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Speaker 6: way to hire Good evening. This is tantamount to my
Speaker 6: insensitivity to people, especially women. I will admit the others
Speaker 6: and when you catch me if you can freeway phantom.
Speaker 6: In nineteen seventy one and seventy two, a deadly predator
Speaker 6: stalked the streets of the nation's capital. His targets young girls,
Speaker 6: whom he kidnapped, raped, and left the remains along busy
Speaker 6: roadways in plain view. Some of his victims he held
Speaker 6: captive for days, others only a few minutes. Seven victims,
Speaker 6: ranging from the ages of ten to eighteen, died in
Speaker 6: his hands. Then, as mysteriously as he started, the Freeway
Speaker 6: Phantom stopped on one victim. He left a note taunting
Speaker 6: police and confirming the name. The media gave him the
Speaker 6: Freeway Phantom. Now, after nearly five decades, Washington, d C's
Speaker 6: oldest unsolved serial killing spree his pride open. With the suspects,
Speaker 6: the liars, and the evidence laid bare. Father daughter duo
Speaker 6: and best selling authors Blaine Pardeaux and Victoria Hester share
Speaker 6: shed new light and provide tantalizing new clues as to
Speaker 6: who may be the Freeway Phantom. The book that we're
Speaker 6: featuring this evening is tantamount the pursuit of the Freeway
Speaker 6: Phantom serial killer. With my special guests, Blaine Pardoh and
Speaker 6: Victoria Hester, welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 6: much for a greened in this interview. Victoria Hester and Blaine.
Speaker 7: Pardo, thanks for having us.
Speaker 6: Thank you, good evening, Good evening. Let's start off right
Speaker 6: away with Blaine. Why don't you tell us a little
Speaker 6: bit remind us about April nineteen sixty eight, Washington d C.
Speaker 6: As you do set the stage in this book, tell
Speaker 6: us about April fourth, nineteen sixty eight and Washington d
Speaker 6: C at that time, before we talk about the very
Speaker 6: next day after riot, two weeks of demonstrations against the
Speaker 6: Vietnam War, US about and set the stage for April
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty eight Washington, d C, USA.
Speaker 7: But I would be pleased to you know, I think
Speaker 7: you've got to look at the tinderbox that was Washington
Speaker 7: d C. In the sixties. You know, two thirds of
Speaker 7: the city's population in the late sixties, early seventies, and
Speaker 7: these crimes take place in seventy one and seventy two.
Speaker 7: But you know, the cita's population at the time was
Speaker 7: eighty percent black, but you know, the police force was
Speaker 7: eighty percent white, and that kind of a mix really
Speaker 7: did cause some problems. The DC public schools, you know,
Speaker 7: were ninety two percent black students, but only one out
Speaker 7: of every three freshmen actually graduated high school. The city
Speaker 7: was in a very deep divide, and race was very
Speaker 7: much a primary issue along with the civil rights struggle,
Speaker 7: you know, and everything kind of fell apart in April
Speaker 7: of nineteen sixty eight, when Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated.
Speaker 7: The black community long frustrated with what was going on
Speaker 7: in the city and feeling that they were targets, you know,
Speaker 7: rioted as they did in many cities across the country,
Speaker 7: you know, but this was in the nation's capital, and
Speaker 7: they inflicted a heck of a lot of dmage on
Speaker 7: that and it really caused a great schism, you know,
Speaker 7: in the city, and a lot of distrust with the
Speaker 7: police force, which we saw as we were doing this
Speaker 7: book was a key element. By the time you get
Speaker 7: to nineteen seventy one, you're dealing with massive protests against
Speaker 7: the Vietnam War. The week before the first of these
Speaker 7: murders in nineteen seventy one, you had a half million
Speaker 7: people in town visiting DC and pro testing the war,
Speaker 7: and that really led to a lot of problems all
Speaker 7: on its own, and it took a police force it
Speaker 7: was already streamed and stressed and stretched it even further.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 6: and you write in the introduction, this is what is
Speaker 6: known as this crime spree, this murder spree. April twenty fifth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy one to November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 6: and we'll talk about that, but you talk of the
Speaker 6: first victim, Carol Denise Spinx, Victoria. If you can tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit what happened on April twenty fifth
Speaker 6: with Carol Denise Spinx and seven to eleven.
