It was clear to the police that a serial killer was at work. All the victims were young black females. All of them had been abducted from the same geographical area and their bodies dumped near the same location. Most had been raped and strangled. Curiously, four of them had the middle name Denise. But this brought them no nearer to an arrest.
In the tense political atmosphere of the early 1970s—after the city had been torn part by race riots in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King—the fact that all the victims were black led to a furore. More than 70 percent of the D.C.’s 757,000 residents were black, and there was widespread distrust of the police department, which was more than 60 percent white.
“You better bet that if these had been white girls, the police would have solved the cases,” says Evander Spinks, a sister of the Phantom’s first victim. “They didn’t care about us. All the cases involving white girls still get publicity. But ours have been forgotten.”
Black Washington was up in arms and, because of the phone calls in the Crocketts’ case, they wanted to prove that a white man was to blame, but angry political rhetoric did nothing to advance the murder investigation. Meanwhile the Freeway Phantom lay low.
It was ten months before he claimed his final victim. On 5 September 1972, 17-year-old Diane Williams, a senior at Ballou High School, cooked dinner for her family, then went to visit her boyfriend’s house. She was last seen boarding a bus on her way home. A few hours later, her body was found on the side of I–295 just south of the District line, just five miles from the point where Carole Spinks was discovered in May 1971. Again, police noted striking similarities with the other cases—and again, found no evidence that would identify a suspect.
In late March, the Maryland State Police arrested two black suspects—30-year-old Edward Leon Sellman and 26-year-old Tommie Bernard Simmons. They were charged with the murder of Angela Barnes. Both suspects were ex-Washington policemen, though both had dropped out early in 1971, before completing their mandatory probation periods. They were also charged with the abduction and rape of a Maryland waitress in February 1971. Convicted of murder in 1974, both defendants were sentenced to life.
In the other case, the police had received thousand of tips, but did not have the manpower to handle them as the FBI had been recalled from the case to investigate the Watergate break-in and the subsequent scandal that forced President Nixon from office. Nevertheless D.C. detectives combed the rosters of the area’s mental health facilities, examined the employment roles at city recreation centres and did background checks on substitute teachers who might have known the girls. In all, they developed more than 100 potential suspects, including dozens of convicted sex offenders, a real estate developer and a US Air Force colonel stationed at Bolling Air Force Base, across the I–295 from St Elizabeth’s Hospital. None panned out.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury examining the Phantom murders focused its spotlight on “a loosely-knit group of persons” suspected of luring girls and young women into cars—sometimes rented for the hunt—then raping their victims for sport. In 1974, the FBI returned to the case and began investigating the gang known as the Green Vega Rapists, some of whom claimed to have participated in the Phantom killings.
Suspects John N. Davis, aged 28, and Morris Warren, 27, were already serving life for previous rapes when a series of new indictments were handed down in December 1974. Turning state’s evidence, Warren received a grant of limited immunity in return for testimony against Davis and another defendant, 27-year-old Melvyn Sylvester Gray. However, Davis recanted, no charges were filed and the investigation went no further. As a government spokesman explained, “The ends of justice can be served just as well if a person is convicted and sentenced to life for kidnapping, than if he is jailed for the same term for murder.”
In court filings and in comments to reporters, authorities indicated that they felt that the Green Vega Rapists were responsible for the killings. However investigators now are not so sure, especially in the light of the Suitland murders 13 years later. Once again, the victims were young, female and black, and abducted and discarded in a manner reminiscent of the Freeway Phantom’s style and in places not far from his patch. However, authorities refused to speculate upon a link between the crimes, and so both cases are considered “open”, with the killers still at large.
In the late 1970s, D.C. homicide Detective Lloyd Davis developed a new Phantom suspect. One day in 1977 Davis had questioned Robert Askins, who had been charged with raping a 24-year-old woman in his house. At that time, the Phantom case was still active and homicide detectives routinely questioned rape suspects as part of the investigation.
