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Speaker 2: My mother was very strict with us. So the rule
Speaker 2: is when she leaves, the door is closed and locked,
Speaker 2: and you don't come out that door. And her favorite
Speaker 2: saying was, I don't care if Jesus Christ knock on
Speaker 2: that door and say open it, you better not open it.
Speaker 2: So that was the rule. We didn't open the door
Speaker 2: for any We were playing around, we were watching TV,
Speaker 2: everybody else was playing around where and my sister Valerie
Speaker 2: knocked on the door. I think I told him at first,
Speaker 2: don't say anything. She knocked harder and I was like what.
Speaker 2: She was like, open the door and I was like, no, Mama,
Speaker 2: not home. Opened the door and I was like, what
Speaker 2: do you want? She said, I want one of y'all
Speaker 2: to go to the store for me. I said, Mama
Speaker 2: not home, we can't come out. Baby said no, i'm'a go,
Speaker 2: homem'a go, ho'm'a go, cause she didn't want us to
Speaker 2: start a fight. Her and Valerie went out. I guess
Speaker 2: about twenty thirty minutes. I'm like, she ain't back yet.
Speaker 2: So I went across the hall where I knew my
Speaker 2: sister was Valerie to see if she was back, and
Speaker 2: she was like no. Now I'm getting scared cause she
Speaker 2: not home and my mother gonna be coming soon. And
Speaker 2: I'm go'a get the work it because I'm the oldest.
Speaker 2: I told them to stand in the house. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: run up to the store. So I took the shortcut
Speaker 2: to go to the store and made it back. She
Speaker 2: still wasn't at the house. I was hollering at Valerie
Speaker 2: because I was upset and I was scared because she
Speaker 2: hadn't gotten back home and she sent her to the store.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. And the next thing
Speaker 2: I know, was getting late in the evening. People just
Speaker 2: started coming around, you know, from the neighborhood and the neighbors.
Speaker 2: And then somebody was like, Okay, we're gonna just go searching.
Speaker 2: Everybody was like in groups of fours and five out
Speaker 2: looking and I don't remember when the police came, but
Speaker 2: I remember that night detectives came. I didn't really think
Speaker 2: about the police, but when the detectives came, I really
Speaker 2: realized this was you know, it was serious. They never
Speaker 2: spoke to us, they talked to my mother. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't really know what was happening, what was going on.
Speaker 2: It didn't make sense. And the only thing that I
Speaker 2: was not understanding, period was what is my sister, Why
Speaker 2: nobody found her? What's going on?
Speaker 3: If you look up Freeway Phantom, you might find out
Speaker 3: a little bit about this strange and tragic case, but
Speaker 3: in all likelihood you're not going to find out much.
Speaker 3: You'll learn that during the early nineteen seventies, a serial
Speaker 3: killer murdered at least six young black girls in the Washington,
Speaker 3: DC area. You might learn their names, you might hear
Speaker 3: about a strange note left by the killer. You may
Speaker 3: even come across a few suspects, but not much else.
Speaker 3: And that's what makes the case of the freewaym so
Speaker 3: very very strange. My name is Celeste Hedley. I'm a
Speaker 3: journalist author and longtime public radio host based in Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: Over the years, I've covered many stories of people of
Speaker 3: color going missing in this city, a phenomenon that absorbed
Speaker 3: the public consciousness. In twenty seventeen on social media.
Speaker 4: When the Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: Police Department tried to raise awareness about missing children and
Speaker 5: teenagers by posting their images on social media, the campaign backfired,
Speaker 5: sparking some national outrage and fears of an epidemic of
Speaker 5: missing children of color.
Speaker 6: One of the most popular stories on our NBC app
Speaker 6: this week is about missing girls. Our story debunks of
Speaker 6: fake reports that fourteen girls went missing from DC in
Speaker 6: just one day. DC police told us there are simply
Speaker 6: sharing missing person cases more often on social media.
Speaker 3: It all started when a post went viral all over
Speaker 3: social media saying young black girls were going missing at
Speaker 3: an alarming rate in DC, and admits the firestorm that
Speaker 3: particular post was proven to be untrue. However, behind the
Speaker 3: social media frenzy was a certain reality that for decades,
Speaker 3: people of color, particularly women, have been abducted or killed
Speaker 3: across the Capital region, and their cases rarely resolved or
Speaker 3: even fully investigated. That fact may be why most people
Speaker 3: have never heard of the Freeway Phantom case, a case
Speaker 3: that involved six young black girls who were all kidnapped, killed,
Speaker 3: and discarded along the DC freeways in the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: A case that was never solved and sadly quickly forgotten.
Speaker 3: But in the wake of the DC Missing Girl's Conversation,
Speaker 3: people started thinking about this case again. One of those
Speaker 3: people was fellow DC journalist Cheryl Thompson, who used to
Speaker 3: write for The Washington Post.
Speaker 7: While I was actually working on another story at the Post,
Speaker 7: I stumbled across this press release of these six little
Speaker 7: black girls. And the photo struck me because it was
Speaker 7: in black and white, and so the first thing I
Speaker 7: thought of, Oh my god, this is old, Like what
Speaker 7: is this? And then just saw these six bass of
Speaker 7: these six little black girls, and you could tell by
Speaker 7: their hairstyle and you know, the bows and their hair,
Speaker 7: and it sort of gave me pause, and I was like,
Speaker 7: what is this and why are these murders unsolved? And
Speaker 7: so that's what sort of prompted me.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, Cheryl published a groundbreaking article about this
Speaker 3: seemingly uncovered story, and that's how we and thousands of
Speaker 3: others found out about the Freeway phantom case. She says
Speaker 3: the process was both difficult and significant.