Speaker 8: So she at the time of her disappearance was thirteen
Speaker 8: years old, So although a teenager, still very much child right.
Speaker 8: Nineteen seventies were a lot different than today, where sending
Speaker 8: your child to the store at the end of the
Speaker 8: block wasn't a thing you do today without a cell phone,
Speaker 8: without you know, some sort of tracking device on your child.
Speaker 7: There was a lot more trust.
Speaker 8: In other people and of children being able to go
Speaker 8: outside and play and not have to worry. Carol was
Speaker 8: on her way to seven eleven to grab a few
Speaker 8: things for her family, and she disappeared right outside about
Speaker 8: seven eleven and was found later. Just you know what
Speaker 8: seemed like at the time, just an isolated incident, but
Speaker 8: you know, as the months went on, it seemed to
Speaker 8: be kind of a reoccurring thing with these young girls
Speaker 8: disappearing and being found later in a ditch or on
Speaker 8: the side of the road.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us about finding this body and what please
Speaker 6: I can learn from this if anything.
Speaker 7: Well, she was found six days later, and what was
Speaker 7: really kind of interesting or creepy about that is her
Speaker 7: killer had kept her for a period of time. She
Speaker 7: actually had digested food in her stomach, and the estimated
Speaker 7: time of her death was in such that it's believed
Speaker 7: that he kept her for several days in his control.
Speaker 7: And she's found a Long Eye two ninety five, which
Speaker 7: is one of the major thoroughfares through the Washington, DC
Speaker 7: area on the southeast side. And you know when she's found,
Speaker 7: she's found on the right at the edge of the
Speaker 7: grounds of Seeing Elizabeth's Hospital and just kind of unceremoniously
Speaker 7: dumped alongside the road. But there is some evidence that's
Speaker 7: found on her. Well, she died of man strangulation. They
Speaker 7: did find several synthetic green fibers, which kind of become
Speaker 7: a hallmark of the of these killings, is these fibers
Speaker 7: that were found and those were found on her body.
Speaker 7: Of course, at the time, they just thought this was
Speaker 7: a young girl who had been kidnapped. Nobody realized at
Speaker 7: that point that they had a serial killer on their hands.
Speaker 6: You talk about also the limited forensics at that time,
Speaker 6: but also that they would collect hairs and fibers. You
Speaker 6: talked about the fibers. What were the hairs that were
Speaker 6: found at that first crime scene.
Speaker 7: There were several negrade hairs found at that crime scene
Speaker 7: and they were not hers. Now, they showed up in
Speaker 7: her shorts or sweatering or underwear, but at the time
Speaker 7: they didn't have that. They also found some blood under
Speaker 7: her fingernails. Today that would have been easily DNA tested,
Speaker 7: but at the time, you know, it just they didn't anything.
Speaker 7: They didn't even have enough for conclusive blood typing or
Speaker 7: grouping at that time.
Speaker 6: Right, you list The next victim is Darlenia Denise Johnson,
Speaker 6: and again we'll talk about the significance of the name
Speaker 6: Denise or the middle named Denise. And you say she
Speaker 6: was found eleven days later and her face and body
Speaker 6: were so badly decomposed that the medical examiner had to
Speaker 6: cut off her fingers to id her. Of course, was
Speaker 6: no DNA testing at that time. She had disappeared July eighth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy one. Tell us about what had happened to
Speaker 6: her for her to disappear.
Speaker 9: Victoria Ticket, Yeah, I'll take this flunchop. Darlenia was sixteen
Speaker 9: years old, and she was actually on her way to work.
Speaker 9: She had a summer job at the Oxen Hill Recreation Center.
Speaker 9: That's pretty much the last time that she was reported
Speaker 9: being seen, so not sure if she was abducted on
Speaker 9: her way to work or there was some talk before
Speaker 9: that she may have skipped work on purpose that day
Speaker 9: to hang out with her boyfriend. It's really not clear
Speaker 9: what part of town or is the area that she
Speaker 9: was abducted or taken from, but there was no witnesses
Speaker 9: actually to see her get in a car with someone else.
