Speaker 1: Freeway Phantom is available each week on Wednesdays. To hear
Speaker 1: each episode ad free and one week early, check out
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Freeway Phantom, a production of iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: Tenderfoot TV, and Black bar Mitzvah. The views and opinions
Speaker 2: expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
Speaker 2: author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not
Speaker 2: represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, Black bar Mitzvah, or
Speaker 2: their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may
Speaker 2: not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: There was a series of rapes of adult women, of
Speaker 3: kidnappings and rapes of adult women that were done by
Speaker 3: this group of men called the Green Bager Rapist and
Speaker 3: they were basically, I guess the best way to describe
Speaker 3: them as like a rape club. I mean, some of
Speaker 3: them will go out some knights, others would go out
Speaker 3: other knights, and they would drive a green vega around
Speaker 3: and they would kidnap women off the street, look at
Speaker 3: bus stops and things like that, take them to someplace,
Speaker 3: rape them, sodomize them, and then let them go some
Speaker 3: of the rapes were pretty brutal, and when they finally
Speaker 3: got captured, one of them started making noise and saying, well,
Speaker 3: I know who the freeway phantom is. And he starts
Speaker 3: naming people within the group and starts talking about how
Speaker 3: he knew about the different murders and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: We call him Joel House nitches or informists. He's desperate
Speaker 3: because if he can give up information that that increases
Speaker 3: this chance of getting the deal and getting out from
Speaker 3: under this. We're desperate because you know, of course we
Speaker 3: want to solve this case. Joe House informants are really
Speaker 3: good at suckering us as detectives because we want to believe.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.
Speaker 5: This child was laying on the side of the road
Speaker 5: as would and go no way, I would call out
Speaker 5: my house.
Speaker 6: Those first five murders should have been a huge warning
Speaker 6: bell for the police.
Speaker 7: We just want to know what happened. This person must
Speaker 7: have saw that.
Speaker 4: They were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and
Speaker 4: he says, uh, they need to know this is me.
Speaker 5: I thought that they would catch him. I thought it
Speaker 5: was just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: I'm Celeste Hedley, and this is Freeway Phantom. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, two years after the last confirmed Freeway Phantom murder,
Speaker 1: investigators turned their attention to the Green Vega Gang, also
Speaker 1: known as the Green Vega Rapists. This group of five
Speaker 1: or six men were known to drive a green Chevy
Speaker 1: Vega around the DC Maryland area. They were collectively responsible
Speaker 1: for new rapes and abductions that occurred near the Washington Beltway,
Speaker 1: but through somewhat strange circumstances, they became prime suspects in
Speaker 1: the Freeway Phantom case. It started when a few of
Speaker 1: the Green Vega members had been arrested and put on
Speaker 1: trial for a case involving two gang rapes.
Speaker 8: And when they were brought into court, the lawyer made
Speaker 8: the comment of well, they weren't even looking for the
Speaker 8: Green Vega guys, they were looking for the Freeway fanom Well,
Speaker 8: the investigators for a freeway fan said, well, maybe these
Speaker 8: guys are the same guys.
Speaker 1: This is writer Blaine Pardo, As he says, an offhanded
Speaker 1: mention of the Freeway Phantom case during this trial sparked
Speaker 1: the idea that the two cases were connected.
Speaker 8: And they opened a multi jurisdictional task force that involved
Speaker 8: the FBI, the Park Police, Washington DC, Metropolitan Police, Maryland
Speaker 8: State Police, the Prince George's County Police, etc. They all
Speaker 8: began to crawl into this, and unfortunately, these Green Vega
Speaker 8: guys saw this as a bargaining chip. In other words,
Speaker 8: if we flip on our fellows and say they did
Speaker 8: the freeway phantom murders, maybe I'll get a lighter sentence
Speaker 8: or get some benefits on the side of doing this.
Speaker 8: So several of the members flipped.
Speaker 1: The Green Vega Gang members were individually interviewed by the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Department at Lorton Prison between nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy five. One of the members provided a
Speaker 1: statement implicating another member. His testimony substantiated the investigator's belief
Speaker 1: that the Green Vega Gang was responsible for the Freeway
Speaker 1: phantom murders, and that's because the informant provided signature details
Speaker 1: of the crimes that were not released to the public.
Speaker 1: Police took the informant to sites where he said the
Speaker 1: victims were abducted, assaulted, murdered, and disposed of, and he
Speaker 1: provided a concrete alibi, ruling himself out as a suspect.
Speaker 1: This informant asked to remain anonymous.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 1: Then, information that a Green Vega member at Lorton Prison
Speaker 1: had provided a break in the case was leaked to
Speaker 1: the media by a political candidate in Maryland.
Speaker 8: It literally consumed the case for months.
Speaker 1: One of the investigators looking into the Green Vega Gang
Speaker 1: was former FBI special Agent Barry Culvert.
Speaker 9: The thing that came to our attention with the Green
Speaker 9: Vega cases, it was a gang that were going around
Speaker 9: abducting young women and raping them. That might be the
Speaker 9: way to solve it. That there was something in common
Speaker 9: with our Freeway Phantom cases in these Vega rape cases.
Speaker 9: I think Lou Richardson he was one that continued from
Speaker 9: the Freeway Phantom cases to that case. He thought that
Speaker 9: might be the same people that our girls were killed
Speaker 9: by the Vega rape people.
