"The Freeway Phantom": D.C.'s First Serial Killer?

This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, sexual assault of minors, and suicide.

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Does it sometimes feel like the whole world is vying for your attention?

The ads, the calls, the emails.

There's the content you seek out and the content you don't.

The doom scrolling that maybe falls somewhere in between.

And then there are the news headlines pouring in from all over the world.

With so much global access, the volume alone can be dizzying to process, let alone the decision of where to invest your time and energy.

Where do you fit in?

How do you respond?

It can be hard to know where to start.

Or maybe you're one of the people vying for attention.

You desperately need help.

Lives are at stake in your community and you need support.

Maybe it feels like no matter what you do, you can't get the investment you need.

Everyone is putting their resources elsewhere.

And if you're lucky, you get what's left.

Before you go pining for simpler times, this isn't a new phenomenon.

Today's case begins back in 1971, and the problem of split focus and an unequal distribution of resources runs all the way through it.

Right up until its effective ending.

The last two words any homicide detective wants to see in a serial killer investigation:

evidence destroyed.

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Every Monday, we bring you the true crime stories that stand out.

I'm Janice Morgan.

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It's the spring of 1971, Washington, D.C.

President Richard Nixon sits in the Oval Office.

The now-famous Watergate scandal that will end his career is right around the corner, but Americans don't know it yet.

Many in the nation's capital are focused on their country's presence overseas, where the war in Vietnam continues to rage on.

16 years of bloodshed that Nixon promised to end.

As anti-war protesters flood the streets of Washington, the city experiences an uptick in violent crime.

And it's against this backdrop that an entirely different story makes front-page news.

One that kicks off 17 months of domestic terror and begins with a simple trip to buy groceries.

It's April 25th, 1971.

Carol Spinks is 13 years old.

She's home alone with her seven siblings for the day.

Their mother, Alentine, went to visit a friend in Maryland.

Alentine made it very clear that none of them are supposed to leave the apartment while she's away.

But at some point, Carol's older sister tells her to run to 7-Eleven to buy some bread, soda, and frozen dinners.

She obeys.

The store is only a few blocks away, so it shouldn't take long.

But along the way, something strange happens.

Carol looks up and sees her mother standing on the street.

They lock eyes.

Alentine's apparently returned home from Maryland early, and she isn't happy to see her daughter out of the house.

She tells Carol to quickly finish her errand before returning home.

After they part ways, Carol makes it to 7-Eleven.

She picks up her items, checks out, and exits the store.

But she never makes it home.

When Alentine enters the apartment a short while later, she finds her other children in a panic.

They're worried they'll get in trouble for letting Carol leave the house.

But as time passes, passes, their concern is more for Carol's safety.

It's been over an hour since she left.

Carol's older sister, Evander, decides to go out looking for her.

She traces Carol's steps down the street and speaks to the clerk at 7-Eleven to see if maybe they heard or saw something.

But she returns home without any sign of Carol and without any leads.

That's when Alentine calls the Metropolitan Police Department and reports her daughter missing.

She's frantic on the call, but it quickly becomes clear authorities don't share her concern.

They tell Alentine her daughter probably just ran away.

They don't dispatch any officers to conduct interviews.

They don't help look for the missing girl.

They leave the Spinks family on their own to figure out what to do next.

Alentine calls friends, knocks on neighbors' doors, and assembles a search party.

They scour the area for any sign of Carol, but come up empty-handed.

Six days later, a group of children playing behind St.

Elizabeth's Hospital find Carol's body lying at the bottom of an embankment.

She's been strangled and has cuts on her face, neck, chest, and hands.

An autopsy reveals Carol was raped and probably had been dead for two to three days before she was found.

To make sense of the unaccounted for time, Authorities believe her killer likely kidnapped and held her captive for a few days, and based on the undigested pieces of citrus fruit they find in her stomach, they also might have fed her.

When the news breaks, the community is horrified, but the city's political unrest pulls resources away from the case.

Officer Romaine Jenkins is assigned to the case.