Speaker 9: Her body was found quite almost a week and a
Speaker 9: half later. It was actually fifteen feet from where Carol
Speaker 9: Spinks's body had been found, so very close proximity to
Speaker 9: each other. Obviously, her body was badly decomposed. There was
Speaker 9: could not find a cause of death for her, it
Speaker 9: was so badly decomposed. In the July seat, it was
Speaker 9: interesting on her case that her body was visible from
Speaker 9: the road the roadway that it was next to, and
Speaker 9: multiple callers had called in and saying, I think there's
Speaker 9: a body on the side of the road. The police
Speaker 9: responded to those calls but never got outside of their
Speaker 9: police guards to actually look for a body. They basically
Speaker 9: drove by, didn't see anything, and called it at all clear.
Speaker 7: I think one of the more disturbing things that we
Speaker 7: went through when we met with one of the detectives
Speaker 7: is she actually had the photographs from the crime scene
Speaker 7: and from the autopsies, and it was deeply disturbing. Out
Speaker 7: of all of these victims, they're all horribly disturbing because
Speaker 7: they're young girls, but hers was probably the most disturbing
Speaker 7: because we're talking, you know, summer in Washington, DC, a
Speaker 7: body being left out for days at a time exposed.
Speaker 7: They were unable to get a real usable trace evidence
Speaker 7: at all from that those remains, and it may have
Speaker 7: been one of the more critical ones if they had
Speaker 7: responded quickly where they could have gotten some useful evidence.
Speaker 6: You right. Particularly horrifying fact that this was that one
Speaker 6: of the witnesses that said that they had seen the
Speaker 6: body had driven by their days later and saw that
Speaker 6: no one had responded to it. So he was angry
Speaker 6: at the police that they're in action, you write, And
Speaker 6: so he told his boss, who had a friend, which
Speaker 6: was this Lieutenant Baden, And so as you talk about
Speaker 6: many days after the fact, probably didn't help this investigation whatsoever.
Speaker 6: And that's just one of the disturbing facts that we
Speaker 6: get through this entire case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's hard for people to understand that
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy one and seventy two, we didn't have the
Speaker 7: phrase serial killer. We didn't know that wasn't known. We
Speaker 7: didn't know how these people operated, and that was I
Speaker 7: think a big factor in the investigation and why it
Speaker 7: has gone on for so many years.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 6: Was there any linking of based on evidence, the Spinks
Speaker 6: and the Johnson deaths at that time by police, and
Speaker 6: how do they proceed? They did.
Speaker 7: They were starting to draw a connection, especially because she's
Speaker 7: found fifteen feet or so from where Carol Spinks was
Speaker 7: discovered her remains were discovered, So they realized that they
Speaker 7: were probably dealing with the same killer that was happening
Speaker 7: that was occurring at that time. So they really did
Speaker 7: start to see a connection. But what they did is
Speaker 7: they applied police techniques that you apply when you're trying
Speaker 7: to solve an individual crime rather than go after a
Speaker 7: serial killer. So a lot of it was trying to generate,
Speaker 7: you know, tips and leads from the public, and it's
Speaker 7: very hard because you're dealing with young girls. These were
Speaker 7: not victims that had you know, extensive life history where
Speaker 7: they had people that might have a grudge against them
Speaker 7: or some way to connect them. And it was very
Speaker 7: random how they were mysteriously disappeared. Both of them disappeared,
Speaker 7: you know, for the most part in daylight or twilight
Speaker 7: hours in Washington, d C. So you know, someone should
Speaker 7: have seen something, but they weren't getting that type of feedback,
Speaker 7: which really told them that the killer was operating kind
Speaker 7: of brazenly right out in the open, and that was disturbing.
Speaker 7: I think the media drew more connections than the police did.
Speaker 6: At that stage.
Speaker 8: Though.
Speaker 6: What is one of the events that occurs while the
Speaker 6: Johnson Darlinia is missing in terms of the mother receiving
Speaker 6: what did she see at the home she's.