Speaker 1: Lou Richardson was one of Colvert's partners on the Freeway
Speaker 1: Phantom case, but Colvert says he had his doubts during
Speaker 1: the investigation. He says most of the eyewitness accounts placing
Speaker 1: the Green Vega Gang near the murder sites were unreliable.
Speaker 9: People described cars in the damnedest ways, and what they
Speaker 9: think was a Green Vega may have been a Chevy
Speaker 9: Chevelle or something. They just don't always get it right
Speaker 9: unless you get a guy or a woman. We've had
Speaker 9: a couple of women. Man, they knew their cars. If
Speaker 9: they said it was a Green Vega, probably sixty nine
Speaker 9: because it had a spoiler up here and this kind
Speaker 9: of hubcaps. Don't count on that. Me in your car
Speaker 9: if it was green and small and tudor go with that,
Speaker 9: that's what you probably had.
Speaker 1: As investigators looked deeper into the Green Vega gang, things
Speaker 1: only got weirder. Here's Bleen Pardo again.
Speaker 8: Remarkably. What stugged me was as they were going through
Speaker 8: these cases, they started realizing the confessions didn't match the
Speaker 8: physical evidence. No way could they They described and they
Speaker 8: didn't know about the green rayon fibers, but none of
Speaker 8: them could describe that. We took the victims to the
Speaker 8: same place each time. They always sat in the same
Speaker 8: vehicle in the same place. There's no consistency with this,
Speaker 8: And they described the deaths of these girls very differently.
Speaker 8: It doesn't match physical evidence, to the point where when
Speaker 8: they described one of the ten year old victim as
Speaker 8: being dressed provocatively, you know, and sexy, and no, she
Speaker 8: was dressed like a ten year old girl, you know,
Speaker 8: and just the stuff just didn't match up. But unfortunately
Speaker 8: the police were under such pressure to close these cases.
Speaker 8: When we talked with Jim Trainum, he brought that up.
Speaker 1: Detective Jim Trainum, who you heard at the very top
Speaker 1: of the episode, never believed the Green Vegas could be responsible.
Speaker 1: He says, the informant was a complete fraud.
Speaker 3: So what happened was they took him to some of
Speaker 3: the crime scenes and things like that, and he was
Speaker 3: pointing out stuff and all. And later as all of
Speaker 3: this unfolded, turns out and he admitted, and other people
Speaker 3: admitted that he was just playing these these detectives. He
Speaker 3: would kind of gather bits and pieces of information from them.
Speaker 3: If they took them to a crime scene, he would
Speaker 3: kind of like watch them and see what they would
Speaker 3: want him to maybe point to. He would get clues
Speaker 3: from them. It's kind of like a false confession in that, Okay,
Speaker 3: I want to confess to a crime that I didn't commit,
Speaker 3: how do I get the information about it? And so,
Speaker 3: you know, those guys, they really didn't fit. They're victims
Speaker 3: were all adult women. These were not adult women, I
Speaker 3: mean totally different. And also the fact that this guy
Speaker 3: really didn't have any.
Speaker 1: Information and in fact, there were no charges brought against
Speaker 1: any members of the Green Vega Gang for the Freeway
Speaker 1: phantom murders. There was reportedly a grand jury hearing, but
Speaker 1: the evidence was insufficient to reach a conviction. Willma Harper
Speaker 1: wrote about this in her book The Mystery of the
Speaker 1: Freeway Fandom.
Speaker 10: Close to the investigation, who asked for anonymity, independently told
Speaker 10: The Star that the probe was closed after a disagreement
Speaker 10: in the U. S. Attorney Earl Slibert's office about how
Speaker 10: to proceed. One source said the dispute involved two opposing groups,
Speaker 10: one wanted to submit through a phantom evidence to the
Speaker 10: grand jury and the other that argued that the evidence
Speaker 10: was insufficient to go before the grand jury. On August third,
Speaker 10: nineteen eighty, the Washington Posts published an article that summarized
Speaker 10: what occurred after the grand jury made a decision on
Speaker 10: the Green Vega rape suspects, saying, quote, law enforcement officials
Speaker 10: involved with the cases believed that four men involved in
Speaker 10: hundreds of brutal rapes in the city from nineteen sixty
Speaker 10: nine to nineteen seventy three were implicated in the child murders,
Speaker 10: but the men were not convicted. It is difficult for
Speaker 10: the families to come to grips with the fact that
Speaker 10: eight or nine years later the deaths have not been solved.
Speaker 1: As this article mentions, many investigators still believed the Green
Speaker 1: Vegas were responsible for the Freeway Phantom murders. Here's Blaine
Speaker 1: Pardo again.
Speaker 8: Despite the fact that they never filed charges against the
Speaker 8: Green Vega guys, there's this prevailing attitude that even exists
Speaker 8: today in Washington, DC, that well, we know who did it.
Speaker 8: It was the Green Vega guys, we just couldn't prove it.
Speaker 1: Blaine recalls that Jim Traynham even struggled with this decades
Speaker 1: later when.
Speaker 8: He tried to reopen the case in two thousand and six.
Speaker 8: There was a lot of pressure of why are.
Speaker 7: You doing this.
Speaker 8: We already know who did it. It was the Green Vega guys,
Speaker 8: and he was like, no, Greenvega guys. They recanted, all
Speaker 8: of them recanted their confessions, and the confessions never held water.
Speaker 8: They just didn't hold against the physical evidence. And that
Speaker 8: was a huge distraction.
Speaker 1: Retired MPD homicide detective Romaine Jenkins agrees.