Speaker 7: What it was about it again was the fact that, like,
Speaker 7: how could this be, like six little black girls murdered
Speaker 7: in the nation's capital. And so then I started researching
Speaker 7: it and saw that there had been stories, some stories
Speaker 7: over the years, but it mainly faded from public view.
Speaker 7: I asked one of our researchers at the Washington Post
Speaker 7: to go back. I said, can you find some stories,
Speaker 7: some microfish from you know, back in the early seventies
Speaker 7: when this happened, and there were stories, but we were
Speaker 7: really hard pressed to find stories that focus just on
Speaker 7: these girls. In the early nineteen seventies, it was the
Speaker 7: Vietnam War, and you know, DC was the place where
Speaker 7: protesters came. There was a lot going on in the
Speaker 7: nation's capital during that time. So when murders happened, when
Speaker 7: killings happened, it made the news. But there were so
Speaker 7: many killings at the time that they just didn't get
Speaker 7: the individual attention. Like when I found one of the cases,
Speaker 7: it was lumped in with some other homicides in the district.
Speaker 7: But that's just the way it was. I mean, this
Speaker 7: was the murder capital of the country back in the day.
Speaker 3: Cheryl decided to reach out to some people, and she
Speaker 3: says her best sources have always been the detectives who
Speaker 3: worked on the case.
Speaker 7: Yes, I have called some of my sources over the
Speaker 7: years for stuff that might have happened thirty years ago,
Speaker 7: and they remembered details, right, how do you remember this stuff?
Speaker 7: So I then reached out to Detective Jenkins, Romaine Jenkins,
Speaker 7: because I figured, man, this is a woman, a black woman,
Speaker 7: and I know she had to take an interest in
Speaker 7: this for a lot of reasons, and some of which
Speaker 7: were the very ones that I mentioned. These kids could
Speaker 7: have been her daughters.
Speaker 3: Detective Romaine Jenkins was a name that we kept hearing.
Speaker 8: We spoke with one of the investigators, Romaine Jenkins, and
Speaker 8: she was like, if there was.
Speaker 1: Dic there was also another woman by the name of
Speaker 1: Romayne Jenkins who was a sex squad detective.
Speaker 7: One of our pick apart those files that Romayne's got,
Speaker 7: it would be an exciting interview.
Speaker 9: Romayne Jenkins, she was one of the best.
Speaker 1: She knew all adult dealers, she knew all the girlfriends,
Speaker 1: she was friends with all of them.
Speaker 9: She got the latest school, she knew who pulled the trigger.
Speaker 3: We decided to give Romayne Jenkins a call.
Speaker 10: Hello is.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we soon realized just how much she knew
Speaker 3: about this case.
Speaker 11: I investigated many serial rape cases, and none of them
Speaker 11: are liked to these today. Is this sumitar padn somewhere?
Speaker 11: But the only pattern you have with these cases is
Speaker 11: the fact that they were young black females.
Speaker 3: As it turns out, Romayne was the lead investigator on
Speaker 3: the Freeway Phantom case in the nineteen eighties. That was
Speaker 3: almost ten years after the case went cold, and she
Speaker 3: was the right person for the job. Romayne had an
Speaker 3: impressive resume up to that point as a sergeant in
Speaker 3: the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC back in the seventies.
Speaker 3: She was the first woman and the only woman for
Speaker 3: a long time in homicide. We told Romayne that we
Speaker 3: were looking into the Freeway Phantom case and she agreed
Speaker 3: to sit down with us. But before we made a
Speaker 3: trip to DC to see her, we wanted to learn
Speaker 3: more about her life and how she eventually came to
Speaker 3: investigate this case.
Speaker 10: I am a native person from Washington, d C. I
Speaker 10: attended school here. I joined the Metropolitan Police Department June
Speaker 10: twenty first nineteen sixty five, and at that time there
Speaker 10: were only about maybe thirty police females on the department,
Speaker 10: and they were housed at something called the Woman's Bureau,
Speaker 10: and they did mostly social work, abandoned children, missing children.
Speaker 10: Then they joined us with something called the Youth Division
Speaker 10: and that was the male counterpart of the women's guas.
Speaker 10: And then I stayed there for two years and I
Speaker 10: basically investigated cases involving badded children, juvenile offenders. We did
Speaker 10: missing persons and things like that, and then homicides. They
Speaker 10: needed a female to handle their baby deaths and abortion
Speaker 10: cases because at that time abortion was illegal in the
Speaker 10: District of Columbia.
Speaker 3: So Romayne went to work in homicide. She was there
Speaker 3: for approximately four years investigating battered children and abortion cases.
Speaker 10: After about four years in the homicide squad, I went
Speaker 10: to the seventh District because at that time they decided
Speaker 10: they wanted to put policewomen in uniform and put them
Speaker 10: in the patrol division. And at that time I was
Speaker 10: a supervised I was a sergeant because I made sergeant
Speaker 10: when I was in homicide. So they wanted to see
Speaker 10: if females could supervise males in the prole Division. I
Speaker 10: went to the seventh District and that was quite an experience.
Speaker 10: Everything was solely new to me, but I made it suit.
Speaker 3: During this time, Romayne got married and started a family.
Speaker 3: She eventually decided being a patrol officer wasn't what she wanted,
Speaker 3: so she applied for Sex Squad, which investigates sexually heinous crimes, and.
Speaker 10: I stayed there ten years as a supervisor. And from
Speaker 10: there I went to the US Attorney's Office, where I
Speaker 10: supervised seven detectives and we handled cases. We worked up
Speaker 10: cases for the US Attorney's Office, and that's basically what
Speaker 10: I did. That's basically my career.
Speaker 3: It was while in homicide in the early seventies that
Speaker 3: Romayne first heard about the so called Freeway Phantom murders.
