WEBVTT - Who is the Phantom? [8] 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:03.640 You're listening to the Freeway Phanom, a production of iHeartRadio, 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:07.920 Tenderfoot TV, and Black bar Mitzvah. The views and opinions 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.480 expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.040 author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:19.759 represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, Black bar Mitzvah, or 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:24.000 their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.600 not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:36.519 Freeways are interesting because millions of people use them, but 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:40.080 very few people walk along the sides of them. They're 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:46.640 very accessible, but they're also not generally used for foot traffic, 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.120 and so it's very easy to conceal someone just off 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.920 of a very very busy highway because nobody usually walks 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:01.360 along there. It means that he one has a car, 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.000 two knows when he can get on and off that 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:12.720 road without being detected. Most likely has a job or 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.640 family situation which allows him to be out at any hour. 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:18.200 Of the day or night. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.520 Because, believe me, choosing these victims and abducting these victims 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.000 took a long time. He had to be out there 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.360 a long time to get access. 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:30.560 To these particular victims. 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.680 They weren't doing things that they did every day at 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.160 that time. That means he has to be available to 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.640 wait for them to show up and to follow them, 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.800 and then to be vulnerable. So they're not vulnerable while 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:45.479 they're inside a. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:49.440 Store or with other people. They're vulnerable when they're alone. 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.919 This is exactly who he wanted, and he was willing 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.400 to take a great risk to get her. 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:07.040 The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases. 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.000 This child was laying on the side of the road. 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:12.200 I wouldn't go no way. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:13.640 I would call up my house. 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.680 Those first five murders should have been a huge warning 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:18.640 bell for the police. 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.000 We just want to know what happened. This person must 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.080 have saw that They was thinking that maybe it's just 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.400 one person, and he says, uh, they need to know. 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:27.760 This is me. 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.560 I thought that they would catch him. I thought it 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:32.800 was just a matter of time. 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:42.200 I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. In the 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:45.640 previous seven episodes, we covered the murders of eight young 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.640 black girls, ranging in age from ten to eighteen years old, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.000 that occurred in DC from nineteen seventy one to nineteen 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:56.480 seventy two. There were six confirmed victims of the Freeway Phantom. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.640 And then there was the case of Angela Barnes, originally 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.920 co ittered victim number three, whose case was closed after 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.720 two police officers were convicted of the crime. Then there 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:10.680 was Tera Bryant, originally considered the final victim, who was 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:14.560 eventually removed from the Freeway Phantom victim list. And two 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:18.079 things are unclear about TERA's case. Who removed her from 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:23.000 the investigation and why. Fifty years later, Detective Romaine Jenkins 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.840 still believes that Tara was yet another victim of the 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.840 Freeway Phantom, although her family believes otherwise. As we learned 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.840 in the last episode, law enforcement turned their attention to 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.240 the Green Vega Gang in nineteen seventy four, and although 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.520 they were officially ruled out as suspects in the Freeway 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.400 Phantom murders, many in law enforcement assumed they were responsible. 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.640 Others thought Robert Askins was the likely killer, a suspect 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:51.760 we talked about in episode six. All of this led 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.880 the majority of the Metropolitan Police Department to conclude that 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:59.160 the cases were solved, but not Detective Romayn Jenkins. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.480 Were looking for the wrong person. They didn't know about profiling, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:05.720 and all of that They're not looking for the guy 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:09.640 who hides behind a tree, you know, this dastardly guy 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.960 who's gonna grab a woman, some psycho. That's not what 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:15.080 they were looking for, and that's what they went after. 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:21.560 For ten years, the case files sat there called untouched, 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:24.800 until Romayne took over the case in nineteen eighty four. 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.320 So I had at my disposal, I had seven senior 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.400 homicide detectives, and I decided, I said, why not use them? 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:38.960 And some of them had actually worked on the cases traitionally, yeah, originally, 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.880 And they gave me their notebooks and so forth, and they, 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.839 you know, could you read all their handwriting? Uh huh. See, 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:50.520 back then, we were the carbon paper typewriter folks. There 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:53.359 were no computers. We didn't have computers. You had to 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.839 type everything and man ooh, you had to be detailed. 