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Speaker 2: DC had never had a serial killing before, and so
Speaker 2: it wasn't something not that you ever get used to it,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't something they were familiar with. And so
Speaker 2: if there's a body found here, and then you know,
Speaker 2: a few weeks later, there's a body found here and
Speaker 2: some months later, and they don't connect it until the
Speaker 2: fourth one or so, then it sort of spirals and
Speaker 2: people take notice and then they said, oh, Houston, we've
Speaker 2: got a problem here. These deaths may be connected. And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure why that is. Maybe because you know,
Speaker 2: there were different detectives assigned to each of the cases.
Speaker 2: Maybe because you know, one of the bodies or so
Speaker 2: was found across the district line in Maryland and they
Speaker 2: didn't communicate Maryland in d C. Or again, maybe it's
Speaker 2: because there were so many homicides in the city and
Speaker 2: six little black girls from not the best parts of town.
Speaker 2: You know, did anyone really care outside of their families.
Speaker 3: The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.
Speaker 4: This child was laying on the side of the road.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't go no way, I wouldn't come up my house.
Speaker 4: Those first five murders should have been a huge warning
Speaker 4: bell for the police.
Speaker 5: We just want to know what happened.
Speaker 3: This person must have saw that. They were thinking that
Speaker 3: maybe it's just one person, and he says, they need
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 6: This is me.
Speaker 7: I thought that they would catch him.
Speaker 4: I thought it just a matter of time.
Speaker 8: I'm Celeste Hedley and this is Freeway Phantom. In the
Speaker 8: last episode, we learned about the third and fourth victims
Speaker 8: of the Freeway Phantom, Brenda Crockett and Nina Mosha Yates.
Speaker 8: Up until this point, these murders were largely considered by
Speaker 8: law enforcement to be unconnected, but the murder of Yates
Speaker 8: was a big turning point.
Speaker 9: She was twelve years old and she was found on
Speaker 9: October first, nineteen seventy one. She was a seventh grader,
Speaker 9: and she was a very quiet and well behaved child.
Speaker 9: In the evening, she went to the safeway that was
Speaker 9: a few blocks away from her home to buy a
Speaker 9: bag of sugar.
Speaker 8: This is author Victoria Hester, who co wrote a book
Speaker 8: with her father Blaine Pardo, on the Freeway Phantom Murders.
Speaker 8: She reminds us that Nina Mosha Yates walked to a
Speaker 8: nearby safeway around seven pm one night to pick up
Speaker 8: some groceries, and then after leaving, she was somehow abducted.
Speaker 8: She was found dead just over two hours later in
Speaker 8: Prince George's County.
Speaker 9: Her body was found by a fifteen year old hitchhiker
Speaker 9: beside Pennsylvania Avenue, just sixteen hundred feet beyond the district line.
Speaker 9: Her body was still warm when it was found, so
Speaker 9: she had been dumped and killed very recently. She was
Speaker 9: literally just dumped on the side of the road.
Speaker 8: Co writer Blaine Pardo told us about the evidence gathering
Speaker 8: process that law enforcement went through for Ninemosha.
Speaker 10: They would have looked under fingernails, et cetera, not for
Speaker 10: DNA traceable, but to see if she had scraped her
Speaker 10: victim or fought back and that was done, but you
Speaker 10: don't get that tangible piece of Oh you've got somebody's skin,
Speaker 10: we can run DNA on it, etc. So while they
Speaker 10: may have found things like that, unfortunately those things usually
Speaker 10: wouldn't have been preserved and they didn't have the means
Speaker 10: to preserve those things. But they said the problem was
Speaker 10: at the time, the police always had kind of a
Speaker 10: standard blanket in the back of their car for when
Speaker 10: they found dead bodies, and they throw that blanket on them.
Speaker 10: And it's not like the blanket went off, got sterilized,
Speaker 10: completely cleaned before it was used again. It was a
Speaker 10: blanket that they used over and over. So the contamination
Speaker 10: could have come from any number of sources. And I
Speaker 10: think that's one of the complicating factors when it comes
Speaker 10: to the DNA is how this evidence was physically handled.
Speaker 10: These guys didn't put on rubber gloves when they touched
Speaker 10: things that you know, they just picked it up and
Speaker 10: you're going to pick up trace DNA of everybody that's
Speaker 10: ever touched that piece of clothing. So it's a real
Speaker 10: tricky thing.
Speaker 8: But police were able to identify and preserve a few
Speaker 8: pieces of evidence. They found what they called negroid hair
Speaker 8: on her sanitary napkin hairs that did not belong to her.
Speaker 8: They also found green fibers, much like the ones that
Speaker 8: had been found on previous victims.
Speaker 3: No one knew about the green synthetic fibers until Detective
Speaker 3: Lloyd Davis. When Davis had requested that all the evidence
Speaker 3: be sent to the FBI. That's when they came back
Speaker 3: about the green synthetic fibers, which aren't really green if
Speaker 3: you see them visually.
Speaker 8: This is retired MPD Detective Romaine Jenkins.
Speaker 3: Now, this is what the FBI technician told me, the
Speaker 3: guy who handled the cases. To the naked eye, they're
Speaker 3: a different color. They're only green if you look at
Speaker 3: them under microscott. Then what are the sources of the fibers?
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to know about the fiber evidence,
Speaker 3: I asked him. I said, well, you know, what's the
Speaker 3: source of the fibers? He said he thought they came.
Speaker 5: From an auto.