Speaker 4: A lot of time was wasting, especially when they got
Speaker 4: to the Green Vega guys.
Speaker 7: That really was a waste of time.
Speaker 1: Romayne says, even before she was assigned to the case,
Speaker 1: she was paying attention to the suspects and she found
Speaker 1: it strange that the investigators at the time were so convinced.
Speaker 4: What piqued my curiosity because I knew many of the investigators,
Speaker 4: and especially the lead investigators on the cases, and I
Speaker 4: asked them, well, how you make it out with the case?
Speaker 7: What is going on?
Speaker 4: You know that? And that's when they started talking about
Speaker 4: the Green Vega guys. And one day I was sitting
Speaker 4: in sex squad. Like I said, I like to read everything,
Speaker 4: and I came across this document which was about almost
Speaker 4: the size of a telephone book, and it was on
Speaker 4: the investigation of the Freeway phantom cases. And I started
Speaker 4: reading it, and the more I read, the angrier I got,
Speaker 4: because it showed that the Green Vega cases were a hoax.
Speaker 4: When it came to the Freeway cases, they had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with each other.
Speaker 7: And I mean, now, why do you say that?
Speaker 1: Because the police multiple times. Officials said that the reason
Speaker 1: they thought this could be realists because one of them
Speaker 1: had information that no one else had. So what you're
Speaker 1: laughing already, why did did you think this is a
Speaker 1: red herring?
Speaker 4: Because they you know what, the FBI went back and
Speaker 4: they reinterviewed a lot of these suspects, the people involved,
Speaker 4: and they admitted that it was a hoax. The witnesses
Speaker 4: said that, hey, they planned this thing because some of
Speaker 4: the guys. One of the guys wanted immunity from prosecution.
Speaker 4: Now I'm not saying they're not rapists, because they should
Speaker 4: have been in jail, under the jail probably, but they
Speaker 4: didn't do these cases. Okay, they did not do these cases.
Speaker 4: And this is in plain black and white.
Speaker 1: While writer blame Pardo agreed with Romayne, he was still
Speaker 1: curious about the Green Vegas suspects, particularly the informant, who
Speaker 1: we now know was named Morris J. Warren. Blaine tells
Speaker 1: us he communicated with Warren via letters from prison.
Speaker 8: His correspondence was kind of rambling. I took the approach
Speaker 8: when I wrote him of I know what your involvement
Speaker 8: in these cases are. I just need to hear it
Speaker 8: from you. And he thought I was implying he was
Speaker 8: involved in the cases, so he vehemently denied it. A
Speaker 8: lot of religious texts woven into it, which I always
Speaker 8: find interesting how convicts find Jesus and God when they
Speaker 8: get to prison. And he was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 8: you're on the wrong track. Didn't have anything to do
Speaker 8: with me, wasn't me, didn't do it. And he really
Speaker 8: wanted us to come visit him, which we were unable
Speaker 8: to do. The authorities wouldn't put us on the list
Speaker 8: for him. And he admits, I never had anything to
Speaker 8: do with this, you know, I did it on a
Speaker 8: SPIKEE and revenge. He came right out and said it, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I believe it. They were trying to cut deals for
Speaker 8: themselves once they realized, oh my god, we're going to
Speaker 8: be brought up on murder charges, multiple murder charges. I
Speaker 8: think at that point they said forget it. We're not
Speaker 8: We're not the guys that did this, and they knew it.
Speaker 1: The reality is the Green Vega Gang was a major distraction,
Speaker 1: one that potentially had significant repercussions on the freeway. Fantom investigation.
Speaker 8: Unfortunately, when you get a huge task force put together
Speaker 8: of all these officers and investigators, and they're focused on this.
Speaker 8: That's time that the real killer wasn't being investigated. And unfortunately,
Speaker 8: there were very few people that bucked the system.
Speaker 5: At the time.
Speaker 8: So there's this weird twisted thought of we already know
Speaker 8: who did it.
Speaker 1: To most of the people we talked to. That tunnel
Speaker 1: vision is just one more reason why this case was
Speaker 1: never solved. However, the same year the Green Vegas were investigated,
Speaker 1: another suspect cropped up, actually a pair of suspects. To
Speaker 1: police officers, there were six confirmed victims in the Freeway
Speaker 1: Phantom case, Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nenemotia Yates,
Speaker 1: Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams. However, early on in the case,
Speaker 1: there was another suspected victim and her name was Angela Barnes.
Speaker 1: On July twelfth, nineteen seventy one, just a few days
Speaker 1: after Darlinia Johnson went missing, Angela Barnes also disappeared. She
Speaker 1: was walking home from a friend's house when she was kidnapped.
Speaker 1: The next day, her body was found in Waldorf, Maryland.
Speaker 1: Her cause of death was a gunshot wound to her
Speaker 1: head and her murder was initially attributed to the Freeway Fantom.
Speaker 8: Young girl, same profile as one of the victims. So
Speaker 8: by the time you get to the second and third
Speaker 8: Freeway Phantom victims, the real Freeway Fhanom victims, her name
Speaker 8: gets thrown in with those victims.
Speaker 1: Here's writer Blaine Pardo.
Speaker 8: Again, it made no sense and it definitely muddied the
Speaker 8: investigation because, of course the other officers in the Metropolitan
Speaker 8: Police didn't know that she wasn't connected, so they're wondering,
Speaker 8: did the Freeway Fantom now have an mo where he
Speaker 8: used a gun, ligature, strangulation, etc. To kill his victims.