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.760 And we work closely with the medical exams this office, 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.800 so you know, we learned a lot about anatomy and 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.440 causes of death and things like that. We investigated causes 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:07.920 of death. 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.320 Although she was now leading a team, many in the 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:15.480 police department weren't too happy about having a black female supervisor. 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.640 Romayne says that throughout the nineteen seventies and eighties, racism 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.599 was alive and well in the MPD racism. 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.880 You talk about racism, Oh yes, I just signed black 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.440 officers to a scout car and I'm riding along in 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.119 the area and I see the black officer walking the footb. 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.400 Is what you're doing walking up footb? The lieutenant took 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.200 me out the car and put officers on. So and 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.800 those are the things that they did back then, you know. 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:48.120 So racism hadn't gone away, you know, sexism and sexism 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:53.080 because because the women were mistreated by the officers they were, 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.280 they tried to intimidate some of them, you know, and 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.279 some of the women, some of the women just said, 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:00.640 you know what, this is not for me, and they 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.440 left the job. You know, they actually left the job. 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.359 And as a supervisor on the job, you know, I 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.640 thought I would have some power, but no, I really didn't. 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.279 And I know one time my lieutenant asked me, he said, 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:19.680 Sergeant Jenkins, do you think I'm a racist? And I said, yes, sir, 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.960 you are. And he says, I'm not a racist. My 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.279 next door neighbor is black. I said, Lieutenant, the only 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.279 reason your next door neighbor is black is because you 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.120 don't have enough money to move out the neighborhood. See. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.160 I was like that because my husband was president of 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:39.280 the Afro American Police Association, so there was a militantcy. 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.880 I had an instance where two of my officers, one 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:46.000 white and one black, they saved a little three year 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:47.680 old who had been left in the car and the 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.520 car burst out in flames, and officers went in and 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.960 got that child. I wrote the officers up to the 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:58.440 awards committee, only the white officer's name went. I mean, 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:00.960 they would do things like that, and so I was 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:05.000 always constantly, you know, in battle with them. And I said, 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.039 you know what, I'd enjoined the police department to go 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.360 through us. I mean, these are the things that I 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:15.040 had to face out there. The commander at that time, 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:17.560 I went to him, I said, sir, we have a 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:19.920 problem over here. He said, what's wrong. I said, you know, 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:25.040 the policewomen, these black police women are being harassed, They're 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.040 being mistreated. I said, I think we only had like 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.120 one or two white females. And the white girl who 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.400 came from Connecticut who had never seen a black person before. 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.760 They gave her a short beat around the station. That 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.760 was her assignment. She had to walk around the station 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.920 for the tour of duty. I mean, this actually happened. 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:46.640 And so I said, you know, we're having a problem 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:48.400 and something has to be done. He said, well, you 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:50.560 know what, and he was white. He said, we're not 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:52.320 going to tolerate. He said, I want you to do 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.520 an investigation and let the chips fall where they may. 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.320 And so I said okay. And in the end room, 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.040 a black officer came there and say, look, Sorge, and 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:05.960 be careful because the white officers gonna get you. He said, 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:08.320 I don't know what they planning, but they plotting something. 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:09.880 He said. I was in the locker room and I 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.080 got bits and pieces of the conversation. They're gonna do 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.800 something to you because they upset that you initiated this 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:20.239 investigation of the things they did to the black police swiomen. 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.600 So I said, thank you. And it wasn't no longer 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:27.160 than a day or so later. Whenever my troops went 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:29.920 on a run, I'm just a supervisor. I'm out there 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:32.680 riding up and down in a scoutcar. I go and 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:34.640 see how they handle it. I'd go park in the 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.720 neighborhood and watch how they handle how they interact with people, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:40.240 and I got out the car and I was walking 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.480 towards them. Well by then they had cleared the runs 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.800 at ten eight nothing found or whatever it was. And 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.760 so as I was walking back to my to my 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.559 scout car, they got in the car and the officer 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.160 gunn in the car. I had to jump up on 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.079 a citizen's car to keep from getting hit. I was, Oh, 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.200 was I hot? I was hot? So I didn't say anything. 