Speaker 3: He said, but let me get my notes that I'll
Speaker 3: get back to you. Well, it took for ages for
Speaker 3: him to get back to me. Fine, he didn't. He said, nah,
Speaker 3: I think they came from an auto. But I talked
Speaker 3: to Detective Lloyd Davis, who had all the evidence submitted.
Speaker 3: He said he was told that the fibers came from
Speaker 3: a bathroom mate like a bath mat and a bathroom,
Speaker 3: and that goes along with these victims being washed and cleaned.
Speaker 3: I said, that sounds about right, You know that as
Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 8: We'll explore the possible sources of these fibers in a
Speaker 8: later episode, but for now, there are two important things
Speaker 8: to keep in mind. Technology at the time just wasn't
Speaker 8: advanced enough to properly examine these fibers, so they were
Speaker 8: stored away, possibly in the boxes that Romayne has stored
Speaker 8: in her home.
Speaker 5: Oh, these are glass slides, don't don't bother that. No,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna open them.
Speaker 8: For sure, but these are hairs and fire. These are
Speaker 8: actual glass slides with the hairs and fibers. It's possible
Speaker 8: that today we could revisit the fibers to learn more
Speaker 8: about their origin, but the evidence would need to be
Speaker 8: resubmitted for processing. The other significant matter, as Romaine alluded to,
Speaker 8: is that the FBI was now involved. After the murder
Speaker 8: of Ninomosia Yates, law enforcement finally started to recognize that
Speaker 8: these cases were connected, and that expanded the scope of
Speaker 8: the investigation.
Speaker 3: The fourth body that brought more people in because where's
Speaker 3: the body found. You're talking about PG County, right, You're
Speaker 3: talking about crossing jurisdictional lines, So then he is PG
Speaker 3: County coming into play.
Speaker 8: By the time we get to Ninomosia, people are beginning
Speaker 8: to think this is the same perpetrator. They didn't have
Speaker 8: a phrase of serial killer. They may be called it
Speaker 8: a pattern killer.
Speaker 5: Ye pattern case.
Speaker 3: The homicide detectives term the case is the Little Girl
Speaker 3: cases because they didn't know anything about Freeway pantom.
Speaker 8: Up until this point. The FBI was only vaguely aware
Speaker 8: of the first few murders in the Little Girl cases.
Speaker 4: I would hear them talk about the first two is
Speaker 4: I recall the bodies were found with only about fifteen
Speaker 4: feet of each other, and that kind of peaked their
Speaker 4: interest what we got going on. We've never had a
Speaker 4: serial murder here, but we've had multiple murders, and I thought,
Speaker 4: there's something in here that would be interesting to get
Speaker 4: into and see how you would how you would work
Speaker 4: it out, how you could figure out who did it.
Speaker 8: This is retired Special Agent Barry Culvert, one of the
Speaker 8: FBI investigators who worked the case. He says that once
Speaker 8: victims started turning up both in DC and over the
Speaker 8: state line in PG County, the FBI officially got involved.
Speaker 4: At the time of this case in nineteen seventy, I'd
Speaker 4: been working fugitives and bank robberies four or five years,
Speaker 4: and that lets you know just about every corner in
Speaker 4: their dark alley and Washington, d C.
Speaker 8: If you work those kind of cases, Colvert says, the
Speaker 8: Freeway phantom murders felt different to him. He was struck
Speaker 8: by the innocence and youth of the victims and felt
Speaker 8: compelled to work their cases.
Speaker 4: All of these girls were not from runaway families. These girls,
Speaker 4: from what I can remember just hearing from the detectives,
Speaker 4: these were families that went to churchs and watched after
Speaker 4: their girls and wanted to know where they were. They
Speaker 4: were good families. They didn't take chances that would have
Speaker 4: led them to that kind of death. I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't know that they would have taken a chance
Speaker 4: of getting in a car with somebody that they didn't
Speaker 4: know to get a ride home or something. I don't
Speaker 4: think they would have.
Speaker 8: Colvert remembers when they got the call to join the investigation.
Speaker 4: I think the Chief of Police in Washington re down
Speaker 4: to our agent in charge of the Washington office. They
Speaker 4: had so many leads and so many things to cover,
Speaker 4: they just didn't have the manpower. There was a lot
Speaker 4: of things going on in Washington then. This was only
Speaker 4: two or three years after Martin Luther King and Stokely
Speaker 4: Carmichael had killed the pigs, burned the pigs, and we
Speaker 4: were pigs, so they were really shorthanded. And the fact
Speaker 4: that it was a federal crime, we could assist the
Speaker 4: Metropolitan Police in leads that were just over the line
Speaker 4: in Maryland or in Virginia because we had jurisdiction on
Speaker 4: those places. And I think the Boss came around and
Speaker 4: he was taking agents off of various squads to see
Speaker 4: if they wanted to work on the homicide case, this
Speaker 4: particular case, and I immediately offered my services. I said,
Speaker 4: I like the detectives that I worked with over there.
Speaker 4: I'll be one of the volunteers for it. And that's
Speaker 4: how I got involved in this case.
Speaker 8: Colvert says the FBI's investigation of the Freeway phantom murders
Speaker 8: was broad, intense, and incredibly hands on.
Speaker 4: We figured there had to be someone that got away,
Speaker 4: someone that was lured to the car, and we even
Speaker 4: had a couple of cases where they were forced into
Speaker 4: the car, duct taped, but they got away. So you
Speaker 4: would take that thinking maybe that could be our guy.
