freeway phantom

On the evening of 27 July 1971, 10-year-old Brenda Faye Crockett went to a local store to pick up bread and dog food. About an hour later, when she failed to return home, the Crocketts went looking for her, leaving Brenda’s 7-year-old sister, Bertha, at home.

 Around 9:20 pm, about two hours after Brenda disappeared, Bertha received a phone call from Brenda.  She sobbed as she told Betha that a white man had picked her up and that she would be coming home in a cab. Brenda said she was in Virginia. 

A few minutes later, Brenda phoned again. Brenda said she was with a white man in a house in Virginia. Then she asked an odd question: ‘Did my mother see me?’ Theodore Caldwell,  Brenda’s stepfather, answered the phone and asked to speak with the man, but Brenda said, ‘I’ll see you’, and hung up. Caldwell heard heavy footsteps shortly before the call ended.

Early the next day, a hitchhiker discovered Brenda’s body on Route 50 near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She had been raped and strangled, and a scarf was tied around her neck. The killer had washed her body. The authorities found green fibres on her body.