Speaker 3: Though other officers were assigned to the case, she helped
Speaker 3: canvas neighborhoods and became intimately familiar with the case details.
Speaker 3: Years passed and remain heard little about the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 3: Fifteen years after the murders, in nineteen eighty seven, Romayne
Speaker 3: decided to reopen the case herself while working in the
Speaker 3: US Attorney's office, and it ended up becoming the case
Speaker 3: that would consume Romayne's career and life to this day.
Speaker 3: When we told Romayne we were investigating the Freeway Phantom case,
Speaker 3: she revealed to us that she had held onto boxes
Speaker 3: and boxes of evidence, case files, and other documents. Even
Speaker 3: after retiring from the MPD. Now, at eighty years old,
Speaker 3: Romayne still has those stacks of boxes sitting in her
Speaker 3: bedroom or scattered across her living room floor. We asked
Speaker 3: her if we could talk to her in person and
Speaker 3: look through some of the boxes. At first, she was hesitant,
Speaker 3: but after we talked about our mutual desire to solve
Speaker 3: these murders, she started to open up, and eventually she
Speaker 3: agreed to an in person interview. So the Tenderfoot team
Speaker 3: met up with me in DC and we headed to
Speaker 3: our house.
Speaker 10: Two at a ten.
Speaker 8: Okay, we got you and we can take him back up.
Speaker 3: If that's now, you can leave.
Speaker 12: Man that you got 'em bad, leave me, okay, cause
Speaker 12: they'll either go downstairs.
Speaker 10: They'll probably end up going downstairs. Okay, you wanted to
Speaker 10: sit at the table, No, set him right here on
Speaker 10: the floor. Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm in Romaine Jenkins home in Washington, DC, not far
Speaker 3: from where I live. In her home, Romayne has what's
Speaker 3: likely the largest collection of documents on the freeway. Phantom case.
Speaker 12: Open Open.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna open 'em up for you, all right.
Speaker 3: I will just pull him out and we can take
Speaker 3: a look at what's here.
Speaker 9: This is Brenda Crockett.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, she looks.
Speaker 9: This is the one that was she the one that
Speaker 9: was barefoot, that year old.
Speaker 3: She's tiny, just a tiny baby. She was the one
Speaker 3: that went to the store barefoot.
Speaker 10: And the only the only way she was identified with
Speaker 10: her other identified for the clothing. That's all they had.
Speaker 3: The amount of information we came across was astounding. She
Speaker 3: had crime scene photos, original police reports, suspect lists. Most
Speaker 3: of this we had never seen before. We asked Romaine
Speaker 3: how she came to acquire all of these documents.
Speaker 12: Basically by talking to detectives who were on the actual
Speaker 12: scenes of the cases. A lot of them gave me
Speaker 12: their notebooks, their notes. Some had copies of files. They
Speaker 12: gave me that going to the police department, like Prince
Speaker 12: Georgia's County, they turned over all their files to me
Speaker 12: because they micro fished the file so they didn't need
Speaker 12: the hard copies and they were going to dispose of them,
Speaker 12: so I said, well, I'll take them. So that's how
Speaker 12: I inherited a lot of that information. Then, with the
Speaker 12: cooperation of the FBI, they assigned the case agent to
Speaker 12: work with me, and I was allowed to go into
Speaker 12: their files. Well, they assigned me an office at a
Speaker 12: desk and one of their investigators and I would go
Speaker 12: to the FBI building every day and read through documents
Speaker 12: and they'd make copies of whatever I needed. Also, with
Speaker 12: Natal Investigative Services, they were getting ready to get rid
Speaker 12: of some files, so I was able to make copies
Speaker 12: of the things that they had and nobody told me no,
Speaker 12: even the Metropolitan Police Department. There were people who still
Speaker 12: had information and they turned it over to me. So
Speaker 12: that's how I amass information in the files.
Speaker 3: As Romayne said, law enforcement was disposing of the original
Speaker 3: case files. Had Romayne not tracked down and preserved these files,
Speaker 3: we would have no original documents to view today. This
Speaker 3: is significant because information in those boxes may provide new
Speaker 3: insight into the case. Throughout this podcast, we're going to
Speaker 3: reveal what we found in those boxes and maybe get
Speaker 3: one step closer to finding the Freeway Phantom. But first
Speaker 3: we need to take a step back to talk about
Speaker 3: the basics. What were the Freeway Phantom murders, what happened?
Speaker 3: We need to go back to the beginning to fully
Speaker 3: understand this story. The truth is there's not a ton
Speaker 3: of existing scholarship on this case. In our research, we
Speaker 3: came across only two books written about the Freeway Phantom
Speaker 3: most people have never heard of. The first book, called
Speaker 3: The Mystery of the Freeway Fantom, published in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: three by Wilma W.
Speaker 4: Harper.
Speaker 3: Miss Harper is closely related to these cases, which you'll
Speaker 3: hear about later. In the book's preface, Harper explains why
Speaker 3: she wrote it, saying, quote, when I first undertook the
Speaker 3: task of writing a social study of the families and
Speaker 3: friends associated with the Freeway Phantom cases in September nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, my one objective was to assist the police
Speaker 3: department in apprehending the killer or killers of the seven
Speaker 3: black girls who'd been raped, murdered, and their bodies placed
Speaker 3: on the various highways around the city of Washington, d c.
Speaker 3: It was my belief that the secret of who had
Speaker 3: killed the girls could be found in one or more
Speaker 3: of the social institutions frequented by these girls or by
Speaker 3: their parents. Throughout this podcast, Harper's words will take us
Speaker 3: back in time and provide us with a first hand
Speaker 3: account of what it was like to live through these
Speaker 3: serial murders. The second book we found was called Tantamount,
Speaker 3: The Pursuit of the Freeway Phantom serial Killer, published in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. This book was written by a father daughter
Speaker 3: team of true crime authors.
