The Zodiac Killer, discussed in Chapter 11, remains one of America’s most infamous unidentified serial slayers. Efforts continue to identify the Zodiac, but none of the suspects proposed thus far is tied to any particular crime by substantive evidence. One fact remains clear: if the Zodiac was Texarkana’s Phantom, as author William Rasmussen suggests, then Youell Swinney did not commit the 1946 attacks.
On August 21, 1968, adulterous lovers Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locci were shot in a rural lane outside Florence, Italy, while Locci’s young son slept in the car’s backseat, surviving unharmed. Police eventually charged Locci’s husband with the double murder and he spent six years in prison, but while he was incarcerated someone else used the same .22-caliber pistol in further slayings. Between September 1974 and September 1985, the killer locally known as Il Mostro—“The Monster”—claimed fourteen more victims in seven attacks. Unlike the first crime, female victims in the subsequent attacks were mutilated, with taunting letters and part of one woman’s breast mailed to the state prosecutor’s office. Elderly suspect Pietro Pacciani, a paroled killer and wife-beater, was convicted of fourteen murder counts in November 1994, but an appellate court released him in February 1996. Prosecutors later charged four of his aged friends with taking turns as nocturnal killers, and two of them were convicted in five of the outstanding cases. In August 2001, police changed their tune once again, claiming that unnamed members of a wealthy secret society had committed the murders. By that point, most observers agreed that the state was grasping at straws.7
On May 11, 1970, police in Norman, Oklahoma, found college students David Sloan and Cheryl Lynn Benham dead in the trunk of Sloan’s car, parked on a lover’s lane called Ten Mile Flat. The couple had been missing since a Saturday frat party on May 9, last seen alive at 11:30 P.M. Both were shot multiple times, defined by the state medical examiner as “more than four or five times” each. Benham, found nude, had also suffered massive blunt force trauma to the head and face. Officers recovered sixteen .22-caliber cartridge cases from the scene, but they never found the weapon or the shooter. The case remains unsolved today.8
Terror haunted the borough of Queens once more, as a gunman armed with a .44-caliber pistol killed six victims and wounded seven others in a series of shootings between July 1976 and July 1977. The gunman preferred couples parked in cars, but also shot victims on sidewalks and stoops, including one woman attacked while alone. As in the “3X” case, weird letters mailed to newspapers inflamed the local panic generated by a random killer who called himself “Sam’s son.” Triggerman David Berkowitz, arrested in August 1977, claimed that he received his marching orders from a neighbor’s dog—which he had also shot, but failed to kill—and later named several real-world individuals as alleged members of a cult involved in the slayings. Convicted alone, on multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, Berkowitz received a sentence of twenty-five years to life and remains in prison today. One of his alleged fellow cultists is also imprisoned for multiple, unrelated murders, while two others subsequently died in peculiar circumstances, officially ruled to be suicides.9
Berkowitz was still at large in January 1977, when a stalker armed with a .38-caliber pistol began shooting couples parked on lover’s lanes around Atlanta, Georgia. Between January 21 and March 12, striking at four-week intervals, the prowler shot six victims, killing three. Wounded survivors described their assailant as an African American male, but could provide no further clues. The case remains unsolved today.10
On August 22, 1990, a knife-wielding stalker killed young lovers Andy Atkinson and Cheryl Henry while they were parked on a lonely cul-de-sac outside Houston, Texas. The attacker bound Atkinson to a nearby tree, then cut his throat before raping Henry and slitting her throat in turn. In 2007, DNA evidence matched semen from that crime scene to evidence from an earlier rape in Houston. The victim survived in that case, describing her attacker as a white man with an olive complexion, in his mid-thirties, but he has not been identified or apprehended.11
Around Thohoyandou, South Africa, serial killer David Mmbengwa claimed seven lives between May 1996 and January 1998. While his victims included two police officers and an agricultural department official, Mmbengwa was known to reporters at the “Lover’s Lane Killer,” for his attacks on courting couples. Convicted at trial in July 2001, Mmbengwa received seven life terms for murder, plus forty-five years on additional charges including robbery, possession of illegal firearms, escape from custody, and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.12
What kind of person stalks and murders couples—or invades their homes, as Texarkana’s Phantom may have done, when law enforcement stakeouts kept him from his favored hunting ground on lover’s lane? There is no simple answer, but interviews of serial killers conducted by FBI agents and forensic psychologists since the 1970s suggest some possible answers.
