The Phantom Killer /// Part 2 /// 888

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Speaker 1 All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.

Speaker 1 The devil's gonna get you in your sleep

Speaker 1 The devil don't wanna catch you in your sleep

Speaker 1 The devil don't get you in your sleep

Speaker 1 The devil's gonna catch you in your sleep We have gone in depth through three crime scenes, each one of them horrific, each one of them terrifying, two of them resulting in double homicide.

Speaker 1 We have six victims with four of them dead. It's 1946 and we are in Tex Arcana.

Speaker 1 And the Phantom, or the Phantom Killer, as he would later be known, the work of the Phantom was starting to take form and it was clear.

Speaker 1 Young couples, isolated roads, weekends, a pistol, and merciless violence. But now we get to the scene of the fourth attack.
So this attack is very different.

Speaker 1 And I say that for two reasons. One, the victims here

Speaker 1 are older than the 20-year-olds and teenagers previously attacked. Not much older, but a little bit.
And the major difference here, the attack this time, I call this one the farmhouse horror.

Speaker 1 And as my title suggests, this attack takes place at a house. So not a young couple parked in a car in a lover's lane.

Speaker 1 We're going to go to May 3rd, 1946, when the Phantom struck again, this time at a farmhouse. We have Virgil Starks was shot twice through his window.
while sitting in his living room.

Speaker 1 His wife, Katie, ran to call for help, but she was shot twice herself. Let me set this up.
She's in the other room, and she says that she heard a noise that she found to be strange.

Speaker 1 It was like either her husband, who's sitting in the other room, she's in a bedroom, he's in the living room. She thinks that maybe he dropped something.

Speaker 1 She thinks she hears breaking glass. She's not sure what the noise is, but it startles her to enter the room where her husband is.
And she said that her husband, Virgil Starks, he

Speaker 1 started to stand up and then he slumped back down and fell down. She goes to their phone, the phone in their house, to call for help.
At the same time,

Speaker 1 gunshots come from

Speaker 1 the direction of the window that is near where Virgil is sitting. This poor woman, Captain, is shot twice.
So she decides she's got to get the hell out of there.

Speaker 1 Bleeding, terrified, she She flees barefoot into the night, racing off to the neighbor's house. Now,

Speaker 1 keep in mind, these two, this is a legit farmhouse, meaning they own acres and acres and acres of land. I think it's something like 300 acres.

Speaker 1 She has to run a great distance to get to the neighbor's house. But once she makes it there, thankfully, she's able to call for help.

Speaker 1 So unlike the Lover's Lane attacks that we've talked about, this crime shattered the illusion that safety could be found at home, that you were safe from the phantom if you were inside your house at night.

Speaker 1 The phantom was no longer confined to the shadows of parked cars where he could strike anywhere.

Speaker 5 Well, like you said, they had a lot of land, so you're shot, but now you have to run.

Speaker 5 And you're not just running next door, you're running quite a bit a ways to get help.

Speaker 1 I think she got lucky with one of the shots that went through her cheek

Speaker 1 and I believe the other one struck her in the face as well so these

Speaker 5 something nobody has ever said before oh well I think she got lucky by the one shot hitting her cheek yeah it sounds funny to say but you're also about two to three inches

Speaker 1 depending on the size of your head from the brain and you ain't running you ain't running to the neighbors that you get shot in the the brain. I'm not a doctor, but I can

Speaker 1 surmise that

Speaker 1 you won't be making it very far if that happens. So she rushes off to get help, not just for herself, but for her husband.
Unfortunately, Virgil Starks,

Speaker 1 he dies at the scene. And there's a little more to this chase, from my understanding,

Speaker 1 than what we just went through. We really kind of simplified it there.
But from my understanding here, Captain, none of it takes place outside of the house right she

Speaker 1 she is shot at

Speaker 1 she's shot and then she hears someone trying to bust into their back door they had like a screen and porch and whoever this was they went around to the back and tried to bust in through the back door to get in to get to mrs starks And that's why she's, I've got to hang up this phone and go get out of this house.

Speaker 1 And really, truly, the positioning of the home, where she was in the home, and then the attacker, well, killer attempting to come in through the back of the house probably gave her the distance from the killer that she needed to get out of there and successfully get to help.

Speaker 1 I wanted to hear here, what I wanted to see in these reports that was not found.

Speaker 1 Shout out to our beautiful listeners. If you, anybody has this information, I want to know it.

Speaker 1 In any of her statements,

Speaker 1 does she ever say that she thought the attacker was chasing after her?

Speaker 1 Because I couldn't find any version of that that states either way, that no, he didn't chase after her, or yes, she believed that she was being chased.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but we've all been there where you're riding your bike home when you're a little kid and you think something's behind you. So you start

Speaker 5 riding faster and you think that this thing is coming up on you. And then every time you look back, there's nothing there.
And this is just your imagination. She was just shot in the face twice.

Speaker 1 Well, and this is

Speaker 1 so you're already you have a public that is in full panic mode, they're terrified. The phantoms out there on the streets late at night, on the weekends, killing,

Speaker 1 targeting young couples in their cars.

Speaker 1 But now, here

Speaker 1 we have a couple who is attacked inside their home.

Speaker 1 It's not like they were attacked outside and fled into their home. No, they're just sitting there doing their evening,

Speaker 1 minding their own business, and the killer came to them. So, this is from

Speaker 1 the Texas Paris News, printed the Sunday after the murder of Virgil Starks. our fifth murder victim here.
The paper had a couple of pictures of investigators at the scene at the Starks home.

Speaker 1 And they also had a rather haunting close-up picture of Virgil. He

Speaker 1 sort of has this blank, expressionless stare.

Speaker 1 The headline is Fifth Killing Panics Texarkana Citizens and reads: in short, a phantom killer believed to be responsible for five murders here in six weeks continued to elude a concentrated manhunt by both Texas and Arkansas officials.

Speaker 1 A stunned, tense Tex Arcana was shocked by details of Friday night's cold-blooded killing of popular Virgil Starks, age 36, and the serious wounding of his attractive 30-year-old brunette wife in their farm home near Holman, Arkansas.

Speaker 1 This is interesting, and this is a part that I don't think gets examined enough by us all these decades later, right?

Speaker 1 This case is always referred to as the Phantom Killer, who is the unknown killer, or

Speaker 1 where it took place, the Texarkana moonlight murders. Now,

Speaker 1 none of these attacks or murders took place on a night with a full moon. However, they all took place on a weekend,

Speaker 1 which I find to be incredibly interesting. Look, if it happens twice, it could be a coincidence, but four times, there's something to that.