Speaker 7: Been You know, it's interesting a number of these victims
Speaker 7: did receive crank calls, and you know, some of them
Speaker 7: were very dis and you know, I remember as a
Speaker 7: child who was raised in the sixties and seventies, crank
Speaker 7: calls used to happen because we didn't have you know,
Speaker 7: caller ID at the time. You did get crank calls,
Speaker 7: but it was very disturbing a number of these victims
Speaker 7: received phone calls afterwards, and you have to wonder was
Speaker 7: that the killer actually reaching out to them to the families.
Speaker 6: Now we talk about Brenda Fay Crockett, ten year old,
Speaker 6: and she was again it seems a pattern here, sent
Speaker 6: to the store for groceries. Again a different time the
Speaker 6: seventies where we would send a ten year old anywhere,
Speaker 6: but even this short distance. And this is July twenty ninth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy one. She's in the fifth grade, and she's
Speaker 6: well aware of you rite of dangers of getting into
Speaker 6: vehicles with strangers. She's been educated about this. And it's
Speaker 6: nine days after Darlinia Johnson's body was found. Brenda.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So, ten year old Brenda was sent by her
Speaker 9: mother to the store just there, a couple of blocks
Speaker 9: away from her home. A couple of hours had gone
Speaker 9: by and her mother started to get concerned, So the
Speaker 9: family started to search the neighborhood, ask the neighbors have
Speaker 9: you seen Brenda. While they're doing so, her younger sister
Speaker 9: is at home and receives a phone call. She answers
Speaker 9: the phone call and it's Brenda on the other line
Speaker 9: hysterically crying, saying that a white man picks her up
Speaker 9: and that she's going to Virginia, or that she was
Speaker 9: in Virginia with a white man and that he was
Speaker 9: going to send her in a cab home the sitter.
Speaker 9: She abruptly hangs up, and then just a few minutes
Speaker 9: later calls back again and it's Brenda again calling crying,
Speaker 9: asking if her mother saw her. So the indication here
Speaker 9: is whoever took Brenda or abducted her either knew what
Speaker 9: her mother drove, or Brenda may have seen her mother
Speaker 9: drive by or a car that looks like her mother's
Speaker 9: and said to her killer, I think that's my mom.
Speaker 9: It fears that he the killer, had been spotted or
Speaker 9: that his vehicle may have been spotted with her inside.
Speaker 9: The thought is that he had her call and give
Speaker 9: this fake description of where she was and who she
Speaker 9: was with to throw everyone off, and Brenda ends up
Speaker 9: calling a total of three times to her home, at
Speaker 9: one time talking to her mother's friend, an older male friend,
Speaker 9: and tries to get more information from her, but again
Speaker 9: the phone call this cut short, almost like their footsteps
Speaker 9: in the background, making it pretty clear that someone is
Speaker 9: standing over her shoulder while she makes these calls. And
Speaker 9: that's the last time that the family ever hears or
Speaker 9: from Brenda again. The next morning, pretty early in the morning,
Speaker 9: before dawn, her body was found right off a Route fifty.
Speaker 9: It was she had been strangled, it was she had
Speaker 9: been raped, but that was the last time. It was
Speaker 9: the creepy connection of her actually calling and speaking to
Speaker 9: her sister and her mother's friend on the phone. It's
Speaker 9: just what The killer was clearly afraid that he had
Speaker 9: been caught, so he tried his hardest to throw everybody
Speaker 9: off by giving this opposite description. There is no belief
Speaker 9: that she was ever even in Virginia. It's just an
Speaker 9: odd sense of did you feel like he caught?
Speaker 6: You're right that there's again a few negroid hairs found,
Speaker 6: and the synthetic green fibers that were consistent with the
Speaker 6: other or most of the other ones as well recovered
Speaker 6: from the clothing, and blood mixed with semen found in
Speaker 6: the underwear.
