freeway phantom

Overview

White House By I, Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Freeway Phantom

A suspected paedophile murdered six African-American girls in Washington between April 1971 and September 1972. He strangled his victims, aged ten to eighteen, and sexually assaulted most of them. 

 

The police did not solve the Freeway Phantom murders, and in 2018, they were still open as cold cases in the Metropolitan Police District of Columbia (MPDC) Homicide Division. A reward of up to $150,000 for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the murders is still in existence.

 

In the early 1970s, the MPDC was predominately white even though African-Americans constituted over seventy per cent of the population of the District of Columbia. This imbalance led many to speculate that the investigation was hampered by racism. 

 

‘Those black girls didn’t mean anything to anybody – I’m talking about on the police department,’ claimed Tommy Musgrove, who joined the MPDC in 1972 and later headed the homicide unit. ‘If those girls had been white, they would have put more manpower onto it, there’s no doubt about that,’ he added.

 

The critics may have a point, but would additional resources have made any difference? 

 

Police indifference was evident from the start.  Carol Spinks’ kidnapping and murder coincided with huge anti-war protests in Washington. Unfortunately, the MPDC prioritised the demonstrations, depriving the investigation of Carol’s assault and murder of the resources it needed. Obviously, at the time, the MPDC considered crowd control a higher priority than the rape and murder of a young black girl.

 

The MPDC – and the press – only began to take the murders seriously with the death of Nenomoshia Yeates, the Freeway Phantom’s fourth victim. Indeed, after Nenomoshia’s death the police finally acknowledged that a serial killer was operating in Washington.  This was a significant admission as police in the affected jurisdictions were conducting separate, parallel investigations into the killings. The FBI got involved after Nenomoshia’s death, and, eventually, a multi-jurisdictional task force was established to oversee and coordinate the various murder investigations. 

 

Law enforcement  lost valuable evidence when it failed to discover Darlene’s body on 12 July 1971, four days after she disappeared. This is particularly galling as the body was visible from the highway, and a diligent search would have found it. But, in a prima facie case of police negligence,  a police cruiser sent to investigate simply drove past the site without stopping, even though the MPDC had received two independent reports of a body near the freeway.  

 

In The Freeway Phantom Revisited (2009), MPDC Cold Case Detective James Trainum and retired Homicide Detective Romaine Jenkins discussed the Freeway Phantom murders. If senior police downplayed the killings, the same could not be said for officers engaged in the day-to-day investigation.  Trainum and Jenkins were horrified by the killings and were anxious to bring the perpetrator to justice. 

 

Ultimately, there were many reasons the MPDC missed catching the Freeway Phantom. Firstly, the MPDC failed to establish a clear motive for the killings. 

 

Detective Trainum, for example, believed the Freeway Phantom was a paedophile motivated by sex and the thrill of controlling his victims. He thought the Freeway Phantom killed to avoid capture by eliminating potential witnesses. Trainum further surmised that press coverage of the killings fed the killer’s ego, prompting him to continue his crime spree. 

 

Romaine Jenkins proffered a different theory. In The Freeway Phantom Revisited, she says that the Freeway Phantom set out to kill several girls and stopped when he achieved his goal. In short, she believed the killer had murder – not sex – on his mind.

 

Both Romaine Jenkins and Trainum thought a local committed the crimes. They theorised the killer was an African-American male who lived in the same neighbourhood as one or more of his victims. They believed the killer had to be black because a white man operating in a black neighbourhood would have attracted too much attention. 

 

Moreover, they speculated that the killer acted alone and took fright after the killing of Brenda Woodard. Trainum thought his confidence was shaken when Brenda fought to save her life. On the other hand, Romaine Jenkins believed the killer made a mistake of some kind which caused him to delay his next attack.

 

Their theories are pure conjecture, have no evidence to support them, and as our investigation will show, are simply wrong.  Additionally, some of the victims’ family members were dismayed the police rejected the possibility the killer was white, even though the identity of the killer – or killers – was unknown. The presence of Caucasian hair on Brenda Woodard’s body, as well as Brenda Crocketts’ statement that a white man was holding her, suggests the possibility of more than one killer, one of whom was white. 