Speaker 1 But then the other part of this, Captain, is we always say Texarkana. We always say Tex Arcana.
But what is lost from this is

Speaker 1 the first two attacks took place on the Texas side.

Speaker 1 The third attack, I think, is kind of difficult to say because we have a body here, we have a body there, and we have a car in a whole different place. Right.
So,

Speaker 1 I think if I had to guess, I'm not willing to wager a Franklin on it, but if I had to guess here,

Speaker 1 I would believe that the third attack took place where the young man, Paul Martin, was found dead, that it started there, and that the vehicle where it was found is the last part of that crime scene.

Speaker 1 That would be my guess. Here, with the farmhouse attack, this takes place much deeper into Arkansas.
So,

Speaker 1 this is not even in Texarkana. This is about,

Speaker 1 as I said, it's near home in Arkansas. So,

Speaker 1 we have a whole different county investigating this.

Speaker 1 So, with the first three attacks, you have different jurisdictions because you have this weird city, and I mean that in a good way, Texarkana, where you have half of it in one state and half of it in the other state.

Speaker 1 So, naturally, you're going to have two different investigating agencies there. You have the Texas Rangers who get involved in this investigation.
Ultimately, the FBI will get involved as well.

Speaker 1 But then, in this case, you have, I believe it's Wright County. I would have to look up what county it was, but it's a completely different county.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 this one is out in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 1 This one, just this location in regard, in relationship to the other three attacks, makes no sense to me.

Speaker 5 Yeah, again, we have to determine whether these attacks are connected. But then I think also, if they are connected, then you go, how is the killer getting where he's getting to? Is it by car?

Speaker 5 Is it by foot? Is it by bicycle?

Speaker 1 And is anybody targeted?

Speaker 5 Right. And I think you could say if this

Speaker 5 guy is a popular guy,

Speaker 1 again,

Speaker 1 see,

Speaker 5 the point I was trying to make, and you didn't rudely cut me off, but you did cut me off.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 is, could you imagine you got some sicko out there,

Speaker 5 and it's not just, okay, it's a sexually motivated crime, so I'm going to go to leverage lane, but it's also like the jealousy of the man because I'm out here and I'm going to whatever I'm going to do.

Speaker 5 I'm going to have to do by force.

Speaker 5 This guy got this girl to come out all on her own willingly. She wants to be out here with him.
So the jealousy towards the guys,

Speaker 5 the hatred towards the guys, because

Speaker 5 they're doing.

Speaker 5 and they're at where this killer wants to be.

Speaker 5 So it's not that far to go, well, if they're all connected and that's part of the motivation or part of the connective tissue of the crimes, then you got this guy that's popular with a beautiful wife.

Speaker 5 Oh, well, if I'm going to attack somebody not at Lover's Lane, this could be like the

Speaker 5 pinnacle, if I'm making any sense at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I don't, look, I don't doubt that those niceties were true

Speaker 1 with all this popular guy virgil starks or his

Speaker 1 his attractive 30-year-old brunette wife i don't doubt that those i'm not trying to say that those statements aren't true but coming from a guy that reads a lot of really old newspapers they they would do that in every write-up on they they would like go out of their way to say something complimentary about the person dead or alive yeah what you're talking about we still do it now every victim lights up the goddamn room.

Speaker 1 Well, I've never met anybody that just lights up the damn room.

Speaker 1 A lot of times, well, a lot of times statements like that are coming from somebody that knew the victim very well, that was good friends with them, or a brother or sister, or

Speaker 1 a teacher, somebody that had a very close relationship with the victim.

Speaker 1 This is just a newspaper writer, a reporter who is filling space with additional words, probably. And again, we don't need to go too far down this road.

Speaker 1 For all I know, his wife was incredibly attractive

Speaker 1 and Virgil was incredibly popular. I'm just pointing out that

Speaker 1 if you read the entirety of that day's newspaper that I pulled that little article from, I guarantee you you'd hear a lot of successful such-and-such, attractive so-and-so.

Speaker 1 And they all read like that, especially the 40s and 50s. I had mentioned Wright County earlier.
I was completely wrong on that one, Captain. I want to clear that up before we go any further.

Speaker 1 Miller County was what

Speaker 1 I didn't remember.

Speaker 5 It wouldn't be a true crime garage episode if we weren't wrong about something.

Speaker 1 That's right. So you have multiple jurisdictions involved.

Speaker 1 And if you look at where these attacks are taking place on a map, again, I find it very interesting that a couple take place in the Texas side, and then you have this one kind of deep.

Speaker 1 It's not deep into Arkansas, but when you consider it in relation to the other attacks that we've gone through, I think deep is a fair description.

Speaker 1 Now, here, though, Captain, we have a couple of different things to work with. And those couple of things are what we don't hear much of in the first several scenes.

Speaker 1 These couple of things are what we like to call, what we call in the crime fighting business, evidence.

Speaker 1 So we have some evidence here. We have three clues from the Starks murder scene.
The flashlight. A flashlight was found in the Starks yard near near their home.

Speaker 1 So presumably the killer ditched the flashlight.

Speaker 1 This could be before he was attempting to break into the back of the house. Could be when he was fleeing the house, fleeing the large property.
They also found a 22.

Speaker 1 They also found a.22 caliber bullet and a bloody footprint. I would love to get some information on this damn footprint.
How and why?

Speaker 1 When we see these articles and when things are reported, especially 80 years later, if the information was known, why don't they bother to ever tell us the size of the footprint?

Speaker 1 Very, very rarely do they tell us the size of the footprint. That would be key here.
I want to know, right? And, but

Speaker 1 what we have yet to hone in on is this is a different caliber of gun that was used.

Speaker 1 If you find a.22 caliber bullet, we're talking about a.22 caliber gun that was used at the Stark scene. It was a.32 caliber that was used at the two double homicide scenes.
Right.

Speaker 1 There was talk at the time that this case, this part might not be related to the other parts.

Speaker 1 And some of that was, I think, they were really digging into the Starks and trying to figure out what was going on. I think there was even rumor of a love triangle or

Speaker 1 something.

Speaker 1 something

Speaker 1 going on within the marriage or outside of the marriage, I should say. But I've also seen many reports that state that they couldn't find anything bad about either Mr.
or Mrs.

Speaker 1 Starks and that that was just local rumor at the time. So I think I leave it there that it was local rumor.
Well, of course, you got a young couple, attractive couple,

Speaker 1 farm,

Speaker 5 seems to be successful.