Speaker 4: There has to be someone that he's not successful with
Speaker 4: when working those cases, because we actually had evidence and witnesses.
Speaker 4: There was one that was dropped on the side of
Speaker 4: the highway. It seemed like a truck driver went by
Speaker 4: and thought he saw a white van or a white
Speaker 4: pickup truck or something. If you had a partial tag number,
Speaker 4: you couldn't go on a computer. You had to go
Speaker 4: through files. We got leads from psychics that were weird,
Speaker 4: but you were almost afraid to discount any of them.
Speaker 4: The one good suspect that we developed, the young girl
Speaker 4: was coming out of a drug store, I think on
Speaker 4: Minnesota Avenue, and a white man called to her to
Speaker 4: come to the window, and I think when she backed away,
Speaker 4: thinking he was just asking for information and he was
Speaker 4: really trying to get her in the car either, he
Speaker 4: reached out for her and she pulled back and screamed,
Speaker 4: and other witnesses came forward and gave us a tag number,
Speaker 4: and when we identified this person, he was a contractor
Speaker 4: that either built houses, apartments, main building schools in all
Speaker 4: not only the district, but in Maryland and Virginia. If
Speaker 4: he was working on those buildings and offices, he had
Speaker 4: a place because I know at least two of our
Speaker 4: victims were kept for a day or two and then bathed.
Speaker 4: He could tell he had been washed before they were
Speaker 4: dropped on the side of the road, so we figured
Speaker 4: that would fit. He'd have a place to take them.
Speaker 4: He was not a threatening looking person at all, so
Speaker 4: I thought this guy looks good. They did a polygraph
Speaker 4: exam on it him and I think he passed. I
Speaker 4: thought he was a good match.
Speaker 8: Culvert didn't provide the name of his suspect, but we
Speaker 8: reviewed the FBI case file. He was thoroughly investigated and
Speaker 8: cleared of suspicion, and so it was just one of
Speaker 8: many dead ends.
Speaker 4: That was the kind of leads we got. Mostly they
Speaker 4: would come in by the phone or they would give
Speaker 4: you a nickname. We heard that bow Ray had done
Speaker 4: something like this. He had raped the girl and got
Speaker 4: mad at her or something, and he was afraid she
Speaker 4: was going to go back and rat on him because
Speaker 4: she knew him and he killed her. We didn't have
Speaker 4: an internet to look. We had to go through hand files,
Speaker 4: these index cards. Bow Ray, Who's bow Ray out there?
Speaker 4: Because everybody went by street name in DC, so you
Speaker 4: never got a name. It was bou Ray or Mumpsy
Speaker 4: Bumps or Niani or something like that. So you go
Speaker 4: through the moniker file, you never have one. You'd have
Speaker 4: six bow Rays in there.
Speaker 8: As a result, Culvert says, their investigation became both frustrating
Speaker 8: and exhausting.
Speaker 4: We had spent so many nights away from home, so
Speaker 4: many weekends, so many holidays, out on the street, either
Speaker 4: in a surveillance or just trying to catch somebody. If
Speaker 4: you had a suspect, you didn't have any evidence. The
Speaker 4: only chance you had maybe was following some night and
Speaker 4: catch him in the act of trying to get a
Speaker 4: little girl in the car, pull him over, charging with
Speaker 4: a misdemeanor. Till you could get prints and hair samples
Speaker 4: or something. That's what you were hoping for, And it
Speaker 4: was labor intensive. You sat in cars with these guys
Speaker 4: all night long and the worst weather, hoping we'd get
Speaker 4: a line on somebody, somebody that's going to call up
Speaker 4: here and try to do this, and we're going.
Speaker 7: To get them.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, you thought, is there
Speaker 4: something else we could do right now? Your shift is up,
Speaker 4: you've done your eight ten hours, and you're ready to
Speaker 4: go home. Man, if we could swinging by that corner
Speaker 4: one more time and look and see if we see
Speaker 4: a white man, let's do it. Let's do it now.
Speaker 4: You were bone tired the next day, but no one
Speaker 4: was looking at their watch, no one was looking to see,
Speaker 4: all right this time, let's cut it off. Let's go home.
Speaker 4: There's nothing else we can do. Is there something else
Speaker 4: we could do right now that we couldn't do tomorrow?
Speaker 4: It's one o'clock in the morning, But sometimes that's the
Speaker 4: most advantageous time to find this kind of person doing this,
Speaker 4: And sometimes it meant driving way the heck out in
Speaker 4: PG County to just see where my friend was. At
Speaker 4: that time, there was no doubt these guys were committed
Speaker 4: to solving this thing, and I really thought we might.
Speaker 4: I believed it at that time. I believed it. I said,
Speaker 4: he's going to do something stupid. Somebody's going to get away,
Speaker 4: and we'll get him.
Speaker 8: The work of retired FBI Special Agent Barry Culvert was impressive.
Speaker 8: Up until this point, it seemed like law enforcement wasn't
Speaker 8: taking these cases seriously, but Culvert's team appeared to be different.
Speaker 8: He says they were dedicated to solving these murders. Culvert
Speaker 8: and his detective Jimmy Owens interviewed dozens of people from
Speaker 8: the community and talked to numerous family members of the victims.
Speaker 8: Culvert remembers one night when they visited a family member
Speaker 8: to show her some evidence they'd found at a suspect's residence.
