart. It was funny. Then she was my friend. That was my left hand, because I'm right here. So she was my left hand. That day, I wish, oh my God, I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take that day back. That day, my mom told us, do not go outside. So we always in a house

I don't even remember what we were doing But I know of a skinny event and baby and my baby brother was home because he was a baby in my other brother all of us all 60 percent in house and I remember in battery knocked on the door I said she gonna say Mike go to. And it's like, no, mom said, no. Mom said, don't go out. I don't know what they, her say, I don't know. But I was like, I ain't going.

No, I'm going to get up. I ain't getting a beating. And my mother didn't play. But for whatever reason, Carol volunteered to go to the store. And so, off she went Didn't think nothing of it right then and there The next thing I knew I was like

Didn't come back and I remember I said that I went out that door I'm like no, I got to go to a bathroom. She didn't come back. We got to go to the store And I remember me about to go to the store and we asked the man did he see it and he said yeah he's in the girl just like me and she had her she got her stuff and that was it. We came back home we caught my mother and then she came home and then she got the police I remember she called the police and they said they can't do nothing. Do you remember why they said they couldn't do anything? Because they say you got to be 24 hours.

I remember that. What, and like a couple of hours? No, it's something they write. Mm-mm. I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I told Valerie something wrong, something wrong. Mm-mm.

During that time when you didn't know what had happened to her when she was just missing, what were you thinking had happened? That those of mine had got her and did something to her. You did. I knew nothing had happened to her. I knew it did because she went and ran away. We never ran away from home. We never did anything. I said. So I already knew something was wrong. I knew something bad had happened. I knew that. I just didn't know what. But after like the second day, that's not stopping filling the pain.

The nights just sit on the bottom of the bed in this rock. And now I get pained and I'll be in and out. In and out. Oh my God, it was terrible. It was, oh God, it was the worst. It was the worst. I still feel pain to this day. Search parties were dispatched.

The community was determined to find Carol, but they never did. And then, according to the official reports, five days after Carol's binks' disappearance, a group of kids were playing by the side of Interstate 295 when they discovered Carol's body. But Remaine Jenkins has always been skeptical of this report. Here's how she described it when we talked to her over the phone.

There's no indication how her body was discovered. No, after the crowds get there, of course, they call the police. But what initially calls somebody to say there's a body on 295. I don't understand it. Why would the kids even, kids wouldn't even be playing on 295. There's nothing. There's no reason for them to have been there unless they were told there was a body and they went to see what it was. You know, but who said, who started it, even though when she was missing, you know, they had lots of groups out searching for her and so forth. But there was just nothing,

but for someone to jump over the railing and turn that body over to the man, people just don't do that. Most people don't even want to see a Romaine was talking about. So we found the coordinates for where Carol's body had been found right off the I-295 highway. Just to our right, you can see in the distance Sutland Parkway. And the police reports say that Carol Spinks' body was found about 1,500 feet south of Soutland, which is about where we are. The thing is is that you know, Romaine brought up the idea that why were there people near here to find the body? And I gotta say she has a point. I mean even 50 years ago this would have still been an industrial park. There's nothing here. There's no stores, there's no homes.

This is clearly an highway access road with nothing but industrial buildings. And you can look at these buildings, and even though Verizon is in them now, these buildings have been here for 50 years. So what were they doing here? Why were they walking along the highway? And again, remember, we're talking about a highway

that didn't have these lights. It would have been dark. And I just, she really has a point. How could they have stumbled on this body? It just over and over in this case, you think somebody knew something, someone did. It seems impossible. But here we are.

And you have to imagine as you're standing at I-295, and obviously I-295 did not have this many lanes back then. We saw the photos. But you have to imagine someone just driving up this highway with a dead girl's body in their car, stopping the car right here, pulling her body out of his car and then placing it. It's distressing and incomprehensible. Yeah.

Carolyn Spink said she doesn't remember much about hearing that Carol was dead, only that she remembers feeling it. I'm feeling this kid in a rich even God all the days. I felt everything. What did your family say to you? They knew something was wrong with me. They knew something was wrong because I used to sit and rock. Just sit on the bed and rock and rock and cry and hold myself.

And then something was wrong, something was hurting. A few days later, the family held a public funeral for Carol. Oh my God, that was the worst thing I'm on life. I didn't know what it was. That had never been to a funeral before, so we did. I didn't know what it was. We went to this funeral home. First, I remember, they took us to get these white dresses and shoes and stuff.

And then we went in this beautiful home and they had this noise. I guess it was the piano or whatever it is. And that noise, the old turban, they had a great casket. I didn't know what it was, but it was closed. I remember that. It was closed. And I remember all these people. It was so many people. I remember it was so many people. And then every open the casket and I said, I asked them who was that. And they said, that's not what I said. And they said, that's not what I looked at that face, I was like, oh my God, who is that?

You look like a monster. And they said, I'll cast out a something, something happened to me. I don't know what happened. Well, when I woke up, the next time, remember we was back at home. I don't remember anything else. So you said your family never talked about it.