Experts recognize many different categories of murder and rape, some of which clearly have no bearing on the Texarkana case. The pertinent classes include felony murder, with killing as an adjunct to some other crime (such as robbery), and sexual homicide, wherein various sexual acts precede or follow the murder.13
Felony murders may be either indiscriminate or situational. Indiscriminate felony murders are planned in advance, without specific victims in mind, as when a bandit decides to rob a liquor store and kill any witnesses present. Situational felony murders are unplanned, occurring in the course of some other crime due to panic, confusion, or sudden impulse.14 It might be argued that the Texarkana Phantom’s actions in his double murders of March and April 1946 constitute felony murders, but the rape of both female victims confirmed from law enforcement files, coupled with the assault on Mary Jeanne Larey in February, indicate that the crimes were sexual in nature, with attempted robbery of their male companions a secondary offense, committed almost as an afterthought.
Authorities recognize four categories of sexual homicide: organized, disorganized, mixed, and sadistic. Organized sexual murders are planned in advance, often with a specific victim or victim “type” in mind, and are carried out methodically, even ritualistically, with the slayer taking pains to avoid detection. Disorganized attacks are generally unplanned and spontaneous, leaving a crime scene littered with clues. Mixed sexual homicides, as the label suggests, include elements of both organized and disorganized murder, sometimes indicating participation by two or more offenders with different personalities. Sexual sadists derive primary satisfaction from inflicting mental and/or physical anguish, indicated by prolonged torture or other abuse.15
Based on the evidence available, Texarkana’s Phantom seems to have been a “mixed” offender, with sadistic overtones. His primary motive, it seems, was sexual violation of the female victims, either by “natural” rape or some other means. Published allusions to mutilation and protracted abuse, spanning two hours or more—if accurate—clearly indicate a desire to inflict pain and fear. Most serial killers evolve over time, learning from mistakes, adapting to achieve their goals more economically and to avoid capture. That evolution may explain the Phantom’s progress from attacks in lover’s lane to a nocturnal home invasion, although various investigators on the case separated the Starks attack from preceding crimes. Likewise, the change of weapons might represent an attempt to frustrate police—unless we accept Peggy Swinney’s tale that her husband lost his .32-caliber Colt in a card game.