Davis learned that 58-year-old Askins had been charged with homicide three times. He had spent time in St Elizabeth’s Hospital and had later been convicted of killing a prostitute with cyanide in 1938. His sentence had been overturned on a legal technicality concerning the statute of limitations and he was freed in 1958.
When police searched Askins’ house in the 1700 block of M Street in Northwest Washington after his arrest in 1977, Davis found the appellate court papers in a desk drawer. His eyes were immediately drawn to the word “tantamount” that the judges used in a footnote. That same word appeared in the note found in Phantom victim Brenda Woodward’s coat pocket, where it seemed strangely out of place. Later, Davis discovered that Askins often used this old-fashioned word at the National Science Foundation, where he worked as a computer technician.
Davis worked the case for nearly three years. He retrieved evidence from the early cases from storage and shipped it to the FBI labs for the latest forensic analysis. Experts found the same green synthetic carpet fibre on all but one of the victims’ clothing, for the first time linking five of the six Phantom’s murders. Davis then got a search warrant and began digging up Askins’ back yard. Despite Davis’ best effort, he never recovered any physical evidence linking Askins to the crimes and Askins was never charged with the Phantom murders. However he was sentenced to life for kidnapping and raping two women in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1970s.
Davis retired in 1981, but he was unable to let go of the case. In 2005, he wrote to Askins in a North Carolina federal penitentiary, asking him to confess. Askins promptly wrote back, denying any role in the killings. The Washington Post also wrote to Askins. Again he denied being the Freeway Phantom, saying he did not have “the depravity of mind required to commit any of the crimes”. But Davis does not believe him.
“I know he did it,” Davis says. “I just know it.”
D.C. homicide Detective Romaine Jenkins reviewed the Freeway Phantom cases in the late 1980s. Years after she retired, the Phantom’s victims still haunt her.
“I always think of these young ladies,” she says. “How did he keep these girls? How did he do it without anyone knowing? How did he select them?”
Another officer who took an interest in the Freeway Phantom was Sergeant Rick Fulginiti, a long-time Prince George’s County detective. He was working in the cold-case department when he received a tip about a potential suspect.
Fulginiti learned that authorities had located a semen sample taken from a victim during the post mortem that had been kept at the Maryland medical examiner’s. So he flew to Utah to get DNA samples from his suspect’s relatives and from an old envelope, but when the samples were tested in 2002 technicians were unable to extract any comparable DNA from the sample.
In 2006, D.C. police Detective James Trainum got the task of reviewing the bulging Freeway Phantom files. He employed the geographic profiling technique of ex-Canadian cop Kim Rossmo and the computer system that Rossmo developed to plot the crimes on a map and work out the suspect’s “anchor point”—his home, workplace or other significant location.
Together Trainum and Rossmo spent weeks scouring the reports and visiting crime scenes. From the abduction points and the locations where the bodies had been dumped, they worked out that the Phantom’s anchor point was in Congress Heights, just south of St Elizabeth�
��s Hospital. Trainum now plans to take an old phone book and reverse directory and plot names onto the geographic profile map. Police also plan to blanket the area with fliers announcing a $150,000 reward for witnesses who call Trainum at 202–727–5037 or 202–727–9099 with information.
Trainum has also contacted the relatives of the victims to tell them that he is, once again, looking into the Phantom killings. One of the people he contacted was Carolyn Morris, Carol Spinks’ identical twin, who says the Freeway Phantom wrecked her life. She was overprotective of her four children and was unable to relax if they were out of eyeshot. She could not hold down a job and fell into alcoholism and drug addiction. It was only when they were grown that she found the courage to tell them what had happened 35 years before to the aunt they never knew.
The lives of other relatives of the victims have also been changed irrevocably. One victim’s aunt wrote a self-published book, called The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom, and a victim’s sister spent hours on street corners, wearing revealing clothing in the hopes of attracting the Freeway Phantom.