Speaker 8: I'm Blamed Pardo. I've written over eighty books. I'd write
Speaker 8: primarily science fiction, true crime, military history, political thrillers, things
Speaker 8: along those lines. This is a topic we've been writing
Speaker 8: about a lot about which is true crimes, and we
Speaker 8: tend to focus on the unsolved cases, especially surreal killing
Speaker 8: pieces that remain open on the saviors.
Speaker 13: And I'm Victoria Hester. I've written a total of four
Speaker 13: true crime books alongside my dad and co author Blaine.
Speaker 13: The thing that really got me into true crime was
Speaker 13: actually my dad. Growing up. Our bonding moment was over
Speaker 13: the Zodiac, which go figure, that's a normal father daughter thing.
Speaker 13: But ever since then, I've been kind of hooked on
Speaker 13: true crime and it's fun to research. We enjoy the
Speaker 13: journey of research and then putting it all onto paper.
Speaker 8: We had just finished our book on the Colonial Parkway
Speaker 8: murders and we were looking for the next project to
Speaker 8: get into. And it was really a matter of let's
Speaker 8: look in the local vicinity because we like dealing with
Speaker 8: people we can go interview and spend time with. So
Speaker 8: we started looking in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC to see
Speaker 8: if what open cold cases were out there, and there's
Speaker 8: a lot of them. I outlined a number of them
Speaker 8: for Victoria. Okay, you get to pick this one was
Speaker 8: kind of an easy one to do in the case
Speaker 8: of the freeway fantom. Looking at this one, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 8: this one's got some meat to it. This is an
Speaker 8: interesting case.
Speaker 3: We asked Blaine in Victoria to walk us through the
Speaker 3: basics of the case, starting with the first victim.
Speaker 8: First one that disappeared was a thirteen year old Carol
Speaker 8: Denize Things. She disappeared on April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 8: She's found on the Anacostia Freeway, which is IWO ninety five.
Speaker 8: She's about two hundred yards south of the Suitland Parkway
Speaker 8: and her body's found by a group of children. It's
Speaker 8: a major freeway cutting right through the city. She had
Speaker 8: disappeared on the twenty fifth, but wasn't found until April thirtieth.
Speaker 13: So the next victim is Darlinia Denise Johnson. The reason
Speaker 13: why we put the middle names in with each girl
Speaker 13: is because it does play a huge role down the
Speaker 13: role in the investigation of the middle named Denise. So
Speaker 13: that's why we make a point to mention that she
Speaker 13: was sixteen when she disappeared on July eighth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 13: Her body was found July nineteenth, nineteen seventy one, in
Speaker 13: the evening. Her mother filed a missing persons report and
Speaker 13: her body was actually found on the Anacostia Freeway, so
Speaker 13: the same freeway that Carol Spinks was found off of.
Speaker 8: Brenda Fake Krockett was ten years old. She disappeared on
Speaker 8: July twy seventh, nineteen seventy one. Her body was found
Speaker 8: off of Route fifty, which is one of the major
Speaker 8: thoroughfares in Chevrolet. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Speaker 8: She had been left on the grassy shoulder of John
Speaker 8: Hanson Highway. She was found face up, and it was
Speaker 8: really only a short period of time after she had disappeared,
Speaker 8: so the killer had kind of shifted at least from
Speaker 8: the first case. He's not spending as much time with
Speaker 8: the victims. He's killing them now, just dumping.
Speaker 3: Just over two months later, the fourth victim was discovered.
Speaker 3: Her name was Nina Mosha Yates.
Speaker 13: She was twelve years old and she was found on
Speaker 13: October first, nineteen seventy one. She was a seventh grader
Speaker 13: and she was a very quiet and well behaved child.
Speaker 13: In the evening, she went to the safeway that was
Speaker 13: a few blocks away from her home to buy a
Speaker 13: bag of sugar at eight forty five PM.
Speaker 3: Then a month and a half later, the fifth.
Speaker 8: Victim, Brenda Denise Woodard, was eighteen years old. November fifteenth,
Speaker 8: nineteen seventy one, she disappeared in the evening. She had
Speaker 8: gone to a night class, left with a young man.
Speaker 8: They went to Ben's Chili Bowl in DC, which is
Speaker 8: this iconic restaurant, and she rode the bus to go home,
Speaker 8: and she was last seen around the eighth and H
Speaker 8: Street intersections, but her roommate reported by eleven thirty that
Speaker 8: she hadn't come home. She was found along the Baltimore
Speaker 8: Washington Parkway as well by a Chevrolet police officer. She
Speaker 8: had been strangled, and what was different with her is
Speaker 8: she had also been stabbed.
Speaker 3: And finally, the following year, the sixth and last confirmed victim.
Speaker 13: Diane Williams, is seventeen. She was found on September fifth,
Speaker 13: nineteen seventy two, ten months after the last case with Brenda.
Speaker 13: Her body was found the very next day. She was
Speaker 13: reported missing by her father when he came home at
Speaker 13: eight am that morning. She had visited her boyfriend, which
Speaker 13: was pretty normal thing for her to do, and was
Speaker 13: told to be home by ten thirty. The night before,
Speaker 13: her boyfriend escorted her to the bus stop, so we
Speaker 13: know that she got at least to the bus.
Speaker 8: If you think about it, so many of them are
Speaker 8: caught way to a grocery store running an errand it's
Speaker 8: not like something that's a routine where he's following them
Speaker 8: for several days and knows their pattern and how to
Speaker 8: intercept them. These are all victims of opportunity.