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:06.920 When I got in my scout car, I went over 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.839 the air and asked the dispatcher to locate that unit 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.000 for me and have them meet me at there. Stand 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.679 by their location. I'm responding. They stood by. I went 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:17.959 to their location and I told it was two white 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.400 officers and I told them, whatever you applied and to 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:25.200 get me, make sure that you don't miss the next time, 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.920 or else I'm going to kick your you know, and 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:32.280 I use the word you can use it, yeah ass. 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:34.480 And if I can't whip your ass, I have a 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.240 husband up in three D Whu's six foot two, and 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.320 he will do it. But don't miss the next time. 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:42.880 They didn't say nothing. They went on back and got 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:44.440 in the scout car and drove off. 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.600 It is so difficult for me to hear you tell 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.360 these stories about the way the police force was in 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:55.439 the nineteen seventies and think that that prejudice, that racism 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.120 didn't hamper the investigation. That they may have invested a 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:03.800 lot of officers hours and energy and focus and time 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:08.920 into the investigation. But how were these detectives not let 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:10.559 us stray by their own prejudices. 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.200 Oh, they had to be. They had to be because 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.640 first of all, they didn't understand the community that they 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.720 were investigating. I say, you know, police are representative of 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.560 the communities that they police. If the citizens act wild 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.160 and crazy, the police are the same thing. That's that's 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.320 the same kind of thing you're possibly be going to get. 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.679 Here is the thing. Sometimes, as a police officer, you 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:38.319 have you've got to put aside your personal feelings. The 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.680 only person who ever tried to kill me on the 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:47.280 Metropolitan Police Department was a black police officer. Okay, you know, 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.080 a black police officer tried to kill me and he 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:54.160 ended up getting arrested. So you can't say all the 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.640 white police officers bad. There's some black ones just the same. 0:10:57.760 --> 0:10:57.920 You know. 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.000 By the mid eighties, Romaine and her team were entirely 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.400 focused on the Freeway phantom case, and Romayne had her 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:06.640 work cut out for her. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.120 When I first started, one of the first things I 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.920 did was's tried to find the evidence. When I checked 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.840 with the Metropolitan Police Department and I found that the 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.960 evidence had been destroyed. The officer took me to the 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:23.959 property book where the evidence was and said evidence has 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.760 been destroyed. So say, oh, that's a DC for me. 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:31.640 So then I contacted PG County. PG County found the 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:36.360 evidence in their cases, and I got a technician from 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.960 the FBI to meet me and another detective over in 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.959 their property office and we went over the evidence. Conclusion 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.040 was they hadn't preserved it well enough that they could 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.400 get any type of DNA, but that was back then. 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.000 They have made advances now now whatever happened to that evidence, 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:55.839 I don't know. 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.600 But Romayne was able to start making some connections with 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:01.000 the evidence she did have. 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.640 That's when I saw the report about the green fibers. 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:10.880 That's what really piqued my I said, nobody never mentioned 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.800 anything about green synthetic fibers. And I asked a couple 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.520 of the people who I knew who had worked on 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.080 the investigation, and they said didn't know anything about green fibers. 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.360 Well, investigators did initially identify the green fibers on each 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.200 of the victims. Somehow they failed to connect them or 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:32.319 analyze them conclusively. Remain decided it was time to make 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:32.880 that happen. 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.120 Well, see what happened is no one knew about the 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:43.360 green synthetic fibers until Detective Lloyd Davis developed Askings as 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:48.239 a suspect. When Davis had requested that all the evidence 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.560 be sent to the FBI, that's when they came back 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:56.040 about the green synthetic fibers, which aren't really green if 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.960 you see them visuals. Now, this is what the FBI 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.240 technician told me, the guy who handled the cases to 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.440 the naked eye, they are different color. They're only green 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.360 if you look at them under a microscopt What are 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.199 the sources of the fibers? That's that's what I wanted 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.800 to know about the fiber evidence. And he did the 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.960 fiber evidence in the Wayne Williams Atlanta murders. So I 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.600 figured he's gonna have some credibility which was also green. 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.320 Actually, yeah, coincidentally. 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.679 So I asked him, I said, well, you know, what's 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.240 the source of the fibers? He said he thought they 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:33.520 came from an auto. But I talked to Detective Lloyd Davis, 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.360 who had all the evidence submitted. He said he was 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.480 told that the fibers came from a bathroom. Mate like 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.680 a bath mat and a bathroom, and that goes along 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.760 with these victims being washed and cleaned. I said, that 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.440 sounds about right as far as I'm concerned. 