Swinney had claimed to Arkansas officers that he had a minor accident with a city bus in Dallas that day, presuming to establish an alibi. Tackett called upon the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County sheriff’s office, and the Dallas city bus officials. None of them found a report of the claimed bus accident. The company running the city bus service, Tackett said, “stated that under no circumstances would their driver have failed to report even a minor fender bumping.”
Swinney said that he frequently made trips for Mack’s Travel Bureau at 708 Commerce Street in Dallas. “Upon checking there,” reported Tackett, “I located a former operator of the establishment who knows Swinney, but who would offer no assistance in checking on him. He was very unfriendly to any policeman. The bureau only keeps the signatures of the people who ride with them for a period of one month at a time, for the purpose of maintaining their own books. At the end of that time the cards with the signatures are destroyed.
“Swinney and his wife stated that on April 13 they picked up an old painter at Mack’s Bureau in Dallas and contracted to take him to Shreveport. They claim that he got out of the car near Longview, Texas, and that they brought his clothing on to Texarkana, arriving about dark on the evening of April 13. Upon checking at the travel bureau, there was no record of this man and no one apparently remembered him.”
Sergeant O. D. Morris of the Arkansas State Police’s criminal division wrote the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe’s superintendent of special services in Amarillo about Swinney, noting that he was being held for Virgil Starks’s murder. He mentioned a supervisor’s statement that Harry Woods, alias Harry Lawton, working as a cook on gang #1 at Heman, had purchased a pistol from Swinney. A special agent for the railroad investigated.
“I drove to St. Vrain and talked to Mr. [Albert] Calloway; he stated he seen a gun, a .32 or .38 caliber which he thinks was a Colts make, in the possession of Harry Woods, that Woods told him he bought from Swinney. He also stated there was two guns in camp, one a .22 automatic, which he never seen but talked to Jim Snapp, who did see this gun.
“Calloway also stated this man Snapp seen Swinney give his wife a gun to hold on a man whose name he does not know; then Swinney whipped this man with a chain; is possible this gang can be located at Plains, Texas.”
A crucial statement began to fill in the blanks of Swinney’s activities. Albert O. Calloway, a relief section foreman for the railroad, was foreman of gang #1 at Heman, Oklahoma. One evening he watched a dice game between members of a work gang. Harry Woods, another employee and the cook, also was watching the game after going broke. Woods pulled a pistol from his pocket, either a .32 or .38 caliber automatic, a Colt, and tried to borrow money. Calloway didn’t see anybody lend him money. Calloway asked him where he’d gotten the gun. Woods said he bought it from “the bootlegger.” Calloway later learned “the bootlegger” was Youell Lee Swinney.
“I also know that Swinney had a .22 automatic in his possession as he was trying to sell it,” stated Calloway. “I never did see the gun, but a man, Jim Snapp, now on gang #5, seen the .22 pistol and told other boys that they could buy it.
“This man [i.e., Jim Snapp] also seen Swinney have his wife hold a gun on a man who was working on gang #13, and Swinney then took a chain and whipped this man. I don’t know who the man was that was whipped.”
Peggy’s version was that Swinney held the gun, a shotgun he’d rented, and made her whip the man. This would reverse the role the other witness had assigned her, her account protecting herself by claiming she had no choice but to comply while Swinney held the gun on both her and the whipped victim. The conflicting version made her more of a collaborator, suggesting that Swinney derived deep pleasure from beating the man himself while ensuring that his victim couldn’t fight back.
The incident reminded officers of the savage Hollis-Larey beatings.
It became difficult to trace witnesses who had seen and told others of the events. The extra gang laborers didn’t stay on the job long and were reluctant to provide information to officers. Turnovers were fast. Some worked a few days or a week or a month, often using “flag,” or fictitious, names.
The report concluded: “It seems that Swinney had two or more pistols while working on this gang and that you might be able to pick them up for ballistic examination.”
An excellent suggestion, easier said than done.