Speaker 4: We were going out to a woman's house and I
Speaker 4: think it might have been the aunt of one of them,
Speaker 4: and I was going to take this picture to show
Speaker 4: her these items like ring, ear rings, maybe some little
Speaker 4: trinkets that a teenage girl would have. And I remember
Speaker 4: that because it was the one that made that the
Speaker 4: hardest to get off of this case. Jimmy was on
Speaker 4: the phone and the police cruiser and he said, you
Speaker 4: just take it in there, and usually the police there
Speaker 4: were the evidence custodians of these things, says you go
Speaker 4: in and do it. So I can remember knocking on
Speaker 4: her door and she came to the door and I
Speaker 4: told her this is. My name is Barry, Barry covered.
Speaker 4: I'm an FBI is't and I'm trying to find who
Speaker 4: killed your niece cousin. And she said come in. As
Speaker 4: soon as I came in the door, she took my
Speaker 4: arm and she led me over to the dining table
Speaker 4: to sit down, and I said, I have this picture
Speaker 4: if you've ever seen any of these things on that
Speaker 4: she had and she put that paper down like she
Speaker 4: was she was being so gentle with that picture of
Speaker 4: those items, and she kept rushing the edges, looking and
Speaker 4: then she'd pick it up, and then she'd away and
Speaker 4: put it back down. And I noticed that her eyes
Speaker 4: were tearing up when she looked at the picture. And
Speaker 4: then she said, I don't recognize any of these. It
Speaker 4: must be one of the other girls. Boy, that just
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to say after that, I know,
Speaker 4: I said, well, we'll do the best we can. We're
Speaker 4: going to try to find this person. We got up,
Speaker 4: and she held my arm all the way back to
Speaker 4: the front door, and I turned around and stopped and
Speaker 4: I said, just took her by the shoulder. I said,
Speaker 4: we're going to find out who did this. We are
Speaker 4: going to find out who did this. And I gave
Speaker 4: her a hug, and then we walked out the front
Speaker 4: and it was hard because she just stood by that
Speaker 4: front door, that glass door, watching me get in that car.
Speaker 4: And when I got in the car, Jimmy Owen said, hey,
Speaker 4: you know you've got lipstick on your shirt. Let me
Speaker 4: get a get me get a clean next that. And
Speaker 4: I said, you know, Jimmy, let's don't wipe it off
Speaker 4: for a while. Let's leave that on here. I don't
Speaker 4: know that I ever. I'm sure I sent the suit
Speaker 4: to the cleaners, but I think I wanted it on
Speaker 4: there for a while. I think I did just because
Speaker 4: of that interview with that woman. I'd made a pledge.
Speaker 4: And from the South, we touch and hug a lot
Speaker 4: of people, and I'm a hugger, but in this case
Speaker 4: it was more than just a hug. It was like,
Speaker 4: this is me promising. This is more than a promise.
Speaker 4: I just want you to know I mean what I say.
Speaker 4: We're going to find the person that did this. And
Speaker 4: I wanted her to know that and not some perfunctory
Speaker 4: handshake or i'll see you later. It meant more than
Speaker 4: that to me. And then later, when our role stopped,
Speaker 4: I remembered that promise to that woman and it just
Speaker 4: kind of hard to walk away from it. That's why
Speaker 4: this was different. I could not do this three months
Speaker 4: six months that we did this. This was this was hard.
Speaker 4: This was a hard step.
Speaker 8: Meanwhile, public perceptions about the murders were shifting. Now that
Speaker 8: the cases had all been connected, things were changing in
Speaker 8: the neighborhood.
Speaker 11: I think, just like during the DC stipe of time
Speaker 11: doing that when we talk about mass murders or killings,
Speaker 11: the communities started to close ranks a little more, be
Speaker 11: more watchful.
Speaker 8: This is Derek Davis who we talked to in episode two.
Speaker 8: His family has owned a barbershop in the neighborhood since
Speaker 8: the sixties.
Speaker 11: People were more watchful of our youth then. Okay, they
Speaker 11: were looking out for him. People were talking about it more.
Speaker 11: It was more talk. For instance, what I mean when
Speaker 11: people came to barber shop, that was that was the
Speaker 11: discussion in the barbershop. And people were saying, well, watch out,
Speaker 11: you know, watch out and doing it this and that that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, we're doing this. I'm getting off.
Speaker 11: At this time, you know, people were kind of like
Speaker 11: somewhat forming their own groups or own not like police school,
Speaker 11: but something like neighborhood watches or the orange chat watches
Speaker 11: when you said these orange hat where communities were started
Speaker 11: to walk.
Speaker 5: The blocks and stuff like that.
Speaker 11: So the community were kind of like somewhat policing the
Speaker 11: sells the best way they could to stop what was happening.
Speaker 11: We couldn't stop what already happened for surely, and we
Speaker 11: didn't necessarily see where that support was coming from.
Speaker 8: Also sitting with us was Derek's friend, Reverend Anthony Motley,
Speaker 8: and we got to talking about why it is that
Speaker 8: there was practically no media coverage on this case. It's
Speaker 8: astonishing to me that someone could snatch and murder young
Speaker 8: black girls and now we can't even find coverage.
Speaker 5: How come because they're black.
Speaker 12: Even today we had a six year old murder walking
Speaker 12: to the store with her father and mother and they
Speaker 12: get caught in a drive by The mother and father wounded,
Speaker 12: two more people wounded, the little baby gets dead. The media,
Speaker 12: they show up, they do a press conference, and then
Speaker 12: they go by.
