The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror

by James Presley

  Texarkana had gained, albeit by dubious means, what very rarely happened—focused attention from both state governments, no longer a stepchild of two states.

  The Texas crimes had already spread caution across the state line, especially after dark. On the night of May 3, Leslie Greer, campaigning for Miller County tax assessor, and his wife attended a fish fry and foxhunt in the rural southern part of the county. When two youths rode up on horses, the group went on alert. Alice Greer fetched her husband’s antique .45 revolver from the car, readying it for action. The young horsemen turned out to be harmless local residents, but the culture of fear only continued to grow with the latest murder.

  “Regular” crime continued at a lesser pace. On Sunday night, May 5, two days after the Starks shooting, a 1941 Chevrolet coach was abandoned in the 300 block of West Broad, near downtown. It bore Louisiana license plates. It remained there for several days before police towed it to the station. Its owner was Joe Morgan of Shreveport. He was notified and went to Texarkana to retrieve his property. He said it had been stolen from him on Saturday, May 4. Phantom fears had slowed other crimes but hadn’t halted car theft, a seemingly endemic practice.

  Rumors surfaced in the Starks case as they had in the earlier murders, threatening to dominate the investigation. Many of them assumed that a different criminal had perpetrated the latest one. Similar rumors had afflicted the Hollis-Larey beatings, even the Griffin-Moore murders, that a jealous suitor was to blame. That they were all unproved hardly slowed them. In the Starks case, rumors eventually embraced almost every variant possibility, without a shred of basis. An angry man wreaking vengeance on Virgil Starks hardly would have stopped shooting after firing only two shots that obviously had killed him. In so-called crimes of passion, the anger is so open, so volatile that the killer may confront his victim in broad daylight and shoot and shoot and shoot, usually until he is out of bullets. He also would have shot and run. No evidence was ever presented to prove any of the rumors. The loose talk also unjustly assailed the integrity of the victims.

  Several distinctive features of the Starks case argued for its being a continuation of the earlier serial killings in Texas, rather than a grudge slaying or a crime of passion.

  One of the case’s strangest aspects feeds into the argument. Despite the widespread terror over the region, Starks sat in a chair by a window with the shade up, at night with the light on inside, dark outside. Anyone could see inside; he couldn’t see outside. Clearly Starks displayed no fear of the “Phantom” or anyone else. He obviously lived in less fear of the serial killer on the Texas side than did all of the others in his community. He might well have been the only one in the region so vulnerable.

  Tillman Johnson believed Starks might have felt protected by virtue of his house being close to a relatively busy major highway, the main route from Texarkana to Little Rock, too public for the killer to risk. And, of course, it was in Arkansas, not Texas—a fact that failed to calm most Arkansans that fateful night.

  The light could be easily seen from the highway. For an impulsive, or compulsive, killer the temptation may have been more than he could resist. The Phantom, by then, whatever his level of intelligence, realized lovers’ lanes were more dangerous for him now, as they were now full of disguised officers setting traps in an area already teeming with lawmen.

  Going by the tracks that Johnson had found, the killer appeared to have gone first to the welding shop, perhaps seeking a piece of equipment he could steal and sell. A thief would have done that. This also would have coincided with the noise Katie had heard outside. A man intent solely on assassination wouldn’t have bothered to check out a welding shop before hurrying to settle a score.

  That said, the man may have intended to steal or rob, but he also came to kill. If he had not, he wouldn’t have been armed. He saw Virgil Starks’s light from the highway. He parked away from the house. He got out of the car with his .22 and flashlight. The flashlight indicated that he needed it to look around, in the shop or anywhere else, for items to steal. The gun suggested a more violent intention. If theft had been his only goal, he wouldn’t have needed a gun.

  The killer must not have lived in the community or known much about it. He seemed unaware that the Starkses had a telephone—until Katie ran to the phone to call. A gunman with murder in mind, and thinking clearly, would have cut the phone line—if he’d known there was one. This argues for the view that a stranger did it. Rural telephones were so rare at that time that everyone in the rural community would have known who had one.