Speaker 7: Yes, this is a killer that sexually assaults young girls. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and I've read a couple of newspaper descriptions. We had
Speaker 7: explore it in great detail in the book, but a
Speaker 7: number of newspaper descriptions. You have officers kind of saying, well,
Speaker 7: these girls dress provocatively and things on those lines, and
Speaker 7: it couldn't be further from the truth. These were young girls,
Speaker 7: and they dressed like young girls in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 7: These were not girls that were over developed. For the
Speaker 7: most party, most of them that we've seen pictures of
Speaker 7: the look their age or younger. And so the killer
Speaker 7: clearly had a thing for young women or young girls,
Speaker 7: and that was his focus.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. You now talk about Moshia Yates or Nino Yates.
Speaker 6: This is October second, nineteen seventy one. She's twelve years
Speaker 6: old and in the sixth grade. She lived in an
Speaker 6: apartment with her father and her stepmother. Again this is
Speaker 6: again some of the tragic stories, heart wrenching stories. Her
Speaker 6: stepmom was in the hospital after having a baby in
Speaker 6: complications or after having a baby part of me, and
Speaker 6: she is sent again to the store Safeways a block away.
Speaker 6: Tell us what happens to Nino Mashia October first.
Speaker 9: So she was sent to the Safeway store literally just
Speaker 9: around the corner, a place she had been probably one
Speaker 9: hundred times. She was purchased and as proven by the
Speaker 9: manager in the store saw her purchase items. She was
Speaker 9: alone at the time. She purchased like flower sugar, very
Speaker 9: like normal things to take home. She had those items
Speaker 9: in a Safeway bag, had her change in her pocket,
Speaker 9: was headed home, and then just vanished from this side
Speaker 9: of the streets. And it's a fairly busy area. This
Speaker 9: isn't a parking lot with no lights. And you know,
Speaker 9: it wasn't very late at night. It was seven pm
Speaker 9: on October first. It wasn't, you know, an odd time
Speaker 9: of day or odd CD part of town. She just
Speaker 9: disappeared from the side of the road. And in her case,
Speaker 9: it was odd because the bag was left behind, the
Speaker 9: Safeway bag with her items in it. So it makes
Speaker 9: it seem like either she was forced in the vehicle
Speaker 9: or she would have just taken those items with her.
Speaker 9: If it was somebody offering her a ride, why would
Speaker 9: she leave those things behind. But again, no witnesses ever
Speaker 9: came forward to say I heard screaming, I saw this
Speaker 9: young girl being forced into a car. Now, whether those
Speaker 9: witnesses exist and just we're afraid to say anything, were unsure.
Speaker 9: But of course her body was found just three hours later,
Speaker 9: and there's some reports saying her body was still warm
Speaker 9: when it was found. That's how fresh it was. Same
Speaker 9: deal with the other cases. Her shoes were missing, and
Speaker 9: then she had these green, almost neon green fibers on
Speaker 9: her clothing, which is kind of a consistent thing that
Speaker 9: have been found on the other bodies as well. Is
Speaker 9: that kind of connects them at this point, is these
Speaker 9: green fibers that appear they're very they're very neon, and
Speaker 9: it's clearly coming from some sort of bath mat. How
Speaker 9: something that stands out. It's definitely not something that we
Speaker 9: all have in our house. This color screen.
Speaker 6: You write about the unusual redressing of the victims, tell
Speaker 6: us about that and also what the Washington Metropolitan Police
Speaker 6: Department admits at this point in terms of case connection.
Speaker 7: Well, it is interesting. What really starts to emerge is
Speaker 7: when she's redressed, she was experiencing her period for the
Speaker 7: first time. Her sanitary mapkin was not placed properly, so
Speaker 7: it's clear that the killer dressed her. And the location
Speaker 7: of the green fibers really becomes kind of important because
Speaker 7: they're found inside of underwear, inside of braziers. Oftentimes, the clothing,
Speaker 7: some of the pieces of clothing are put on inside out,
Speaker 7: which is an indication that the killer has redressed them.
Speaker 7: And you know, the fact is at this stage is
Speaker 7: when you start to see the police going. What the
Speaker 7: families have been pushing for is to say, yes, these
Speaker 7: crimes are connected and that they have a single killer
Speaker 7: who's going after young women. They use this free serial
Speaker 7: killer at the time, so you know, there's definitely a
Speaker 7: heightened sense of fear in all of this. This isn't
Speaker 7: a random murder of one girl and a random murder
Speaker 7: of another girl. The same killer is operating in the streets.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: It's interesting too what we discovered in interviewing folks on
Speaker 7: this is some of these young girls should have had
Speaker 7: dirty feet. For example, they were barefoot. They've seen barefoot
Speaker 7: that day, so they should have had dirty feet, but
Speaker 7: they were clean when they're found, and it's almost an indication.