At 28 years old, she is a trailblazer on the force, the first woman to ever become a homicide detective in D.C.

She is supposed to go interview potential witnesses in Carol's neighborhood, but due to anti-war protests that erupt that day, her supervisor reassigns her to patrol duty.

In fact, the whole Metropolitan Police Department is put on emergency alert, tasked with making sure demonstrations don't turn violent.

With all eyes on the protests congregating in and around West Potomac Park near the National Mall, it leaves a vacuum in other parts of the city, like Carol Spinks' neighborhood.

located to the southeast and separated by the Anacostia River.

About two months after Carol's murder on July 8th, 16-year-old Darlenia Johnson never shows up to her work shift.

Her mother, Helen, reports her missing that day.

She never hears from her daughter again.

But a few days after Darlenia's disappearance, Helen receives a phone call from an unknown number.

When she picks up, she hears a man breathing on the other end, but he doesn't say a word.

Helen reports the call to police, but they can't trace it to a source.

That technology doesn't exist yet so there's not much they can do even as the harassment continues for over a week the haunting calls keep coming in it's the same thing every time just a man breathing on the other end

then one day the pattern changes and the man speaks just a handful of words

i killed your daughter

Then, he hangs up.

A few days later, police get a call about the body found on the side of the I-295 highway.

It's not the first time they're hearing about it.

It's actually the third.

Officers were dispatched to the scene days earlier, but they apparently never got out of their car.

They just drove by, claimed they didn't see anything, and left.

This third call comes from the same man who first reported the body.

He was shocked and disturbed to find it still lying there days later, in the same spot, left to decay in the summer sun.

This time, he contacts his boss, who's friends with a DC police sergeant.

Even though he's off duty at the time, the sergeant responds to the call right away, searches the area, and locates the remains.

The victim is young, black, and female, but the body is too decomposed to determine a cause of death.

The medical examiner has to use fingerprint analysis to make an identification.

Sure enough, it's Darlenia Johnson.

It doesn't take authorities long to figure out that Darlenia and Carol Spinks lived in the same neighborhood.

Their bodies were found within 15 feet of one another.

It's immediately clear the two cases could be connected, but detectives barely have time to investigate before another girl goes missing.

Eight days after police recover Darlenia's body, 10-year-old Brenda Crockett leaves her house to buy some groceries around 8 p.m.

When she doesn't return in a timely fashion, her mother goes out to look for her.

While she's away, the phone rings in the apartment.

Brenda's little sister picks up around 9.20 p.m.

On the other end, she hears Brenda's voice.

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Over the phone, 10-year-old Brenda Crockett tells her little sister that, while she was out running an errand, a white man picked her up.

Brenda's crying, but she tells her sister that the man man is going to send her home in a taxi soon.

About 30 minutes later, Brenda calls back.

This time, her stepfather answers, and Brenda's story has changed.

She sounds distraught and confused.

She says something about being held in Virginia and asks if her mother saw her.

Her stepfather tries to make sense of what she's saying.

How could her mother see her if she was in Virginia?

But Brenda never answers the question.

She mumbles a quick goodbye and hangs up.

Early the next morning, Brenda's body is found along the edge of Route 50 in Chevrolet, Maryland, a town just outside of DC.

Like Carol Spinks, tests reveal she's been raped and strangled to death.

The news crushes Brenda's family.

Everything happened so fast.

Brenda left for groceries and less than 24 hours later, she's dead.

The Crocketts tell police about the phone calls from Brenda, about the white man who allegedly picked her up and drove her to Virginia, but investigators don't know what to make of the information.

First, Brenda's body was found in Maryland, not Virginia.

But second, why would Brenda's abductor allow her to make two phone calls?

Detectives believe the calls could have been an intentional misdirection.

a concerted effort to throw police off the killer's trail.

So they come to the conclusion that Brenda likely never went to Virginia and that her killer probably wasn't white.

Beyond that, officials don't have any leads or evidence to work with, so the investigation stalls.

And only two months pass before there's a fourth victim, black, female, and 12 years old.