Patricia Williams, younger sister of Diane Williams, the Freeway Phantom’s last known victim, joined the D.C. police in 1982. It had not been her ambition to be a police officer, but after the death of her sister, with whom she once shared a bed, she felt compelled to sign up. She still keeps a push-pin map showing the locations of random attacks on juveniles by adults in her office.
“I’m sure, subconsciously, that I know that if I wasn’t able to help Diane, then I can help other children,” she told Washington Post reporter Del Quentin Wilber.
She rarely goes days without thinking about catching the killer, to find out why he picked her sister and put a human face on the killer.
“I think that would help my healing process,” she says.
Like Carolyn Morris and other relatives of Freeway Phantom victims, Patricia Williams has vivid nightmares about her dead sister. In Williams’ dreams, she always asks her sister the same question, one that she also would love to ask the Freeway Phantom: “Where have you been all these years?”
Washington State Serial Killers
The Pacific Northwest has had more than its fair share of serial killers. Ted Bundy began his career in Washington State and Green River Killer Gary Ridgway operated there. The murder of 29 women and the disappearance of 12 others in the counties of King, Pierce and Snohomish in Washington State since 1985 are thought to be the work of another killer who is still at large. However, the perpetrator does share some of the Green River Killer’s profile. He mainly abducts prostitutes, kills them and dumps their bodies in rural areas.
There are other serial killers at large in the area. One killer’s grisly signature is his dismemberment of the bodies. He seems to be responsible for three murders where the victims’ bodies were cut up and scattered in remote areas in Snohomish County. One victim was a Bulgarian involved in organized crime whose body was found in 1987, but was not identified for ten years. Another was a Korean immigrant from Bothell on the outskirts of Seattle who had a record for prostitution. Her body was found in 1991 with the remains of a man who has never been identified.
There was another cluster of killings around the area of the town of Index in the Cascades. The bodies of two Seattle women were dumped there in 1988. Both victims were known prostitutes and drug users. They had been stabbed. Three other women—two found dead nearby and a 14-year-old runaway last seen with one of the dead women—may also be victims of the same killer.
Another unknown killer is thought to be responsible for five murders and disappearances in the area of Clarkston and Lewiston on the Idaho border between 1979 and 1982. Some of the victims were dismembered and dumped in a river. Victims include three young women, a girl and a man. Two of their bodies have never been found. Although investigators had a suspect, they have never made an arrest.
A child killer was also at large in Washington State in the 1980s. On 7 September 1983, seven-year-old Lea Kimball vanished after leaving her school bus in rural King County, Washington. Two years later, 12-year-old Brenda Gere disappeared in similar circumstances in Clearview, in neighbouring Snohomish County. However, Brenda Gere apparently arrived home before she was abducted. Her school books were found in the house, but her fate remains a mystery. No trace of her has ever been found. However, Lea Kimball’s case officially became a homicide on 7 March 1986, when her skeletal remains were found near Ellensburg, in the southeast of the state. No suspect has been named in Brenda Gere’s abduction or in the death of Lea Kimball, but the police are convinced that there is a connection between the two cases.
Random slayings continue in Washington State. On 11 July 2006, 56-year-old Mary Cooper, a Seattle Public Schools librarian, and her 27-year-old daughter Susanna Stodden went hiking a wooded trail in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, near Seattle. They were last seen at around 10 a.m. near Mount Pilchuck in Snohomish County. A hiker found their bodies along the trail to Pinnacle Lake, 20 miles east of Granite Falls at around 2.30 p.m. They had been shot. Police quickly ruled out a murder-suicide. Robbery does not seem to be a motive as Mary and Susanna’s wallets, keys and IDs were found in their backpacks. Both women had a passion for the outdoors.
Two weeks later, Snohomish County Sheriff’s office said they had “persons of interest”, though they have not identified any suspects and they do not have anyone in custody.