Speaker 5 There's reason to believe.

Speaker 5 But I'm kind of with you, though, where you have evidence that it's a different gun and it's a different location.

Speaker 5 So it's hard for me to say that this one is connected or not.

Speaker 5 And I think if we had the surviving victim

Speaker 5 say,

Speaker 5 well, I saw a man with a mask, then you go, okay, well, that's very similar to the other attack.

Speaker 1 Well, this area,

Speaker 1 especially Texarkana, is in such a panic that any

Speaker 1 crime that contained a heightened element of violence to it i mean it really was like everything was the phantom until it's not that could have been the case here and and you're right there captain when you we look at these and try to compare apples to apples i don't think we have apples i don't think we have four four apples here i think we have an orange two apples in the middle and then a banana on the end or a pair thank you a pair would be nice My question, though, is: do we know where this couple was coming from?

Speaker 5 Were they just at the house?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 they were just at their house after dinner on a Friday night.

Speaker 1 She was going to be going to bed.

Speaker 1 I believe, so he was sitting in the living room or family room, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 5 Just to be clear, the dinner was at their house. Because that's where I'm unsure.
Did they go out for dinner?

Speaker 1 And then did this maniac follow them back?

Speaker 1 I had seen one report, and I hate to reference one report when I've seen

Speaker 1 a dozen reports on it. And this

Speaker 1 line item is only in the one report. There is a report out there that says that they may have gone to a movie that night.

Speaker 5 And that they're going to be a little bit more than

Speaker 5 somebody's following them.

Speaker 1 Possibly, but again, like I said, the other 11 reports out of the dozen mention nothing of a movie and say that

Speaker 1 they were winding down. It was, it was later in the evening on a Friday night.
She was in her room and she was doing something that was a hobby of hers.

Speaker 1 I want to say it was reading, but I don't think it was, I don't think she was reading. He, Virgil, was in their sitting room and he was listening to a radio program, I believe.

Speaker 5 I heard he was listening to the original True Crime Garage.

Speaker 1 And he's attacked through the window, shot through the window while sitting in his chair. I don't know.

Speaker 1 You could make an argument and you could probably sway me into believing that they're not all connected and that maybe the first one's different than the other three, the last one's different than the other three.

Speaker 1 You could sway me.

Speaker 1 If you sat me down and talked to me long enough, I could be convinced. But I sit here in front of you here today in the garage and I think they're all connected.

Speaker 1 I think that they're all connected. One thing that I found really interesting, keeping that it's 1946 in mind at all times, we talked about evidence.
Remember the flashlight. The

Speaker 1 police called for the public to report anyone who had owned a flashlight like the one that was found at the Starks murder scene. And they put

Speaker 1 a picture of that flashlight. in the newspaper.
So they're hoping to get somebody to call in

Speaker 1 saying, either I know somebody that owns a flashlight similar to that, or

Speaker 1 I have some knowledge of a flashlight similar to that.

Speaker 1 It was, from my understanding, in the newspaper, the Tex Arcana Gazette, because of the importance of that piece of evidence and trying to identify the person connected to that flashlight, it was the first colored photograph, the first color photograph published in the Texarkana Gazette.

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Speaker 5 All right, we are back, you silly little monkeys.

Speaker 5 Tall can't in the air. Cheers to you, Colonel.

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Speaker 1 What do you think? What's your gut tell you here, Captain?

Speaker 1 Do you think they're connected?

Speaker 5 Yeah, because of the brutality.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think it would be strange if not. I mean, I think you could make a better argument that the last attack wasn't because you've got a different caliber gun and location.
And also, it's just

Speaker 5 the fabric of that crime is a little different than the others.

Speaker 1 And you would have some people push back and say, ah, but the flashlight. Well, it's also late at night.
A flashlight would make sense.

Speaker 1 It would be more odd that the attacker, connected or otherwise, didn't have a flashlight. I mean, you're out in the sticks.

Speaker 5 Well, here's what I wonder: the killer maybe realized this lover's lane type attack.

Speaker 5 He wasn't able to

Speaker 5 fully do whatever he was setting out to do in his sick fantasy.

Speaker 5 So instead of trying to attack somebody that's

Speaker 5 by their vehicle out in the open,

Speaker 5 let me try to attack a couple.

Speaker 5 and and that's what i also wonder too is is the is there being multiple people there being a

Speaker 1 a threat

Speaker 5 and then the prize i'm trying to think like the sicko right the the threat is the man the prize is the woman is that part of this whole killer's dna i mean it's it's

Speaker 1 absurd to me we know per the reports that there was a sexual assault in at least two of the first three attacks. In this

Speaker 1 fourth attack, he's unable to get to the woman. So we don't know if there would have been one had he been able to get inside the home before she could make it to the neighbor's house.

Speaker 1 I think that that is

Speaker 1 probably a big part of it. Again, like I said at the beginning of part one, I have a lot of thoughts on this

Speaker 1 killer here. And we'll get, I want to get into those here in just a bit, but beforehand, I think we should talk about

Speaker 1 some of the known suspects or the people that have been speculated about over the years. And there's been a lot of them.

Speaker 1 In fact, there are some write-ups out there that say that there were 200 suspects over the years or there had been hundreds of people interviewed over the years.

Speaker 1 There is one that we didn't talk about. Well, there's several that have been named in the news news and online that we didn't talk about in our first episode.
The first one is an

Speaker 1 unnamed suspect. Like, if you go to most websites, this suspect is listed, but not named.

Speaker 1 And forgive me, Oklahoma, if I get this name wrong, but it says Atoka County Suspect is what this man is often referred to as.

Speaker 1 It says on May 10th in Atoka, Oklahoma, a man assaulted a woman in her home, ranting that he might as well kill her because he had already killed three or four people and that he was going to rape her.

Speaker 1 He then fled the scene. A widespread search for the man included 20 officers and 160 residents.
Two days later, police arrested a suspect, but did not believe this man was the phantom killer.

Speaker 1 According to the man's story, he could not have been in Texarkana at the time of the Starks murder. So if this guy is the Phantom, it sounds like he had an alibi for the time.

Speaker 1 He wasn't even in Texarkana. They could prove he wasn't in Texarkana at the time of the Starks murder.
So he could be the Phantom, but did not kill Mr. Starks.
Now,

Speaker 1 this man's always unnamed. I'll tell you his name.
It's Charles A. Coleman.

