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

by James Presley

  If Youell and his father appeared to be dysfunctional and keeping the rest of the family under continual strain, there was ample documentation.

  Although Swinney probably decided Arkansas didn’t have a strong case against him in the Starks murder, he could never be sure. As far as he knew with certainty, he still might be tried, found guilty, and electrocuted. He knew they were holding him for “more than stealing a car,” as he had blurted out that fateful July day.

  Fear of the unknown, which had once terrorized the region, now turned on Swinney. Did Arkansas have the goods on him? Well, probably not a strong case. But what did they have? Were they still making a case, compiling more evidence? They had something, and they had been grilling Peggy, and what had she said?

  He didn’t know Peggy had spilled the beans on the Booker-Martin murders. By then, he was not anxious about that. He was in Arkansas custody. The Starks case was fresher, leaving him more anxious. The prospect of serving time in Texas on a car-theft charge had its appealing side. He remembered how tough it was in Arkansas’s penitentiary where he had served time at Tucker Farm in the early 1940s.

  Swinney also was in the crossfire of conflicting legal advice. His father and McVey came forth almost daily with strategy, some of it the opposite of previous policies. The prisoner counseled with his attorneys near at hand. When a deal came, it had to be considered. Once extradition loomed as a reality, there seemed to be little choice.

  Tillman Johnson remembered that a deal had been offered, through Swinney’s lawyers, to go to Texas and be tried for car theft under the habitual criminal act. He named William Haynie as the attorney who had negotiated for Swinney. He recalled that Swinney had jumped at it. A deal carried the welcomed prospect of getting out of Arkansas and from under the shadow of its electric chair and into Texas and some sort of certainty of life. Granted, it was prison life; he could deal with that. He’d done it before. And he’d always gotten out long before his sentences ended.

  It was a good deal that he welcomed with relief, Johnson believed.

  Texas officers, once he had been extradited from Arkansas, took Youell Swinney to Mt. Pleasant, sixty miles west, in Titus County. If word somehow slipped out that Bowie County authorities were holding the major Phantom suspect, it wasn’t hard to predict that vigilante violence might follow. Lynchings were far from rare in Bowie County and Texarkana-area history. Bill Presley vowed to take no chances over how an angry citizenry might react. He remembered the last lynching in Texarkana, while his predecessor was serving as sheriff, and he was adamant that one would never happen during his watch.

  Usually he took prisoners to nearby Cass County for security purposes. This case, however, was the biggest that had ever confronted Bowie County. Neighboring Cass County was too close. A lynching party wouldn’t have far to go; besides, two of the Phantom’s victims, Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore, had come from Cass County. The feeling and tensions were as high there as anywhere else. Presley called Aubrey Redfearn, then winding down his tenure as sheriff of Titus County. Would he take a special prisoner for him temporarily? Redfearn would be glad to accommodate a fellow sheriff. Presley and a deputy hustled Swinney over to the jail one block off the town square in Mt. Pleasant. It was far enough away that the prisoner should be safe. Officers remained tight-lipped, intending that nothing should reach the public about their captive.

  On December 9, Youell Swinney wrote a postcard to a sister, giving as his return address “c/o County jail, Mt. Pleasant, Texas.”

  “Trust you have my letter of a couple days ago. Geneva send me some money & a change of clothes at once. Get in touch with Mr. McVey at once. You, Joe & Cleo come to see me at once.”

  His repeated admonitions of “at once” could hardly have failed to remind the others of the father Swinney’s time-centered demands, suggesting the source of Youell’s appeals to urgency.

  While Swinney remained in custody in Mt. Pleasant and Peggy in Miller County, a new rumor erupted that threatened to undo the carefully concealed plans of Texarkana officers. A one-column story on December 10, datelined Dallas from the Associated Press, came close to making public what was believed to be a well-guarded secret.

