The Texarkana Moonlight Murders

5/21/2024

Texarkana Moonlight Murders by M.P. Pellicer

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Texarkana is a small town that straddles the state line between Texas and Arkansas, and in the spring of 1946 an unidentified assailant attacked eight people in the span of ten weeks. Five of them were killed. The news media named him the "Phantom Killer" or the "Phantom Slayer" because witnesses later described him as wearing a white mask or sack with holes cut for eyes.

Jimmy Hollis

Between February 22 to May 3, 1946, this killer who only struck on weekends, terrorized a town. Police suspected that because he would not kill during a weekday, he held down a steady job, or perhaps he lived elsewhere and would drive to Texarkana to commit the crimes.

Initially the victims were young lovers who parked in lovers' lane on lonely country roads.

Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey were the first two to be attacked on February 22, 1946. They were parked one mile north of the Beverly Heights addition in Texarkana. They described where a masked man drove up and ordered them to get out of the car. The man wore a bag-like mask over his head with cut out eye holes.

He told Hollis to remove his pants, and went through the pockets. Then he struck him over the head with a blunt object. He then hit the girl and ordered her to run. As she ran she could hear how he continued to beat and stomp on Jimmy Hollis.

The attacker overtook her and struck her again. Strangely he asked her why she was running, and she told him he had ordered her to do so. He called her a liar, and then raped her with the barrel of his gun. When he returned to where Hollis was she ran to a nearby residence. Hollis regained consciousness and was picked up by a passing motorist.

Later, both Jimmy and Mary Jeanne gave contradicting statements regarding their attacker's appearance, with Hollis claiming he was a tanned white man in his 30s, while Larey described the man as being a light-skinned black man, and added a detail: the mask that covered his face also had a mouth hole. They both agreed he was about 6 feet tall.

In the weeks to come, it would turn out they were the lucky ones. Hollis ended up with a a fractured skull, and Mary Jeanne brutally beaten moved out of town. Both of them were deeply traumatized by the event.

Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard L Griffin, 29, were the first murders,

Polly Ann Moore and Richard Griffin were found on May 24 in Griffin's car, which was parked off Highway 67, one mile outside the city limits. Each had been shot once in the back of the head, and they were fully clothed. The man's pockets were turned inside out. No fingerprints or evidence was found since it rained during the night, and the victims were found in the morning.

On April 14, Betty Jo Booker and James Paul Martin were found a mile apart on roads behind Spring Lake Park, about two miles outside of the city limits. James was shot four times, and Betty Jo twice. They had left a dance at the Veterans of Foreign Wars around 2 a.m. Betty Jo played the saxophone in the Jerry Atkins' teenage band.

Six cartridge cases and four bullets were obtained, and matched by the FBI to the same gun used in the Moore/Griffin shooting. One bullet had "T" marked on the nose and "IV" between the nose and the cannelure. One of the cartridge cases was marked with "JFR" and "E7" on the side.

James' car was found parked a mile away from his body with the keys in it. Finger prints were found on the steering wheel that did not belong to the owner, or either of the victims.

In the Martin/Booker scene a swab test of Betty Jo's vaginal passage was positive for male seminal secretion, but did not match Paul Martin. It was not definitely known if Martin was raped since she was embalmed before officers could complete their investigation.

Betty Jo's family had a sad history already. In 1933, her father Toogie Booker was killed in an automobile accident when he was 30 years old. In 1943, her brother William "Billie Boy" Booker died when he was 16. Her mother had remarried by then, but she lost her one remaining child with the death of Betty Jo.

Since the crime occurred on the Texas side of the town, the Texas Rangers were called in. They tagged the perpetrator the "Phantom Killer". The FBI also came in to help.

Betty Jo Booker (1930-1946)

By April 21, 1946 police understood there was one offender targeting the unsuspecting. A .32 automatic Colt pistol was used in both sets of murders.

A midnight curfew was put in place in Texarkana, and a $5,000 reward was offered. Eventually the sum would be raised to $10,000.

M.T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas with the Texas Rangers took over the investigation, and became the public face of the police. Despite the amount of investigators assigned to the case, this did not prove to be a deterrent to the killer.