The string of circumstances implicating Swinney steadily mounted. Swinney, taking Peggy with him, had fled Arkansas and Texarkana for western Oklahoma soon after the Starks murder. Desperate for money, he had done what he rarely did—he took a job at hard labor, far off from Texarkana. This suggested that he was feeling the heat following the Starks shooting. He needed to get away—far, far away.
If he’d had nothing to worry about, he could have remained in the Texarkana area, his comfort zone.
A pattern had formed. The spat with Peggy’s sister over unpaid board money—a triggering mechanism—had stirred his anger. The Starks shootings followed—within hours. He’d gone to Texarkana. On the way back, a prosecutor could postulate, he had seen the un-shuttered light from the Starks home with Virgil Starks’s silhouette by the window. He parked across the railroad tracks from the residence, waiting for darkness to deepen. Indications were that Peggy was with him, for he rarely, if ever, went anywhere without her. His car was parked heading north, away from Texarkana and toward Delight, where he later claimed to be.
If he’d only intended to steal from Starks’s shop, he wouldn’t have needed a gun. Being armed indicates that he intended to use it, possibly to kill the stranger by the window and anybody else in the house.
All circumstances pointed toward him. He had no alibi. The couple at the hotel in Delight refuted his claim there. Statements added up to place him near the scene and in a sour mood.
Then there was his marriage to Peggy after months of rambling around together with hardly a care to legitimize their relationship. She had filed for divorce from Stanley Tresnick after the Texas murders had thrown the area into turmoil. The day after her divorce became final, he hustled her to Shreveport for an impromptu courthouse wedding, suggesting that he was in haste to gain legal control of her so she could not testify against him, a maneuver that succeeded by mere hours.
Ironically, if an unpaid debt had led to his trip to Texarkana on May 3, another deadbeat episode—not paying rent due Jim Mays—had led to his eventual arrest.
Tracing and locating the .32 and .22 automatic pistols Swinney had been known to possess proved to be a major frustration. Harry Woods, the extra gang’s cook, could not be found. The Santa Fe Railway special agents were unable to locate Woods. The chief of police in Denver reported that Woods had no criminal record there. The draft board in Denver described Woods as born in Mart, Texas, in 1894 (making him fifty-two), five feet six, 150 pounds. His wife’s name was Hortense.
Harry Woods, however, seemed to have vanished, taking with him the suspect weapon that might have tied Swinney to the Starks murder.
Carl Miller of the Arkansas State Police summarized the status of the Swinney couple. His report included several relevant points, indicating the certainty with which Arkansas authorities suspected Swinney’s guilt. His treatment of Swinney’s brief Waynoka experience thickened the plot.
FBI agent Dewey Presley also followed Harry Woods’s trail. Woods had quit the work gang at Hoover, a small town in West Texas. The foreman of the extra gang at Heman confirmed that Woods had purchased the .22 automatic pistol. Records verified that Swinney was employed from May 13 to June 3—close to Peggy’s contention.
Meanwhile, Peggy was still talking. She told Tillman Johnson that while they were in Waynoka, Swinney bootlegged whiskey. At one point, she said, officers got wind of his illegal activities and seemed to be chasing them.
“Swinney got out of the car and ran off to hide,” Johnson reported. “There was another man in the car, name unknown, and they—Peggy and this man—drove off with the whiskey in the car
and hid it out in the woods. They sat in the car for awhile and the man tried to get her to have an entercourse [sic] with him. She refused and later told Swinney about it. It made Swinney mad and they drove over toward Woodward, Oklahoma, where he rented a double-barreled shotgun and returned to the camp at Heman where the man worked. Swinney tried to get her to go into the camp and bring the man out and she refused. He went in and came back to the door of the cook shack and told her to bring the shotgun. She took it to the door and went back to the car. Swinney brought the man out and made him get in the car and then drove off down the road and into the woods on a side road. They got out of the car and Swinney held the gun on the man and made her whip him with a short chain.”
Johnson wrote at the end: “Peggy states that there were several men in the cook shack when they drove up to get the man, that she was sure they knew what was going on. Swinney did not report back for work after this and they left that night.”
