This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews podcast More what You Hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. So lest Hedley is a journalist and radio host,
professional speaker, and author of best selling books like We Need to Talk,
how To, How to Have Great Conversations that matter and Do Nothing,
how To break Away from over working, over doing, and Underliving. She's
also the creator and host of a new podcast that can be heard everywhere you
get podcasts, including the iHeartRadio app Freeway Phantom. So lest Hedley, Let's
go back to the beginning of this story, because I'm not sure everybody remembers
this horrifying case. Yeah, and that's kind of one of the points about
this is there is so much attention put on serial killers, right or wrong,
and yet this is a guy who killed at minimum six young black girls
in the DC area in the early nineteen seventies and most people have never heard
of him. To be honest, there were probably more victims, at least
one. Well, but but you know, that's one of the questions of
this Investigated podcast is how could this guy take so many lives and yet not
be remembered, not have attention put on him and you know, that's one
of the things we look into, how did the murders, how were they
committed by and large, So this is a guy who somehow was able to
snatch these young girls, the youngest was only ten years old, off the
streets of their neighborhoods, most of them with an easy walking distance of their
homes, in broad daylight, with people walking around watching. One of them
girls was snatched right outside a grocery store. Her the purchases she just made
were dropped on the sidewalk, and then he took them and killed them,
and they discarded their bodies on the side of the freeway, which is how
he ended up with that title. In some case he killed them within hours.
In another case he kept them somewhere in his home, fed them,
clearly bathed them. So you know, each victim ended up having a different
horrifying experience, but they were all deposited by the side of the road.
So lest Headley and the podcast is Freeway Phantom that can be heard on the
iHeart radio app and everywhere you get podcasts. And once this in a part
of the district of Columbia that was within sight of the capital mall Or was
it in a lower class part of the town. It was in a lower
socio economic neighborhood. These neighborhoods were largely African American, and again this is
part of the problem in that and you know, the accusations that perhaps these
these cases weren't taken seriously by law enforcement, fair or not, was because
of the neighborhoods in which they occurred. But they also happened to have happened
right when the Vietnam protests were happening at the Capitol, and that may have
really distracted Lunger. Oh yeah, yeah, content cycle of now call it,
yes, exactly, that's exactly so so lest Heedley. These murders came
along also at a time when tracking down serial murders wasn't very sophisticated. Yeah,
to put it lightly, we didn't have the phrase serial killer. That
wasn't in our lexicon. And if you've ever seen that series mind Hunter on
Netflix, I think it is it's about the establishment of the behavioral Profiling Unit
at the FBI. Right, they have the science of tracking down killers that
didn't exist yet. Actually, for this investigated podcast, we actually commissioned the
first ever scientific profile of this killer and it very much does not align the
scientific profile, doesn't align with the sort of gut level profile they did at
the time. And so yeah, they didn't have the tools to track down
what they called a pattern killer at that time. They didn't have the tools
to really understand it. And it actually several girls too, many girls were
murdered before they even realized that these killings were connected. It's the story of
Freeway Phantom and Celeste Hedley is the journalist and host telling the story of how
Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nnemohia Yates, and Brenda Woodard
were and Diane Williams as well, were all murdered between nineteen seventy one and
nineteen seventy two and their bodies dumped aside a freeway in Washington, d C.
Many serial killers went on our caughts idolized Jack the Ripper. We don't
know because this one hasn't been caught, But are there any similarities in the
murders. First of all, thank you for saying their names. That's one
of the points of this podcast is so we can remember these girls. The
other thing is that yes, there were In fact, he clearly took delight
in the attention of the of law enforcement, in the attention of media.
He left a note with one of the girls that in some ways had a
similar tone to the notes that Jack Ripper sent to law enforcements, kind of
taunting them. He even signed it the Freeway Phantom, so he liked having
that name. And yeah, you're right, there does seem to be among
the monsters who kill, you know, multiple people for no motive except for
the joy of killing. There does seem to be this enjoyment in taunting the
police and in communicating with law enforcement. So yeah, there were a few
similarities. Well, there also seems to be a reticence in these types of
murderers to not make it quick and out of the blue. They don't usually
use firearms that they seem to prefer a more personal touch, if you will,
Yes, um, and definitely in this particular case that that is true.
As I mentioned, there was some intimacy here and had um. He
even taunted and tortured the families Um. The families in one case received a
phone call from their missing child Um in which she asked for her mother and
said she'd been she's been taken by a white man, which the law enforcement
probably accurately believed was an attempt to hear them in the wrong direction. That
the family got these phone calls, which there's good reason to believe they were
from the killer taunting them as well. Um and and again this intimacy,
that some cases their shoes and socks had been removed, they had been based
in some cases. Um it fed he you know there, I don't know.
I mean, obviously this is not my field understanding that kind of psychopathy
and anti social personality. But yes, um, with these particular kind of
killers, there seems to be a need to make this a personal, horrifying
ritual. Freeway Random is the podcast. It's hosted by journalists Celeste Headley,
and it is about these murders in between nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy two
in the Washington, DC area. Was there any distinguishing characteristic more suliman similarity
in between the girls. Were they all in the same part of town saying
in the same maybe blocks away from each other, or was it more random
than that? No, in fact, they were all from the basic the
same area, maybe not the same many of them were some of the exact
same neighborhood. But they were all from the same area on the east side
of DC, right around where these freeways intersect. They were all very similar
of type. They were all quite young, as I said, their ages
were from age ten to eighteen. They were all petite. These were not
just short statured, but but slim girls. More than one of them was
actually, you know, wearing school clothes and so yeah, he had a
type. In fact, one of the main suspects was a man who had
been convicted of violence against women. But one of the things that the profiler
said makes this person not fit is because that guy had committed violence against grown
women, and this particular the Freeway Phantom obviously had a predilection for young girls.
Celest Hedley is the host Freeway Phantom is the podcast heard on the iHeartRadio
app app and everywhere you get podcasts and you can hear more about this really
a true crime and unsolved case. And Celest Hedley, thanks for bringing it
to our attention, Thanks for lying you to Thanks for listening to Later with
Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
weekday afternoons from five to seven and Ihearts Media Presentation