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.760 One of the most important things that remain did was 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.240 submit evidence to the FBI to get the first official 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.760 profile of the killer, and they came up with some 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:03.400 intriguing conclusions. 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.920 They felt that this person was in the military. Well, 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.480 at that time, you had all these military people coming 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:13.559 back from Vietnam who were in hospitals here and installations here, 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.559 so you had a lot of that going on. But 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.520 that was really interesting. And the reason why I thought 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.320 it was so interesting was because when I showed the 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.880 note to the FBI, they said, this is military. This 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.280 person was in the military. I showed the same note 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:33.560 to the investigator at Naval Investigated Service. He said, oh, 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.960 whoever wrote this note? This military? So I had two 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.560 different brains saying the same thing. You know that this 0:14:40.640 --> 0:15:00.720 person was in the military. 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:08.960 Romaine eventually retired from the police force, and with her retirement, 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:12.920 the case essentially went cold. That was until it was 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:15.720 picked up in the early two thousands by former DC 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:20.120 homicide detective Jim Trainam, who stumbled into it almost by accident. 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.920 That kind of took over a project where we were 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:29.080 looking at all of these unsolved cases involving women in DC, 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:32.760 like one hundred had been identified over a ten year 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.640 period by the Washington Post. And that was also during 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:41.920 the time period where they first started the coda's database. 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.080 You know, before you really couldn't do anything with DNA 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:47.400 unless you had a named suspect to do a one 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.280 to one comparison to. But with codas, she could put 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.600 the information into a database, it would run it against 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:56.600 other cases, it would run it against a database or 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.480 a collection of suspects. So it was during that time 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.480 when I was first getting started somebody came to me 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.760 and asking me about the Freeway phantom case, and I 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.160 really didn't know anything about it at the time. I 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.680 began to do research and poll what I could, and 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.400 basically I found the very minimal paperwork, just entries in 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.720 our homicide log book, and that was pretty much it. 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.440 We didn't have any files we didn't have any evidence. 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.640 And the more I looked, the more I realized, like 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:28.440 you know, all the cases that were out in PG, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.880 they really didn't have any files. They had some evidence 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.160 that they were looking at in the Wooded case, but 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:39.720 everything had pretty much been destroyed, and so I was 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.520 just trying to build what I could based on these 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:44.360 paper accounts and things along that. 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.160 Line, much like Romayne decades before him, Jim train And 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.160 discovered that the evidence in the case had been poorly maintained, 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:56.760 either damaged or mysteriously missing. But he slowly started to 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:57.920 connect some dots. 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:02.080 So I was able to some stuff from Prince George's county. 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.800 And then we found out that the FBI had gotten 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.400 involved in the Worder case and they had quite an 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:12.080 extensive file. I was able to get that and make 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.159 a copy of it as well. I was continuing to 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.760 look for evidence during that time, kept finding nothing, nothing, nothing. 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:22.480 And after we got the FBI file and we learned 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.440 about people like, let say, Romaine Jenkins who had information 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.719 as well. I was approached by Dale Wilbur of the 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.240 Washington Post, and you know, he wanted to do some 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.919 work on cold cases, and so he was asking me 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.879 about cases that I thought would be interesting, and I 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.119 had mentioned the Freeway Phantom to him, and so he 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:43.679 thought that was going to be a good case to 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:45.880 the feature, And so we pretty much gave him open 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.040 access to our files that we had at the time 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.439 because it was so old, we figured it wasn't going 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:52.480 to do any harm. 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:53.879 So he did. 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:56.760 What I really wanted to do was that he actually 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.320 went out and knocked on the doors of the detectives 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.000 who actually worked on the case originally, and they would 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.359 invite them in and they would say, yeah, I know 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:07.800 all about it. I'll talk to you about it. Come 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:09.480 on in, and by the way, would you'd like to 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.359 see my file. It turns out that a lot of 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:15.400 them missing files had been taken home by the original 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:19.840 case detectives for later that back in the eighties, they 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:22.679 were packing up a lot of those files. Because of 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.520 the way that files were retained back then, they were 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:31.439 throwing out a lot of things like crime scene reports, photographs, 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.560 witness statements and all of that on all these cases, 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.719 including the Freeway Phantom case. And that's been changed because 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:39.280 of the law, they can't do that anymore. 