Johnson added, as if an afterthought, “Peggy states that she stole the wrist watch from a Mrs. Williams in Waynoka.”
Tackett prepared a sheet listing the assaults and murders by date, commenting on Swinney’s whereabouts on each date.
First, the Hollis-Larey beatings: Swinney and Peggy occupied a room at 1906 West 16th Street, only about three miles from the crime scene.
Second was the Griffin-Moore case: “Peggy was in Miller Court (proven) and Swinney was seen at 9 P.M. on Broad Street, walking alone. He cannot account for his time from there on.”
Third, the Martin-Booker murders: “Swinney states he was at Mr. Stevens’ house that night. Stevens (i.e., Peggy’s father) denies this, but states he was there early the following morning.”
The Starks shootings: “Swinney and Peggy state they were in Delight, Arkansas, in a hotel. They are unable to describe the room. They were seen at about 5 A.M. following morning coming into Antoine from the Prescott road. The people who operate the hotel state they sold a room to a couple about midnight or after.”
Every one of the notations placed Swinney near the scene of each crime. Witnesses disputed his claimed alibis.
In a separate set of notes, Tackett compiled a list of suspicious or potentially incriminating factors connecting Swinney to the crimes.
Upon his arrest, Swinney said, “I will spend the rest of my life behind bars this time.”
Swinney asked Johnson, “Do you think that I could be lucky enough to get out in twenty-five years?”
When car stealing was mentioned en route to the jail, Swinney remarked, “Hell, they don’t want me for car stealing. They want me for something more than that.” Yet he subsequently claimed all he ever did was to steal cars.
When a lawyer told Peggy Swinney that her husband was being held for murder, she exclaimed, “How did they find it out?”
“A maroon Chevrolet figured in one of the Texarkana killings. Swinney took a maroon Chevrolet sedan in March. He used it and gave it away to two hitchhikers (in Lubbock) who promised to deliver it to a man in Texas for him. He gave them a fictitious name. He and Peggy hitchhiked back into Texarkana, Texas. If the car hadn’t been very hot he would not have gotten rid of it and hitched to Texarkana.”
“Peggy Swinney said that Swinney had her whip a man with a piece of chain in Waynoka, Oklahoma, while in a jealous rage. He held a shotgun on him. This might indicate that he was the man who brutally whipped the man and woman in Texarkana, Texas, February 22.”
“All of these killings came after Swinney got out of the pen.”
“According to all the people talked to yet Swinney was in Texarkana or the vicinity at the time of each killing.”
“R. E. Whetstone, Swinney’s brother-in-law, stated that on the morning following the Griffin-Moore killings, Swinney showed up at his house in the early morning in a very nervous state and after a while went to a bed and pulled the sheet over his head and slept the entire day.”
On the Sunday morning very early after the Booker-Martin killings, Swinney showed up at Stevens’s home and drove into the woods and remained nearly all afternoon.
Members of the Stevens family had expressed their belief that Swinney killed those people.
His brother-in-law Whetstone stated that he thought Swinney killed the people.
Swinney told his wife, “I will be blamed for all these killings in Texarkana.”
Swinney was in a hotel at Delight, Arkansas, at 5 A.M. the morning after Starks was killed.
Swinney had always stolen clothes every time he had a chance. He had a suitcase full of clothing at the time of his arrest. Virgil Starks could be the owner of the shirt found among Swinney’s possessions with the word STARK on the back of it. Mrs. Starks stated that she thought it might be one of Virgil’s; it was the right size.
If those who had seen Swinney up close were correct, then Swinney had perpetrated the murders. They added to a web of circumstantial evidence that kept the focus on Swinney.
Officers never placed Swinney in a police lineup, where survivors Hollis or Mrs. Larey—if they had been induced to return to Texarkana—might have identified him, or possibly heard him speak. That incident, in darkness, would have made facial identity difficult, particularly if he actually did wear a mask. As for his voice, it was doubtful that any voice, in a normal tone, would have matched the rage-filled demands made by the February attacker.