Speaker 7: One of the theories that was floated to us by one
Speaker 7: of the investigators was perhaps the killer bathed them. And
Speaker 7: if you think about it, it makes sense because that
Speaker 7: would explain how the fiber evidence finds its way on
Speaker 7: the inside of their clothing. So this isn't a killer
Speaker 7: who's forcing a young girl down, pulling her ponies down,
Speaker 7: raping her. This is a killer who's stripping his victim's
Speaker 7: naked completely and bathing them, washing them clean, thinking he's
Speaker 7: getting rid of trace evidence. But what he's really doing
Speaker 7: is picking it up from something such as his bath mat.
Speaker 6: Right now, let's talk about the very well they wrong important.
Speaker 6: But Brenda Denise Woodard, and she's eighteen years old, and
Speaker 6: she's a little bit older, and she lives with a
Speaker 6: neighbor because she has this disagree with her parents about dating.
Speaker 6: But she lives right across the street, and she's very
Speaker 6: close to her family and goes over there for dinner
Speaker 6: and all the time. What happens to Brenda Denise Woodard.
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Speaker 9: So on November fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, she was actually
Speaker 9: going on a bus, and this is pretty late at night,
Speaker 9: which kind of stands out as different from the other
Speaker 9: victim being around twilight or in the evening. This is
Speaker 9: almost midnight that she is last seen. About a couple
Speaker 9: hours later in the morning, her body is discovered, and
Speaker 9: then another thing that stands out with her is she
Speaker 9: has actually has stab wounds and strangulation so the stab wounds.
Speaker 9: It's interesting, is it the Why is this killer more
Speaker 9: violent with her? Did she fight back? Did she say
Speaker 9: something that made him angry? What does this strangulation not work?
Speaker 9: Did she try to get away? Did she scream? What
Speaker 9: stood out with her that she was stabbed and not
Speaker 9: just strangled again, She's found in a grassy area right
Speaker 9: off of a ramp off the roadway, and she was
Speaker 9: wearing her shoes and a note was actually found on
Speaker 9: in her coat pocket, and that is a note that
Speaker 9: it actually inspired the name for the book, for the Tantamount.
Speaker 9: It's really creepy and of course in the book there's
Speaker 9: a really good picture of what it looks like based
Speaker 9: on At first, it was thought when the note was
Speaker 9: first found, this must be from the killer, the killer
Speaker 9: wrote this note, but actually as police started to look
Speaker 9: at Brenda's own handwriting and it was her that wrote it,
Speaker 9: the theory is that this note was dictated to her.
Speaker 9: There was certain phrases and things in the note that
Speaker 9: santamount isn't a very common word used in the everyday language,
Speaker 9: especially for an eighteen year old. So the theory is
Speaker 9: that this note was either dictated to her to write
Speaker 9: which is creepy to think that you're writing your own
Speaker 9: note that's going to be found on your body later,
Speaker 9: or it was copied by her from something the killer
Speaker 9: had already written. It was found on notebook paper that
Speaker 9: had been ripped out of a notebook in her coat pocket.
Speaker 9: So the main thing with Brenda is, you know, the
Speaker 9: stab wounds changed kind of how our killer is acting now,
Speaker 9: and now he's getting the courage to leave notes on
Speaker 9: his victims, which is creepier as it goes on.
Speaker 6: Let's not forget to talk about the horrifying backstory to
Speaker 6: this where Brenda's mom left work early for the day
Speaker 6: or early for a doctor's appointment at six forty five am,
Speaker 6: and she waited at the bus stop for over or
Speaker 6: about an hour before asking a security guard why there
Speaker 6: was a weight with the buses. Blaine tell us what happens,
Speaker 6: what she actually witnesses that day, Well.