Speaker 3: Six victims, all young black girls from around the same area,
Speaker 3: all disposed of in identical ways. When we sat down
Speaker 3: with Romaine Jenkins, we asked her about her first involvement
Speaker 3: in the case.
Speaker 12: Well at the time when Carol Spinx was murdered. I
Speaker 12: was in the homicide unit, and at that time I
Speaker 12: was the only female in the unit. I was interested
Speaker 12: in the case. But what happened was we were inundated
Speaker 12: with the May Day demonstrations.
Speaker 3: From May first to May fifth, nineteen seventy one, thousands
Speaker 3: of people gathered in Washington, d C. To protest the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War. This would become the May Day Protests.
Speaker 4: We have seventy five thousand people from all walks of life,
Speaker 4: with differing ideologies and purposes, marched from the White House
Speaker 4: to the Capitol.
Speaker 3: More than five thousand Metropolitan Police Department officers, including Romayne,
Speaker 3: were tasked with shutting down the demonstrations. By the end
Speaker 3: of the week, over twelve thousand protesters had been arrested
Speaker 3: to this day, the largest mass arrest in US history.
Speaker 12: And so I never got the chance to go and
Speaker 12: dig into the investigation like I could have. The first
Speaker 12: day I recalled we were going out on the case,
Speaker 12: and the division command to stop me and said, where
Speaker 12: are you going. I said, well, we had a little
Speaker 12: girl murdered over in Southeast and we're going to the
Speaker 12: neighborhood and we're going to work on the case. He says, notice,
Speaker 12: may they demonstrations. This is a red alert for the
Speaker 12: police department. You will get involved in the demonstrations.
Speaker 3: But Romayne went home that night and thought more about
Speaker 3: Carol Spinks. She was familiar with the neighborhood and something
Speaker 3: just didn't add up.
Speaker 12: The girls come from neighborhoods that are densely populated with
Speaker 12: black people, their kids in and out, their cars going
Speaker 12: up and down wheel or road. You know, there's never
Speaker 12: a time it's not busy. So you could send you
Speaker 12: a child to the store. Nobody's gonna bother your child
Speaker 12: or what. The neighborhood never even thought like that.
Speaker 9: No, they were even safer because there's always somebody.
Speaker 12: Somebody that's right. And everybody knew everybody, you know, they said, oh,
Speaker 12: that's miss so and So's daughter, it's time to be
Speaker 12: in the house. It's close and dark, I mean, and
Speaker 12: people looked out for each other.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: I've spent my entire career working in public media as
Speaker 3: a radio journalist and national talk show host. One of
Speaker 3: the things that I love about working for public radio
Speaker 3: is that I rarely have to report on crime. Well,
Speaker 3: we never neglect a story about terrorism, Mass shootings or
Speaker 3: corporate mouth. Individual crime stories don't generally get coverage, and
Speaker 3: I like that. I like that I don't have to
Speaker 3: dig into personal stories of infidelity or rage or greed,
Speaker 3: or interview family members who've just lost a loved one
Speaker 3: to a drive by shooting. So you might wonder what
Speaker 3: I'm doing hosting a podcast series about a string of
Speaker 3: murders in Washington, d C. A city that had so
Speaker 3: many homicides in the early nineteen nineties that it was
Speaker 3: known as the murder capital of the United States. There's
Speaker 3: one easy answer to that question and one more complicated answer.
Speaker 3: The easy answer is that I'm so afraid of serial
Speaker 3: killers that I'm fascinated by them. They terrify me. I
Speaker 3: simply can't understand the kind of mind that would take
Speaker 3: a stranger's life for no reason other than because they
Speaker 3: enjoy it. That seems more than deranged to me. It
Speaker 3: seems inhuman. Serial killers are incredibly rare. According to the FBI,
Speaker 3: less than one percent of murders are committed by a
Speaker 3: serial killer, but were also not very good at catching them.
Speaker 3: The founder of the Murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit that
Speaker 3: collects information about murders, believes that a good number of
Speaker 3: unsolved homicides may have been committed by serial killers, So
Speaker 3: the chance to dig into both the mindset of such
Speaker 3: a killer and the techniques for finding them was very tempting.
Speaker 3: More importantly, though, I couldn't understand why the Freeway Phantom
Speaker 3: had never been caught and why most people have never
Speaker 3: heard of him. The Phantom killed at least six young girls,
Speaker 3: probably more. The so called Son of Sam also killed
Speaker 3: six people, and there are a bunch of movies about him,
Speaker 3: and even an episode of Seinfeld ed Geen. The Plainfield
Speaker 3: ghoul who inspired the killers in Psycho, Silence of the
Speaker 3: Lambs and the texts Chainsaw Massacre, was convicted of killing
Speaker 3: two people and may have killed as many as seven.
Speaker 3: This is not admiration for perpetrators with high body counts,
Speaker 3: but a legitimate question. How could someone kill so many
Speaker 3: young girls and be forgotten. The Freeway Phantom is worth
Speaker 3: talking about because the larger issues that surrounded his killing
Speaker 3: spree still endanger the lives of girls, and especially black girls.
Speaker 3: And before we go any further, we want to make
Speaker 3: an important announcement. After over fifty years of waiting, we
Speaker 3: believe the victims' families deserve answers. That's why Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 3: and iHeartMedia are matching the one hundred fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: reward offered by the Metropolitan Police Department. This brings the
Speaker 3: total reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction
Speaker 3: of the person or persons responsible for these murders to
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand dollars. If you have information that may
Speaker 3: lead to the identify location of the freeway phantom, it's
Speaker 3: time to speak up. Tips can be provided to MPD
Speaker 3: or Tenderfoot TV at tips at tenderfoot dot TV. With
Speaker 3: all of that said, it's time we dig deep into
Speaker 3: this case. So to fully understand these murders, we need
Speaker 3: to examine the crimes individually, starting with the very first victim,
Speaker 3: Carol Spinks.
Speaker 2: We grew up at ten thirty four Wall to place
Speaker 2: southeast will place is on the top part of Valley Green.
Speaker 2: Infamous Valley Green, very well known for a lot of activity,
Speaker 2: negative activity, but they're good people in the worst of places.
Speaker 3: This is Evander Spinks, the older sister of Carol Spinks,
Speaker 3: the first victim. At the top of the episode, you
Speaker 3: heard Evander talk about the night that her sister Carol
Speaker 3: went missing.
Speaker 2: I can't say my mother was the best person in
Speaker 2: the world, but my mother took care of us. We
Speaker 2: could not rip and run the street. We could not
Speaker 2: go anywhere. You better not talk about no boy. You
Speaker 2: stay very close to home. We played outside like any
Speaker 2: normal kids have, races in the street, played kickball, double
Speaker 2: dutch boy games outside. Water Place was a well known street,
Speaker 2: but there were a lot of good families on that street.
Speaker 2: Things happened on that street that were bad, but we
Speaker 2: never witnessed anything because we weren't out at night. Whatever happened,
Speaker 2: we would find out the next day or through your
Speaker 2: friends if they saw something, or their parents saw something
Speaker 2: and they was discussing it with their girlfriend, the boyfriend,
Speaker 2: or do you know how adults talk. It's always one
Speaker 2: or two kids hanging around listening getting to school, so
Speaker 2: that everybody else couldn't know what was going on. But
Speaker 2: that's how we found out things. Never that we were
Speaker 2: involved around or near, because my mother didn't play that.
Speaker 3: On April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, the day Carol
Speaker 3: would go missing, the entire Spinx family, with the exception
Speaker 3: of their mother, was home.
Speaker 2: I was home fourteen, Carolyn. Carolyn was home thirteen, Tanya
Speaker 2: was home twelve, One was home eleven, and Joseph was
Speaker 2: home one or two years old.
Speaker 3: Carol and Carolyn Spinks were twin sisters. Their nicknames were
Speaker 3: and Yaya, respectively.
Speaker 2: They looked identical, they were identical. They could sometimes fool us,
Speaker 2: but me not that much because they had different personalities Baybe.
Speaker 2: Carol was more laid back and quiet Carly and Yaya
Speaker 2: a mouthpiece and a social butterfly. But they stuck together.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't see one ten feet further from the other one.
Speaker 2: They were always together.
Speaker 4: My mom and all that. Brothers and sisters. They knew
Speaker 4: us apart. But some of our own friends that we
Speaker 4: had outside of the house, some of them knew. Some
Speaker 4: of them didn't. That would be dressed to Nike, you
Speaker 4: can forget it.
Speaker 3: This is Carolyn Spinx. She was incredibly close with her
Speaker 3: twin sister, Carol.
Speaker 4: Oh, we did okay. We of course played. We all
Speaker 4: did each other's hair, We dressed it like we fold
Speaker 4: the teachers. We jumped double dutch, played Jack's, all kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff. We did everything together. She was smart, She
Speaker 4: was very smart. She wasn't a smart mouth as I was.
Speaker 4: Then she was smart. It was funny then she was.
Speaker 4: She was my friend. That was my left hand because
Speaker 4: I'm right here, so she was my left hand. That day.
Speaker 4: I wish, Oh my god, I wish I could take
Speaker 4: it back.
Speaker 3: Wish I could take that day back.
Speaker 4: That day, my mom told us do not go outside.
Speaker 4: So we all was in the house. I don't even
Speaker 4: remember what we were doing, but I know it was me,
Speaker 4: event and baby, and my baby brother was home because
Speaker 4: he was a baby, and my other brother. All of us,
Speaker 4: all six of us was in the house. And I
Speaker 4: remember when Battery knocked on the door saying, see when
Speaker 4: somebody go to the store, and like, no, most in no,
Speaker 4: most that don't go out. I don't know what made
Speaker 4: her say I'll go. I don't know, but I was like,
Speaker 4: I ain't gone, No, I'm gonna get us. I ain't
Speaker 4: getting no beating. And my mother didn't play.
Speaker 3: But for whatever reason, Carol volunteered to go to the store,
Speaker 3: and so off she went.
Speaker 4: Didn't think nothing of it right then and there. The
Speaker 4: next thing I knew, I was like, dang. An minute
Speaker 4: she didn't come back, and I remember I said that
Speaker 4: I went out that door. I'm like, no, I gotta
Speaker 4: go to a Vatamy. She ain't come back. We got
Speaker 4: to go to the store, and I remember me and
Speaker 4: Battery went to the store and we asked the man
Speaker 4: did he see it? And he said, yeah, he seen
Speaker 4: the girl look just like me, and she had her
Speaker 4: She got her stuff, and that was it. We came
Speaker 4: back home. We called my mother and she came home,
Speaker 4: and then she called the police. I remember she called
Speaker 4: the police and they said they can't do nothing.
Speaker 9: Do you remember why they said they couldn't do anything.
Speaker 4: Because they said to be twenty four hours. I remember
Speaker 4: that well, in like a couple of hours. No, something
Speaker 4: ain't right. Mm hmmm. I knew something was wrong. I
Speaker 4: knew it. I told her I'd be something wrong, something wrong.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 9: During that time when you didn't know what had happened
Speaker 9: to her, when she was just missing, what were you
Speaker 9: thinking had happened?
Speaker 4: I thought somebody had got her or did something to her.
Speaker 9: He did.
Speaker 4: I knew something had happened to her. I knew it
Speaker 4: did because she wouldn't run away. We never ran away
Speaker 4: from home. We never did any of that, So I
Speaker 4: already knew something was wrong. I knew something bad had happened.
Speaker 4: I knew that, I just didn't know what. But after
Speaker 4: like the second day that when I started feeling the pains,
Speaker 4: and I used to sit on the bottom month in
Speaker 4: bed and this rock and I would get pained, and
Speaker 4: oh I'd be in and out, in and out. Oh
Speaker 4: my god. It was terrible. It was Oh god, it
Speaker 4: was the worst. It was the worst. I still feel
Speaker 4: pain to this day.
Speaker 3: Search parties were dispatched, the community was determined to find Carol,
Speaker 3: but they never did. And then, according to the official reports,
Speaker 3: five days after Carol Spinks's disappearance, a group of kids
Speaker 3: were playing by the side of Interstate two ninety five
Speaker 3: when they discovered Carol's body. But Romayne Jenkins has always
Speaker 3: been skeptical of this report. Here's how she described it
Speaker 3: when we talked to her over the phone.
Speaker 10: There's no indication how her body was discovered.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 10: After the crowd gets there, of course they call the police.
Speaker 10: But what initially caused somebody to say there's a body
Speaker 10: on two ninety five. I don't understand it. Why would
Speaker 10: the kids, even kids wouldn't even be playing on two
Speaker 10: ninety five. There's nothing there's no reason for them to
Speaker 10: have been there unless they were told there was a
Speaker 10: body and they went to see what it was, you know,
Speaker 10: but who said who started it? Even though when she
Speaker 10: was missing, you know, they had lots of groups out
Speaker 10: searching for her and so forth, but there was just
Speaker 10: nothing but for someone to jump over the rail and
Speaker 10: turn that body over.
Speaker 11: Man.
Speaker 10: People just don't do that. Most people don't even want
Speaker 10: to see a dead body. My mind questions a lot
Speaker 10: of things.
Speaker 3: We were curious to see what Romayne was talking about.
Speaker 3: So we found the coordinates for where Carol's body had
Speaker 3: been found, right off the Itune ninety five highway just
Speaker 3: to our right you can see in the distant Suitland Parkway,
Speaker 3: and the police reports say that Carol Spink's body was
Speaker 3: found about fifteen hundred feet south of Suitland, which is
Speaker 3: about where we are. The thing is is that, you know,
Speaker 3: Romayne brought up the idea that why were there people
Speaker 3: near here to find the body? And I gotta say
Speaker 3: she has a point. I mean, even fifty years ago
Speaker 3: this would have still been in industrial park. There's nothing here,
Speaker 3: there's no stores, there's no homes. This is clearly an
Speaker 3: highway access road with nothing but industrial buildings. And you
Speaker 3: can look at these buildings and even though Verizon is
Speaker 3: in them now, these buildings have been here for fifty years.
Speaker 3: So what were they doing here? Why were they walking
Speaker 3: along the highway? And again, remember we're talking about a
Speaker 3: highway that didn't have these lights. It would have been dark.
Speaker 3: And I just she really has a point. How could
Speaker 3: they have stumbled on this body? It just over and
Speaker 3: over in this case, you think somebody knew something, someone
Speaker 3: did It seems impossible. But here we are, and you
Speaker 3: have to imagine as you're standing at I two ninety five,
Speaker 3: and obviously I two ninety five.
Speaker 9: Did not have this many lanes back then.
Speaker 3: We saw the photos. But you have to imagine someone
Speaker 3: just driving up this highway with a dead girl's body
Speaker 3: in their car, stopping the car right here, pulling her
Speaker 3: body out of his car, and then placing it. It's
Speaker 3: distressing and incomprehensible. Yeah, Carolyn Spinks said she doesn't remember
Speaker 3: much about hearing that Carol was dead, only that she
Speaker 3: remembers feeling it.
Speaker 4: I'm feelingly was killing her when she was gone. On
Speaker 4: the days I felt everything.
Speaker 9: What did your family say to you they knew something.
Speaker 4: Was wrong with me. They knew something was wrong because
Speaker 4: I used to sit and rock, just sit on the
Speaker 4: bed and rock and rock and cry and hold myself.
Speaker 4: And then something was wrong, something was hurting.
Speaker 3: A few days later, the family held a public funeral
Speaker 3: for Carol.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that was the worst day of my life.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what it was. I had never been
Speaker 4: to a feeling before, so we did. I didn't know
Speaker 4: what it was. We went to this funeral home first.
Speaker 4: I remember they took us to get these white dresses
Speaker 4: and shoes and stuff. And then we went in this
Speaker 4: funeral home and they had this noise. I guess it
Speaker 4: was the piano or whatever it is, and that noise ooh,
Speaker 4: it was curb. And then they had the big gray casket.
Speaker 4: I ain't know what it was, but it was closed.
Speaker 4: I remember that it was closed, and I remember all
Speaker 4: these people. It was so many people. I remember there
Speaker 4: was so many people. And then we opened the casket
Speaker 4: and I said, I asked them, who was that. Then
Speaker 4: they said that's my said.
Speaker 11: I said, no, it's not.
Speaker 4: When I looked at that face, I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: my god, who was that? He looked like a monster.
Speaker 4: And they said I passed out of something. Something happened
Speaker 4: to me. I don't know what happened. Well, when I
Speaker 4: woke up the next time, I remember we was back
Speaker 4: at home. I don't remember anything else.
Speaker 9: So you said your family never talked about it after
Speaker 9: the funeral, nobody even mentioned her.
Speaker 4: They did, but I'd never want to hear it. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 9: And you think that it was an until you were
Speaker 9: an adult that you were able to hear about her
Speaker 9: or talk about her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Actually it was after I got married to my husband,
Speaker 4: who lived on our block. He knew my sister. When
Speaker 4: he told me one day we talked about it, because
Speaker 4: we never even talked about it for a long time,
Speaker 4: but he told me he carried my sister Casky, And
Speaker 4: I said, no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did.
Speaker 14: My mother had a book, a whole book of the funeral,
Speaker 14: and I was always I never wanted to look at it,
Speaker 14: but this when my mother was still living. So one
Speaker 14: day I just went over went to look at the
Speaker 14: book and I saw him current her casket. And when
Speaker 14: he told me that, that's.
Speaker 4: When I said I need to talk. I needed to
Speaker 4: talk to somebody because I just came, couldn't keep hold
Speaker 4: of it because I know it was hurting. It was
Speaker 4: hurting me. After a while, after I had my kids
Speaker 4: and my sister told the kids. That's when I just
Speaker 4: started to try to talk about it.
Speaker 10: Me and my.
Speaker 4: Husband talking a little bit from time to time, but
Speaker 4: I didn't want to talk about it. There was nothing
Speaker 4: to talk about. You.
Speaker 9: Have you talked with others in your family since then?
Speaker 4: Yes, most of me and my sister Evan talk about
Speaker 4: it more than anybody, but not nobody else really.
Speaker 2: Yvan Is Evander spinks my brothers have never mentioned one
Speaker 2: way to other Caurling. It hurts her, she says, never
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about it, and I've always wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about it because I can't forget. My sister Valerie
Speaker 2: has never talked or spoke about it that I know of,
Speaker 2: so I had to over the years keep talking yeah, yay,
Speaker 2: curling about it, and I know she can't forget, but
Speaker 2: I know she hurts behind that. That's why I her
Speaker 2: entire life changed and it wasn't for the better, totally
Speaker 2: the wrong way. I think the first time all of
Speaker 2: us got together, it was a couple of years ago
Speaker 2: because it bothered me all my life that I could
Speaker 2: go and sit where I knew my sister's body was,
Speaker 2: but there was nothing there to show me that she
Speaker 2: was there. So we got to talk about it. It's
Speaker 2: a hurtful thing, but we gotta do it. And you
Speaker 2: just never know something could pop up. Something just might
Speaker 2: get triggered, or you may have seen something or heard something.
Speaker 9: We don't want to do it.
Speaker 2: It's not like we want to be recognized, because we
Speaker 2: still get recognized as soon as somebody hear the name
Speaker 2: Space Spinks. Oh, I know about the Spinx family. You
Speaker 2: don't know about the Spins family. You don't even know
Speaker 2: about the incident that happened.
Speaker 4: To the Springs family.
Speaker 2: My sister was an innocent little girl. People say, you know,
Speaker 2: these kids fast they grow. She was out there having sex,
Speaker 2: not with my mother, that's a no. She was an
Speaker 2: innocent little girl that was taken from her family and abused.
Speaker 2: We want to know why. As a young teenager, I
Speaker 2: don't think the police did a good job. I didn't
Speaker 2: feel as though they actually cared during that time, And
Speaker 2: as an adult, I know they didn't do a good job,
Speaker 2: and I know down where they didn't care and today.
Speaker 2: I'd be sixty five years old this month, and I
Speaker 2: still feel like they don't give a damn. It probably
Speaker 2: was the police, was somebody that worked with the police.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing really made sense to me. People
Speaker 2: are everywhere. Somebody saw it, and we still want to know,
Speaker 2: and it still hurts. We just want to know why
Speaker 2: and what happened.
Speaker 12: The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.
Speaker 4: This child was laying on the side of the road.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't go nowhere, I wouldn't call it my house.
Speaker 3: Those first five murderers should have been a huge warning
Speaker 3: bell for the police. We just want to know what happened.
Speaker 12: This person must have all that. They were thinking that
Speaker 12: maybe it's just one person, and he says, uh, they
Speaker 12: need to know.
Speaker 4: This is me. I thought that they would catch him.
Speaker 4: I thought it was just a matter of time.
Speaker 3: I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. Next time
Speaker 3: on Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 9: People were scared. I mean parents was scared.
Speaker 4: Children were scared. They wanted to know what more police
Speaker 4: could do.
Speaker 7: What were they doing.
Speaker 8: He kept her for several days as prisoner.
Speaker 1: When the first victims went missing, there was a really
Speaker 1: kind of a muted police response.
Speaker 12: You follow a lead until it takes you nowhere. They
Speaker 12: got all kinds of leads. Everybody was a suspect.
Speaker 15: I got home in the store about six ten pm
Speaker 15: and asked the kids if Darlenia had been home, and
Speaker 15: they said they hadn't seen her. I sent the kids
Speaker 15: around in the next court and they asked the people
Speaker 15: if they had seen Darlina, and they said now.
Speaker 3: Roy said that there was a body of a dead
Speaker 3: lady out there. He told us that he notified the police,
Speaker 3: but the body was still out there.
Speaker 1: Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 1: and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is CELESE.
Speaker 4: Hilly.
Speaker 1: The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and CELESE.
Speaker 11: Hiley.
Speaker 1: Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers
Speaker 1: on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
Speaker 1: with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on
Speaker 1: behalf of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and
Speaker 1: Aaron Bergman with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Mister Soul two one six original music by
Speaker 1: Makeup and Vanity Set Special thanks to a team at
Speaker 1: Uta Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group, Tenderfoot
Speaker 1: TV and iHeartMedia, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah, have
Speaker 1: increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and
Speaker 1: conviction of the person or persons responsible for their Freeway
Speaker 1: Phanom murders. The previous reward of up to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department
Speaker 1: has been matched. A new total reward of up to
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered. If you
Speaker 1: have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero two seven
Speaker 1: two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information, please
Speaker 1: visit Freeway Dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.