  If he’d known of the phone but for some reason neglected to disable it, he arguably would have shot Katie as she came within range while near Virgil’s body. His first action did not come until she turned from the body and lifted the receiver and started to crank the mechanism to reach an operator. Then he shot her and broke into the house to finish her off. He may have gloated at her horror upon finding her husband dead, then panicked when he saw how fast the alarm could be spread and expedite his capture. If he could not kill the witness, he must escape, as soon as possible.

  Had he killed Katie, no one would have known until the next day, much as had happened in the two Texas double murders. Based on this, his target was not only Virgil Starks but everyone else in the house. He would have had time to see her, watch her, then go inside and kill her up close at his leisure, much as he had done to his earlier victims. The phone, suddenly entering his perception, thwarted him. What may have seemed to be an easy mark at an isolated rural home became a dangerous boomerang. He didn’t have time to search for valuables, even to take Starks’s wallet or money.

  Furthermore, if the killer had been someone known to the Starkses, with a grudge against Virgil, he likely wouldn’t have lingered to see Katie and possibly be recognized. If he didn’t know them, he’d have less fear of recognition—he was a stranger, after all, and one who intended to leave no witnesses.

  After she fled, he didn’t know where she was or where she’d gone. He ran to his car. His actions indicated that he wasn’t familiar with the locale. If he’d known the Starkses and the community, he would have known where the other houses were and where she might have gone. But he was in the dark, in more ways than one—he’d also lost his flashlight.

  Might it have been a “copycat” killing, a term that did not arise for decades? Unlikely, for the killer would run even greater risks, if he had a known motive. He then might be charged with the Texas slayings also.

  As was to be emphasized later by Max Tackett, each of the Texas victims had been shot two times, as if the killer believed no more was needed to wipe out a life. Paul Martin had been shot four times but only twice at a time, the fatal series coming only when the killer, afterward, apparently saw that the boy was still alive from the earlier two shots. In Arkansas, the gunman had shot Starks two times, then Katie twice. He could have shot either more times but had not. A similar mentality seemed behind all of the crimes.

  A parallel to the Griffin-Moore murders was that Starks also was shot almost point-blank in the back of the head, execution-style. The killer seemed to know it was the surest way to kill, not a difficult conclusion to reach but one that suggested knowledge gained through experience.

  If the earlier murders were crimes of opportunity, the Starks shootings could be seen as continuing the pattern. The Starks home provided the easiest target he’d had. Similarities that appeared to link the cases were several: couples only as victims, killing or disabling the male first, two shots at each victim (except for Martin, killed in two series of two shots each), an automatic weapon, vulnerable victims at night, use of a flashlight in at least two, possibly all, cases.

  A strong flashlight was a part of the gunman’s equipment in at least two of the cases, the Hollis-Larey beatings and the Starks shootings.

  Though the caliber was different in the Starks case with a different gun, an automatic was used in the two double murders and probably in the beatings. The same .32 automatic killed four
victims, a .22 automatic rifle or pistol in the Starks case. Knowing that the police were looking for a .32 automatic warned him to dispose of it, while a .22 rifle or pistol wasn’t suspicious—until May 3.

  Arguments seeking to derail the one-killer theory pointed out that a different weapon was used in the Starks slaying, that the victims were at home in a house and not in a secluded lovers’ lane, and that the victims were older. But the argument only deflects, rather than refutes, the position that the same man did it all. The distinctions were superficial. He obviously would change his weapon to a more common, less conspicuous caliber. By then, he had a more restricted cast of potential victims from which to choose. Where else but in a home could the killer find a couple at this point, now that all the lovers’ lanes were being watched? Thousands locked their homes tight and shielded their windows after nightfall. Lovers’ lanes were too hot to explore. He had to hunt his game in a safer venue.