Time was running out for holding Swinney without a charge. By then, members of his family had hired lawyers and proposed strategies for setting him free. Miller County had a felony theft charge, for the stolen cars, almost certain to gain a conviction. There were several car-theft cases, on both sides of the state line, for which there was solid evidence. But a felony theft wouldn’t net him more than five to ten years, putting him back on the streets again.
Officers felt certain they had their Phantom. Peggy’s statements were damning. But she could not be compelled to testify against her husband, and she refused to do so. She repeatedly emphasized that she was scared to death of him. Without her testimony, could a murder conviction be won?
The question haunted officers, inspiring them to explore all possible remedies. The goal, they agreed, was urgent: to take Swinney off the streets, with no expectation of release.
But could it be done?
CHAPTER 19
MOUNTING PRESSURES
As summer edged toward September, Texarkana bustled with activity. Veterans scrambled for scarce local jobs; some hired on at the still-functioning defense plants or left home to seek employment wherever they could find it. Others, especially unmarried veterans, crammed into Texarkana College on the GI Bill of Rights. One of the student veterans was David Griffin, Phantom victim Richard Griffin’s younger brother, back from the war in Europe. Overnight the two-year college experienced growing pains as it registered its largest enrollment since its founding in 1927, necessitating use of temporary buildings.
New, pleasant excitement gradually supplanted the spring horrors. The fact that no similar crime had been committed since early May offered guarded hope that the cycle had ended and life could resume as before. The public knew nothing of Swinney’s arrest and interrogation as the major Phantom suspect. With the murder pattern halted, the spotlight had faded from the Texas Rangers and Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, who had been constant reminders of the case’s unsolved status.
Most officers believed that with Youell Swinney behind bars, the Phantom’s reign of terror was over. They remained tight-lipped about it. No charges had been filed. It was uncertain how the case would be handled, and they did not want another media maelstrom on their hands that could potentially harm their efforts to prove that Swinney was the murderer.
By the end of summer, the entire army of lawmen had entered a relaxed mode. The Texas Rangers quietly eased off, without the fanfare that had heralded their arrival. Captain Gonzaullas concluded, on July 23, as for the Texarkana assignment, “it would not be detrimental to this investigation or cause a recurrence of said crimes if we reduced our f
orces to a minimum on this assignment.” On August 15, he made it plain and direct in a memo stamped CONFIDENTIAL, which he distributed to stations in Dallas, Stephenville, Clarksville, and Waco. The two-page, single-spaced letter spelled out the rationale for the shift of personnel, without revealing the specific reason or mentioning the name of the suspect in Arkansas custody.
Important
Special Attention
In order to conduct other assignments by the Rangers’ limited personnel and budget, he said, “and due to the present status of the investigation,” it was time to reduce the force in Texarkana to a minimum. He assigned only two Rangers at a time in Texarkana for the remainder of August, then only one for September. After that, Ranger Stewart Stanley, stationed at Clarksville sixty miles away, would keep tabs on the situation. Occasionally thereafter, Gonzaullas would have a Ranger drop in, to make his presence known.
“At this time,” he emphasized, “I wish to call your attention to the importance of keeping strictly confidential the contents of this letter and our future plans for handling this investigation.”
The orders, secret and never disclosed publicly, were clear to those receiving them.
The Rangers had been called off.
The Phantom no longer threatened.
The Siege of Texarkana was over.
If the residents at large had known this, they would have organized a gigantic spontaneous celebration, the likes of which the city had never known.
And, possibly, a lynching party.
Thirty miles away, in Hope, Arkansas, William Jefferson Blythe was born on August 19, coming into the world as unheralded as the Texas Rangers’ drawdown in Texarkana. He would become William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton, elected forty-six years later as President of the United States. By that time, one of his future 1992 opponents, third-party candidate H. Ross Perot, was a sixteen-year-old student at Texarkana’s Texas High School.
The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror Page 25