  ‘GOOD SUSPECT’ IN PHANTOM CASE

  In Dallas, Ranger Captain “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas told reporters that officers had a “good suspect” in the case, good news indeed. He said he and Sheriff Bill Presley were working on some “good stuff that has not definitely been eliminated.” He didn’t say where the investigation was being made, nor would he name the suspect. “Too many times good leads have turned into duds,” he said.

  The report went on to put Gonzaullas’s quote in context. “Widespread rumors of an early break in the five Texarkana murder cases have been heard in the past two weeks,” the AP story continued. “Reports have been heard from such widely separated cities as Austin and Midland.”

  A Texarkana reporter pursued the local angle, leaving the reader to wonder what was going on. “In Texarkana, Sheriff Presley said he had nothing definite in the case and did not feel he could make any statement that would enlighten the public any more than those which he had already issued. He said he knew of nothing of significance to report at the time.”

  The final paragraph of the story stated the current status of the case.

  “Although the reward fund set up for the capture or information leading to the capture of the person responsible for the killings has been dissolved and residents of the Texarkana area have become less nervous, interest still is high in the case and officers continue their probe of what still remains an unsolved case.”

  Whether Gonzaullas’s tip, or leak, to the press was intended to renew media interest in the case or whether he hoped to be the first to signal a break was not clear. Almost immediately, to those who knew anything about the case, it became obvious that lawmen were practicing poor coordination. Others were puzzled.

  The “good suspect”—undoubtedly Gonzaullas was referring to Swinney—evaporated overnight. The next day, the local sheriffs joined together to discredit the Dallas-based story.

  PROMISING LEAD IN PHANTOM CASE PROVES DUD

  PRESLEY AND DAVIS SAY EXTENSIVE

  QUESTIONING OF COUPLE UNAVAILING

  The story quoted Presley and Davis as saying “the latest and most promising lead” had “fizzled out and the officers were no nearer the solution of the puzzling crimes than they were months ago.” It was an emphatic slamming of the door on the “good suspect” story. The report went on to say that officers of several jurisdictions had been “working day and night trying to validate the story of a woman that her husband had slain Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker, a teen-age couple, after robbing them of a small sum of money.

  “The woman’s statement followed so closely the known facts of the case as deduced by the officers that they were almost positive she was telling the truth and at one time were almost at the point of announcing a break in the case,” the quotation continued. “Subsequently, however, the woman repudiated her story completely and said that neither she nor her husband had had anything to do with the slayings.

  “The investigating officers, however, refused to dismiss the pair as suspects in the case and about 10 days ago the woman was taken to Austin where she was questioned extensively. The man later was taken to Austin and was also questioned at length.”

  The Gazette quoted the officers as saying, “However, our investigation, after all was said and done, has disclosed that the woman was not telling the truth and that on the night Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker were slain, these two, the man and the woman, were asleep in an automobile under a bridge near San Antonio.

  “We will continue to check clues on the killings and will question all persons against whom there is any suspicion.”

  It was clear, despite the statement, that the officers did not believe they “were no nearer the solution than they were months ago.” They still held Swinney and his wife, in separate jails. If they were the couple m
entioned who were supposed to have been sleeping in a car under a bridge in south Texas, then the officers were trafficking in misinformation, doctoring their statement to discount the rumors already circulating and to calm down the potential public uproar likely to ensue if a full disclosure came forth. The news story was basically accurate except for two things: the Swinneys did not sleep under a bridge near San Antonio the night Betty Jo and Paul were murdered, and Peggy’s statement still stood. Both Swinneys were known—proved—to have been in the Texarkana area during the murders. She was taken to Austin, but no records reflect that he had been taken as well. Swinney was to remain behind bars and looking forward to a trial date. The story served the purpose for which it had been designed, to spike the rumor and prevent the premature exposure of Swinney as the major suspect in the crimes for which he hadn’t yet been charged.

  The inadvertent announcement of the “good suspect” in the midst of delicate negotiations came close to negating months of hard investigative work and legal maneuvers.