  Additionally, the Starks killer appeared to be an experienced burglar, suggesting that he had committed a range of other crimes in the past, perhaps as a career criminal. He broke into the house as surely and swiftly as an old hand. He hadn’t needed that skill in the previous crimes. He also seemed to know the rural roads on the Texas side better than in the Homan community, suggesting that he had moved from his accustomed base of operations in Bowie County to a less familiar rural Miller County.

  If the killer was a different one, settling a grudge against Starks, why did he linger just outside the window after he had shot Starks dead until Katie entered the room—to eliminate a witness? She had not witnessed the shooting. The shooter had not seen her until she entered the room. He could have shot and run and escaped before she appeared. What had he waited for, to see what she looked like? A grudge-holder would have known both Starks and his wife and what she looked like.

  Did he shoot her to keep her from telephoning to spread the alarm? Undoubtedly. But if he had been a man who lived in the community he would have known the Starkses had one of the few rural telephones. He could have cut the phone line before he fired. The fact that he did not argues for his not knowing about the phone or knowing the couple. Everyone in the community knew of the telephone. A rank stranger would not have.

  Officers never developed any evidence to implicate anyone who knew Starks. They thoroughly checked out every suspect. The Starks shootings were as motiveless as the earlier ones.

  In the final analysis, a logical marshalling of the facts gave greater credence, and a preponderance of evidence, to the same hand’s having committed all four incidents.

  The Texas Phantom, whoever he might be, in all likelihood also was the Arkansas assassin.

  Vexing times took different forms over the nation. In Georgia the Ku Klux Klan—“for white gentiles only”—burned five crosses on top of Stone Mountain as white-robed, masked Klansmen made their first public statement since Pearl Harbor. The Associated Press reported that seven hundred Klansmen initiated five hundred new members into the secret organization, with a thousand wives and children of the new members brought in by five chartered buses. The Georgia group was described as the “mother Klan” of all American KKK organizations.

  The week after the Starks shootings, another body turned up, near Ogden, Arkansas, about sixteen miles north of Texarkana in adjoining Little River County. The body was mutilated, having been run over by a Kansas City Southern train. A Social Security card identified him as Earl Cliff McSpadden; an employment card gave Shreveport, Louisiana, as his home. His brother in Dallas identified him as a transient oil-storage-tank builder. The family had not heard from him since May 3. His letter of that date bore a Texarkana postmark.

  The question immediately rose in lawmen’s and residents’ minds: Was he murdered and his body set on the train track to cover up the crime, or had he been struck by the train and killed instantly? Opinions differed. The coroner, Dr. Frank G. Engler, empaneled a jury that returned a verdict coinciding with his own conclusion that McSpadden had died “at the hands of persons unknown.” Dr. Engler believed McSpadden had been stabbed to death elsewhere and his body placed on the tracks to conceal the crime and perhaps make it look like an accident or suicide. The coroner said that although the body had been mangled, there were no bruises indicating that the man had fallen from a train. He cited a deep wound two inches long on the left temple, deep enough to have caused death, and cuts on the hands indicating the dead man had struggled with an assailant armed with a knife. He said McSpadden had been dead for at least two hours before the body was placed on the tracks, that there wasn’t enough blood around the wounds that caused the death when the body was found. The left arm and leg had been severed. A freight train had passed the Ogden station at five-thirty that morning. Blood was discovered on the highway a short distance from where the body was found early that morning.

  Little River County Sheriff Jim Sanderson strongly disagreed. He felt sure that the train had killed him without help from anyone else. He believed the death was accidental. He felt “absolutely certain” of it and considered the matter closed.

  By then, any suspicious death in Texarkana was likely to gain widespread attention, fueling the rumor mill with a new frenzy of speculation. Few believed this death was connected with the earlier murders, though. It simply did not fit the profile.

  Forty-seven officers, most of them special deputies, patrolled secluded lanes. None would be quoted, but the Gazette reported that “general sentiment of the majority [is] that the motive for the murder was one of sex mania.”