 

The MPDC adopted a different view. It concluded the Caucasian hair found on Brenda Woodard’s body belonged to one of its investigators, even though it failed to trace the hair to a member of the MPDC. 

 

The police also dismissed or downplayed other critical clues if the evidence contradicted their theories about the killings. The prominence of the name ‘Denise’ falls into this category.  “That Denise theory is just a bunch of bull,” said an unnamed detective in 1972, “…Do you think some guy is going around saying: ‘Hey, little girl, What’s your middle name?’ before he abducts her. Of course not.” In a newly published book, TANTAMOUNT The pursuit of the Freeway Phantom Serial Killer, this quote is attributed to Detective Louis Richardson.

 

As Detective Richardson’s remarks indicate, the police investigation treated the Freeway Phantom victims as targets of opportunity, even though they speculated that the killer may have known one or more of his victims. The police cannot have it both ways, either the killer selected his victims at random or they were known to him. Equally, if four of the six victims having Denise as a middle name is significant, it means that most – and perhaps all – of the girls were specifically targeted. As statisticians pointed out at the time, the odds are less than one in a million that the girls were selected at random.

 

Law enforcement failed to discern the underlying patterns in the killer’s behaviour. As the Freeway Phantom wanted poster shows, Freeway Phantom victims can be divided into children and young adults. What the police failed to acknowledge is that a paedophile who is attracted to children is unlikely to target adults, even if they are in their mid-to-late teens. A fifty/fity split between children and adults is highly unusual. 

 

But perhaps law enforcement’s greatest oversight was its inability to appreciate the Freeway Phantom toyed with them and deliberately left clues for them to follow. Trainum was wrong when he said the Freeway Phantom attempted to hide the bodies of his first two victims. His first victim was discovered after only three days, and his second after four days. Moreover, the killer was probably responsible for making the first call to the police pinpointing the location of his second victim’s body. In short, the Freeway Phantom left the bodies of his victims for the police to discover. 

 

The Freeway Phantom also taunted the police in other ways. He left a note with one victim and allowed another to phone home. His aim was to show the police were powerless to stop him.

 

The Freeway Phantom was Washington’s first serial killer and something totally outside the experience of the MPDC. In addition, the Freeway Phantom liked to play games. Consequently, the difficulty the MPDC had in understanding both the nature of the crimes and the evil genius who committed them comes as no surprise. 

 

The MPDC treated the crimes as sex killings. It thought the killings were the work of a sexual deviant who could not form or maintain a relationship with a mature woman. Unfortunately, that is the profile of a rapist not a paedophile. 

 

Additionally, it believed the culprit was a black man who lived and worked locally and that he killed the girls to stop them from giving evidence against him.

 

As usual, the MPDC had few facts to support these theories, and the specifics of the crimes contradict their simplistic analysis. 

 

Although the Freeway Phantom attacked five victims between April and November 1971, he waited ten months to kill his sixth and last victim. Significantly, even though she was the prettiest of his victims – and had hopes of becoming a fashion model – the killer did not sexually assault her. This behaviour is extremely odd, and suggests sex was not the Freeway Phantom’s primary motivation.

 

By leaving bodies near public highways, the Freeway Phantom guaranteed his crimes received maximum publicity. Unless he wanted to cause an uproar, his actions were counterproductive, making it harder for him to obtain more victims.

 

Narcissism and and a thirst for notoriety were an essential part of the Freeway Phantom’s makeup. 

 

At one point, the MPDC became convinced a  group of men known as the Green Vega Rapists were responsible for the Freeway Phantom killings. Thinking the cases were solved, the department closed the cases, disposed of the physical evidence and destroyed many of its case files. When it realised its mistake, the Department reopened the murder cases and attempted to recreate rudimentary case files from other sources, such as the notes and diaries of police involved in the various investigations. It could not replace the missing evidence, however.

 

Despite the reward, the Freeway Phantom will probably escape justice as successful prosecution is impossible without evidence. Moreover, as the Phantom committed his crimes over fifty years ago, he and many of the witnesses to the crimes may be dead. 

 

Realistically, the best outcome we can hope for is to learn the killer’s identity. But, even that limited objective will be difficult to achieve.

 

Washington including the Capitol By Duane Lempke - This file has been extracted from another file, CC BY-SA 4.0

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