Speaker 8: The gun didn't make sense, you know, from an investigative perspective,
Speaker 8: it totally did, because a gun would be a great
Speaker 8: way to force young victims into a car. You pull
Speaker 8: up alongside the window down, you aim the gun to
Speaker 8: get in the car. Makes total sense from a control perspective,
Speaker 8: and it could be that the Freeway Phantom did use
Speaker 8: a gun to get his victims into the vehicle. It
Speaker 8: made very little sense though when you look at in
Speaker 8: the context of all the other victims, you only have
Speaker 8: one that was stabbed. Clearly that was someone who resisted
Speaker 8: him and was stabbed. The rest were all strangled, and
Speaker 8: while there were evidence of fighting or resisting, it was
Speaker 8: all more manual than anything else. There wasn't the use
Speaker 8: of a weapon like that. The only other weapon that
Speaker 8: the Freeway Phantom used was a knife, and it was
Speaker 8: only on one victim.
Speaker 1: Willma Harper wrote about the curious case of Angela Barnes
Speaker 1: in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 10: One view was that Angela was not a Freeway Phantom victim.
Speaker 10: She was the only one of the girls that had
Speaker 10: been shot. Based on the fact that the bullet that
Speaker 10: killed Angela had ricocheted, it was the opinion of Detective
Speaker 10: Simpson that Angela's death had been accidental.
Speaker 1: Police would eventually determine that Angela wasn't connected, and sometime
Speaker 1: during the Freeway Phantom investigation, her name was removed from
Speaker 1: the victim list. But years later, in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: someone was arrested for the murder of Angela Barnes.
Speaker 8: It was actually they found out a police officer who
Speaker 8: killed her, and it was a real creepy circumstance. He
Speaker 8: and his partner abducted her, got her in the car,
Speaker 8: performed sexual acts with her and inadvertently shot her in
Speaker 8: the car. And the way they caught them was one
Speaker 8: of the police officer's wife was involved with cleaning up
Speaker 8: the car, and they had kind of played it off
Speaker 8: that it had nothing to do with them killing anyone.
Speaker 8: That was, you know, the blood from one of their
Speaker 8: suspects that they brought in. But she was like, it's
Speaker 8: all over the front seat, which didn't make sense. And
Speaker 8: after a while she slowly pieced it together and actually
Speaker 8: reached out to law enforcement and they got a full confession.
Speaker 1: The two police officers were named Edward Sullivan and Tommy Simmons.
Speaker 1: They were both convicted and sent to prison for Barnes murder.
Speaker 1: What an investigators said, they were not responsible for the
Speaker 1: other six Freeway phantom murders. Still, the murder of Angela
Speaker 1: Barnes brought up some troubling implications. Many families in the
Speaker 1: area started to believe that a police officer could very
Speaker 1: well have been responsible for the freeway phantom murders. You
Speaker 1: may remember that when we talked with Evander Spinks, older
Speaker 1: sister of Carol Spinks, she revealed her biggest suspect.
Speaker 11: It probably was the police was somebody that worked with
Speaker 11: the police. That's the only thing really made sense to me.
Speaker 11: I think it got covered up. As an adult, I
Speaker 11: see it differently than when I was a kid. Plus
Speaker 11: as a kid, I didn't know a lot of stuff
Speaker 11: that had happened, how the police was handling things because
Speaker 11: we weren't privy today.
Speaker 8: There was definitely a feeling and what it really contributed to,
Speaker 8: I think was, and you read the interviews with the
Speaker 8: families at the time, they really then begin to suspect
Speaker 8: the police department or someone in the police department was involved,
Speaker 8: because the minute you get one young girl who's killed
Speaker 8: by police, you start wondering, while our other cops out
Speaker 8: there killing young girls, and is that what's really feeding this?
Speaker 8: And it really added to what I would call the
Speaker 8: extreme distrust the family started developing towards the police department.
Speaker 8: And it was, by the way, completely earned. You know,
Speaker 8: when you've got something like that happening in a community
Speaker 8: like that, you're not going to shake that. And there's
Speaker 8: no amount of goodwill you can put out that's gonna
Speaker 8: change people's perceptions of that. And I don't blame the
Speaker 8: families at all. I would still be kind of wondering
Speaker 8: where the police involved.
Speaker 1: When I spoke with Carolyn Spinks, the twin sister of
Speaker 1: Carol Spinks, she revealed some haunting thoughts about who she
Speaker 1: believed killed her sister. Have you had thoughts about who
Speaker 1: you think was responsible? Yes, I mean who do you
Speaker 1: think might have done it?
Speaker 5: I thought that it was a white man in a
Speaker 5: police car. Why because this may sound crazy to you all,
Speaker 5: but because one day I was at the store where
Speaker 5: my mom was, because my mother was the last person
Speaker 5: to see her alive. And right there at the store
Speaker 5: where my mom was, it used to be a phone
Speaker 5: booth right there. So one day, this was years later,
Speaker 5: I was at that phone booth and a vision came
Speaker 5: over me. I don't know where it came from, but
Speaker 5: it was a white police but he was in a
Speaker 5: police car. But I don't know if he was a
Speaker 5: police where he was just like one. And he was
Speaker 5: in a police car. And he heard my mother tell
Speaker 5: her that she was going to get her when she
Speaker 5: get home, because he told her not to come out
Speaker 5: of the house and she was walking home and he
Speaker 5: followed her. This is in your vision, yes, And then
Speaker 5: the day of my sister funeral afterwards, We went to
Speaker 5: my aunt house and we was outside and I looked
Speaker 5: across the street and there was a police officer. But
Speaker 5: he had that helmet thing with a big glass black
Speaker 5: thing across his face. And he was in that motorcycle
Speaker 5: thing that looked like where one could ride aside it
Speaker 5: that's made with the thing on the side, and he
Speaker 5: was just staring at me. But he was across the street,
Speaker 5: way across from my aunt house, but I could see
Speaker 5: him looking at me. And I got scanned and ran
Speaker 5: in the house. And I tell my mother that police
Speaker 5: keep looking at me.
