Phantom Killer of Texarkana

What the record shows

The Phantom Killer is the name given to an unidentified attacker who struck four times around Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas line, between February 22 and May 3, 1946. Eight people were attacked and five were killed, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and the Texarkana Gazette. Three attacks took place in Bowie County, Texas, and the fourth in Miller County, Arkansas. No one has ever been charged with any of the crimes, and the case was never officially solved.

The first attack came late on February 22, 1946, when Jimmy Hollis, 25, and Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, were parked on a secluded road outside Texarkana, Texas. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a masked man forced them out of the car at gunpoint, beat Hollis with the gun and sexually assaulted Larey. Both survived. On March 24, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, were found dead in Griffin's car on a lovers' lane off Highway 67, each shot in the back of the head with a .32-caliber pistol.

On April 14, Paul Martin, 16, and Betty Jo Booker, 15, were found shot dead near Spring Lake Park; investigators linked the same .32 pistol to both double murders. The Texarkana Gazette, marking the 70th anniversary in 2016, reported that the second double murder sent a shock wave through the twin cities. The final attack, on May 3, was different: farmer Virgil Starks, 37, was shot twice through a window of his farmhouse in Miller County, Arkansas. His wife Katie, 36, was shot twice in the face but escaped and survived. A .22-caliber weapon was used, and the Gazette has reported that some close to the case question whether the Starks attack was the Phantom's work.

The investigation was one of the largest Texas had seen. Texas Ranger Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas became its public face, working with Bowie County sheriff W. H. Presley, Texarkana police chief Jack Runnels, Miller County sheriff W. E. Davis and the Arkansas State Police, with FBI assistance. Hundreds of suspects were questioned, Rangers used decoy couples in parked cars, rewards passed $10,000, and the Texarkana Gazette coined the name Phantom Killer.

In July 1946, Arkansas State Police officer Max Tackett, who had noticed that a car was stolen and abandoned around the time of each attack, traced a stolen car to a woman connected to Youell Swinney, a 29-year-old car thief and counterfeiter. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the woman, Peggy, who later became Swinney's wife, gave officers unpublished details of the Booker-Martin murders, but her account changed, and prosecutors concluded she was unreliable and could not be compelled to testify against her husband. Swinney was investigated and never charged with any of the murders. In 1947 he was convicted in Bowie County of automobile theft and, as a habitual criminal, received a mandatory life sentence.

That sentence later unraveled. In Ex parte Swinney, decided September 25, 1973, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that a 1941 Arkansas conviction used to enhance his sentence was void because he had not been shown to have had counsel; without it the maximum term was ten years, long since served, and the court ordered his release. Wikipedia records that he died in Dallas on September 15, 1994, though the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes conflicting accounts. Tackett and Miller County deputy Tillman Johnson believed to the end of their lives that Swinney was the Phantom, and historian James Presley argued the same in a 2014 book. No court has ever ruled on the question.

Other leads failed, including a 1948 suicide note confessing to the murders that investigators could not corroborate. In February 2020 the FBI released more than 1,100 pages from its 1946-1949 file, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas describes the case as a cold case that is theoretically still open. It inspired Charles B. Pierce's 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which, the Wikipedia article notes, is the source of much of the folklore around the case.