Speaker 5: It's like sensationalism exactly what it is.
Speaker 12: That's what they do. Don't do you have any what
Speaker 12: they call invest investigative reporters anymore? And if they do investigate,
Speaker 12: they don't investigate when it comes to black people, you know,
Speaker 12: unless it's something that that that's juicy, you know, like
Speaker 12: the government. But as far as the community is concerned,
Speaker 12: since another day in the park.
Speaker 8: This frustration was evident in community throughout the murders. Community
Speaker 8: member Wilma Harper wrote about it in her book The
Speaker 8: Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 13: The bizarre murders of these black girls had not aroused
Speaker 13: the press to an acceptable degree. The communities seemed to
Speaker 13: have forgotten. Families of the victims bore their sorrow alone
Speaker 13: in hopelessness and terror.
Speaker 8: Harper writes that at one point, members of the Congress
Speaker 8: Heights neighborhood took it upon themselves to hold a press conference.
Speaker 8: They wanted to protest what they called poor police protection
Speaker 8: and a lack of media coverage.
Speaker 13: The press conference was called by Calvin Rolark, editor publisher
Speaker 13: of the Weekly Washington Informer and president of the Washington
Speaker 13: Highland Civic Association. He accused the police and news media
Speaker 13: of failing to give equal attention to crimes in the Southeast.
Speaker 13: He condemned newspapers for bearing news of the deaths of
Speaker 13: the three girls. If it was a blue eyed, white
Speaker 13: girl from Silver Spring, her picture would have been all
Speaker 13: over page one. About seventy five persons attended the press
Speaker 13: conference at one zero five eight Waller Place, Southeast.
Speaker 8: Harper remembers that just before Ninomosia Gates was murdered, the
Speaker 8: media went entirely dark on the case.
Speaker 13: During the months of August and September, the news media
Speaker 13: made no reports of the progress in the investigation of
Speaker 13: the murders. I was recuperating from an automobile accident and
Speaker 13: was free to diligently watch for information. My interest in
Speaker 13: the cases had been heightened because I knew family members
Speaker 13: of two of the victims. I was also in accord
Speaker 13: with the earlier interest taken by citizens of the Southeast
Speaker 13: community to protect their children from such crimes. The lull
Speaker 13: ended on October second, nineteen seventy one, not with the
Speaker 13: announcement of a solution, but with the headline of yet
Speaker 13: another black girl's murder.
Speaker 2: If you'd look through news releases and police departments, I mean,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna find a whole lot of photos from
Speaker 2: fifty years ago.
Speaker 8: This is NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl Thompson who we heard
Speaker 8: from at the top of the episode. When she thoroughly
Speaker 8: investigated this case in twenty eighteen, she says it was
Speaker 8: difficult to find any substantial news coverage.
Speaker 2: Initially at some of the microfish I looked at, it
Speaker 2: was lobbed in with you know, like, Okay, a girl's
Speaker 2: body was found here, and then you know, some guy
Speaker 2: found across town. You know, it was just sort of
Speaker 2: like in passing. So there was coverage, but again then
Speaker 2: it just sort of faded. You know, in the early seventies,
Speaker 2: Vietnam was all the daily, NonStop coverage, right every single day,
Speaker 2: day in and day out. And you had these May
Speaker 2: Day protesters, thousands of them on the nation's capitol, and
Speaker 2: so that was the coverage. I mean, you know, Detective
Speaker 2: Jenkins will tell you that even at the time when
Speaker 2: they found the first body, that they were going to
Speaker 2: the scene, the supervisor pulled them office said no, no,
Speaker 2: I need for you to go down down to the
Speaker 2: mall and deal with the protesters. And murder always took
Speaker 2: homicide always took precedence, but not in this instance, So
Speaker 2: I think that was probably part of it.
Speaker 8: However, there was one major piece of news coverage following
Speaker 8: the murder of Ninamoshi Gates, the Daily News published an
Speaker 8: article about the now connected murders and they named the
Speaker 8: killer the Freeway Phantom. We haven't been able to find
Speaker 8: this news clipping. There are some conflicting reports as to
Speaker 8: the exact date of this article, but we know it
Speaker 8: came before the killer's next victim was found. But they
Speaker 8: still didn't refer to the Freeway Phantom as a serial killer,
Speaker 8: and Romaine Jenkins explains why.
Speaker 3: Well, at the time, the term serial killers was not
Speaker 3: even in existence. The FBI didn't even have its profiling unit.
Speaker 3: So if we had a pat and of cases, we
Speaker 3: call them pattern cases.
Speaker 5: The reason you.
Speaker 3: Said pattern because there was something about the cases that
Speaker 3: linked them together. Either the suspect wore the same clothing
Speaker 3: or said the same thing in these instances. They weren't
Speaker 3: sure that it was the same person. It was hard
Speaker 3: for them to believe that one person could have committed
Speaker 3: all of these crimes. So a lot of times you
Speaker 3: had investigators going off in their own direction, you know,
Speaker 3: looking for suspects you know that they felt might fit
Speaker 3: the profile of the person.
Speaker 8: They might not have had a name for it at
Speaker 8: the time, but the Freeway Phantom was likely Washington, DC's
Speaker 8: first serial killer.
Speaker 6: Let me just say, I really hate the way that
Speaker 6: we give these killers these names. I know we have
Speaker 6: to do it like you know, just that's what it is.