Speaker 5 He went on to make a bunch of grills.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, and

Speaker 1 little else is known about him as far as I could find, but I was able to dig deep enough to find his actual name. Charles A.

Speaker 1 Coleman was considered a suspect at one time, but again, police did interview this man. He did speak with this man,

Speaker 1 and they arrested him, but do not believe that he was the phantom.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but that would also make some sense if he was.

Speaker 5 Okay,

Speaker 5 I have this weird fantasy or strategy or whatever, and I have the threat and I have the prize. but hey, let me just start trying to find victims that don't have the threat.

Speaker 1 The better known suspects, and I do want to, I need to go out of my way and point something out here.

Speaker 1 Because oftentimes, especially in these serial, unsolved serial killer cases, there's a, there's several talked about suspects over the years.

Speaker 1 This doesn't be, because the ones we're choosing to present to you here today in the garage, doesn't mean that there are suspects.

Speaker 1 It's just we're trying to be thorough in our coverage of this true crime story.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we got this great email from a very informed listener.

Speaker 5 She just wasn't informed on the idea that the case that we were talking about, we were bringing up other people's suspects and then dissecting them. We weren't just bringing them up because

Speaker 5 we thought

Speaker 5 those were our opinions of who the best suspects were.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 sometimes we bring up suspects that are not mentioned in other forums, but that's part of the gig here. So

Speaker 1 Yoel Sweeney is one who's been talked about quite a bit. He is somebody that we examined in our very first episode, which was titled The Phantom Killer.
Yoel Sweeney was a 29-year-old career criminal.

Speaker 1 I mean, he had been in trouble for counterfeiting, for theft, for car theft.

Speaker 5 Big loser.

Speaker 1 He was

Speaker 1 arrested in the summer, so in July after the killings stopped. And we'll circle back to the killing stopping.

Speaker 1 So keep in mind, like you have about a 10-week time period with these four different attacks that result in five people being killed. And in each attack,

Speaker 1 the masked gunman is attacking a couple. So eight people in total with resulting in five deaths.

Speaker 1 Now, a big part of this equation, the big giant question mark here beyond who was the Phantom is, well, why did he stop?

Speaker 1 So this Yule Sweeney character was arrested in July. And in fact, he was arrested by one of the investigating officers in the Phantom case.
Now, keep in mind, anybody with a connection.

Speaker 1 to Texarkana that was in law enforcement was investigating the Phantom case. Okay.
Anyway, he's he's arrested for car theft, and

Speaker 1 the arresting officer said that Sweeney made some incriminating statement of,

Speaker 1 well,

Speaker 1 I'll be going to prison for life this time, making him think that he was the phantom killer.

Speaker 5 Right, because it would be a very harsh sentence for stealing a car.

Speaker 1 Yes and no. Remind me to get back to that.
So the first part of this that makes it feel like he might be the guy,

Speaker 1 a guy that steals cars, would have an advantage, right? Arriving at these scenes in a car that doesn't belong to him, that can't be traced back to him.

Speaker 1 What do we know about the phantom? He wears a mask to cover his face.

Speaker 1 He is taking efforts to conceal his identity, to hide his identity. So the boosting of cars and stealing the cars and using them in the commission of these murders would make a lot of sense to me.

Speaker 1 His wife, Peggy, according to the police, independently made some confessions in which she incriminates her husband, saying that he's the phantom killer.

Speaker 5 But she might have just hated her husband.

Speaker 1 I don't know how far down the road you want me to go on this one. I know I talked about Yul Sweeney in depth and took a hard look at him in our first episode.

Speaker 1 Since then, in reviewing some of the information about the wife, his wife Peggy, I don't think that she was upset with him.

Speaker 1 I worry that they coerced a confession out of her. I worry that they turned the screws on her and she confessed to something that wasn't factual.
Now, back.

Speaker 5 Look, it's a lot easier to get somebody to turn on somebody else than to turn on yourself.

Speaker 1 And some of these investigators went to their grave believing that Sweeney was the phantom killer. And I'm not trying to diminish their work.

Speaker 1 I think you have to leave him on the table because of the good work that those investigators did on this case. Whether her confession was pulled out of her, real or otherwise, I can't say.

Speaker 1 It feels like they were turning the screws on her to get her to confess to something that might not be the truth.

Speaker 1 In regard to Sweeney saying something to the effect of, well, I'm going to prison for life this time.

Speaker 1 Keep in mind, he's a a career criminal. He was a habitual offender.
They do have the habitual offender sentencing.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 he pleads guilty.

Speaker 1 He has a plea bargain that he works out, but the plea bargain is for life in prison. A lot of people will point to that and say, well,

Speaker 1 he did that to avoid the death penalty for the murders. And so justice was never carried out here.
Right.

Speaker 1 So So

Speaker 1 he actually agreed to a no contest plea to a habitual offender charge. This did

Speaker 1 land him in prison with a life sentence. He always said he never was the phantom.
He said he never killed anybody.

Speaker 1 And in fact,

Speaker 1 he didn't serve the rest of his days in prison. I believe he got out sometime in the 90s, in the early 90s.
I don't think he's as good as the next suspect.

Speaker 1 And Yule Sweeney and Dudy Tennyson are the two that are discussed the most when it comes to this case. In fact, when we did our very first episode,

Speaker 1 one, we didn't think anybody would listen. But what did happen is some people listened.

Speaker 1 But out of those three people, Captain, well, we have no clue how many people listen, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 Out of those three people, one of them was a person that is very much in the Sweeney is guilty camp, and one of them is very much in the Tennyson is guilty camp.

Speaker 1 Just like whether these all these attacks are connected or not, if you sit me down long enough and give me a nice PowerPoint presentation on Sweeney or Tennyson, I think I could be talked into either one of these guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But Tennyson is

Speaker 1 strange because so Henry Booker Tennyson, he went by the nickname of duty. He was only 18 years old when he killed himself.
So he dies by suicide in November of 1947.

Speaker 1 I think I need to double check this. My notes say 1948 here, but Captain, I think it was actually 1947.
Keep in mind, all these attacks took place in 1946.

Speaker 1 The part that makes him interesting is he leaves behind a suicide note. This note leads the people who find it to other information.
He left another note.

Speaker 1 And his suicide note leads them to a lockbox. Inside this lockbox, they find a pen, like a ballpoint pen, and someone had unscrewed it and put, rolled up a note and put it inside that pen.

Speaker 1 And on that note, clever mystery.