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.680 One of those people was Romaine Jenkins, who kept most 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.400 of the files from the Freeway Phantom case in boxes 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.359 in our house. These are the very same boxes that 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:51.720 we sifted through when we visited her home. 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:54.720 Well, here's some of that carbon paper you're talking about. 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:55.440 Yeah. 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.159 That all I had to do was okay, See the 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.520 police department likes to throw away stuff. Yeah, and I 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.840 don't throw away nothing because you never know when you're 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:05.879 going to see it again. 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.200 Oh, it looks like it's from the memorial service. 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:11.400 That the memorial. 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:18.840 This is Ninemosia's autopsy reports or foot tall and one. 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:20.000 Hundred pounds. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.240 Student at Kelly Miller Junior High School in the sixth grade. 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:25.159 That's tough. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:31.800 Photos are not here, but. 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:32.920 I think the ends. 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:34.880 The thing. 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.240 She realized that a lot of the files were being purged, 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.240 so she actually took all the purge material and kept 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:47.560 it herself. So between her and her institutional knowledge and 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.120 what Dell was able to gather for us, we were 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:54.000 able to recreate a lot of the original files, and 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.440 so we had a good foundation to work on from there. 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.960 Jim Treeham says Roman was instrumental in his reinvestigation of 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:04.200 the Freeway Phantom case. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:06.560 She is wonderful. 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.359 I mean, her memory of this case. Anything that I 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:13.000 say that is contradicted by her, go with what she says, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:18.399 because where I have, you know, files and reports that 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:20.000 I am working off of and all that. She has 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:23.560 a great institutional memory about what was actually going on 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.200 during that time, which is so important because she knows, 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:29.840 you know, what, not only what the department was like, 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:34.080 but what was those neighborhoods were like, what the relationships 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.720 were between the department and the neighborhoods and the media 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.119 and all of that. And just talking with her, I 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:42.840 always learned something new. We talked several times, you know, 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:45.960 during that time period, and we've actually talked several times 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.639 since where we've discussed various issues. 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.040 On the case and all of that. 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:53.280 And you know, she was able to help us out, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.280 you know, quite a lot, because even with what we 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.200 were able to gather, when you're digging through these old 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.879 files and stuff, you're almost like an archaeologist. You're trying 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:05.560 to kind of piece together little things, and some of 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:08.520 the documents that you would come across, they would make 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:10.960 reference to things that you would go, well, where is that? 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.160 Where is that in another document? And you can't find it, 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:17.240 So you know that at some point something existed. 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:21.159 After some digging, Jim and his team were able to 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.080 identify some new evidence that hadn't been thoroughly looked at before. 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.320 During the time that we were working on this, we 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:32.960 basically learned that there was evidence available from two of 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:37.840 the different scenes. One was that PG County had evidence 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:40.520 from the Brenda Woodard case. It was part of the 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:44.680 sex kit that they submitted to the Maryland State Police lab. 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.480 And at that time the technology is in advance as 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:52.200 it is now, they weren't able to get a DNA 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.280 profile off of the material that was left, and there 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.399 was so little material left that they actually used it 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:01.800 all up, and so we pretty much hit a data 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:07.879 end right there. The second evidence actually came because of 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:09.919 our work. We were trying to promote the case and 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.280 get information out there about it, and I was doing 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:15.600 a presentation on it to the mid Atlantic Cold Case 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.879 Homicide Investigators Association when a cold case investigator from the 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:23.040 Maryland State Police said, wait a minute, the last victim, Williams, 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:26.560 that's our case. And it turns out we didn't know that, 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.320 but because of where her body was found, the Maryland 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:33.560 State Police had actually become involved in her case. And 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.520 so they actually had more case files that we weren't 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:38.760 aware of at the time, and they had a box 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:42.800 of some of her clothing, which was pretty exciting for us. 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.199 And it turns out that, you know, her underwear was 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:48.760 in there, and there was a possibility that there were 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:53.920