  Back in Missouri, McVey continued to push his contention that the Phantom was someone other than Youell Swinney. His candidate was the same W— he had mentioned before. McVey wrote Cleo Swinney that he knew of two “suspicious characters around here,” one, he said, fitting the general description of W—. He passed on his suspicions to the local sheriff, but the “suspicious characters” suddenly left town. The next night a man he did not see, but who also fit the description, inquired in town of the Rev. Mr. Swinney. Later in the afternoon while S. C. Swinney was at the post office, “this man”—whom he also didn’t see—rattled the door of the Swinney home, then ran when Mrs. Swinney went to the door. Swinney’s daughter (and Youell’s sister) insisted that W— was in Louisiana at the time, but McVey persisted in his belief that the man was in Missouri.

  Stanley Swinney joined in with McVey in flailing out at W—, who he claimed, without evidence, was in Montgomery City with “a St. Louis killer” presumably stalking the elder Swinney. It was a pattern, tinged with paranoia and denial, that was to persist.

  McVey remained suspicious. Cleo sent McVey a newspaper clipping that the reward fund had been dissolved. McVey wrote back for him to be on guard. “I am confident,” wrote McVey, “that it has not been dissolved and that it has been increased considerably in the past month or two.” By then John Frederick had called McVey to report his conversation with Maxwell Welch, soon to be Bowie County’s district attorney, who promised “that he would see that there was no crooked stuff or Third degree pulled off.”

  A few days later, Frederick called McVey, reporting on another talk with Maxwell Welch. Welch assured Frederick “that Youell would be given every consideration; that he would never be indicted for murder, and that the only thing that Texas had against him was the car theft and parole violation, and that it was in view of this fact that he was a parole violator from The State of Texas that the Governor released him to Texas over our protests.”

  On December 19, Peggy Swinney was released on her own recognition by the Miller County Circuit Court. She had cooperated. This was her reward, freedom for the time being. If things went well, she would never return to jail.

  On the Sunday night before Christmas, Max Tackett and Tillman Johnson narrowly escaped death when a seemingly routine traffic stop escalated into a brief but bloody gun battle on Highway 67 East near Fulton, Arkansas. When the last shot was fired, Tackett lay critically wounded and their two prisoners dead. Tackett and Johnson had arrested a white man and a black man as suspects in the theft of a truck. Tackett assembled the two men in the police car to take them to jail in Texarkana, with the white man in front, the black man in the back seat. Johnson, following behind in the stolen truck, saw the police car slow and roll toward a culvert. He got out and sprinted toward the car. The white man held a .38 caliber revolver, later determined to have been stolen from a hardware store in Texarkana, to Tackett’s stomach for several seconds. The officer twisted his body and the bullet went into the side of his abdomen. Powder burns scorched his clothing where the bullet had entered.

  “This man has a gun—watch out!” Tackett yelled out.

  The white man jumped from the car and began firing at Johnson. At close range by then, Johnson seized the man’s wrist, turning the gun toward the ground. The man kept firing, the bullets going into the ground. Johnson pulled his own pistol and emptied it into the man, who fell dead to the ground.

  Johnson looked into the back of the police car, where the black prisoner was scuffling with the wounded Tackett. Tackett managed to pull his own gun and shot the man in the head, killing him instantly.

  Johnson then entered the police car, with the wounded Tackett sprawled in the seat and the dead man’s body on the floor, and drove at top speed to the emergency room at Michael Meagher Hospital.

  City officers rushed out to the bloody scene, finding the white man’s body. Nearby in the gravel, they found a flashlight, still shining.

  Tackett recovered, once more reminded of the hazards of “routine” police work. It had been almost a year since the December 31, 1945, gun battle at Fulton when Tackett was fired upon five times before he and State Policeman Charley Boyd killed the ex-convict bandit initiating the shootout.