Speaker 1 He's confessing to

Speaker 1 some of the attacks, to the murders. They find this note.
And I believe the note said something to the effect of

Speaker 1 I'm guilty of two double murders and the Starks attack or the murder of Mr. Starks.

Speaker 1 Right. So Duty would have been, if my notes are correct, he would have been, what, 17 at the time of the murders.
And he would have been similar in age to some of our victims that we've discussed.

Speaker 5 Again, a little bit of a loner, jealous of the guys taking the girls to the lover's lane.

Speaker 1 Investigators say they were unable to find any concrete evidence linking Duty Tennyson to the murders beyond that, the notes that he left behind.

Speaker 5 The signed confession.

Speaker 1 So James Freeman, and some reports states he's a close friend of Dudy Tennyson. Other reports state he was a cousin and friend.
So I guess both could be true.

Speaker 1 But James Freeman provided an alibi for... Dudy Tennyson, saying for at least one of the attacks, saying that, hey,

Speaker 1 my friend, Dudy, could not have been the murderer because I remember the night that the Starks were killed or Virgil Starks was killed, that we were hanging out together playing cards.

Speaker 1 And in fact, we heard the news come over the radio. I was with him when we heard the news come over the radio that night.

Speaker 1 I'm sure knowing the captain's history and talking cases with him long enough that that alibi seems a little flimsy, right? Good friend who just says, oh, yeah, we were playing cards that night.

Speaker 1 Nobody else saw

Speaker 1 Duty Tennyson.

Speaker 5 Sure. Then I'd start questioning him.

Speaker 1 Were you involved?

Speaker 5 Was there two people?

Speaker 1 I, his family,

Speaker 1 Henry Booker Tennyson's family were concerned and rightfully so, saying, you know, we're worried that our son, our loved one, was extremely mentally ill at the time of his suicide.

Speaker 1 They have no answer for why he would confess to something that they strongly believe that he did not do. You want to hear something funny here, Captain.

Speaker 1 So, if you look up, there's a, there, there's this tiny little website, Did Duty Do It?

Speaker 5 Oh, that's a great title.

Speaker 1 Did Duty Do It?

Speaker 1 And they list several links that you can go to. Um, I think it's to bolster their argument that he did.
I, I, I, I don't know if, if they're trying to say he did it or didn't do it.

Speaker 1 There's several links here where you can,

Speaker 1 there's a video presentation by John Tennyson

Speaker 1 MD.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this site is run by John Tennyson MD. It has not been updated in a long time, but it has a link to our 2015 podcast, which discusses Duty Tennyson.

Speaker 1 Now, if you click on the link, obviously it's a broken link because it's

Speaker 1 the link is very old. I think if I had to go off of memory in that first episode, I seem to be leaning towards Sweeney.
You were leaning towards Duty.

Speaker 1 He's a very interesting one to ponder because I've seen some reports. So he worked at the, I believe he worked at the Paramount movie theater in downtown Texarkana.

Speaker 1 And some people have suggested that what separates Duty Tennyson from some of the other named suspects is that he knew several of the victims.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because he would know a lot of the people coming to see movies.

Speaker 1 And then again. Well, he went to high school with some of them as well.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but here's the thing about the fourth attack: is it possible that he writes this note, he folds it up, puts it in his pen.

Speaker 5 Maybe he forgets about it. You know, he's going through

Speaker 5 some kind of mental break. And then obviously you're attacking individuals.
So that's going to cause more mental shit going on in your head.

Speaker 5 But we have this couple that might have went to the movies that night that they're attacked. Then the kid kills himself, but he never alters the note.

Speaker 1 So he still could be responsible for

Speaker 5 all four attacks.

Speaker 1 That doesn't work because he, in his suicide note, that's what led them to the note inside of the ballpoint pen.

Speaker 1 He gave instructions in his suicide note to go look for this other. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 1 We do know in the first attack that that couple, the couple that survived, they were coming home home from the movies that night and they had gone to the Paramount movie theater.

Speaker 5 Well, and the one girl was playing at the theater. Was the theater different than the movie theater?

Speaker 1 Yes. But he has a connection to the saxophone player.
The saxophone player was Mary Joe Booker. Dudy played trombone in the same high school band as Booker.

Speaker 1 And it says here, but they were not friends. Investigators were unable to find any other evidence linking Tennyson to the murders.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't think there was much evidence that Doody had many friends.

Speaker 1 This is a better description and a more concise description here.

Speaker 1 Henry Booker Duty Tennyson. So yes, it wasn't until 1948 that he killed himself.
So he was 18 at the time and he was born in February of 1930. The attacks occurred in February of 1946.

Speaker 1 A big change in Duty's life would be getting a driver's license at 16. I can't confirm that he did, but it would make sense that he got his driver's license at 16.

Speaker 1 And starting in February of 1946, when the attack started, he's working. Let's say he's working at the movie theater.
He's got a vehicle or access to a vehicle.

Speaker 1 He can be out driving. And now he has his wheels to get to these attacks and commit these attacks.
That makes a lot of sense to me. The same time that he starts, would be able to start driving.
So

Speaker 1 this says Henry Booker Duty Tennyson was 18-year-old, an 18-year-old university freshman who committed suicide using mercury cyanide poisoning on November 4th, 1948, leaving behind cryptic instructions which directed

Speaker 1 investigators to a suicide note in which Tennyson confessed to being the phantom killer from Texarkana, killing Betty Joe Booker, Paul Martin, and Virgil Starks, and attempting to murder Mrs.

Speaker 1 Katie Starks. And then this also states that he was in the same high school band as Mary Joe Booker.
So

Speaker 1 this guy, there's connections to him.

Speaker 1 The one problem I have is I go back to the first attack.

Speaker 1 And if you're convinced that they are connected, the one part of the description of the assailant that the two agreed upon was they mentioned that he was like 30 years.

Speaker 1 They believed him to be 30 years old. I would like to see what was the

Speaker 1 physical build of Dude Tennyson.

Speaker 1 Does he make that six foot mark where

Speaker 1 the first case, they said, well, the guy was six foot. He was athletically built or thin.
And we believed that he was 30 years old or approximately 30 years old.

Speaker 5 But here's the thing, though.

Speaker 1 But why did he continue to kill? Right? So he goes off to university.

Speaker 1 I believe he went to, I can't remember what school he goes off to, but he goes off to college and then kills himself there in November of 48.

Speaker 1 So he would have still been in school and high school in Texarkana. He went to Texarkana, Arkansas High School.
He graduated class of 48.

Speaker 1 Why wasn't he still killing between May of 46 and when he leaves for college after the summer of 48?

Speaker 5 Well, that confession note, the suicide confession note, that might not be the totality of his crimes. That just might be the totality of the crimes he wants to omit to.

Speaker 1 That's true. We did say earlier, when did the the Phantom actually stop?

Speaker 1 And if he did stop, why?

Speaker 1 Did he die? Did he move away? Was he apprehended for some other crime? Or if it were to be Duty Tennyson, did he just stop? Or did his

Speaker 1 conscience take grasp on him? Or he grew a soul all of a sudden or grew up and decided, learned that you can't kill people?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Or, I mean, again, we've seen some people kill people and they don't care. There's no remorse.
They're just evil. They're the devil.
And then there's other ones, they're the devil, too.

Speaker 5 They know they're the devil, but they hate themselves for it.

Speaker 1 And to me, he would be the latter of that.

Speaker 1 The other part of this, though, could be if he thought he was very close to being caught, it might have inspired him to stop or take a break, right?

Speaker 1 Because if it was Tennyson, who's to say that he wouldn't, had he not committed suicide go back to killing in 49 or 50 or later now as far as homicides go we can i think we can say pretty conclusively that the killer the phantom killer as far as tech sarkana is concerned did either stop or moved away and and chose a different hunting ground as far as when did the killer stop let me just say what

Speaker 5 I'm thinking right now. It goes back to what I was saying, the jealousy.
Well, guess who would be also very jealous?

Speaker 5 If you worked as a young teen

Speaker 5 in high school, not a lot of friends,

Speaker 5 kind of in Lonerville, and you work at a movie theater

Speaker 5 and you see these couples coming in on dates,

Speaker 5 and that would just fuel your fire.

Speaker 1 Did he have access to a gun or guns?

Speaker 1 Did he have access to a vehicle? But do we know that?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't say it so definitively without having proof of that. I mean, it seems reasonable that he probably had access to guns, but it's Texas.

Speaker 5 Everybody has guns.

Speaker 1 Well, technically, it's Arkansas.

Speaker 5 Well, it's so damn close. It's one and the same.

Speaker 1 Come on.

Speaker 1 So there.

Speaker 1 People had always wondered when the Phantom stopped. This is from

Speaker 1 November 10th, 1947, from the Waco News Tribune. And the headline is, Return of Texarkana Phantom feared as man,

Speaker 1 woman, beaten. Officer also shot as violence flares in city.
Okay, so we need to point out here, the officer shot is a different,

Speaker 1 is not related to the

Speaker 1 man and the woman who were beaten. But listen to this report here.

Speaker 1 A 42-year-old Texarkana lumber company employee was near death, and his attractive 31-year-old woman companion was in serious condition Sunday night.

Speaker 1 That's interesting, it happened on a weekend, after they had been attacked by a masked man wielding a ball peen hammer.

Speaker 1 And authorities fear the phantom killer who left five victims during a three-month killing spree last year had resumed his work. The masked man assaulted Meek Wilbourne and Mrs.

Speaker 1 Grace Evans early Sunday morning. When the attack ended, after the two

Speaker 1 victims had been struck time and time again, Wilbourne was in critical condition with brain injuries, and Mrs. Evans was suffering from a skull fracture.
Mrs.

Speaker 1 Evans told police the man was an African-American male, attempted to rape her after beating Wilbourne into unconsciousness.

Speaker 1 Her description of the assailant, Texarkana police said, was strikingly similar to that of the Phantom Killer hunted since February of 1946 when he took the life of his first victim.

Speaker 1 So there's a problem with their write-up right there. He didn't take his first victim

Speaker 1 in February of 46.

Speaker 1 Mrs. Evans said the hammer wielder wore a white mask with holes cut out at the eyes.
Police said the phantom killer wore a similar garb. Mrs.
Evans said that the

Speaker 1 African-American male demanded money and started the attack when Wilborne refused to hand over his cash. Police say robbery may have been a partial motive for the Phantom Slayer.

Speaker 1 We also don't know if this attacker was ever apprehended.

Speaker 1 They very likely could have found the person responsible for this. Right.

Speaker 1 It's just...

Speaker 1 But that doesn't, oh, this guy's not the phantom. That doesn't make headlines.

Speaker 1 What makes headlines is, oh, oh, the police are worried that the Texarkana Phantom has returned or has resumed his work, as they say.

Speaker 5 And if you're a writer, it's like, okay, well, maybe this isn't connected, but I'll throw this in. I'll throw these couple phrases in, and it'll sell some more newspapers.

Speaker 1 Well, before we wrap, again, back to the idea of these four attacks, do you think?

Speaker 1 Because I think they're connected. I think they were all committed by the same individual.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think it's most likely the case. I mean, especially when you talk about

Speaker 5 one set of couple went to a movie theater, another set is coming from a theater, not a movie theater, but it's probably in

Speaker 5 similar location. It's not a giant town.

Speaker 5 And then you have the other, the last victims that possibly were at a movie theater. There's just some weird similarities.
And also, like I said, I think there's something to this.

Speaker 5 There's something to the attacks because they're couples, because there's a threat, and then there's a prize. So I think, yeah, I think it's more likely that they're connected.

Speaker 1 I think that they are connected by the nature of the crimes, by the nature of the attacks and the weapons and tools used to carry them out.

Speaker 1 Now, as far as the theater or theaters go, I don't think that has, I think that has little to do with any of it. I think that the city was, in fact, big enough.

Speaker 1 I don't know that she was even playing at a theater. It may have been a dance hall.
It may have been a church.

Speaker 1 I would want to look into that a little bit more. I'm not saying you're wrong.

Speaker 1 There could be something there. But what is there is the first three attacks, they're parked.

Speaker 1 They're all parked in like lover's lanes.

Speaker 1 That's your connection. not a theater or persons coming from this spot or that spot.

Speaker 1 To me, it's to me, again, it goes back to if I'm looking for a young female victim on a Friday, Saturday night, and I live in this town of 40,000 people, the city of 40,000 people, I know that young folks go and park at these locations.

Speaker 1 All I have to do is hop in my car and drive to them and see if I see a car. I'm not going to find two 40-year-olds in that car.
I don't think that I'm going to.

Speaker 1 I think I'm going to to find some younger folks in that car. I'm going to park a distance away late enough at night and make sure that I think that I'm going to be the only one.

Speaker 1 It's going to be the three of us.

Speaker 1 Me, the Phantom, and my two victims in this spot at this time of night.

Speaker 5 But one of the things I like about duty is that if you have a teenager that's working, especially something like a movie theater, the different times, he probably have to work a little bit later.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 5 maybe

Speaker 5 you wouldn't have a clear indication of when he was at work or when he got off work.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 to take that a little bit further,

Speaker 1 it stands to reason working in a movie theater that he would be getting off late at night on the weekends pretty frequently. And so

Speaker 1 we can put together very quickly that he might be leaving the movie theater not too long after

Speaker 1 the folks that attended the movies are leaving. So that would, that would line up nicely for duty.

Speaker 5 I stop by Lover's Lane before I head home.

Speaker 1 Duty makes sense for a couple of reasons.

Speaker 1 I feel like when I review, if I, if I, if I review the first attack by itself, there are things to suggest that it's an inexperienced attacker, that it's a younger attacker.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of psychology in there, and I don't want to go too far down that road today, but there's a lot of psychology there.

Speaker 1 one with the, I don't want to go too far down the road because I don't know if the killer was scared off, right? That changes everything about that scene.

Speaker 1 If the killer chose to leave after the assault, or if the killer was scared off, we don't know what he was going to do, how far he was going to take things that night.

Speaker 1 And a lot of times, this leading all the way up to almost a murder, this sexual assault that's not a rape in the traditional sense,

Speaker 1 a tool was used, the gun was used.

Speaker 1 That is suggestive and very similar to crimes that we've seen committed by

Speaker 1 a younger offender.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But I don't see that. I don't see a younger offender.
And here's why. I feel like we're talking about somebody that is,

Speaker 1 as the witnesses, as the survivors described, they thought he was 40, they thought he was 30 years old.

Speaker 1 And I feel like there's a certain level of confidence as to what this guy is doing that is also suggestive of

Speaker 1 an older killer. And when I say older, I mean older than 16, somebody that has a little more life experience.

Speaker 5 And you said it right there, older than the age of the victims. And so you might not know

Speaker 5 how old the guy is, but especially during that time, 30 would have been, oh, that's an old man. So, but when these younger victims are saying, well,

Speaker 5 I'm placing them at an age older than me, then duty doesn't make a lot of sense.

Speaker 5 But to close us out, do you have a small list of other suspects that we don't have to dive into, but just some that have popped up since we covered it last?

Speaker 1 There's been others that have been named, but very quickly you look into them and there's nothing there. So I don't even know why they are named.

Speaker 1 Like, it's like, oh, we interviewed this guy and it wasn't him. Or this guy, people were suspicious of him, but police talked to him.
And so those ones go nowhere real quick.

Speaker 1 Where I would prefer to spend my time here wrapping this up is I had said that I, that I had a lot of thoughts about this guy.

Speaker 1 And it goes back to what I had just said, where I think there's a certain level of confidence there that requires an older person with more life experience.

Speaker 1 Again, the first survivors say that they believe he was approximately 30 years old. Keep in mind, Jimmy Hollis, who was the first male who was attacked and survived, was 25 years old at the time.

Speaker 1 He's not a 16-year-old boy saying it was an older guy. This is a 25-year-old dude who was in close enough contact with the Phantom Killer that he was struck in the head twice with the butt of a gun.

Speaker 1 And it's him and

Speaker 1 it's his 19-year-old girlfriend that are saying they believe the attacker to be 30 years old. And now,

Speaker 1 what what i often do with these

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 again i think that these attacks are connected and i think that there is a

Speaker 1 evolution to these attacks the first three happening in parked cars that's no mistake that's where the killer that's where the attacker went to go look for victims okay the the fourth one being in a farmhouse i don't think it had anything to do with mr or mrs starks i think it had everything to do with what was going on in Texarkana at the time.

Speaker 1 There's a killer on the street who's killing teenagers parked in cars. Guess what? We have this thing now.
We put in a curfew, so there's not many people parked in their cars on the streets anymore.

Speaker 1 You have to be inside because the phantom killer gave us a curfew.

Speaker 1 And then so he needs to get off the streets. And then, number two, another thing that was happening is

Speaker 1 there was everybody was turning into a vigilante at the time. Everybody wanted wanted to catch or kill the phantom killer.

Speaker 1 So you had people that were sitting in parked cars armed with guns waiting for the killer to approach them so they could, so they could apprehend him or kill him.

Speaker 1 That was something that was regularly happening in those weeks. I think that he killed, went to the farmhouse.
He went to a house instead of a car out of necessity because of what was going on,

Speaker 1 what he had started inside of Texas, Tex Arcana.

Speaker 5 Well, no, that makes a lot of sense because the lover's lane are kind of remote. So he went to a more remote house.

Speaker 1 Yes. If that makes sense.
And I,

Speaker 1 how many shows have we done? Over 800? You never hear me say this. You never hear me say this.
So I think that it should add a little weight to it.

Speaker 1 For some reason, I think this guy might be law enforcement.

Speaker 5 Finally tell me he loves me.

Speaker 1 I think this guy might be law enforcement or have a law enforcement background.

Speaker 1 There's something with the gun and the flashlight, with the way that he commands everybody. Here's the reason why there's something he has

Speaker 1 a confidence level at these different scenes. He doesn't seem to be rushed or in a hurry, right?

Speaker 1 He's operating out in the open. Anybody could drive by, but he doesn't seem to be so concerned about that, right? Like that's where he's going to find his victims.
Maybe he knows.

Speaker 1 Tech Sarkana, there ain't too many police out running around at midnight on a Saturday. Maybe he knows that, or maybe this is his territory.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't want to go too far down that road either, but there's a hint of that there.

Speaker 1 But oftentimes, when you, the thing that I do enjoy about these serial cases that are different from one-offs is it gives you more of the work to look at.

Speaker 1 And so you get a better, I think you can get a better understanding of the monster if you, if you attempt to look at the monster and examine the monster.

Speaker 1 And the first things that I ask when attempting to examine these monsters is, what is it? What does it do? What is its nature? I think this guy is a violator.

Speaker 1 I think what he does, he's a violator, which is, there's also a ridiculously great. 1990 album by Depeche Mode, but that's neither here nor there.
So what is it?

Speaker 1 What does it do? What is its nature? This guy is a violator, not just a killer. If he only wanted to kill, he would just walk up on the vehicle and shoot, Zodiac style.

Speaker 1 Zodiac was a killer and a terrorist. Our guy here is a violator.
He wants to violate your space. He wants to violate your vehicle, and then he'll go violate your house.