Speaker 6: But I think that naming them, giving them this quasi
Speaker 6: mythological status, just elevates them. And these are despicable human beings,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 8: Doctor Jean Murley is an author and professor of English
Speaker 8: at Queensborough Community College. She specializes in true crime and
Speaker 8: has studied the history and psychology of serial killers. To
Speaker 8: get a clear picture of the Freeway Phantom, we need
Speaker 8: to understand what a serial killer is. So I sat
Speaker 8: down with doctor Murley and asked her to fill in
Speaker 8: some missing pieces on that front.
Speaker 6: The standard definition of serial killing for a long time
Speaker 6: was three or more victims with a kind of.
Speaker 5: A cooling off period between each.
Speaker 6: That's been revised, right, That's been changed to two victims
Speaker 6: at two different times for any reason.
Speaker 8: What were these killers called before we I mean, we
Speaker 8: clearly had serial killers before the nineteen seventies, right, I mean,
Speaker 8: if nothing else, everybody knows about Jack the Ripper. But
Speaker 8: what were they called? What did we how did we
Speaker 8: or law enforcement make sense of them.
Speaker 6: Before we had this language to comprehend and to articulate
Speaker 6: this phenomenon, we use a more gothic terminology of the monstrous. Right,
Speaker 6: these people were monsters. They were wicked, evil, demonic even
Speaker 6: And so you're moving from a more emotional rhetoric into
Speaker 6: one that's more scientific and objective in a way.
Speaker 8: Can I put to you some of the most common
Speaker 8: myths about serial killers and have you respond to each one?
Speaker 8: The first one, I think, shows like Criminal Minds makes
Speaker 8: us think that there are way more serial killers than
Speaker 8: there are. I mean, they have someone to catch every week,
Speaker 8: and the FBI says, I mean every murder is awful,
Speaker 8: but no more than one percent of all murders were
Speaker 8: committed by a serial killer. Why do we think they're
Speaker 8: so ubiquitous? Is it only the true crime shows.
Speaker 6: It's not true that the country is sort of crawling
Speaker 6: with serial killers. It never really was true. What is
Speaker 6: true is that serial killing as a phenomenon goes through
Speaker 6: waves and troughs, right, and so in the post war period,
Speaker 6: right in the nineteen fifties to the nineteen nineties, there
Speaker 6: was a very large uptick in the number.
Speaker 5: Of serial killers who were.
Speaker 6: Apprehended who were active and apprehended. In nineteen fifty, there
Speaker 6: were seventy two known serial killers in the country. Nineteen
Speaker 6: sixty there were two hundred and seventeen, nineteen seventy wow,
Speaker 6: six hundred eighty, seven hundred and sixty eight, nineteen ninety
Speaker 6: six sixty nine, two thousand and three, seventy one, twenty ten,
Speaker 6: which is the latest statistic, one hundred and seventeen.
Speaker 8: So next myth serial killers are almost all white men.
Speaker 6: That's a good one too, and similar to the ways
Speaker 6: that the numbers of killers sort of peaks and troughs,
Speaker 6: race and serial killing is a very interesting thing. Early on,
Speaker 6: there were more white men than any other race. It
Speaker 6: was about sixty percent white men, thirty or thirty five
Speaker 6: percent black men, the rest Hispanic Asian Native Americans, very
Speaker 6: very very small numbers that started to become more even
Speaker 6: more fifty to fifty as the seventies, eighties, and nineties
Speaker 6: rolled on. And that's a very interesting thing that you know,
Speaker 6: it is true that serial killers do tend to victimize
Speaker 6: members of their own race, but the fact is that
Speaker 6: the racial categories of black and white seemed to become
Speaker 6: more even as the decades were on.
Speaker 8: What about the myth that serial killers are isolated dysfunctional, Well.
Speaker 6: That isn't actually, I wouldn't say on myth. I would
Speaker 6: say that's pretty true. We're talking about people who are psychopathic,
Speaker 6: and that means they have trouble with long term relationships
Speaker 6: of any type. They have trouble keeping jobs, they have
Speaker 6: trouble fitting in antisocial personality disorder. They tend to also
Speaker 6: commit a range of sort of lesser crimes and so
Speaker 6: interactions with the system, whether it's misdemeanors or smaller felonies.
Speaker 6: These are not people who you know, generally, you would
Speaker 6: want to be friends with and have.
Speaker 5: A lot of friends.
Speaker 6: They are people who are.
Speaker 5: Just like, oh, you know, that guy's weird. I don't
Speaker 5: want to you know.
Speaker 6: The charming, charismatic, seemingly normal guys are the outliers, right,
Speaker 6: And that's what true crime has fed us, and that's
Speaker 6: what a lot of the movies and fiction television feeds us.
Speaker 6: So I would say that the majority of serial killers
Speaker 6: are not people who are successful human beings.
Speaker 8: The term serial killer wouldn't come around until the late seventies,
Speaker 8: but the killer took notice of the attention that this
Speaker 8: new Moniker Freeway Phantom gave him. Not long after Ninomosia
Speaker 8: Yates he would attack again, and this time emboldened.
Speaker 5: I grew up. As I said in Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: I wasn't far from the freeway to ninety five. And
Speaker 5: when I was in elementary school, Harris Elementary School, one
Speaker 5: of the victims was in the class with my sister
Speaker 5: in the fifth grade, and I remember in the school
Speaker 5: they announced it and we would devastate. My sister was crushed.