Prison interviews with organized sexual killers revealed certain common traits: most had a high birth order status (a first-born child or eldest son), had fathers with stable employment, experienced inconsistent childhood discipline, were socially and sexually competent (with willing partners), lived with a partner (married or otherwise), preferred skilled employment, enjoyed free mobility and kept vehicles in good condition, committed crimes after incidents of precipitating situational stress (loss of a job, dissolving personal relationships, etc.), drank alcohol in preparation for a crime, professed a controlled mood during the crime, followed po
lice investigations through the media, and might change jobs or leave town in the wake of a crime.16
Examination of an organized crime scene revealed some or all of the following characteristics: evidence of advance planning, selection of targeted strangers as victims, demand for a submissive victim including physical restraints, personalizing of victims through controlled (even scripted) conversation, aggressive acts against the victims prior to death, removal of the murder weapon and other evidence, and transportation of bodies from the murder scene to a separate dump site. Obsessive fantasy dominates organized killers, often driving them to leave bodies posed or mutilated in specific ways that have significance to the slayer.17
Disorganized sexual killers, by contrast, displayed traits including minimal birth order status, unstable parental employment coupled with harsh childhood discipline, social immaturity and sexual incompetence with voluntary partners, commonly living alone, a poor/erratic work history, residing or working near crime scenes, commission of crimes with minimal preceding stress or use of alcohol, profession of an anxious mood during the crimes, minimal interest in media coverage of the crimes or ongoing investigations, and little or no change in life-style after the murders.18
Evidence found at disorganized sex-murder scenes commonly indicates a spontaneous crime, a victim and/or location familiar to the killer, sudden violence (a “blitz attack”) with minimal conversation and no restraint of the victim, sexual acts committed posthumously, with copious evidence—corpses, weapons, etc.—left at the “random and sloppy” crime scene.19
The Texarkana Phantom, once again, appears to be a “mixed” offender. We have no way of knowing whether any of the victims knew their killer, but he kept a vehicle in working order, came prepared to kill in each case (hooded, armed, and carrying a flashlight), he engaged in conversation with the first surviving victims, sexually assaulted the female victims prior to killing them, and moved some of the bodies after death. Conversely, failure to retrieve spent cartridge casings might be deemed disorganized behavior, and the killer’s actions in the Starks home—if that was, in fact, a Phantom crime—suggest erratic, uncontrolled behavior.
If Youell Swinney was the Phantom, what we know of him supports the “mixed” hypothesis. The 1920 census lists him as the youngest of five children—low birth order status, hence presumably disorganized. His father was a Baptist minister, which for the time and place suggests (but does not prove) strict discipline. Likewise, some ministers—particularly those in southern rural areas—may be only sporadically employed. Swinney was married after the attacks but had no children from that union, leaving us to speculate in vain about his sexual performance. No surviving source describes his employment history, but he was known to police as a car thief and counterfeiter with a history of assault. Statements from his bride and fellow prison inmates implicate him in the crimes, but he was never charged in any of the Phantom’s raids, and investigators continued their search for viable suspects long after Swinney was imprisoned for life as a habitual criminal.
Why, if they were certain of his guilt?
The Phantom’s first three crimes were clearly sexual attacks, based on the violation of his female victims. He may have intended to rape Katy Starks, if in fact that attack was part of the series. Earl McSpadden’s stabbing, if related to the other crimes, remains as enigmatic as the victim. Among the various categories of sexual assault, those with possible relevance to the Phantom’s case include felony rape (committed in conjunction with some other, nonsexual crime) and sadistic rape.20
Felony rapes are subdivided into primary and secondary categories. Primary felony rape occurs during commission of another crime, such as burglary or robbery, when the offender impulsively decides to rape a victim coincidentally found at the scene. The crime originally planned would still occur in any case, while the rape constitutes a distraction. In secondary felony rape, the offender plans a sexual assault in conjunction with some other crime, such as robbery or car-jacking.21 It is possible that the Phantom’s first attack, in February 1946, was planned as a straightforward robbery, then digressed into a sexual assault on Mary Jeanne Larey when the assailant found his victims had no money. The next two crimes, however, seem to have been planned with rape in mind.
The Phantom’s interlude with Larey seemingly unleashed desires that may have been suppressed before the first attack. The penetration with a foreign object classifies that crime as a sadistic rape, employing force beyond any required to compel victim compliance.22 While the act of rape itself was not completed in the first attack, we have specific references to rape in law enforcement documents from two successive crimes, coupled with later media allusions to prolonged abuse and even mutilation of the female victims. No particulars of those assaults are provable today, without detailed autopsy protocols, yet the indications of sadistic rape remain persuasive.
And still, crucial questions remain unanswered.
Was Youell Swinney the Phantom? Max Tackett and Tillman Johnson thought so, yet Captain Gonzaullas and other officers working the case pursued different suspects for over a decade after Swinney received his life sentence. DPS Director Homer Garrison went to his grave in May 1968, calling the Phantom’s crime spree “the Number One unsolved murder case in all Texas history.” Three years later, Weldon Glass—district attorney on the Texas side in 1946—still wondered if police had ever questioned the killer. “The Phantom might have gone through the mill,” Glass told the Gazette, “and then, on the other hand, he might not have.”23
If so, he slipped through.