On May 3, 1946 a couple was attacked in their home. Walter Virgil Starkes was killed, and his wife Katie was wounded when shots came through the living room window. After being shot twice, she escaped the killer by running to a neighbor's house for help.

The only clue was a flashlight that was left behind, which was sent to the FBI, however it had no fingerprints.

It was believed the assailant came into the house and left after he did not find Mrs. Starks, as shoe prints were made in blood on the linoleum.

The investigation widened to include four states and 100 officers were assigned to follow down leads, and patrol the streets of Texarkana.

On May 6, 1946, the body of Earl Cliff McSpadden was found on a railroad track of the Kansas City Southern railroad 16 miles outside of Texarkana. It was determined he was dead by the time they placed his body on the tracks. The coroner found he had a deep cut over the his eye, made just prior to being placed on the tracks, and that it was serious enough to have caused death.

Officers had found him early in the morning as they were searching for the person who shot Virgil Starks only 3 days before.

The body had been run over by a train that came through at around 5:30 a.m. The left leg was cut off below the hip and the left arm at the elbow.

Strangely after six people were shot and 5 killed, police refused to believe there was any connection with the assault on Mary Jeanne Larey and Jimmy Hollis. She had moved to Oklahoma after the attack. Part of the problem lay in that police believed she and Hollis knew who the attacker was, and were covering for him.

Virgil and Katherine "Katie" Starks

By sundown the residents and business people of Texarkana were behind closed doors and heavily armed. Parents slept with their children in the same room. There were some that just decided to leave town until an arrest could be made.

Armories had sold out of firearms and ammunition. Hardware stores ran out of locks. This was a town where previous to these crimes, doors were left unlocked.

As the days turned into weeks, the Texas Rangers quietly left town, and the local police continued their vigil. Just as suddenly as the Phantom had appeared, he disappeared.

In 1948, Virginia Carpenter, 21, a Texarkana native went missing on June 1 when she went to Denton, Texas to enroll at the Texas State College for Women. She never registered at the hall. She was seen getting into a convertible parked in front of the dormitory with two youths in it. Her trunk was found in front of Brackenridge Hall where she was planning to stay.

Speculation around her disappearance was not only that she hailed from Texarkana, but knew three of the victims murdered in 1946.

She has never been found and close to $250K and countless man hours have been spent in trying to find her. Her case remains open.

Virginia Carpenter a Texarkana native knew 3 of the Phantom victims. She disappeared in 1948.

Youell Swinney, a known criminal and counterfeiter who was also the son of a minister was a prime suspect. He was arrested in 1947 for auto theft and his wife Peggy intimidated he was involved in the murders, but then she refused to testify against him, and he was never convicted.

Two lead investigators thought he was the killer, and he continued a life of crime until 1973. He died in 1994 behind bars without making any statement or deathbed confession that he was the Phantom Killer. Youell's fingerprints did not match any of the latent prints at the Booker/Martin crime scene.

One who confessed to the murders was Henry Booker "Doodie" Tennison. He played trombone in Betty Jo Booker's high school band. His confession was part of a suicide note he left when he swallowed rat poison in November, 1948. His friend James Freeman provided an alibi for the night the Starks were shot. Doodie's brother said he didn't know how to use a weapon, and he learned how to drive in 1947. Why he would claim responsibility for these acts remains unknown.

Doodie Tennison confessed to the murders in a suicide note

Another suspect was Emmett Daniels, a veteran indicted for his action in the Lippach massacre in Germany in 1945. There was a mass rape of 20 women, and 24 German POWs were killed. He was alleged to have raped two women and penetrated another with the barrel of his gun. He beat to death three German soldiers, and shot two others. Another allegation against him was the rape and strangulation of a woman in Germany during the Battle of Berlin. The charges against him were dropped.

There were others who were ultimately ruled out by the authorities.

Eventually Sheriff Presley with Bowie County, Texas asked the assistance of the FBI in Dallas to compare 20,000 fingerprints to the latent prints found at the Booker/Martin scene. They found no matches.

In 1976, the film The Town That Dreaded Sundown retold the story of the murders, but not very accurately.

The crime remains unsolved.