Speaker 5: It was just a really scary time. And I remember
Speaker 5: my mom. You know, she was from the South, so
Speaker 5: you know, she wasn't playing anyway, but it just heightened
Speaker 5: the fear.
Speaker 8: This is Rita McCoy who we heard from an episode two.
Speaker 8: She's now a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Speaker 8: But she went to school with Nenomoshia Gates and remembers
Speaker 8: when she was murdered.
Speaker 5: So when that happened with her, I think I was
Speaker 5: about eleven or twelve. When I was in junior high school.
Speaker 5: There was an incident. It was about four thirty in
Speaker 5: the afternoon, and I'm you know, I'm a teenage girl,
Speaker 5: and I had another little kid in my neighborhood. We
Speaker 5: were going to get some can d and stuff for
Speaker 5: her and just hanging out after school. And we were
Speaker 5: walking up this hill off of Benning Road, just walking along, laughing.
Speaker 5: It was a beautiful day. And all of a sudden
Speaker 5: I saw this white Cadillac were on the sidewalk and
Speaker 5: it pulled up and like it was parking, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, the guy he comes out of the
Speaker 5: driver's side and he comes around the front of the
Speaker 5: car and snatches me, and he's not saying anything, and
Speaker 5: he grabbed my arm and he's holding me and he's
Speaker 5: pulling open his passenger door. And I'm looking at this
Speaker 5: guy and there's no emotion on his face none, And
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, screaming and hollering, and the little
Speaker 5: girl is hollering. Her name is Wanda, and I'm trying
Speaker 5: to grab stuff. I grabbed a piece of brick off
Speaker 5: the ground and hit him, and nothing deterred him, and
Speaker 5: he just was strong, and I was kicking and fighting,
Speaker 5: and I was almost in the car, and people were
Speaker 5: driving up and down the road broad daylight. So all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, coming down the hill, that good old God,
Speaker 5: there were some friends of my older brother named Roosevelt
Speaker 5: and his friends were coming down the hill and they said,
Speaker 5: isn't that Rose sister, And I mean for them to
Speaker 5: even see me over his car, it blows me away.
Speaker 5: But they saw guests coming down the hill. They could
Speaker 5: see it, and they say, hey. They screamed to the
Speaker 5: guy because it was warm out and the windows were down,
Speaker 5: and the guy dropped me and I fell to the
Speaker 5: ground and I'm telling you, almost slammed the door on
Speaker 5: my leg. And I jumped up, you know, because I
Speaker 5: just was so scared. And he closed the door and
Speaker 5: jumped in the car and drove off. So the guys
Speaker 5: flagged down the police officer. I don't know what they
Speaker 5: said to the police. They were older than me. They
Speaker 5: had to be like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, whatever, and so
Speaker 5: they told the police what they saw and everything, and
Speaker 5: the police officer let him go because the police officer
Speaker 5: wanted to see if he can catch the guy. So
Speaker 5: we got in the car police car. Next thing I know,
Speaker 5: the police officer, I guess he got a radio call
Speaker 5: or something, because I gave him the description of car
Speaker 5: and everything, and they found him instill on Benning rude.
Speaker 5: So we just went down to where he was and
Speaker 5: there was another officer already talking to him. And this
Speaker 5: officer got out and he said, you stay in the car.
Speaker 5: Next thing I know, I see him cuff him and
Speaker 5: put him in a police call and then took me
Speaker 5: also to the station with my mom came and got me.
Speaker 5: I don't know what they did with him. I know
Speaker 5: they took him that day, but I don't know what
Speaker 5: happened as a result, because I never was called, so
Speaker 5: I don't know what they did or whatever. But when
Speaker 5: we were talking about this case, when I was talking
Speaker 5: with others about it years later, as matter of fact,
Speaker 5: I mean we're talking about maybe a couple of years ago,
Speaker 5: it hit me. Could this have been the freeway phantom.
Speaker 5: I don't know. It made me wonder because this guy
Speaker 5: was very fierce and he was very determined, and I
Speaker 5: mean it was no conversation, just snatching off the street.
Speaker 5: And when you look at those cases, that's what happened
Speaker 5: in each one of those cases, they were just snatched
Speaker 5: off the street. So it's just something to ponder. Thank
Speaker 5: god it was saved from that.
Speaker 8: It's unclear if the man who tried to abduct Rita
Speaker 8: was the Freeway Phantom, but it's very possible she was
Speaker 8: the exact demographic that the phantom was targeting, black, young
Speaker 8: and petite. She was also on Bending Road that's the
Speaker 8: same road that nine Moosha was snatched off of. And
Speaker 8: there was one other strange similarity.
Speaker 5: Back then, they had this in school. It was one
Speaker 5: piece like shorts that we used for our gym class
Speaker 5: and it was like a one piece jumper but the
Speaker 5: shorts and I had that on and you know, it
Speaker 5: wasn't provocative or anything, you know.
Speaker 13: So you were in the gym outfit, which is one
Speaker 13: of the other girls.
Speaker 5: Was in as well. Did you know that?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 5: I didn't. I did not know that. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: I never knew that. Well, you know, it was issued
Speaker 5: and I could see myself in it actually because there
Speaker 5: were different colors and minds was the part the top
Speaker 5: part is as pin stripe and it was in the
Speaker 5: pants were like gold.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: The thing is, I don't know that I've award again.