Most suspect names were excised from the FBI’s extensive Phantom file before it was released to public scrutiny; if one of them was Swinney’s, nothing in that file connects him to the crimes in any way. Swinney admitted nothing to police, and they retrieved no evidence connecting him to any of the crimes. By all accounts, his bride’s confession was incriminating but changed significantly in successive recitations. We are told that she directed officers to Betty Jo Booker’s lost saxophone, but that instrument was only found by accident, three months after Peggy’s interrogation. Swinney’s supposed confessions to prison mates may have been fabricated—by them, to win favor with authorities, or by him, to enhance his reputation as a tough guy. If any fingerprints or other evidence from any crime scene had been linked to Swinney, we may take for granted that he would have been indicted, tried, convicted—and, most likely, executed.
So, his guilt or innocence stands unresolved.
Did the Phantom murder Virgil Starks and/or Earl McSpadden? Tillman Johnson seems to have believed, at least in private, that the Starks attack sprang from a love triangle unrelated to the other crimes. That view may be supported by omission of the case from several Texas Ranger documents listing the names of other Phantom victims. Against that argument, the FBI’s extensive file consistently includes Starks and his wife among the Phantom’s victims and includes no gossip (always eagerly received at bureau headquarters) suggesting another offender or motive. Never has the media, despite its many references to sexual attacks suppressed by the police in 1946, run any exposés of women scorned or hanky-panky in the Starks case. No proof of a love affair, much less a murder spawned by jealousy, is presently available—nor likely will it ever be.
McSpadden’s case is even more peculiar. We know virtually nothing of the victim other than his name, his occupation, and that he passed through Shreveport on his way to die in Texarkana. With the passage of another decade, some reporters managed to forget even those meager details, lapsing into repetition of the fable that some unknown man, perhaps the Phantom, had committed suicide to end the string of murders. Stabbed and left to be dismembered by a passing train, McSpadden broke the Phantom’s killing pattern, and his slayer may have been some other villain, still unknown.
Again, the question stands unanswered.
Was the Phantom white or African American? The two surviving victims who observed him—hooded, in the dark, half-blinded by a flashlight’s glare
—could not agree. Mary Jeanne Larey arguably had a closer look behind the Phantom’s mask, but in the circumstances, could she accurately judge his race from only lips and eyelids partially exposed?
Statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports speak to the probability of interracial murder in the lover’s lane attacks. In 2010, America’s identified white murderers preyed chiefly on members of their own race: 90.7 percent of their victims were white, 7.1 percent were African American, 1.5 percent belonged to some other race, and .7 percent were unidentified by race. African American killers also hewed closely to the color line: 83.4 of their victims were black, 15.1 percent were white, 1 percent belonged to some other race, and .5 percent were unidentified by race.24
That said, we know that Clarence Hill broke the mold before the Texarkana Phantom struck, and that Atlanta’s unknown gunman followed suit in 1977. Without specific evidence of race—a hair, perhaps, or DNA (first used to exonerate a rape-murder suspect in 1986; first used to convict one in 198725)—no definitive statement on the Phantom’s race is possible today.
And lastly, is the Phantom still alive? We may say no, conclusively, if Youell Swinney was the murderer. If he was innocent, the Phantom might be living, well advanced in age since he was old enough to drive in 1946—but living, still. Did he go on to other crimes, perhaps like California’s Zodiac, changing his methods to avoid detection? Was he jailed on unrelated charges or committed to a mental institution? Run down by a bus or stricken with a terminal disease? Did he “retire” from rape and murder as abruptly as he started?
The Texarkana Moonlight Murders: The Unsolved Case of the 1946 Phantom Killer Page 24