Speaker 8: What did she say when they came out?
Speaker 5: He was gone, do you.
Speaker 1: Feel like you trust police?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever or it's just since that
Speaker 1: time when your sister was murdered? Was that the end
Speaker 1: of your trust for law enforcement?
Speaker 5: I ain't never had any get into it. Law aenportment,
Speaker 5: you know, at that time, so I didn't know. But
Speaker 5: as I got older, I was like, no, I don't
Speaker 5: trust them because you know, some police deduced they do underhanded,
Speaker 5: you know, unhanded stuff, and I guess you can't trust them.
Speaker 5: I don't trust no man.
Speaker 1: Author Wilma Harper wrote about this theory as well.
Speaker 10: Questions continued to be asked but not answered, like why
Speaker 10: no one ever saw the girls picked up? Was the
Speaker 10: killer someone so utterly trustworthy, like a policeman, that a
Speaker 10: bystander would take no notice? Was he someone they knew?
Speaker 10: Did the killer know the freeways, the neighborhood, and what
Speaker 10: were the chances that he lived among them? A person
Speaker 10: of normal appearances stalking and killing adolescent girls.
Speaker 1: We asked Blaine Pardo if he thought a police officer
Speaker 1: could feasibly pull off these murders.
Speaker 8: There's a feeling that the police department is either involved
Speaker 8: simply because these girls are so easily pulled off the
Speaker 8: streets and a policeman pulling up and a police car
Speaker 8: could do that. You know, he could say get in
Speaker 8: the car. So many of these are in broad daylight
Speaker 8: and the streets are so busy. To me, that's the
Speaker 8: one thing that this whoever this killer was, had a
Speaker 8: technique for securing these young women in his vehicle. We
Speaker 8: need to know what that is. Because he did it
Speaker 8: on streets where everybody knew everybody, where, people were out,
Speaker 8: and these girls simply vanish. So how he did it
Speaker 8: without raising attention? A policeman could easily do that.
Speaker 1: Despite this, Blaine ultimately doesn't think the freeway fandom is
Speaker 1: a police officer.
Speaker 8: I don't get that vibe, especially with the leaving of
Speaker 8: a note. A police officer is going to go, look,
Speaker 8: I'm not going to do anything at all to leave evidence,
Speaker 8: even evidence where I've got the victim writing out a note.
Speaker 8: Why taught police? If you're in the police department, They're.
Speaker 7: Not going to do that.
Speaker 8: And that note still sticks with me. That's someone who's
Speaker 8: literally flipping the finger off at the police department. You know,
Speaker 8: he's saying, catch me if you can, and I'll confess
Speaker 8: the others when you do. If this was a police officer,
Speaker 8: I just can't picture him being diabolical enough to go,
Speaker 8: I'll throw the scent off by pretending I'm a craze killer.
Speaker 8: And it's something that's very rare among serial killers to
Speaker 8: actually communicate to the authorities. They just don't do that.
Speaker 8: There's too much risk involved, and I think even in
Speaker 8: that timeframe, I don't think a police officer would do it.
Speaker 1: But the tragedy of Angela Barnes proved that not everything
Speaker 1: was as it seemed. Her inclusion in the Freeway Phantom
Speaker 1: case skewed perceptions of what was possible, and she wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one. As it turns out, there was yet
Speaker 1: another unofficial Freeway Phantom victim, and her case is even
Speaker 1: more terrifying. Angela Barnes wasn't the only unconfirmed victim of
Speaker 1: the Freeway Phantom. In November of nineteen seventy two, just
Speaker 1: two months after the last confirmed victim, Diane Williams, was killed,
Speaker 1: police found the body of eighteen year old Tara Bryant.
Speaker 1: To many investigators, Tara Bryant is considered the seventh victim
Speaker 1: of the Freeway Phantom, but she was ultimately ruled out
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons which we'll get into. Still,
Speaker 1: we and others believe the similarities are too striking to ignore.
Speaker 1: Tara was a young mother with a one year old
Speaker 1: son at home on Sunday, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: just three days after enjoying a Thanksgiving with her family,
Speaker 1: Tara's mother dropped her off at Leland Memorial Hospital for
Speaker 1: a medical appointment. She was wearing a shiny red jacket
Speaker 1: over a striped red, white and black dress, along with
Speaker 1: white knee high socks and brown loafers. Her mother gave
Speaker 1: her bus fare so she could ride the bus home
Speaker 1: after her appointment. According to a relative, Tara called home
Speaker 1: just after five pm and spoke to her brother Terence.