There is a heavy methamphetamine problem in the nearby town, there was speculation that the perpetrator could have been a “meth-head”. There was a similar case in Portland, Oregon in 4 July 2005, where two hikers were found shot to death on a trail. Again the killer or killers have not been caught. And there is a similar unsolved murder in California, leading investigators to believe that there is a serial killer at work.
PART II
Killers Stalk the Globe
Where America leads, the rest of the world surely follows. The Earth, now, is overflowing with killers at large. Britain, which has always prided itself on the quality of its crime, if not its quantity, is still full of unapprehended murderers. In the 1960s, London produced Jack the Stripper, a rival to Jack the Ripper, who killed six women, but was never caught.
In England and Wales, the 43 police authorities launched Operation Enigma, looking into over 200 unsolved murder cases involving young women. In Glasgow, the police are searching for a current killer who has been butchering prostitutes, while a cold-case unit is still trying to identify Bible John, a killer from the late 1960s who has yet to be caught. Even sleepy old Ireland has a serial killer on the loose.
But then nowhere is safe these days. Canada has pig-farmer Robert Pickton. He denies all charges against him, and he has only been charged with a fraction of the murders he is suspected of, and even those are a fraction of the outstanding murders in Vancouver, let alone the whole of British Columbia. There are certainly more killers at large. Particularly vulnerable are “First Nations”—that is, Inuit and Native American—women. There are allegations of racism—first by the killers who do not value Inuit and Indian lives, then by the authorities who do not investigate the cases with quite the alacrity they exhibit when the victim is white. This mirrors the situation in the United States, where it is possible to murder African-American prostitutes—particularly those lured into the sex industry by drug addiction—seemingly with impunity. Many are not even identified.
Killing has become an international enterprise. One murderer seems to have been at large in the US, then moved his activities on to Portugal and at least four other European countries. This has a long history. Suspects in the Jack the Ripper case went on to kill in the US and Australia. Indeed, one even seems to have commuted back and forth across the North Atlantic.
It is not just free societies that are prone to having killers on the loose. Countries that have suffered political oppression seem to have spawned a particularly vicious variety. Russia has its own serial killers, with several at large. And in South Africa there seem
s to have been an epidemic. Again the police force, perhaps still infused with the old ethos of apartheid, has a poor record when it comes to dealing with killers who seek out black women as their victims.
In Latin American counties, particularly those that have suffered divisive civil wars, it is almost open season in women. In Guatemala, for example, almost every murder case goes unsolved. The police neither have the resources nor the incentive to investigate. In fact, some of the killers at large seem to be in the police force itself.
But worse is Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. The pandemic of murders there has come to the attention of the English-speaking world because Juarez is just over the border from El Paso, so the killings are reported the papers in Texas. In Juarez so many vulnerable young women have been raped and killed in the most horrible ways that the term “femicide” has been coined. The allegation is that Latin machismo culture and general border-town lawless had combined to create a murderous war on women. In the eyes of women’s rights activists, all men in Juarez are potentially killers at large.
Argentina’s Highway Maniac
Since 1996 a serial killer has been at large in Buenos Aires State, Argentina. Known as the “Highway Maniac”, he has killed at least five times. The victims—largely prostitutes—all had their throats slit or were strangled. Their naked bodies were found along the main road around the eastern city of Mar del Plata, on the Atlantic coast some 240 miles from the capital. One victim had the word “puta”—prostitute—carved on her body. Some had their genitals mutilated. Police had several suspects, but not enough evidence to lead to an arrest. Another seven prostitutes have disappeared and it is feared that they are also victims of the killer.
The first victim was 27-year-old Uruguayan Adriana Jacqueline Fernandez. She was strangled with a cable and her naked body was found in a culvert alongside Highway 226 on 1 July 1996. She worked as an artisan in Mar del Plata and was the only victim who was not thought to be a prostitute.
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