  During this period, the elder Swinney struggled with his own personal crises. A Seconal addiction, which he attributed to his physician’s prescription during a previous hospitalization, kept him on the verge of “going to pieces” each time he faced withdrawal. Overshadowing his drug dependency, he lost his livelihood as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery City when deacons learned of his son Youell’s record and reputation. Church members knew nothing of the Seconal addiction, but they didn’t want a pastor whose son had served time in the penitentiary. The minister wanted to relocate, to a Southern church, if possible, believing there such a situation would not be a taint.

  In mid-January the minister wrote Youell of the deacons asking him to resign. He assured Youell he would work to get him released—even if he got a life sentence, he would serve less time than he had previously. He also enclosed a self-explanatory letter from Texarkana defense attorney Elmer Lincoln. Lincoln offered to take Youell’s case for a fifty-dollar retainer and a nominal fee to defend him, and start work on the case. The odds were that Lincoln, knowing only the father’s version, failed to realize the full nature of the case. The Reverend Swinney did not follow through. He appeared to have a less expensive remedy in mind. He advised his son that, the prosecutor being inexperienced, he should not try to defend himself and not ask for court-appointed counsel. Just plead Not Guilty and any conviction would be overturned.

  The minister insisted, to his son Cleo, that a lawyer would get Youell off with a light or suspended sentence. Later in the month he changed his mind, saying Youell should plead Not Guilty by reason of insanity, contradicting his earlier advice, no doubt to the bewilderment of the recipients of his directives.

  On January 13, 1947, the Bowie County Grand Jury for the Fifth Judicial District convened in the stately 1890s courthouse in the county seat, Boston, in the west end of the county and indicted Youell Lee Swinney for felony theft. His bail was set at $7,500, a large sum for the time.

  Bowie County could be called the County of Three Bostons. Within miles of each other in the western end there were Boston, Old Boston, and New Boston. The county seat was in just plain Boston, consisting of one square block on which the courthouse and jail were set. Decades later, the seat was moved to New Boston.

  The indictment, prepared by the new district attorney, Maxwell Welch, accused Swinney of stealing, on March 3, 1946, the automobile belonging to Luther McClure, valued at five hundred dollars. The grand jurors also noted Swinney’s previous convictions, August 28, 1944, in Texas for felony robbery by assault, and his February 11, 1941, Arkansas conviction for grand larceny.

  Witnesses before the grand jury included Luther McClure, the owner of the stolen car, FBI agents Horace Hallett and J. C. Calhoun, and J. B. Co
mo, deputy sheriff in Beaumont.

  The foreman of the grand jury, G. Ross Perot, a Texarkana cotton broker, signed the indictment. Perot’s teenaged son, H. Ross Perot, was a senior at Texas High.

  There is no extant documentary evidence that Swinney and his defenders cut a deal with authorities, but numerous lawmen have attested that such a negotiation did occur. Each side had a goal: the authorities wanted to keep Swinney behind bars, Swinney wanted to escape the electric chair. Several officers have asserted this as a fact, though not written on any public document that exists. Tillman Johnson, the last lawman to die, repeated the same story. In essence, Swinney was offered the opportunity to be transferred to Texas and be tried for felony theft under the state’s habitual criminal act, for which a conviction would likely mean a life sentence. But whatever sentence he received, it would not be death. Anxious over his fate in Arkansas, according to this version, Swinney was eager to accept the transfer and plead guilty in Bowie County. The details, the oral recapitulation goes, were worked out by members of Swinney’s family and his attorneys in Texarkana. Some of the events that followed tend to bear out this account.

  While the shadow of the Phantom’s deeds hung over the town like a Halloween wraith, Swinney’s name had never appeared in print or on the radio. Only lawmen and members of his family knew the reason he was being held. Even though he made the front page of the Texarkana Gazette on February 11, 1947—two days after his thirtieth birthday—his name appeared almost as an afterthought, as better-known local police characters, notably Maxie Lott and Johnny Orr, Sr., hogged the headlines. Even then, it was only a one-column story at the bottom of the page.