Right away, the similarities are clear.

The evening Nina Moshe Yates disappears, her father sends her to buy sugar, flour, and paper plates.

The store is only a block from their apartment in southeast DC.

She's later found raped and dead from strangulation.

But unlike the others, only two hours pass before she's found.

Her body is still warm when officials arrive on the scene.

If it wasn't clear already, police are now certain that all four murders are connected.

If true, it would be DC's first known serial killer in history.

Newspapers run with the story and headlines give the killer a name based on the fact that his victims were all found by highways.

The Freeway Phantom

For those living in the victim's neighborhood, fear eventually gives way to anger.

The string of murders might be the most serious crime spree to ever grip the city, but many feel like the police aren't doing enough.

After the public backlash and recent media attention, investigators decide they need additional support, so they call in the FBI.

Federal agents revisit the evidence from all four cases, and it's at this point that they find evidence the Metro Police apparently missed.

Three of the victims had hairs in their underwear belonging to someone else.

Presumably, their killer.

DNA testing isn't available yet, but analysis finds the hairs most likely belong to a black man.

With that information in mind, agents begin to build a profile.

Given his pattern of behavior, agents believe the killer could be a DC local, someone familiar with the area, someone able to travel the streets relatively undetected.

It doesn't narrow the field much.

There are still tens of thousands of people it could be, but it's a starting point.

Detectives continue looking for new evidence to narrow the scope of their investigation, but another victim appears before any real progress is made, the fifth since April.

In mid-November, another black female is found murdered in Chevley, Maryland, this time 18 years old.

Her body is found near the access ramp to the Baltimore, Washington Parkway, slightly north of I-295.

The victim's name is Brenda Woodard.

She attended a night class before going out to eat with a friend the night before.

After dinner, she got on a bus alone and headed home.

But she never made it back.

Everything about the crime matches the known M.O., a young black woman kidnapped off the street, raped, and strangled.

But there's evidence the killer's violence is escalating.

Brenda's also been stabbed.

Notably, the killer draped Brenda's velvet coat over her body, a measure the Freeway Phantom had never taken before.

And inside one pocket, investigators find a handwritten note.

It reads, quote, This is tantamount to my insensitivity to people, especially women.

I will admit the others when you catch me if you can.

It's signed with the killer's new moniker, Freeway Phantom.

Investigators obviously have a serial killer on their hands, one who's aware of his growing notoriety and seems to revel in it.

So much so, he's taunting the police.

But the note isn't the only surprise.

A handwriting analysis reveals it wasn't actually written by the killer.

It was written by Brenda Woodard.

Presumably the killer dictated the note to Brenda so investigators couldn't use his handwriting to identify him.

But what's maybe more surprising is the penmanship itself.

It's crisp, clear, legible.

Not something you'd expect from anyone in such grave danger.

It gets officials thinking, maybe Brenda knew her killer.

That could explain her apparent sense sense of calm.

Maybe she thought the note was a strange joke and she was just helping a friend.

Detectives pursue this new theory.

They speak with Brenda's friends and family.

But it doesn't get them any further.

By December, it's been eight months since the Freeway Phantoms' first murder, and investigators are once again combing over the evidence, making sense of the disparate pieces.

The fruit found in Carol Spinks' stomach, the phone calls to victims' families, the shorter timelines of the killings starting with the two-hour abduction and murder of Nina Moshe Yates, the coat draped over Brenda Woodard's body, the bizarre note left inside.

Investigators know that a few of the victims were abducted from the same neighborhood, but the killer's locations and tactics have changed enough that it's hard for them to draw conclusions.

All they know for sure is he's probably black, he enjoys toying with people, and he's more violent and emboldened than ever.

The lack of progress is heartbreaking for the victims' loved ones.

In interviews with People magazine investigates, many express frustration with authorities.

They feel a sense of indifference from police, and some wonder if things would be different if the killer's victims were white.

As they continue to push investigators to solve the five homicides, a specter hangs over Washington, D.C.

