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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews podcast More what You Hear

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weekday afternoons on the Drive. So
lest Hedley is a journalist and radio host,

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professional speaker, and author of best
selling books like We Need to Talk,

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how To, How to Have Great
Conversations that matter and Do Nothing,

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how To break Away from over working, over doing, and Underliving. She's

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also the creator and host of a
new podcast that can be heard everywhere you

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get podcasts, including the iHeartRadio app
Freeway Phantom. So lest Hedley, Let's

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go back to the beginning of this
story, because I'm not sure everybody remembers

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this horrifying case. Yeah, and
that's kind of one of the points about

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this is there is so much attention
put on serial killers, right or wrong,

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and yet this is a guy who
killed at minimum six young black girls

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in the DC area in the early
nineteen seventies and most people have never heard

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of him. To be honest,
there were probably more victims, at least

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one. Well, but but you
know, that's one of the questions of

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this Investigated podcast is how could this
guy take so many lives and yet not

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be remembered, not have attention put
on him and you know, that's one

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of the things we look into,
how did the murders, how were they

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committed by and large, So this
is a guy who somehow was able to

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snatch these young girls, the youngest
was only ten years old, off the

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streets of their neighborhoods, most of
them with an easy walking distance of their

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homes, in broad daylight, with
people walking around watching. One of them

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girls was snatched right outside a grocery
store. Her the purchases she just made

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were dropped on the sidewalk, and
then he took them and killed them,

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and they discarded their bodies on the
side of the freeway, which is how

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he ended up with that title.
In some case he killed them within hours.

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In another case he kept them somewhere
in his home, fed them,

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clearly bathed them. So you know, each victim ended up having a different

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horrifying experience, but they were all
deposited by the side of the road.

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So lest Headley and the podcast is
Freeway Phantom that can be heard on the

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iHeart radio app and everywhere you get
podcasts. And once this in a part

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of the district of Columbia that was
within sight of the capital mall Or was

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it in a lower class part of
the town. It was in a lower

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socio economic neighborhood. These neighborhoods were
largely African American, and again this is

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part of the problem in that and
you know, the accusations that perhaps these

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these cases weren't taken seriously by law
enforcement, fair or not, was because

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of the neighborhoods in which they occurred. But they also happened to have happened

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right when the Vietnam protests were happening
at the Capitol, and that may have

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really distracted Lunger. Oh yeah,
yeah, content cycle of now call it,

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yes, exactly, that's exactly so
so lest Heedley. These murders came

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along also at a time when tracking
down serial murders wasn't very sophisticated. Yeah,

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to put it lightly, we didn't
have the phrase serial killer. That

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wasn't in our lexicon. And if
you've ever seen that series mind Hunter on

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Netflix, I think it is it's
about the establishment of the behavioral Profiling Unit

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at the FBI. Right, they
have the science of tracking down killers that

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didn't exist yet. Actually, for
this investigated podcast, we actually commissioned the

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first ever scientific profile of this killer
and it very much does not align the

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scientific profile, doesn't align with the
sort of gut level profile they did at

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the time. And so yeah,
they didn't have the tools to track down

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what they called a pattern killer at
that time. They didn't have the tools

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to really understand it. And it
actually several girls too, many girls were

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murdered before they even realized that these
killings were connected. It's the story of

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Freeway Phantom and Celeste Hedley is the
journalist and host telling the story of how

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Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson, Brenda
Crockett, Nnemohia Yates, and Brenda Woodard

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were and Diane Williams as well,
were all murdered between nineteen seventy one and

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nineteen seventy two and their bodies dumped
aside a freeway in Washington, d C.

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Many serial killers went on our caughts
idolized Jack the Ripper. We don't

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know because this one hasn't been caught, But are there any similarities in the

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murders. First of all, thank
you for saying their names. That's one

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of the points of this podcast is
so we can remember these girls. The

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other thing is that yes, there
were In fact, he clearly took delight

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in the attention of the of law
enforcement, in the attention of media.

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He left a note with one of
the girls that in some ways had a

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similar tone to the notes that Jack
Ripper sent to law enforcements, kind of

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taunting them. He even signed it
the Freeway Phantom, so he liked having

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that name. And yeah, you're
right, there does seem to be among

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the monsters who kill, you know, multiple people for no motive except for

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the joy of killing. There does
seem to be this enjoyment in taunting the

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police and in communicating with law enforcement. So yeah, there were a few

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similarities. Well, there also seems
to be a reticence in these types of

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murderers to not make it quick and
out of the blue. They don't usually

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use firearms that they seem to prefer
a more personal touch, if you will,

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Yes, um, and definitely in
this particular case that that is true.

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As I mentioned, there was some
intimacy here and had um. He

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even taunted and tortured the families Um. The families in one case received a

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phone call from their missing child Um
in which she asked for her mother and

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said she'd been she's been taken by
a white man, which the law enforcement

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probably accurately believed was an attempt to
hear them in the wrong direction. That

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the family got these phone calls,
which there's good reason to believe they were

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from the killer taunting them as well. Um and and again this intimacy,

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that some cases their shoes and socks
had been removed, they had been based

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in some cases. Um it fed
he you know there, I don't know.

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I mean, obviously this is not
my field understanding that kind of psychopathy

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and anti social personality. But yes, um, with these particular kind of

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killers, there seems to be a
need to make this a personal, horrifying

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ritual. Freeway Random is the podcast. It's hosted by journalists Celeste Headley,

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and it is about these murders in
between nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy two

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in the Washington, DC area.
Was there any distinguishing characteristic more suliman similarity

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in between the girls. Were they
all in the same part of town saying

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in the same maybe blocks away from
each other, or was it more random

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than that? No, in fact, they were all from the basic the

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same area, maybe not the same
many of them were some of the exact

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same neighborhood. But they were all
from the same area on the east side

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of DC, right around where these
freeways intersect. They were all very similar

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of type. They were all quite
young, as I said, their ages

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were from age ten to eighteen.
They were all petite. These were not

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just short statured, but but slim
girls. More than one of them was

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actually, you know, wearing school
clothes and so yeah, he had a

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type. In fact, one of
the main suspects was a man who had

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been convicted of violence against women.
But one of the things that the profiler

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said makes this person not fit is
because that guy had committed violence against grown

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women, and this particular the Freeway
Phantom obviously had a predilection for young girls.

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Celest Hedley is the host Freeway Phantom
is the podcast heard on the iHeartRadio

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app app and everywhere you get podcasts
and you can hear more about this really

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a true crime and unsolved case.
And Celest Hedley, thanks for bringing it

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to our attention, Thanks for lying
you to Thanks for listening to Later with

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Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven and
Ihearts Media Presentation