Speaker 8: As it turns out, Rita had worn DC Public School
Speaker 8: issue jim shorts, the same shorts that Carol Spinx had
Speaker 8: on when she was killed. The coincidences in Rita's case
Speaker 8: are just too many to ignore. And so if this
Speaker 8: man she's describing was in fact the killer, we thought
Speaker 8: we should learn a little bit more about who he was.
Speaker 5: He was dark skinned. He wasn't very tall. I'd say
Speaker 5: it was probably about between maybe five eight five nine.
Speaker 5: He was strong, very strong. He looked like he could
Speaker 5: have been either in his late thirties or early forties,
Speaker 5: mid forties. He had like cyburns. He was kind of scruffy.
Speaker 5: He wasn't dirty, but like you know, wasn't neat. But
Speaker 5: he had facial hair, not a beard, but he had cydeburns,
Speaker 5: and he had a mustache and it was dark. He
Speaker 5: wasn't like he had no gut or anything. He was
Speaker 5: pretty fit. I wouldn't even doubt that he could have
Speaker 5: been military or some type of job at that age
Speaker 5: to keep you know, in pretty good shape. You know,
Speaker 5: now with my police skills, I can really break it
Speaker 5: down a little bit. I really believe I was being stalked.
Speaker 5: The whole thing was I wonder how long he was stalking,
Speaker 5: because when he pulled up, he pulled up farther enough
Speaker 5: so that he was literally by the time he got out,
Speaker 5: it was like pre playing. By the time he got
Speaker 5: out of his car, he met me. You see, as
Speaker 5: I was walking.
Speaker 8: We asked to reader how this event impacted her life.
Speaker 5: It was mostly mental. I was definitely fearful after that.
Speaker 5: I don't remember ever walking up there again that way
Speaker 5: ever again, you know, I remember even after that years later,
Speaker 5: driving you know, and I never talked about it. I
Speaker 5: mean even within my family, we didn't talk about it.
Speaker 5: And the girl Wanda, she lived next door, and we
Speaker 5: were recently talking about it because we're still friends, and
Speaker 5: she said, oh yeah, she said it was terrifying. And
Speaker 5: I never really talked to her even about her perspective
Speaker 5: because it had to traumatize her because she was younger
Speaker 5: than me, about about three or four years. But they
Speaker 5: didn't go after her.
Speaker 8: Rita says that afterwards she was expecting to learn more
Speaker 8: about the man or what happened, but she never heard
Speaker 8: anything else about the incident.
Speaker 5: After that day. I was never called. There was never
Speaker 5: anything after that. I don't know what happened to that guy.
Speaker 5: The only thing I had learned was it was his birthday.
Speaker 5: I don't know his name or anything like that, but
Speaker 5: it was his birthday, which really creaked me out a lot.
Speaker 5: What was his plans?
Speaker 8: Rita could have been the fifth victim of the Freeway Phantom,
Speaker 8: if there was any connection at all. Either way, she
Speaker 8: was lucky, but not everyone was so lucky. Soon another
Speaker 8: girl would go missing. Just a little over a month
Speaker 8: after Nina Moosi Yates was murdered, eighteen year old Brenda
Speaker 8: Woodard was found dead and in her coat pocket police
Speaker 8: found a handwritten letter, the first communication from the killer.
Speaker 7: I hund hand him out to my own sons and
Speaker 7: him and two people of not howing women. I one
Speaker 7: met the other when you catch me and canna how
Speaker 7: freeway Haando.
Speaker 8: Next time on Freeway Phantom. When I got home today,
Speaker 8: my wife was crying. She said she got off from
Speaker 8: work and she couldn't catch the bus because of all
Speaker 8: the police tape.
Speaker 3: We live basically in the same neighborhood, I mean the
Speaker 3: same type of apartments, the same people, and I used
Speaker 3: to hang out where she lived. I had friends up there.
Speaker 10: She had been strangled, and what was different with her
Speaker 10: is she had also been stabbed. So I've liked previous victims.
Speaker 10: She put up a serious struggle with her as Sam.
Speaker 9: And it makes you wonder too, did she fight back
Speaker 9: because she basically wrote her own killer's note.
Speaker 5: Here he is. He's taunting the police.
Speaker 4: He knows enough to know not to write the note
Speaker 4: himself because he could potentially be connected to it.
Speaker 1: Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 1: and Black bar Mitzvah. Our host is CELESE.
Speaker 5: Hiley.
Speaker 1: The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright and
Speaker 1: Celes Hiley. Executive producers on behalf of Our Heart Radio
Speaker 1: include Matt Frederick and Alexilliams, with supervising producer Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright
Speaker 1: and Payne Lindsay, with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan.
Speaker 1: Executive producers on behalf of Black bar Mitzvah include myself,
Speaker 1: Jay Ellis and Aaron Bergman, with producer Sidney Fools. Lead
Speaker 1: researcher is Jamie Albright. Artwork by Mister Soul two one six,
Speaker 1: original music by Makeup and Vanity Set special thanks to
Speaker 1: a teammate, Uta Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group.
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV and iHeartMedia, as well as Black bar Mitzvah
Speaker 1: have increased the reward for information leading to the arrest
Speaker 1: and conviction of the person or persons responsible for their
Speaker 1: Freeway Fan of murders. The previous reward of up to
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Police Department has been matched. A new total reward of
Speaker 1: up to three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered.
Speaker 1: If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes,
Speaker 1: contact the Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero
Speaker 1: two seven two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information,
Speaker 1: please visit freeway dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.