Speaker 1: She checked in on her son and said she decided
Speaker 1: to use her bus fare to purchase Duncan donuts and
Speaker 1: was walking home instead. They said goodbye, and unfortunately that
Speaker 1: was the last time that anyone heard from Tara. When
Speaker 1: Tara didn't return home, her mother contacted the Prince George's
Speaker 1: County Police Department, but according to the relative that we
Speaker 1: spoke to, law enforcement didn't respond very swiftly. Since Tara
Speaker 1: was an adult. The police told her mother there was
Speaker 1: nothing they could do. At the time, Tara's family knew
Speaker 1: that something was wrong. They believed she would not run
Speaker 1: away and would definitely not leave her young son behind.
Speaker 1: That night, the Bryant family conducted their own search. Tara's
Speaker 1: one and a half mile walk from the hospital took
Speaker 1: her south on Rhode Island Avenue, so her family retraced
Speaker 1: her steps. One relative recalled seeing a suspicious man walking
Speaker 1: alongside the road in a dark long coat, but there
Speaker 1: was no sign of Tara. Two agonizing days later, on
Speaker 1: November twenty eighth, at nine am, Tara's body was found
Speaker 1: floating in shallow water in the Anacostia River, one mile
Speaker 1: downstream from where she was last seen. When police discovered her.
Speaker 1: One of her shoes was missing.
Speaker 8: Police did an investigation along the banks and they found
Speaker 8: just two hundred yards from her house the other shoe,
Speaker 8: So she was very close to being at home when
Speaker 8: she was attacked and apparently killed.
Speaker 1: Here's writer Blain Pardo.
Speaker 8: Again, what we don't know is was she killed there
Speaker 8: or taken somewhere and dumped back there. And that's the
Speaker 8: tricky part with this, and having driven the area, you
Speaker 8: could almost see both scenarios playing out. But it certainly
Speaker 8: you've got a strangulation. You've got a body being dumped
Speaker 8: along that border line with Washington, DC and the surrounding communities.
Speaker 8: This one was a little different. She was dumped in
Speaker 8: water in a river, but it's also further out from
Speaker 8: any of the other freeway phantom victims, so it would
Speaker 8: make her the final victim.
Speaker 2: Of all this.
Speaker 1: According to the FBI, Tara's autopsy report determined that her
Speaker 1: cause of death was asphyxia DUDI strangulation. Her neck bone
Speaker 1: was intact and there was no damage to the cartilage
Speaker 1: around her neck. The autopsy couldn't determine if the strangulation
Speaker 1: was manual or ligature. The examination also couldn't determine if
Speaker 1: Tara was sexually assaulted, but noted there was no evidence
Speaker 1: of injury to her vagina or presence of seamen, but
Speaker 1: since Tara had been in the water for several days,
Speaker 1: it's possible that evidence may have washed away. The FBI
Speaker 1: analysis stated that sexual assault was probable since TERA's panties
Speaker 1: were located at the site where the assault most likely occurred,
Speaker 1: and the teddy that Tara had on under herd was
Speaker 1: unsnapped between her legs. Officially, sexual motivation for her murder
Speaker 1: was not ruled out, and there were no defensive wounds
Speaker 1: on her body. A Washington Post news article entitled quote
Speaker 1: police seeking help in slaying of girl was published following
Speaker 1: the discovery of Tara's body. The article included a photo
Speaker 1: of Tara and urged the public to contact the Homicide
Speaker 1: Division with tips. An excerpt of the article stated.
Speaker 12: Prince George's County Police today appealed for help from anyone
Speaker 12: who might have seen Tara and Bryan eighteen near her
Speaker 12: home in North Brentwood on Sunday before she was slain.
Speaker 12: The police say they believed the girl met her assailing
Speaker 12: as she walked south on Rhode Island Avenue between the
Speaker 12: five thousand block and Hyattsville and her home at forty
Speaker 12: five twenty two Rhode Island Avenue in North Breadwood between
Speaker 12: five point thirty and six thirty pm on Sunday.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen seventy three, a year after Tara
Speaker 1: was killed, a letter was published in the Washington Evening Star,
Speaker 1: written by Tara's brother, Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 13: And loving memory of my sister who passed away one
Speaker 13: year ago today, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two, As
Speaker 13: flowers rest upon your grave. May the Lord be with
Speaker 13: you through the day. It seems like yesterday when you
Speaker 13: passed away. We think about you every day, Your loving brother,
Speaker 13: Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 1: Sadly, the investigation into TERA's murder never bore much fruit.
Speaker 1: Here's blame Pardo again.
Speaker 8: There were no charges ever filed against anybody for this,
Speaker 8: so it's still considered a cold case. I requested copies
Speaker 8: of the case file and was told no, it's still
Speaker 8: an open investigation, which after nineteen seventy two, I'm curious
Speaker 8: what actual investigating they're doing, but you guys know how
Speaker 8: that goes. It was very fascinating for me because to me,
Speaker 8: I wonder, was this the last of the Freeway Fantom's
Speaker 8: true victims. She fits the profile and so many ways.
Speaker 8: There was nothing in the police reports about her being
Speaker 8: sexually assaulted that I've been able to find, which might
Speaker 8: be the telling clue in all of this. But for
Speaker 8: the FBI to consider her one of the Freeway Phantom
Speaker 8: victims is probably good enough for me at this point
Speaker 8: in time.
Speaker 1: The question of whether Tara Bryant was in fact the
Speaker 1: seventh victim of the Freeway Phantom is a hotly contested
Speaker 1: issue in this case. When we spoke with MPD Detective
Speaker 1: Romayne Jenkins, she fully believed that Tara was killed by
Speaker 1: the Freeway Phantom. So why was she not included among
Speaker 1: the Freeway Phantom victims?