  An unnamed officer said, “I believe that a sex pervert is responsible.” Off the record, one said he thought that in the first murders Griffin’s pockets had been turned inside out in an effort to conceal the real motive.

  In most minds, sexual assault, despite evidence to the contrary, was accepted as the chief motive. The news article built upon that existing belief.

  “A diabolical killer,” the story began, “believed to be a sex maniac, who blasted the peace of a modest farm home into a nightmare of blood and horror Friday night, remained at large Saturday night and it was feared he might strike again at any moment, at any place, at anyone.”

  On Sunday after the murder, three weeks since Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin were shot to death, an eight-column, inch-high, all-capitals headline on page one of the Gazette proclaimed:

  SEX MANIAC HUNTED IN MURDERS

  A three-column picture of Katie Starks in her hospital bed, her head swathed in so much bandaging that she was unrecognizable, commanded a portion of the front page under the headline.

  The prison riot at Alcatraz, tagged as “the most spectacular in the history of federal prisons,” which had ended in the deaths of the convict ringleaders and two guards, with fourteen wounded, remained on page one but was swept from the main headline into a one-column story.

  The Texarkana headline verified the suspicions and anxieties of thousands. Panic knew no bounds.

  What type of man was responsible? The unknown factors promoted his mystique, making kings of rumors. The Gazette began looking for an expert who might offer insight. Two days after the Starks shooting, staffers found their man—Dr. Anthony Lapalla, a psychiatrist at the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institution.

  Dr. Lapalla offered meager solace to a populace already up to their necks in fear. He predicted that the murderer was planning “something as unexpected as was the murder Friday night of Virgil Starks and the attempted murder of Mrs. Starks.” He believed the same man had committed all of the crimes. “He may lay low for awhile, but eventually he probably will commit another crime.”

  He pegged the man to be about middle age, with a strong sex drive, a sadist. Such persons—intelligent, clever, and shrewd—Dr. Lapalla said, often are not apprehended.

  Dr. Lapalla’s theory held that the murderer knew at all times what was going on in the investigation and realized the outlying roads were being constantly patrolled. That would explain why he had struck the Starkses in their ho
me instead of waylaying persons on the roads.

  Basing his theory on case histories of similar criminals, he noted that such criminals often divert attention to a distant community, causing people to believe the crimes are unrelated, or else he may overcome his desire to kill and assault women.

  Dr. Lapalla doubted the man had ever been confined in a mental institution. He also doubted he was a war veteran because such “maniacal tendencies” would have been observed while in the service. The killer wasn’t necessarily a resident of the area, despite how well he seemed to know it. He could have come from another community but acquainted himself with the local situation before beginning his killing spree.

  “This man is extremely dangerous, with a tremendous impulse to destroy,” Dr. Lapalla emphasized. “He works alone, and no one knows what he is doing because he tells no one. He might be thought of as a good citizen. He probably has reasoned that the only way to remain unidentified is to kill all persons at the scene of his crime.”

  Although several black men had been picked up by then, Dr. Lapalla felt certain a white man was to blame.

  With the unknown factor gnawing insidiously at every mind, Dr. Lapalla’s insights soothed few nerves and only brought into the open old hidden fears. The Phantom could be anyone! Residents wondered about the man across the street, the respected businessman, the minister’s son, or some returning veteran perversely reacting to his combat trauma.

  Satisfied that the February beatings had been the early work of the same man who had attacked and killed other couples, J. Q. Mahaffey dispatched a reporter to Frederick, Oklahoma, to interview Mary Jeanne Larey, the young woman beaten in February. The editor contracted with Paul A. Burns, a printer, entrepreneur, and pilot, to fly Lucille Holland there. Burns’s 65-horsepower, two-place side-by-side Luscombe Silvaire had a three-hour range and he expected to reach Frederick, Oklahoma, before dark. A stout headwind, however, slowed the plane significantly. He had to stop once to refuel, then land at Frederick in the dark after buzzing the field to bring the airport manager out to train car headlights on the field.