Speaker 1 He most certainly enjoyed the terror that it was causing because he was,

Speaker 1 but he wasn't going to make any threats. He doesn't threaten to kill.
He kills. He goes to violate.
That's his thrill. Then he kills.
He violates the victims. He controls the man.

Speaker 1 He humiliates him in front of his woman. And then he violates the female.
And he kills because it's the ultimate win. It's the best getaway clean.

Speaker 5 But maybe this is also why they didn't release much information about the footprint.

Speaker 5 Is it a boot print? Is it a

Speaker 5 would that print

Speaker 5 lead people to look into law enforcement?

Speaker 1 Well, and then the double homicide turns, in turn, violates the city, its people, and its police. And he loves it.
To him, there's nothing better. I also think that this is very much about the gun.

Speaker 1 So much about the gun. The gun is like an extension of himself, maybe the best part of himself, because it allows him to do what he loves most, control and violate.

Speaker 1 He doesn't need to wear a mask because he needs no face. He needs no face for them to see.
In those moments, he's more than a man. He's something else entirely.

Speaker 1 He is what he always wanted to be and as he believes, what he deserves to be. But I think he's absolutely local.
And I think the victims from the first attack were right.

Speaker 1 The guy was in his mid to late 20s, maybe 30 years old.

Speaker 1 And the thing with the law enforcement, again, he seems confident and fine being out there at night, but we have multiple jurisdictions, and then he's controlling these victims.

Speaker 1 I think he's local because of the mask, and I think he knows this area well. And I think that

Speaker 1 the changing of the gun is significant too.

Speaker 1 I think that he thought, well, if I'm going to have to go to a house to violate and kill, where before I was going to cars, but because the scenery, the landscape has changed, and I have to go to a house now, I might as well switch up the gun.

Speaker 1 He doesn't want them to know that it's connected. He's not like the Zodiac that's telling you, oh, I did all this, that these are all my crimes.
He doesn't care.

Speaker 1 He's not a terrorist like the Zodiac is. The Zodiac threatens.
This guy doesn't threaten. This guy just kills.

Speaker 1 And I think it's the violation part of the act that gets him to go out and do it again and again. Why did he stop? I don't know.

Speaker 1 But this one reminds me very much of a

Speaker 1 series of crimes that didn't involve a gun at all. Remember our Aurora hammer slayer killer.
He was going into homes with a hammer and he was taking out everybody in that house.

Speaker 1 And his crimes were sexually motivated as well. When we reviewed it, when we reviewed it, we couldn't figure out for the life of us why the guy stopped.

Speaker 1 Well, Well, he stopped because he was picked up in another state like two weeks after the murder stopped in Aurora. He's picked up and he's locked up for

Speaker 1 decades. And then the golden age of crime solving, DNA happens, and we figure out who the hammer slayer was.

Speaker 5 And it doesn't have to be a law enforcement officer from Texarkana. It could just be.
from a neighboring town or county.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's local on some level. I feel very confident in in that.
The law enforcement part of it, who's to say, that's hard to say.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't put my stamp on that one for sure, but I feel absolutely very strong that he's local. And I think that,

Speaker 1 look, and with Tennyson,

Speaker 1 okay, so he says that he was the Phantom Killer in his suicide notes. It would not be the first nor the last time that somebody tries to make a spectacle out of their suicide.

Speaker 1 Whether he was the Phantom Killer or not, Dudy Tennyson's name lives on in the history books and will so forever. They're not going to solve the phantom killer.

Speaker 1 We're never going to learn who the phantom killer was.

Speaker 5 And we understand that Dudy had some mental illness. I mean, that's why he took his own life.

Speaker 5 And so is there a possibility that he was having some kind of breakdown and just

Speaker 5 thought he did, thought he was the killer? Because I don't think there's really any, I don't think there's anything in that suicide note or the confession

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 5 would be evidence that only the killer would know.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 In fact, you have the investigator saying the exact opposite of that, saying we looked and we looked and we looked and we couldn't find any evidence linking this poor young man who took his own life to these crimes other than this confession that he left after his suicide.

Speaker 1 We can't find anything. Now, he is interesting and will remain interesting for a long time because he does have connections and personal ties to some of the victims.

Speaker 1 But I just feel like he was too young, too inexperienced. I feel like we're dealing with a confident killer who has other motivations.
And

Speaker 1 something just keeps telling me this guy went to another location and got picked up for something else.

Speaker 1 The devil's only get you in your sleep.

Speaker 5 You could be anywhere, but you're here with us, and we thank you so much. Thank you for joining us here in the garage each and every week.

Speaker 5 Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners?

Speaker 1 I am very, very happy to be recommending this one this week. It is called, this is one of the best true crime books in existence.
That's right, I said it.

Speaker 1 It's called A Need to Kill by the great Mark Pettit. And as far as I know, I believe this is Mark Pettit's only true crime book.

Speaker 1 Now, what's interesting about that is I'm holding a copy of A Need to Kill in my hands right now. This is from 1990, back when you could buy a hardback book for $16.

Speaker 1 The book is so good and tells the story so well that it has gone into print like six times.

Speaker 1 six different times. Sold a bunch of copies in the early 90s, I think like 80,000 copies.
And so it's gone to print six times. Here's the description.

Speaker 1 Two young boys were kidnapped and brutally murdered for no apparent reason. The manhunt that followed lasted 116 days.
The lawmen finally caught their man.

Speaker 1 He was no more than a child himself, a young man obsessed with death, unable to distinguish between pain and pleasure. Mark Pettit is the only reporter to talk with the killer.

Speaker 1 His name was John Juper,

Speaker 1 and he was executed not too long after the crimes were committed. This is a case that goes into the state of Nebraska with two murders in 1983, and it has some ties to the Johnny Gosh investigation.

Speaker 1 Anybody that knows this case or has read A Need to Kill will know that it has a lot of ties to the Johnny Gosh, still missing newspaper boy.

Speaker 1 One of these victims, unfortunately, was out delivering newspapers when he was abducted by John Juper.

Speaker 1 Again, that book is A Need to Kill by Mark Pettit. You don't need to write that title down now.

Speaker 1 No, because you can go to TrueCrimeGarage.com, click on the recommended page, and you can see all of our recommendations there.

Speaker 5 And while you're at TrueCrimeGarage.com, treat yourself to some dope-ass merchandise.

Speaker 1 Until next week, be good, be kind, and don't live.

Speaker 9 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 1 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 2 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 9 Fox.

Speaker 2 There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.