Speaker 7: I have no idea.
Speaker 4: Some people did, because I see where there were submissions
Speaker 4: made to the FBI to examine fiber evidence and sover,
Speaker 4: and they included her case with it. Some did, some didn't.
Speaker 4: I can't tell you why. I guess mainly because she
Speaker 4: was only victim found in the water.
Speaker 1: Why are you so sure that.
Speaker 4: She is the seventh victim, because on the periphery it's
Speaker 4: the same. You have an eighteen year old petitue, young
Speaker 4: black female. She's dropped off at the hospital by her mother.
Speaker 4: Her mother says, I'll come back and pick you up.
Speaker 4: A few hours later, she calls home and says, tell
Speaker 4: my mother, don't pick me up. I'm going to catch
Speaker 4: the bus home. She's walking on US one Rhode Island Avenue,
Speaker 4: which is heavily traveled. People see her walking towards her house.
Speaker 4: She's headed home and she doesn't make it. And that's
Speaker 4: the same thing with these victims. Also the fact that
Speaker 4: she's in the water. Her underpants have been removed. There
Speaker 4: was no sign of forced vaginal entry, so they couldn't
Speaker 4: say that she had been raped. But she's in the water,
Speaker 4: so any fiber evidence or anything is gone. And like
Speaker 4: I said, she's headed home and she's only like forty.
Speaker 7: Yards from her house. She's a tech. And the same
Speaker 7: thing with these girls.
Speaker 4: They are snatched in the neighborhood and they depositive back
Speaker 4: in the neighborhood, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You know, we were able to contact a relative of
Speaker 1: Tara Bryant. They believe she was not a victim of
Speaker 1: the freeway fantom. According to the relative, the Bryant family
Speaker 1: shared this information with law enforcement, even telling them who
Speaker 1: killed Tara. They believed it was one of Tara's former boyfriends.
Speaker 1: The relative we spoke to said the ex boyfriend bore
Speaker 1: visible scratches and marks the day following her disappearance. We
Speaker 1: asked Blain Pardo about this and if he thought it
Speaker 1: could possibly be the ex boyfriend.
Speaker 8: You know, I don't know what the motivation would be.
Speaker 8: And if they think the boyfriend did it, then charge
Speaker 8: him with that. To me, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 8: There had to be something that was impetus for this.
Speaker 8: And how would the boyfriend know that she'd be walking
Speaker 8: home from the hospital, you know, in the early evening hours.
Speaker 8: You know, if the boyfriend was going to intercept her,
Speaker 8: how would he know where she is? Her mother didn't
Speaker 8: even know she was walking home. Her mother gave her
Speaker 8: a dollar to ride the bus home. So the concept
Speaker 8: that he was driving by, saw her and decided now's
Speaker 8: the time I'm going to kill her just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 8: I'm not saying that there weren't terrible relations between her
Speaker 8: and her boyfriend. I just don't see what the connection
Speaker 8: is and if the family believes he did it by
Speaker 8: all means, then the police should be investigating him in charging.
Speaker 5: Him with a crime.
Speaker 1: According to the relative we spoke to, the unnamed ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend was never investigated. The relative says this forced the
Speaker 1: family to live in the same community with the person
Speaker 1: they believed to be Tara's killer. According to the relative,
Speaker 1: that individual went to prison for other violent crimes and
Speaker 1: is now deceased. We reached out to Prince George's County
Speaker 1: for comment on Tara's case and to date have not
Speaker 1: heard back. Blaine Pardo says the investigation of Tara Bryant
Speaker 1: speaks to a bigger issue within the Prince George's County
Speaker 1: homicide department, and he compares it to another case that
Speaker 1: occurred almost a decade after the Freeway Phantom murders.
Speaker 8: There were a whole number of murders that took place
Speaker 8: in the nineteen eighties as well, called the Suitland Slaves.
Speaker 8: A number of bodies found right across the DC line
Speaker 8: in a park, all women sexually assaulted, strangled, etc. And
Speaker 8: dumped in this very small area. It was clearly a
Speaker 8: dumping ground for a serial killer. The Suitland slayings they
Speaker 8: tried to attribute to somebody else, but they never charged
Speaker 8: him for the crimes.
Speaker 5: But he was.
Speaker 8: Arrested for kidnapping a young woman in the district, so
Speaker 8: they said, well, he must have been the one that
Speaker 8: did all of these. There was absolutely nothing that I
Speaker 8: ever saw that connected him to these victims. But the
Speaker 8: Suitland slaves all remain open at this time, and Prince
Speaker 8: George's County will not release anything on a cold case
Speaker 8: at all, nor will their public relations people even pick
Speaker 8: up the phone and call you back. It's really weird.
Speaker 8: Even the Metropolitan Police Department actually communicates with me openly
Speaker 8: still to this day on the freeway phantom stuff, which
Speaker 8: I expected the Washington DC police to be a lot
Speaker 8: more rigid than anybody else. But Prince George's County won't
Speaker 8: even return phone calls. They don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 8: And sometimes I get the feeling that police officers get
Speaker 8: in their mind who they think did it, and in
Speaker 8: their mind the cases are closed, even though nobody was
Speaker 8: ever brought to trial for it.
Speaker 1: Blaine says, both Tara's murder and the Suitland slings add
Speaker 1: to a larger picture of how investigations are handled depending
Speaker 1: on who the victim is or what the victim looks like.