It seems like only a matter of time before another young black girl ends up dead.

But the other shoe doesn't drop.

Months go by without another body appearing.

And there's hope that maybe the killings have come to an end.

But those hopes are dashed in September 1972, when the freeway phantom comes out of hiding again.

17-year-old Diane Williams spends the evening of September 5th, 1972 on a date with her boyfriend in southeast DC.

After, he walks her to the nearest bus stop, watches her board, and sees the bus drive away.

The next morning, a trucker finds Diane's body on the side of I-295.

She's been strangled to death, and forensics analysts reveals clear sign of sexual assault.

Almost immediately, her murder is connected to the so-called freeway phantom.

Diane becomes victim number six.

Terror sweeps through DC all over again as communities desperately search for answers.

At times, it feels like grasping at straws.

Amateur sleuths learn that three of the six victims all had the middle name Denise and wonder whether that could mean something.

But investigators eventually find a more promising pattern.

Five of the six victims were found with green synthetic fibers on their clothing, all identical.

They look like carpet fibers, possibly from the inside of someone's car or home.

The only victim without green fibers is Darlenia Johnson, whose body was left outside for over a week.

It's possible the fibers were lost due to weather or decomposition.

The investigation continues, making no real headway for years.

In 1974, two years after Diane Williams' murder, the FBI creates a task force of over 100 detectives and agents to find the Freeway Phantom.

They investigate hundreds of suspects from army generals to psychiatrists, but arguably the most notable is a computer engineer named Robert Askins.

Askins was previously convicted of murder.

In 1938, he poisoned a sex worker and served 20 years in prison for the crime.

Notably, in court documents, he used language which later appeared in the Freeway Phantom's note to police.

specifically the word tantamount.

Investigators use the loose connection to obtain a search warrant for Robert's property.

They find some pretty disturbing evidence.

Photos of girls and young women, buttons and jewelry under the seats of his car, and a knife that was apparently used in a separate unrelated crime.

Officials take samples of the carpet in Askins' home and car, as well as strands of his hair.

Neither match the fibers or hairs found on the Freeway Phantoms victims.

But investigators do find evidence to tie Askins to two other unsolved kidnapping and rape cases in the DC area.

A dangerous criminal is taken off the streets when he receives a life sentence for those crimes.

But officials can't definitively tie him to the Freeway Phantom murders.

They're forced to look elsewhere.

Later that year, they zero in on another potential suspect named Morris Warren.

Warren is a member of the Green Vega gang, responsible for a series of kidnappings and rapes that occurred in D.C.

around the same time as the Freeway Phantom murders.

Authorities suspect there could be a connection.

Though free at the time of the murders, Warren is now incarcerated.

Investigators speak with him in prison and find him unusually forthcoming.

He says he knows who the Freeway Phantom is, and it's not one person, it's many.

Members of the Green Vega are behind the homicides.

According to him, he can prove it with the information he knows.

He says he can show detectives exactly where the victims' bodies were found.

But it turns out to be a bluff.

First, his information doesn't add up.

Then, police find letters that Morris Warren wrote admitting that he lied to try and get his prison sentence shortened.

It's another dead end.

Over the next 13 years, the FBI's task force slowly disintegrates.

Some detectives retire.

Others move on to different projects.

But Romaine Jenkins never forgets about the murders.

Ever since Carol Spinks's murder back in 71, she's been slowly working her way up in the department.

In 1987, at age 44, she gets her biggest promotion yet.

She finally becomes a sergeant.

One of the first steps she takes is to open up the case files for the Freeway Phantom murders.

Staring her right in the face are two words, evidence destroyed.

The hairs, the green fibers, and all the original case files are gone.

All Romaine can think is,

why?

Officials need to prove a case is closed before they destroy any evidence.

That's protocol.

And the Freeway Phantom case is very much still open.

Romaine is devastated by the discovery, but she doesn't give up.

She contacts the FBI and requests the information they compiled on the case.

She also reaches out to the original investigators and asks for their notes.

Then, she rebuilds the case back together, piece by piece, as best she can.

She passes the results to the FBI's recently formed Behavioral Analysis Unit, who puts together a psychological profile of the freeway phantom.

They believe he's a textbook psychopath who acts alone and has a deep hatred for women.

They suspect he was in his late 20s or early 30s at the time of the murders and that he may have worked in the area.

Perhaps most significantly, Given how quickly he was able to earn their trust, profilers believe he likely knew some of his victims.

The FBI also plots out where each victim's body was recovered and uses the pattern to determine the killer's comfort zone.

It's all useful information, but officials still face an uphill battle.

The most important information in the case has been destroyed.

Even if they identify a suspect, they can't use forensic evidence to tie him to any of the crimes because for unknown reasons, it was destroyed.

It's another mystery in this case, how and why that was allowed to happen.

But ultimately, the lack of evidence is a hurdle investigators never get past.

Sergeant Romaine Jenkins retires in 1994, and the murders remain unsolved.

Romaine sits down with People Magazine Investigates for a 2019 episode of their series.

She says she still looks into the Freeway Phantom murders from time to time.

She keeps copies of the case files in her home.

As for the images of the six victims, those are forever burned in her mind.

There's been one glimmer of hope in the case since Romaine retired.

In 2002, Metro police learned that not all forensic evidence had been lost.

A medical examiner's office still had a sample of the killer's semen.

Analysts ran tests straight away, but were unable to extract enough DNA for it to prove useful, so the glimmer of hope faded quickly.

It's something the victims' loved ones are used to at this point.

Many of them have connected since the murders and advocated for more support from law enforcement.

They share a feeling of being overlooked, a feeling that's been validated by some officials.

Romaine Jenkins, for example, believes the six Freeway Phantom victims weren't prioritized by Metro Police.

There were many factors that she says played a role, including general disorganization in the department and the city's ongoing protests.

But according to her, race was also a factor.

Tommy Musgrove agrees.

He joined the Metro Police in 1972 and has gone on record to say that if the victims had been white, the department would have put more manpower behind their cases.

There's no doubt in his mind.

Whether that's true or not, data shows a discrepancy in clearance or solve rates for homicides in the United States.

A data analysis by Scripps Howard News Service examined all murder cases in the United States from the year 1980 to 2008.

Homicides with white victims had a solve rate of 78%.

In cases where the victim was black or Hispanic, the number dropped to 67%.

Data compiled by a volunteer-run nonprofit, the Murder Accountability Project, found that solve rates for homicides have overall been steadily declining in the United States since the 60s, which may be surprising considering all the new technology we have.

But those numbers aren't exactly as they appear.

While the average may have remained in decline, solve rates for cases with white victims have actually been rising since the early 90s.

The reason for the overall decline is because the racial gap has continued to widen.

In 2019, for example, 81% of cases with white victims were solved, compared to just 59% of cases with black victims.

What's driving those numbers?

No one has been able to point to one root cause.

But regardless of the factors, the impact remains the same for victims, families, and loved ones.

In the case of the Freeway Phantom, they're still waiting for answers.

Some hold out hope that the case will one day be solved.

As Diane Williams' sister Patricia told The Washington Post,

You never forget, there is no closure.

Whoever did it has gotten away.

They may be living somewhere else, doing it again.

It's not too late to say something.

You have a whole generation of family members who would like to see someone brought to justice.

Thanks for tuning in to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast.

We'll be back Monday with another episode.

If you have any information about the murders of Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nina Moshe Yates, Brenda Woodard, or Diane Williams, contact the Metropolitan Police Department at 202-962-2121.

For more information on the Freeway Phantom murders, we recommend checking out the coverage done by People Magazine Investigates.

Amongst the many sources we used, we found it extremely helpful to our research.

Stay safe out there.

This episode of Serial Killers was written by Karis Allen, edited by Sarah Batchelor and Connor Sampson, fact-checked by Claire Cronin and Lori Siegel, researched by Mickey Taylor, and sound designed by Alex Button.

I'm Janice Morgan.