After the funeral, nobody even mentioned her? They did, but I never want to hear it. I didn't want to hear it. And you think that it was an until you were an adult that you were able to hear about her or talk about her? Yeah. Actually, it was after I got married to my husband who lived on my blocks. He knew my sister, when he told me, one day we talked about it

because we never even talked about it for a long time. When he told me he carried my sister, can you see, I said, no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did. My mother had a whole book of the funeral. And I was always, I never wanted to look at it. But this one, my mother was still living. So one day I just went over, went to look at the book.

And I saw him crying or caressing. And when he told me that, that's a nice thing. I didn't need to talk. I needed to talk to somebody because I just can't, couldn't keep holding it because I know it was hurt. It was hurt hurting me. After a while, I had my kids, and my sister told a kid that's an SS started to try to talk about it.

Me and my husband were talking really big from time to time, but I didn't want to talk about it. It was nothing to talk about. Have you talked with others in your family since then? Yes. Most of me and my sister, Evann, talk about it more than anybody,

but not nobody else really. Evann is Evander Spinks. My brothers have never mentioned it one way to other. Karlin, it hurts her. She's had never wanted to talk about it. And I've always wanted to talk about it, because I can't forget. It's just the Valerie has never talked or spoke about it that I know of.

So I had to, over the years, keep talking to Ye-ye curling about it. And I know she can't forget, but I know she hurts behind it That's why her entire life changed and it wasn't for the better Totally the wrong way I Think the first time all of us got together Was a couple years ago because it bothered me all my life there. I could go and sit where I knew my sister's body was but there was nothing there to show me that she was there. So we got to talk about it. It's a

hurtful thing but we got to do it. And you just never know something could pop up Something just might get triggered. Well, you may have seen something to hurt something We don't want to do it It's not like we want to be Recognized because we still get recognized to be recognized because we still get recognized. As soon as somebody hit a name, spinks, oh, spinks, spinks. Oh, I know about the spinks family.

You don't know about the spinks family. You only know about the incident that happened to the spinks family. My sister was an innocent little girl. People say, you know, these kids fast, they grow, she was out there having sex. Not with my mother, that's a no. She was an innocent little girl that was taken from her family and abused.

We want to know why. As a young teenager, I don't think the police did a good job. I didn't feel as though they actually cared during that time. And as an adult, I know they didn't do a good job. And I know down where they didn't care. And today, I have been 65 years old this month. And I still feel like they don't give a damn. It probably was the police,

was somebody that worked with the police. That's the only thing really made sense to me. People are everywhere. Somebody saw it. And we still want to know. And it still hurts. We just want to know why. And what happened?

The homicide detectives termed the case as the little girl cases. This child was laying on the side of the road. I wouldn't go, no way. I would come out of the house. Those first five murders should have been a huge warning bell for the police. We just want to know what happened. This person must have saw that they were thinking that maybe it's just one person and he says, oh, they need to know. This is me.

I thought they'd take with Ketchum. I thought it was just a matter of time. I'm Celeste Headley, and this is Freeway Phantom. Next time on Freeway Phantom. Next time on Freeway Phantom. People were scared. I mean, parents were scared, children were scared. They wanted to know what more police could do, what were they doing. He kept her for several days as a prisoner. I don't know. I knew it would be not good enough.

When the first victims went missing, there was a really kind of immediate police response. You follow a lead until it takes you know-it. They got all kinds of leads. Everybody was a suspect. I got home from a store about 6-10 pm and asked the kids if Darlinia had been home and they said they hadn't seen her. I sent the kids around in the next court and they asked the people if they had seen Darlinia and they said no.

Roy said that there was a body of a dead lady out there. He told us that he notified the police, but the body was still out there. Frue Fanum is a production of I Heart Radio, Tinderfoot TV, and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is Celeste Hiddley. The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Arbright, and Celeste Hiddley. Executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio include Matt Fredjick and Alex Williams with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tinderfoot TV include Donald Arbright and Payne Lindsay

with producers Jamie Arbright and Payng Lindsay with producers Jamie Arbright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself J. Ellis and Aaron Bergman with producer Sidney Fooz. Lead researcher is Jamie Arbright, artwork by Mr. Soul 216, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, special thanks to a team at UTA, Beck Media, and Marketing, and the Nord Group. Tinder for TV and I Heart Media, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah,

have increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for their freeway phantom murders. The previous reward of up to $150,000 offered by the Metropolitan Police Department has been matched. A new total reward of up to $300,000 is now being offered. If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the Metropolitan Police Department at area code 202-727-9099. For more information, please visit freeway-fanon.com. For more podcasts from our radio and Tinder for TV, visit the IHR radio app, Apple Podcast,

or ever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. Alphabet Boys is a podcast that takes you inside undercover investigations. In the second season, we've got an alphabet soup, with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say, can you get renamed and done for this guy in Colombia?

No, no, no, no, no. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm steel, alphabet boys, on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town?

From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows.