0:01

This is Matt from Stuff they Don't Want you to Know.

0:04

I want to tell you about the new podcast, Freeway

0:06

Phantom. It's from the same team

0:08

that created Atlanta Monster Monster, The

0:11

Zodiac Killer Monster, DC Sniper,

0:13

and the MLK Tapes. You

0:15

may have heard the name Freeway Phantom, but

0:18

I promise you don't know the full story.

0:20

Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen

0:23

seventy two, at least six young black

0:25

girls were murdered and left on the side

0:27

of highways in Washington, DC. The

0:30

families of these victims have been waiting

0:32

for justice for over fifty years

0:34

because the person responsible has never

0:37

been caught. This is a story about

0:39

bias in both media organizations

0:41

and law enforcement agencies, an

0:44

issue that continues today.

0:46

This is a crucial story you need

0:48

to know. In a few seconds,

0:51

you'll hear the entire first episode,

0:53

and I hope you'll listen. When you're

0:55

done. Search Freeway Phantom and make

0:57

sure to subscribe new episodes

1:00

every Wednesday. You're

1:03

listening to the Freeway Fantom, a production of

1:05

iHeartRadio, Tenderfoot TV, and

1:08

Black Bar Mitzpoo. The views

1:10

and opinions expressed in this podcast

1:12

are solely those of the podcast author

1:15

or individuals participating in the podcast,

1:17

and do not represent those of I Hear

1:19

Media, Tenderfoot, TV, Black

1:21

Bar, MITZVAH, or their employees. This

1:24

podcast also contains subject matter

1:26

that may not be suitable for everyone. Listener

1:29

discretion is advised. My

1:38

move was very strict with us. So

1:41

the rule is when she

1:43

leaves the doors closed and locked

1:46

and you don't come out that door. And

1:50

her favorite saying was I

1:53

don't care if Jesus Christ knock on that

1:55

door and say opening, you better

1:57

that opening. So that was

1:59

the rule. We didn't

2:01

know what the door for anybody. We

2:05

were playing around,

2:09

we were watching TV, everybody else was playing around.

2:12

When my sister Valerie knocked on the door,

2:16

I think I told him at first, don't say anything.

2:19

She knocked, caught her and

2:22

I was like what. She was like, open the door

2:24

and I was like, oh, Mama,

2:26

not home. Opened the door

2:29

and I was like, what do you want. She said,

2:31

I want one of you out to go to store for me. I

2:34

said, Mama, not home, we can't come out. Baby

2:37

said no, I'm gonna go. Oh my god, I'm gonna go. Because she

2:39

didn't want us to start a fight. Her

2:42

in Valerie went out. I

2:44

guess about twenty thirty minutes. I'm like,

2:47

she ain't back yet. So

2:49

I went across the hall where I knew

2:51

my sister was Valerie to see

2:54

if she was back, and she was like, no. Now

2:56

I'm getting scared and she not home, and

2:59

my mother gona be coming soon, and

3:02

I'm gonna get the worst of it because I'm the oldest.

3:05

I told him to stay in the house. I'm gonna

3:07

run up to the stoore. So

3:09

I took the shortcut to go to

3:11

the store and made it

3:14

back. She still wasn't

3:16

at the house. I was

3:18

hollering at Valerie because

3:20

I was upset and I was scared because she

3:22

hadn't gotten back home, and she sent her to the

3:24

stool. I don't know what to do. And

3:28

the next thing I know was getting

3:31

late in the evening. People

3:33

just started coming around, you

3:35

know, from the neighborhood and the neighbors, and

3:38

then somebody was like, Okay, we're

3:40

gonna just go searching. Everybody

3:43

was liking groups of fours and five

3:46

out looking and

3:49

I don't remember when the police came, but

3:51

I remember that night detectives came.

3:54

I didn't really think about the police. But

3:57

when the detectives came, I really

4:00

realize this was

4:02

big. You know, it was serious. They

4:05

never spoke to us, they talked to my

4:07

mother. You know, I didn't really know

4:09

what was happening, what was going on. It

4:12

didn't make sense. And the only

4:14

thing that I was not understanding, period

4:16

was what is my sister?

4:20

Why nobody founther? What's

4:22

going on? If

4:34

you look up Freeway Phantom, you

4:36

might find out a little bit about this strange

4:38

and tragic case, but in all likelihood

4:40

you're not going to find out much. You'll

4:43

learn that during the early nineteen seventies, a

4:45

serial killer murdered at least six

4:48

young black girls in the Washington, DC area.

4:51

You might learn their names, you

4:53

might hear about a strange note left by the killer.

4:56

You may even come across a few suspects,

4:58

but not much else. And

5:01

that's what makes the case of the Freeway Phantom

5:03

so very, very strange.

5:07

My name is Celeste Headley. I'm a journalist,

5:09

author, and longtime public radio host

5:11

based in Washington, DC. Over

5:14

the years, I've covered many stories of

5:16

people of color going missing in this city, a

5:18

phenomenon that absorbed the public

5:20

consciousness in twenty seventeen on social

5:23

media, when the Washington

5:25

DC Police Department tried to raise

5:27

awareness about missing children

5:29

and teenagers by posting their images

5:31

on social media. The campaign backfired,

5:34

sparking some national outrage

5:37

and fears of an epidemic of missing

5:39

children of color. One of the most

5:41

popular stories on our NBC app this

5:43

week is about missing girls.

5:45

Our story debunks of fake

5:48

reports that fourteen girls went

5:50

missing from DC, and just one day,

5:53

DC police told us there are simply sharing

5:55

missing person cases more often on

5:57

social media. It all

5:59

start when a post went viral all

6:01

over social media saying young black

6:04

girls were going missing at an alarming

6:06

rate in DC, and admits

6:08

the firestorm that particular post was

6:10

proven to be untrue. However,

6:13

behind the social media frenzy was

6:15

a certain reality that for decades,

6:18

people of color, particularly women,

6:21

have been abducted or killed across the Capital

6:23

region, and their cases rarely

6:25

resolved or even fully investigated.

6:28

That fact maybe why most people

6:31

have never heard of the Freeway Phantom

6:33

case, a case that involved six

6:35

young black girls who were all kidnapped,

6:38

killed, and discarded along the DC

6:40

freeways in the early nineteen seventies,

6:43

A case that was never solved and sadly

6:46

quickly forgotten. But in

6:48

the wake of the DC Missing Girls conversation,

6:51

people started thinking about this case again.

6:54

One of those people was fellow DC journalist

6:56

Cheryl Thompson, who used to write for The Washington

6:59

Post. While

7:01

I was actually working on another

7:03

story at the Post, I stumbled

7:05

across this press release of

7:08

these six little black girls.

7:10

And the photo struck me because

7:13

it was in black and white, and so the first

7:15

thing I thought of, Oh my god, this is old, Like

7:18

what is this? And then it just saw these

7:20

six basis of these six little

7:22

black girls, and you could tell by their hairstyle and

7:24

you know, the bows in their hair, and it

7:27

sort of gave me pause, and I was like, what is

7:29

this and why are these murders unsolved?

7:32

And so that's what sort of prompted me. In

7:35

twenty eighteen, Cheryl published a groundbreaking

7:38

article about this seemingly uncovered

7:40

story, and that's how we and thousands

7:43

of others found out about the Freeway

7:45

phantom case. She says the process

7:47

was both difficult and significant.

7:51

What it was about it again was the fact

7:53

that like, how could this be, like

7:55

six little black girls murdered

7:57

in the nation's capital, and

8:00

so then I started researching it and saw that

8:02

there had been stories, some stories over the

8:04

years, but it had mainly faded from

8:06

public view. I asked one of our

8:08

researchers at the Washington Post to go back. I said,

8:10

can you find some stories, some microfish

8:13

from you back in the early seventies

8:16

when this happened, And there were

8:18

stories, but we were really hard pressed to find

8:20

stories that focused just on these

8:23

girls. In the early nineteen seventies,

8:25

it was the Vietnam War, and you know, DC

8:27

was the place where protesters

8:29

came. There was a lot going on in

8:32

the nation's capital during that time. So

8:35

when murders happened, when killings

8:37

happened, it made the news.

8:39

But there were so many killings at the time

8:42

that they just didn't get the individual

8:44

attention. Like when I found one of the cases,

8:47

it was lumped in with some other homicides

8:49

in the district. But that's just the way it was.

8:51

I mean, this was the murder capital

8:53

of the country back in the day. Cheryl

8:56

decided to reach out to some people, and she says

8:59

her best horses have always been the detectives

9:02

who worked on the case. I

9:04

have called some of my sources over the years for stuff

9:06

that might have happened thirty years ago,

9:08

and they remembered details, right,

9:11

how do you remember this stuff? So

9:14

I then reached out to Detective

9:17

Jenkins, Romaine Jenkins, because

9:19

I figured, man, this is a woman, a black

9:21

woman, and I know she

9:24

had to take an interest in this for a lot of reasons,

9:27

and some of which were the very ones that I

9:29

mentioned. These kids could have been her daughters.

9:34

Detective Romaine Jenkins was a name that

9:36

we kept hearing. We spoke

9:39

with one of the investigators, Romaine

9:41

Jenkins, and she was like, if there was there

9:44

was also another woman by the name

9:46

of Romaine Jenkins who was a sex

9:48

squad detective. One of her pick apart those

9:50

files that Romaine's got, it

9:53

would be an exciting interview Romaine Jenkins.

9:56

She was one of the best. She

9:58

knew all adult dealers, all the

10:00

girlfriends she was friends with, all

10:02

of them, She got the latest school, she knew

10:04

who pulled trigger. We

10:07

decided to give Romayne Jenkins a call Hello,

10:12

Yes, and we soon realized

10:15

just how much she knew about this case.

10:18

I investigated many serial rate

10:20

cases and none of them are like the

10:23

seas today. It is a

10:25

similar pad in somewhere. But

10:28

the only pattern you have with these cases

10:30

is the fact that they were young black females.

10:33

As it turns out, Romayne was the lead

10:36

investigator on the Freeway Phantom case in

10:38

the nineteen eighties. That was almost

10:40

ten years after the case went cold,

10:42

and she was the right person for the job. Romayne

10:45

had an impressive resume up to that point

10:48

as a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police

10:50

Department in Washington, DC back

10:52

in the seventies. She was the first woman

10:54

and the only woman for a long time in

10:56

homicide. We told Romayne

10:59

that we were looking into the Freeway Phantom case

11:01

and she agreed to sit down with us. But

11:03

before we made a trip to DC to see

11:05

her, we wanted to learn more about her

11:08

life and how she eventually came

11:10

to investigate this case. I

11:12

am a native person from

11:14

Washington, d C. I attended

11:17

school here. I joined the Metropolitan

11:20

Police Department June the twentieth

11:23

first, nineteen sixty

11:25

five, and at that time there

11:28

were only about maybe thirty police

11:30

females on the department, and

11:33

they were housed at something called the Woman's

11:35

Bureau, and they did mostly

11:38

social work, abandoned children,

11:40

missing children. Then they

11:43

joined us with something called the Youth Division

11:46

and that was the male counterpart of

11:48

the women's girl And I stayed there

11:50

for two years and I basically

11:53

investigated cases involving badder

11:55

children, juvenile offenders.

11:58

We did missing person and things

12:00

like that. And then homicide

12:02

decided they needed a female to handle

12:05

their baby death and abortion

12:07

cases because at that time abortion was

12:09

illegal in the District of Columbia.

12:12

So Romayne went to work in homicide.

12:15

She was there for approximately four years

12:17

investigating battered children and abortion

12:19

cases. After about

12:21

four years in the Homicide quad, I

12:24

went to the seventh District because at

12:26

that time they decided they wanted to put

12:28

policewomen in uniform

12:31

and put them in the patrol division.

12:34

And at that time I was a supervisor.

12:36

I was a sergeant because I made sergeant when

12:39

I was in homicide, So they

12:41

wanted to see if females

12:43

could supervise males in the

12:45

PTO division. I went to

12:47

the seventh District and that was fighting.

12:49

The experience. Everything was solely

12:51

new to me, but I made a sup During

12:54

this time, Romayne got married and started a family.

12:57

She eventually decided being a patrol

13:00

officer wasn't what she wanted, so

13:02

she applied for Sex Squad, which

13:04

investigates sexually heinous crimes,

13:07

and I stayed there ten years as

13:09

a supervisor. And from there I

13:11

went to the US Attorney's Office, where I supervised

13:14

seven detectives and we handled

13:16

cases. We worked up cases for the US

13:19

Attorney's Office, and that's basically

13:21

what I did. That's basically my

13:23

career. It was while

13:25

in homicide in the early seventies that

13:27

Romayne first heard about the so called Freeway

13:30

Phantom murders. Though other officers

13:32

were assigned to the case, she helped canvas

13:34

neighborhoods and became intimately

13:36

familiar with the case details. Years

13:39

passed and remained heard little about

13:41

the Freeway Phantom. Fifteen

13:43

years after the murders. In nineteen eighty seven,

13:46

Romayne decided to reopen the case herself

13:48

while working in the US Attorney's office, and

13:51

it ended up becoming the case that would

13:53

consume Romayne's career and life

13:56

to this day. When

13:59

we told Romayne we were investigating the Freeway

14:02

Phantom case, she revealed to us

14:04

that she had held onto boxes and

14:06

boxes of evidence, case files,

14:08

and other documents. Even after retiring

14:11

from the MPD. Now, at

14:13

eighty years old, Romayne still

14:15

has those stacks of boxes sitting

14:18

in her bedroom or scattered across her

14:20

living room floor. We asked her if we

14:22

could talk to her in person and look through some

14:24

of the boxes. At first, she

14:26

was hesitant, but after we talked

14:28

about our mutual desire to solve

14:30

these murders, she started to open up,

14:33

and eventually she agreed to

14:35

an in person interview. So

14:38

the Tenderfoot team met up with me in DC and

14:40

we headed to her house. Oh,

15:02

he brings me two at a time. Okay,

15:05

we got you, and we can take him back up to

15:07

us. No, you can lead that you

15:09

got him bag, Okay,

15:12

because they'll either go down stairs. They'll

15:14

probably end up going downstairs. Okay,

15:17

you wanted to sit at the table, No, set him

15:19

right here on the floor. Okay. I'm

15:21

in Romaine Jenkins home in Washington, d

15:24

C. Not far from where I live. In

15:26

her home, Romayne has what's likely

15:28

the largest collection of documents on the

15:30

freeway Phantom case open. I'm

15:33

gonna open them up for you, all

15:37

right. I will just pull him out and we can

15:39

take a look at what's here. And

15:43

this is Brenda Crockett. Oh

15:47

my god, she looks this is the one that was she

15:49

the one that was barefoot. That's a ten year old.

15:52

She's tiny, just a

15:54

tiny baby. She was the one

15:56

that went to the store barefoot.

16:00

The only way she was identified with her

16:02

mother identified with the clothing. That's

16:05

all they had. The

16:08

amount of information we came across was

16:10

astounding. She had crime

16:13

scene photos, original police reports,

16:15

suspect lists. Most of this we

16:18

had never seen before. We

16:21

astro remained how she came to acquire all

16:23

of these documents, basically

16:26

by talking to detectives who were on

16:28

the actual scenes of the cases. A

16:30

lot of them gave me their notebooks, their

16:33

notes, some had copies

16:35

of files. They gave me that going

16:37

to the police department like Prince Georgie's

16:40

County, they turned over all their files

16:42

to me because they micro fished the file so

16:44

they didn't need the hard copies and they were

16:47

going to dispose of them, so I

16:49

said, well, I'll take them. So that's how

16:51

I inherited a lot of that information.

16:54

Then, with the cooperation of the FBI,

16:57

they assigned a case agent to work

16:59

with me and I was allowed to go into

17:01

their files. Well, they assigned

17:04

me office at a desk and one of their

17:06

investigators and I would go to the FBI

17:08

building every day and read

17:11

through documents and they'd make copies of

17:13

whatever I needed. Also, with

17:15

Naval Investigative Services,

17:17

they were getting ready to get rid of

17:19

some files, so I was able

17:21

to make copies of the things that they

17:23

had and nobody told me no, even

17:26

the Metropolitan Police Department. There

17:28

were people who still had information and they

17:30

turned it over to me. So that's how mass

17:33

the information in the files. As

17:36

Romayne said, law enforcement was disposing

17:39

of the original case files. Had

17:41

Romayne not tracked down and preserved

17:44

these files, we would have no

17:46

original documents to view today. This

17:48

is significant because information

17:51

in those boxes may provide new

17:53

insight into the case. Throughout

17:55

this podcast, we're going to reveal

17:58

what we found in those boxes

18:01

and maybe get one step closer

18:03

to finding the Freeway Phantom. But

18:08

first we need to take a step back to talk about

18:10

the basics. What were the Freeway Phantom

18:13

murders, What happened? We need to go

18:15

back to the beginning to fully understand

18:17

this story. The truth is,

18:19

there's not a ton of existing scholarship

18:22

on this case in our research, we

18:24

came across only two books written about

18:26

the Freeway Phantom most people

18:28

have never heard of. The first book, called

18:30

The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom, published

18:33

in nineteen eighty three by Wilma W.

18:35

Harper. Miss Harper, is

18:37

closely related to these cases, which you'll

18:39

hear about later. In the book's

18:42

preface, Harper explains why

18:44

she wrote it, saying, quote, when

18:46

I first undertook the task of writing

18:49

a social study of the families and friends associated

18:51

with the Freeway Phantom cases in September

18:54

nineteen seventy two, my one objective

18:57

was to assist the police department in apprehending

19:00

killer or killers of the seven black

19:02

girls who had been raped, murdered, and

19:04

their bodies placed on the various highways

19:06

around the city of Washington, d c. It

19:09

was my belief that the secret of who

19:11

had killed the girls could be found in

19:13

one or more of the social institutions

19:15

frequented by these girls or

19:18

by their parents. Throughout

19:20

this podcast, Harper's words will take

19:22

us back in time and provide us with

19:24

a first hand account of what it was like to live

19:27

through these serial murders. The

19:32

second book we found was called Tantamount

19:35

The Pursuit of the Freeway Phantom serial

19:37

Killer, published in twenty nineteen.

19:40

This book was written by a father daughter team

19:42

of true crime authors. I

19:45

blame Pardo. I've written over eighty

19:47

books. I'd write primarily

19:49

science fiction, true crime, military

19:51

history, political thrillers,

19:54

things on those lines. This

19:56

is a topic we've been writing a lot about,

19:58

which is true crimes. We tend to focus

20:01

on the unsolved cases, especially

20:04

serial killing pieces that remained open.

20:07

And I'm Victoria Hester. I've

20:10

written a total of four true crime

20:12

books alongside my dad and

20:14

co author Blaine. The thing that really

20:16

got me into true crime was actually my dad.

20:18

Growing up. Our bonding moment

20:21

was over the Zodiac, which go figure,

20:23

that's a normal father daughter thing. But

20:25

ever since that, I've been kind of hooked on true

20:28

crime and it's fun to research. We

20:30

enjoy the journey of research and then putting it

20:32

all onto paper. We had

20:34

just finished our book on the Colonial Parkway

20:37

murders and we were

20:39

looking for the next project to get into,

20:41

and it was really a matter of let's

20:44

look in the local vicinity because

20:46

we like dealing with people we can go

20:49

interview and spend time with.

20:51

So we started looking in Virginia, Maryland,

20:54

Washington, DC to see if

20:56

what open cold cases were out there, and there's

20:59

a lot of them. I outlined a

21:01

number of them for Victoria and said, okay,

21:03

you get to pick this one. Was kind

21:05

of an easy one to do in the case of the freeway.

21:07

Fantom looking at this one and it

21:09

was like, Okay, this one's got some meat to it.

21:12

This is an interesting case. We

21:15

asked Blaine in Victoria to walk us through

21:17

the basics of the case, starting with

21:19

the first victim.

21:21

First one that disappeared was a thirteen year

21:24

old Carol Banise Things. She

21:26

disappeared on April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy

21:29

one. She's found on the

21:31

Anacostia Freeway, which is five

21:34

She's about two hundred yards south of the

21:36

Cityland Parkway and her body's found

21:38

by a group of children. It's a

21:40

major freeway cutting right through the city.

21:44

She had disappeared on the twenty fifth,

21:46

but wasn't found until April

21:48

thirtieth. So the

21:50

next victim is Darlinia Denise

21:53

Johnson. The reason why we put

21:55

the middle names in with each girl

21:58

is because it does play a huge rolled down

22:00

the role in the investigation of the middle named

22:02

Denise, So that's why we make a

22:04

point to mention that she was sixteen

22:07

when she disappeared on July eighth, nineteen

22:09

seventy one. Her body was found

22:11

July nineteenth, nineteen seventy

22:14

one in the evening. Her mother

22:16

filed a missing person's report and

22:19

her body was actually found on the Anacostia

22:21

Freeway, so the same freeway that

22:24

Carol Spinks was found off of. Brinda

22:27

Fay Crockett was ten years old. She

22:30

disappeared on July ty seventh,

22:32

nineteen seventy one. Her

22:34

body was found off of Root

22:37

fifty, which is one of the major

22:39

thoroughfares in Cheverley. She

22:41

had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

22:44

She had been left on the grassy shoulder of

22:46

John Hanson Highway. She was

22:48

found face up, and it

22:50

was really only a short period of time

22:53

after she had disappeared, So

22:55

the killer had kind of shifted at least

22:58

from the first case. He's not ending

23:00

as much time with the victims. He's killing

23:02

them and now just dumping. Just

23:05

over two months later, the fourth victim was

23:07

discovered. Her name was Ninamosha

23:10

Yates. She was twelve

23:12

years old and she was found on October

23:14

first, nineteen seventy one. She

23:17

was a seventh grader and she was a

23:19

very quiet and well behaved

23:22

child. In the evening, she went

23:24

to the safeway that was a few blocks

23:26

away from her home to buy a bag of sugar

23:29

at eight forty five pm. Then

23:32

a month and a half later, the fifth

23:34

victim, Brenda Denise

23:36

Woodard, was eighteen years old.

23:39

November fifteenth, nineteen seventy one,

23:42

she disappeared in the evening.

23:44

She had gone to a nightclass, left with a

23:46

young man. They went to Ben's Chili

23:48

Bowl in DC, which is

23:51

this iconic restaurant, and

23:53

she rode the bus to go home

23:56

and she was last seen around

23:58

the eighth and eighth three

24:00

intersections, but her roommate

24:03

reported by eleven thirty that she hadn't

24:05

come home. She was found

24:07

along the Baltimore Washington Parkway

24:10

as well by a Chevalley police

24:12

officer. She had been strangled,

24:15

and what was different with her is she had also been

24:17

stabbed and

24:19

finally the following year, the sixth

24:22

and last confirmed victim,

24:25

Diane Williams, is seventeen.

24:28

She was found on September fifth,

24:31

nineteen seventy two, ten months

24:33

after the last case with

24:35

Brenda. Her body was found

24:37

the very next day. She

24:40

was reported missing by her father when he

24:43

came home at eight am that morning.

24:45

She had visited her boyfriend, which was

24:47

pretty normal thing for her to do, and

24:51

was told to be home by ten thirty.

24:53

The night before, her boyfriend

24:55

escorted her to the bus stop, so we know

24:57

that she got at least to the bus. If

25:00

you think about it, so many of them are caught going

25:03

to a grocery store running

25:05

an errand it's not like something

25:07

that's a routine where he's following

25:09

them for several days and knows their pattern

25:12

and how to intercept them. These

25:14

are all victims of opportunity.

25:20

Six victims, all young black girls

25:22

from around the same area, all

25:24

disposed of in identical ways.

25:27

When we sat down with Romayne Jenkins, we

25:29

asked her about her first involvement in

25:31

the case. Well, at the

25:33

time when Carol Spinks was murdered,

25:36

I was in the homicide

25:38

unit, and at that time I

25:40

was the only female in the unit. I

25:43

was interested in the case. But

25:45

what happened was we were inundated

25:48

with the Mayday demonstrations from

25:52

one to May fifth, nineteen seventy one,

25:54

thousands of people gathered in Washington,

25:57

d C. To protest the Vietnam War. This

25:59

would be the May Day Protests.

26:02

Some one hundred and seventy five thousand

26:04

people from all walks of life, with

26:06

differing ideologies and purposes,

26:09

marched from the White House to the Capitol. More

26:11

than five thousand Metropolitan Police

26:13

Department officers, including Romayne,

26:16

were tasked with shutting down the demonstrations.

26:19

By the end of the week, over twelve thousand

26:21

protesters had been arrested to this day,

26:23

the largest mass arrest in US

26:25

history. And so I

26:28

never got the chance to go

26:30

and dig into the investigation

26:33

like I could have. The first

26:35

day I recalled we were going out on the case,

26:37

and the division command to stop me

26:40

and said where are you going. I said, well, we had a little

26:42

girl murdered over in Southeast and we're going

26:44

to the neighborhood and we're going to work on

26:46

the case. THESUS notices and May Day demonstrations.

26:49

This is a red alert for the police department.

26:52

You will get involved in the

26:54

demonstrations. But

26:56

Romayne went home that night and thought more about

26:58

Carol Spinks. She was familiar

27:00

with the neighborhood and something

27:02

just didn't add up. The

27:05

girls come from neighborhoods

27:07

that are densely populated with

27:09

black people, their kids in and out,

27:11

their cars going up and down

27:14

Wheelo Road. You know, there's never a time

27:16

it's not busy. So you could send

27:18

you a child to the store. Nobody was gonna bother

27:20

your child or what. The neighborhood

27:22

never even thought like that. No, they

27:25

were even safer because there's always somebody somebody

27:27

right, that's right, and everybody

27:29

knew everybody. You know, they say, oh, that's miss so

27:31

and so's daughter. It's time to be in the house.

27:33

It's close and dark. I mean, the

27:36

people look out for each other, you know.

27:45

I've spent my entire career working

27:47

in public media as a radio journalist

27:49

and national talk show host. One

27:52

of the things that I love about working for public

27:54

radio is that I rarely

27:56

have to report on crime. Well,

27:59

we never neglect a store, worry about terrorism,

28:01

mass shootings, or corporate malfeasance. Individual

28:04

crime stories don't generally get coverage,

28:07

and I like that. I

28:09

like that I don't have to dig into personal

28:12

stories of infidelity or rage or

28:14

greed, or interview family members

28:16

who've just lost a loved one to a drive

28:18

by shooting. So you might

28:20

wonder what I'm doing hosting a podcast

28:23

series about a string of murders in

28:25

Washington, DC, a city that

28:27

had so many homicides in the early nineteen

28:29

nineties that it was known as the murder

28:31

capital of the United States. There's

28:35

one easy answer to that question and

28:37

one more complicated answer. The

28:40

easy answer is that I'm

28:43

so afraid of serial killers that

28:45

I'm fascinated by them. They

28:47

terrify me. I simply can't

28:50

understand the kind of mind that

28:52

would take a stranger's life for

28:54

no reason other than because they enjoy

28:57

it. That seems more than deranged

28:59

to me. It seems inhuman

29:03

serial killers are incredibly rare.

29:06

According to the FBI, less than one percent

29:08

of murders are committed by a serial

29:11

killer. But we're also not very good

29:13

at catching them. The founder

29:15

of the Murder Accountability Project, a

29:17

nonprofit that collects information about

29:19

murders, believes that a good number

29:21

of unsolved homicides may have

29:23

been committed by serial killers.

29:26

So the chance to dig into both the

29:28

mindset of such a killer and the techniques

29:31

for finding them was very tempting.

29:35

More importantly, though, I

29:37

couldn't understand why the Freeway Phantom

29:39

had never been caught and why most

29:41

people have never heard of him. The

29:44

Phantom killed at least six young

29:46

girls, probably more. The

29:49

so called Son of Sam also killed

29:51

six people, and there are a bunch

29:53

of movies about him and even an episode

29:56

of Seinfeld ed gein

29:58

the plain Field ghoul who inspired the killers

30:00

in Psycho, Silence of the Lambs and the

30:02

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was convicted

30:05

of killing two people and may have

30:07

killed as many as seven. This

30:09

is not admiration for perpetrators with

30:11

high body counts, but a legitimate

30:13

question. How could someone

30:16

kill so many young girls

30:18

and be forgotten. The

30:20

Freeway Phantom is worth talking about because

30:22

the larger issues that surrounded his killing

30:24

spree still endanger the lives

30:26

of girls, and especially black girls.

30:32

And before we go any further, we want to make

30:34

an important announcement. After

30:37

over fifty years of waiting, we

30:39

believe the victims families deserve answers.

30:42

That's why Tenderfoot TV and iHeartMedia

30:44

are matching the one hundred fifty thousand

30:46

dollar reward offered by the Metropolitan

30:48

Police Department. This brings the total

30:51

reward for information leading

30:53

to the arrest and conviction of the person or

30:55

persons responsible for these murders

30:57

to three hundred thousand dollars. If

31:00

you have information that may lead to

31:02

the identification of the Freeway phantom,

31:04

it's time to speak up. Tips

31:06

can be provided to MPD or Tenderfoot

31:09

TV at tips at Tenderfoot

31:12

dot TV. With all

31:14

of that said, it's time we dig deep into

31:16

this case. So to fully understand

31:18

these murders, we need to examine the crimes

31:21

individually, starting with the very

31:23

first victim, Carol Spinks. We

31:47

grew up at ten thirty four Wilaplace,

31:49

Southeast. Wild Place

31:51

is on a top part of Valley

31:54

Green. Infamous Valley

31:57

Green, very well, known

31:59

for a lot of activity, negative

32:02

activity. But they're

32:05

good people in the worst of places.

32:09

This is Evander Spinks, the older

32:11

sister of Carol Spinks, the first

32:13

victim. At the top of the episode,

32:15

you heard Evander talk about the night that her sister

32:17

Carol went missing. I

32:20

can't say my mother was the best person

32:22

in the world, but my mother

32:24

took care of us. We

32:26

could not rip and run the street, We

32:29

could not go anywhere. You'd

32:32

better not talk about no, boy,

32:34

you stay very close to home. We

32:37

played outside like any normal kids

32:40

have, races in the street, played

32:42

kickball, double Dutch

32:45

boy games outside. Water

32:48

Place was a well known street,

32:52

but there were a lot of good families

32:54

on that street. Things

32:56

happened on that street that were bad,

32:59

but we never witness anything because

33:01

we weren't out at night. Whatever

33:03

happened, we would find out the next day or through

33:06

your friends if they saw something

33:08

or their parents saw something and they was disgusting

33:10

it with their girlfriend and boyfriend, or do you

33:12

know how adults talk as always one

33:15

or two kids hanging around listening, getting

33:18

the scoop, so that everybody else didn't

33:20

know what was going on. But that's

33:22

how we found out things, never

33:25

that we were involved around or

33:28

near, because my mother didn't play

33:30

that. On April twenty

33:32

fifth, nineteen seventy one, the day

33:34

Carol would go missing, the entire

33:36

Spinx family, with the exception of their mother,

33:39

was home. I was home

33:42

fourteen, Carl

33:44

and Carlin was home thirteen,

33:47

Tanya was home twelve,

33:51

One was home eleven,

33:53

and Joseph was home one

33:56

or two years old. Carol

33:59

and Carol and Spinks were twin sisters. Their

34:01

nicknames were Babe and Yaya

34:04

respectively. They

34:06

looked identical, they

34:08

were identical. They

34:10

could sometimes fool us,

34:13

but me not that much

34:15

because they had different personalities.

34:19

Babe Carol was

34:22

more laid back and quiet. Carol

34:25

and Yaya a mouthpiece

34:28

and a social butterfly. But

34:31

they stuck together. You

34:33

wouldn't see one

34:36

ten feet further from the other one. They

34:38

were always together. My

34:42

mom and all the brothers and sisters,

34:44

they knew us apart, but some of

34:46

our own friends that we had outside

34:49

of the house, some of them knew, some of them

34:51

didn't. Now we dressed the like you

34:53

could forget it. This is Carolyn

34:55

Spinx. She was incredibly

34:57

close with her twin sister, Carol. Oh,

35:00

we dare because stuff. We of course

35:02

played dogs, did each other's hair. We

35:04

dressed it like. We pulled the teachers. We jumped

35:07

double dutch, play jack's, all

35:09

kinds of stuff. We did everything

35:12

together. She was smart.

35:14

She was very smart. She wasn't as

35:16

smart mouth as I was. She

35:18

was smart. It was funny she

35:21

was. She was my friend. That was

35:23

my left hand because I'm right here, so she was my left

35:26

hand that day.

35:28

I wish, oh my god, I

35:30

wish I could take it back I wish I

35:32

could take that day bad. That

35:35

day, my mom told us do not

35:38

go outside, so we always

35:40

in the house. I don't even know in

35:42

what we were doing, but I

35:45

know it was me even and baby

35:47

and my baby brother was because he

35:49

was a baby, and my other brother. All

35:51

of us, all six of us was in

35:53

the house. And I remember in

35:55

battery nothing to do, say

35:57

she going somebody go to stool and like, no, no,

36:00

most didn't. No, MO said,

36:02

don't go out. I don't know what made

36:05

her say I'll go. I don't know,

36:08

but I was like, I ain't gonna no,

36:11

I won't get us. I ain't getting no beating. And

36:13

my mother didn't play. But

36:15

for whatever reason, Carol volunteered

36:17

to go to the store, and so off

36:20

she went. Didn't think nothing

36:23

of it right then and there. The

36:25

next thing I knew, I was like, ain't

36:28

it. She didn't come back, and

36:31

I remember I said that I went out

36:33

that door. I'm like, no, I got to go to a battomy.

36:36

She didn't come back. We got to go to the store, and I remember

36:38

me and Battlemy went to the store and we asked

36:40

the man did he see it, and he said, yeah, he seeing

36:42

the girl looked just like me, and she had her

36:44

she got her stuff, and that was

36:46

it. We came back home.

36:48

We called my mother and she came home,

36:52

and then she called the police. I remember

36:54

she called the police and they said

36:56

they can't do nothing. Do

36:59

you remember why they said they couldn't do anything,

37:02

because they said you gotta be twenty four hours.

37:04

I remember that. But

37:07

like a couple of hours, something

37:10

right, m I knew something

37:12

was wrong. I knew it. I told got

37:14

to be something wrong, something wrong. During

37:19

that time when you didn't know what had happened

37:21

to her, when she was just missing,

37:24

what were you thinking had happened? I

37:27

thought somebody had got her or did something to

37:29

her. He did. I

37:31

knew something had happened to her. I knew it did

37:33

because she went and run away. We never ran away

37:35

from home, We never did any of that. Said already knew

37:37

something was wrong. I knew something bad

37:39

had happened. I knew that. I

37:42

just didn't know what. Man

37:44

after like the second day, definitely not stopped feeling

37:46

the pains. And

37:49

I used to sit on the bottom months and been in this rock,

37:53

and I would get pained and I would be

37:55

in and out, in and out. Oh my god,

37:57

it was terrible. It was Oh god,

37:59

it was the worst. It was the worst.

38:02

I still feel pained to this day.

38:06

Search parties were dispatched, the community

38:08

was determined to find Carol, but

38:11

they never did. And then,

38:13

according to the official reports, five

38:16

days after Carol Spinks's disappearance, a

38:18

group of kids were playing by the side of Interstate

38:20

two ninety five when they discovered

38:22

Carol's body. But Romaine

38:24

Jenkins has always been skeptical of this

38:27

report. Here's how she described it when

38:29

we talked to her over the phone. There's

38:31

no indication how her body was

38:33

discovered. No. After the crowd

38:36

gets there, of course they called the police, but

38:38

what initially called somebody

38:41

to say there's a body on two ninety

38:43

five. I don't understand. Why

38:45

would the kids, even kids wouldn't even be

38:47

playing on two ninety five. There's nothing,

38:50

There's no reason for them to have been there

38:52

unless they were told there was a body and

38:54

they went to see what it was, you know, But

38:56

who said who started it? Even

38:59

though when he was missing, you know, they had

39:01

locked the group out searching for her

39:04

and so forth. But there

39:06

was just nothing but for someone

39:08

to jump over the rail and

39:11

turn that body over. Man. People

39:13

just don't do that. Most people don't even want

39:15

to see a dead body. My

39:18

mind questions a lot

39:20

of things. We

39:22

were curious to see what Romayne was talking about,

39:24

so we found the coordinates for where Carol's

39:27

body had been found, right off the highway

39:32

just to our right. You can see

39:34

in the distant Suitland Parkway, and

39:36

the police reports say that Carol Spinks's

39:38

body was found about fifteen hundred feet south

39:41

of Suitland, which is about where

39:43

we are. The thing is is that, you

39:46

know, Romayne brought up the idea that why

39:48

were there people near here to find

39:50

the body? And I gotta say

39:52

she has a point. I mean, even

39:55

fifty years ago, this would

39:57

have still been an industrial park. There's nothing

39:59

here, there's no stores, there's no homes.

40:02

This is clearly an highway

40:04

access road with nothing but industrial

40:07

buildings. And you can look at these buildings and even

40:09

though Verizon is in them now, these

40:12

buildings have been here for fifty years.

40:14

So what were they doing here? Why

40:17

were they walking along the highway? And again, remember

40:19

we're talking about a highway that didn't have

40:21

these lights. It would have

40:23

been dark, And

40:26

I just she really has

40:28

a point. How could they have stumbled

40:30

on this body? It just over

40:33

and over. In this case, you think somebody

40:35

knew something, someone

40:38

did. It seems impossible.

40:40

But here we are, and you have

40:42

to imagine as you're standing at ninety five

40:44

and obviously five did not have this many lanes

40:47

back then. We saw the photos. But

40:49

you have to imagine someone just driving up

40:51

this highway with a dead

40:54

girl's body in their car, stopping

40:57

the car right here, pulling

40:59

her by out of his car, and then placing

41:02

it. It's distressing

41:04

and incomprehensible. Yeah,

41:10

Carolyn Spink said she doesn't remember much

41:12

about hearing that Carol was dead, only

41:14

that she remembers feeling it. I'm

41:17

feeling he was kidding themiss She was gone on him

41:20

days I felt everything. What

41:22

did your family say to you? They knew

41:24

something was wrong with me. They knew something was

41:27

wrong because I used to sit and

41:29

rock, just sit on a bay and

41:31

rock and rock and cry

41:34

and hold myself. And then something

41:36

was wrong, something was hurt. And a

41:39

few days later the family held a public funeral

41:42

for Carol. Oh my

41:44

god, that was the worst day of my life. I

41:47

didn't know what it was. They had never

41:49

been to a feeling before, so we j I didn't

41:52

know what it was.

41:55

We went to the funeral home first.

41:57

I remember they took us to these

42:00

white dresses and shoes and

42:02

stuff. And then we went

42:04

in this funeral home and they had this noise. I

42:07

guess that's the piano or whatever it is, and

42:09

that noise, oh, curb.

42:12

And then they had the big great casket. I didn't know

42:14

what it was, but it was closed.

42:17

I remember that it was closed, and

42:19

I remember all these people. It was so

42:22

many people. I remember

42:25

there were so many people. And

42:27

then and we opened the casket

42:30

and I said, I asked them, who was that? And

42:33

they said, as Listen said, I said, no, it's not.

42:36

When I looked at that face, I was

42:38

like, oh my god, who was that? He

42:41

looked like a monster. And

42:43

they said I I patched out or something.

42:45

Something happened to me. I don't

42:47

know what happened. Well, when

42:50

I woke up the next time, I remember

42:52

we was back at home. I don't remember

42:54

anything else. So

42:56

you said your family never talked about

42:59

it after the funeral, debity

43:01

even mentioned her. They

43:03

did, but I never want to hear it.

43:06

I didn't want to hear it. And

43:08

you think that it wasn't until you were an

43:10

adult that you were able to

43:14

hear about her or talk about her. Yeah,

43:17

actually it was after I got

43:19

married to my husband, who lived

43:22

on our block. He knew

43:24

my sister. When he told me one

43:26

day we talked about it, because we never even talked about

43:28

it for a long time, but

43:31

he told me he curried my sister cask And I said,

43:33

no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did. My

43:35

mother had a book, a whole book of the funeral,

43:38

and I was always I never wanted to look at

43:40

it, but this when my mother

43:42

was still living. So one day

43:45

I just went over went to look at

43:47

the book and I saw him curring the cask. And

43:49

when he told me that that's

43:52

I said, I don't need to talk. I needed

43:54

to talk to somebody because I as king couldn't

43:56

keep holding it because I know it was hurting. It

43:58

was hurting me. After

44:01

a while, after I had my kids and my

44:03

sister told my kids that's another started

44:05

trying to talk about it. Me and my husband

44:07

talk a little bit from time to time, but

44:09

I didn't want to talk about it. There

44:12

was nothing to talk about. You have

44:14

you talked with others in your family since

44:16

then, Yes, most

44:19

of me and my sister Evanne talk about

44:21

it more than anybody, but not nobody

44:24

else really. Evane

44:26

is Evander Spinks. My

44:30

brothers have never mentioned it one way

44:32

to other curling.

44:34

It hurts her, she said, has

44:36

never wanted to talk about it, and

44:39

I've always wanted to talk about it

44:41

because I can't forget. My

44:44

sister Valerie is never talk

44:47

or spoke about it that I know of, so

44:50

I had to over the

44:53

years keep talking, yeah,

44:55

yeah, Carlin about

44:57

it, and I

45:00

I know she can't forget, but I know she hurts

45:02

behind it. That's

45:04

why I her entire life changed

45:07

and it wasn't for the better, totally

45:11

the wrong way. I

45:14

think the first time all

45:17

of us got together it

45:19

was a couple of years ago because

45:21

it bothered me all my life. There

45:25

I could go and sit where

45:27

I knew my sister's body was,

45:30

but there was nothing there to show me that

45:33

she was there. So

45:35

we gotta talk about it. It's

45:37

a hurtful thing, but we gotta do it. And

45:40

you just never know something

45:42

could pop up. Something

45:44

just might get triggered, or

45:47

you may have seen something or herd

45:49

something We don't want

45:52

to do it. It's not like

45:54

we want to be recognized,

45:57

because we still get recognized

46:00

as soon as somebody hid the name Spinx or

46:02

Sphinx, Sphinx, Oh, I know about

46:04

the Spinx family. You don't know about

46:06

the Sphinx family. You don't even know about the incident that

46:09

happened to the Spins family. My

46:12

sister was an innocent little girl.

46:15

People say, you know these

46:17

kids fast, they grown. She

46:20

was out there having sex, not

46:24

with my mother, that's

46:26

a no. She was

46:28

an innocent little

46:31

girl that was taken from

46:33

her family and

46:35

abused. We

46:37

want to know why. As

46:43

a young teenager,

46:45

I don't think the police did a good

46:48

job. I didn't

46:50

feel as though they actually cared during

46:52

that time. And as

46:54

an adult, I know they didn't

46:57

do a good job, and I

46:59

know, damn with they didn't care. And

47:02

today I'd

47:04

be sixty five years old this

47:07

month and I

47:09

still feel like they don't give a damn.

47:12

It probably was the police, was

47:15

somebody that worked with the police.

47:18

That's the only thing really made sense to me.

47:22

People are everywhere. Somebody

47:25

saw it, and we

47:27

still want to know, and it

47:29

still hurts. We

47:32

just want to know why and what

47:34

happened. The

47:43

homicide detectives termed

47:45

the cases the little girl cases.

47:47

This child was laying on the side

47:50

of the road. I wouldn't go no

47:52

way, I wouldn't call it my house. Those

47:55

first five murders should

47:57

have been a huge warning bell for the police. We

47:59

just want to know what happened. This person

48:02

must have saw that. They were thinking that maybe

48:04

it's just one person, and he says, they

48:06

need to know. This is me. I

48:09

thought that they would catch him. I

48:11

thought it was just a matter of time. I'm

48:14

Celeste Headley and this is

48:16

Freeway Phantom.

48:22

Next time on Freeway Phantom. People

48:24

were scared. I mean, Prince were scared.

48:27

Children were scared. They wanted to know

48:29

what more police could do. What were

48:31

they doing? He kept her for

48:34

several days as a prisoner. When

48:39

the first victims went missing, there

48:41

was a really kind of a muted police

48:44

response. You follow a lead

48:46

until it takes you no way. They

48:48

got all kinds of leads. Everybody

48:50

was a suspect. I got home in the store

48:53

about six ten pm and asked the kids

48:55

if Darlinia had been home, and they said they

48:57

hadn't seen her. I think the kids around in

48:59

the next course, and they asked the people if they had

49:01

seen Darlinia and they said no. Roy

49:04

said that there was a body of a dead lady out

49:06

there. He told us that he'd notified the police,

49:08

but the body was still out there. Freeway

49:17

Phantom is a production of iHeartRadio, Tenderfoot

49:19

TV and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our

49:21

host is Celes Hitley. The show

49:24

is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright

49:26

and Celes Hitley. Executive producers

49:28

on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt

49:31

Frederick and Alex Williams, with supervising

49:33

producer Trevor Young. Executive producers

49:35

on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include

49:37

Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, with

49:39

producers Jamie Albright and Tracy

49:42

Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf

49:44

of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself,

49:46

j Ellis and Aaron Bergman, with

49:49

producer Sidney Foods. Lead researcher

49:51

is Jamie Albright. Artwork by Mister

49:53

Soul two one six, original

49:55

music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

49:58

Special thanks to team at Uta

50:01

Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord

50:03

Group, Tenderfoot TV and iHeartMedia,

50:06

as well as Black Bar Mitzvah have increased

50:08

the reward for information leading to the

50:10

arrest and conviction of the person or persons

50:12

responsible for their freeway fantom murders.

50:15

The previous reward of up to one

50:17

hundred and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan

50:20

Police Department has been matched. A

50:22

new total reward of up to three hundred

50:24

thousand dollars is now being offered. If

50:27

you have any information relating to these unsolved

50:29

crimes, contact the Metropolitan Police

50:31

Department at area code two zero two

50:34

seven two seven nine zero

50:36

nine nine. For more information, please

50:39

visit freeway dashfanom dot

50:41

com. For more podcasts from

50:43

our Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, visit

50:46

the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,

50:48

orherever you listen to your favorite shows.

50:50

Thanks for listening.