Speaker 8: You're talking the nineteen seventies and in the Suitland cases
Speaker 8: the nineteen eighties, early eighties. You know, there tends to
Speaker 8: be this approach that I've seen with large scale police departments.
Speaker 8: If they can't get an immediate hey we figured out
Speaker 8: who did it, got the evidence, let's put them to trial.
Speaker 8: If it goes cold, they let them stay cold. They
Speaker 8: don't focus on them, et cetera. And some of that's
Speaker 8: budgetary now, you know, the focus is very much on
Speaker 8: how much money are you spending and things along those lines.
Speaker 8: And I think cold cases are just as important. There's
Speaker 8: still victims, families, there's still somebody who's dead. It doesn't
Speaker 8: matter that it took place fifty years ago or forty
Speaker 8: years ago or ten years ago. They need the same
Speaker 8: level and attention. They probably need more because they haven't
Speaker 8: been completely resolved yet.
Speaker 1: Like TERA's case and the Suitland slings, the rest of
Speaker 1: the Freeway Phantom murders went unsolved, with the Green Viga
Speaker 1: gang ruled out as well as Robert Askins. The case
Speaker 1: went dark until it was picked up again by Romaine
Speaker 1: Jenkins in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: I was transferred, I guess after ten years. I ended
Speaker 4: up being transferred over to the US Attorney's office, and
Speaker 4: there I supervised seven former homicide detectives because they had
Speaker 4: a new division command and he didn't like any of
Speaker 4: these old investigations, so he put him under the career
Speaker 4: criminal unit and.
Speaker 7: They made me the supervisor. I said, oh good, now.
Speaker 4: I can get into my freeway phantom cases. So I
Speaker 4: had at my disposal, I had seven senior hormicide detectives
Speaker 4: and they said, Sorge, we're gonna work on this case,
Speaker 4: but we're not going to do Jack the Ripper. I said,
Speaker 4: don't worry about Jack the Ripper. We're gonna work on
Speaker 4: these and we did it.
Speaker 1: Now that the FBI's criminal profiling unit was more advanced,
Speaker 1: the first thing Romayne wanted to do was create an
Speaker 1: official profile of the potential killer. What did you think
Speaker 1: of the FBI profile that they did back then?
Speaker 4: They did The first one they did was mine was
Speaker 4: for me, and I thought they did a pretty good
Speaker 4: job considering the circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, you mean, considering how little we all knew about.
Speaker 4: It, right, But they did come up with some things
Speaker 4: that had to be keyed in on.
Speaker 7: They felt that this person was in the military.
Speaker 4: Well, at that time, you had all these military people
Speaker 4: coming back from Vietnam who were in hospitals here and
Speaker 4: installations here, so you had a lot of that going on.
Speaker 7: But that was really interesting.
Speaker 4: And the reason why I thought it was so interesting
Speaker 4: was because when I showed the note to the FBI,
Speaker 4: they said, this is military.
Speaker 7: This person was in the military.
Speaker 4: I showed the same note to the investigator at Naval
Speaker 4: Investigated Service.
Speaker 7: He said, oh, whoever wrote this note? This military?
Speaker 4: I had two different brains saying the same thing. You
Speaker 4: know that this person was in the military.
Speaker 1: In February of twenty twenty to a new profile of
Speaker 1: the killer was made and that idea came up once again.
Speaker 6: I believe this was the beginning of his offending career,
Speaker 6: and I think something significant happened right after this that
Speaker 6: could have been he moved, was arrested, went into the military.
Speaker 1: Next time on Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 6: This is exactly who we wanted, and he was willing
Speaker 6: to take a great risk to get her.
Speaker 4: A black officer came to say, look, Sargeant, be careful,
Speaker 4: the white offices will get you, and said, I don't
Speaker 4: know what they plan it, but they platted something.
Speaker 7: He said.
Speaker 4: I was in the locker room and I got business
Speaker 4: pieces of the conversation.
Speaker 3: He actually went out and knocked on the doors of
Speaker 3: the detectives who actually worked on the case originally. It
Speaker 3: turns out that a lot of the missing files had
Speaker 3: been taken home by the original case detectives.
Speaker 6: He's obviously loving the moniker. This is why we tell
Speaker 6: media outlets do not nickname offenders. What it does is
Speaker 6: it gives other people who are like minded the idea
Speaker 6: that they can become famous too.
Speaker 2: Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 2: and Black Bar MITZVAH. Our host is CELESE. Hilly. The
Speaker 2: show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright and CELESE. Hilly.
Speaker 2: Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick
Speaker 2: and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers
Speaker 2: on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
Speaker 2: with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on
Speaker 2: behalf of Black bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and
Speaker 2: Aaron Bergman, with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright.
Speaker 2: Artwork by Mister Soul two one six origin music by
Speaker 2: Makeup and Vanity Set Special Thanks to a team at
Speaker 2: Uta Beckmedia and Marketing and the Nord Group, Tenderfoot TV
Speaker 2: and iHeartMedia, as well as Black bar Mitzvah, have increased
Speaker 2: the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction
Speaker 2: of the person or persons responsible for their Freeway Phanom murders.
Speaker 2: The previous reward of up to one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department has been matched.
Speaker 2: A new total reward of up to three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars is now being offered. If you have any information
Speaker 2: relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the Metropolitan Police Department
Speaker 2: at area code two zero two seven two seven nine
Speaker 2: zero ninety nine. For more information, please visit Freeway Dashfanom
Speaker 2: dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.