Speaker 7: You know, it is one of the creepier things that
Speaker 7: makes you wonder if there's more of a personal connection
Speaker 7: between the killers and the families. She walks down to
Speaker 7: a different bus stop and she actually looks over and
Speaker 7: sees a wig over on the medium and can see
Speaker 7: further down the road where police are around a body
Speaker 7: that she can't tell that it's her daughter, and she
Speaker 7: actually makes the comment off the cuff that that looks
Speaker 7: like the wig that her daughter had been wearing, and
Speaker 7: it was. The killer had not only dropped off the victim,
Speaker 7: but apparently had realized the wig was still in his
Speaker 7: vehicle stop at the median and has thrown it out.
Speaker 7: And it makes you wonder, and there's a we've had
Speaker 7: some numerous discussions about this, whether the killer did that deliberately,
Speaker 7: in other words, left the body where he knew the
Speaker 7: mother would see it. And you see that with Diane
Speaker 7: Dennis Williams, who's the next victim. Her body is seen
Speaker 7: by her father when he's coming home from work. It's
Speaker 7: deposited on I two ninety five, right past where he
Speaker 7: has to drive. So you wonder after a while whether
Speaker 7: there's a strange connection there.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about the next victim, but you talk about
Speaker 6: before that, you talk about that the murder Brenda Woodard
Speaker 6: prompts the FBI to be involved.
Speaker 7: Why is that, Well, her body is actually found in
Speaker 7: kind of a strange place. It's technically in Prince George's county,
Speaker 7: but it's right on the border of a piece of
Speaker 7: National Park property, and because it's on National Park property,
Speaker 7: the FBI has jurisdiction over it as well. And the
Speaker 7: killer got more sophisticated over time. He started depositing bodies
Speaker 7: not just in the District of Columbia, but Imprince George's county.
Speaker 7: And with this he's now getting a third agency involves
Speaker 7: actually two agencies, the park Police and the FBI are
Speaker 7: both involved with this, so you know, as he's getting
Speaker 7: more sophisticated, but he's also doing is almost muddying the
Speaker 7: waters by getting different jurisdictions involved from law enforcement.
Speaker 6: You also introduce a character, a very interesting character name
Speaker 6: doctor Sheldon Freud, and he reaches out to the media
Speaker 6: to warn girls about what.
Speaker 7: Well, if this is what I'm thinking of, it's what
Speaker 7: they're starting to see is a number of these girls
Speaker 7: have the name Denise as their middle name, right, And
Speaker 7: there's another victim who's not related to the Freeway fanom cases,
Speaker 7: who also has Denise in her name, who happens to
Speaker 7: die during this period. She's she's murdered completely separate from
Speaker 7: the Freeway fan cases, but at the time they didn't
Speaker 7: know that so there's actually this paranoid fear out there
Speaker 7: that somehow, in this age before the Internet, et cetera,
Speaker 7: that the killer was targeting girls with the name Denise
Speaker 7: in their name. And so they literally went, you know,
Speaker 7: the police went on radio programs and talked to the
Speaker 7: media about it and warned, you know, young you know, families,
Speaker 7: if you have a young daughter with named Denise, you know,
Speaker 7: take closer care of her, because there's a killer out
Speaker 7: here targeting them. It's you know, nowadays you could go
Speaker 7: and google a list of students potentially at the school,
Speaker 7: or get a class roused or whatever. In the days
Speaker 7: before the internet, I don't know how the killer could
Speaker 7: have done that. But the police were so desperate to
Speaker 7: look for a pattern here, which was the right thing
Speaker 7: to do. They were looking for that key pattern. They
Speaker 7: just couldn't find it. And the only thing that seemed
Speaker 7: to be clicking is the name Denise appearing so often.
Speaker 6: Right, you write about this extensive, exhaustive investigation task force,
Speaker 6: seven thousand phone calls, they opened six hotlines, they follow
Speaker 6: up every single lead. What are the theories after this?
Speaker 6: Before we get to Diane Dennis Williams, what are their
Speaker 6: theories at that time, you know, they.
Speaker 7: They really didn't. One theory that they floated that was
Speaker 7: interesting was that it could be somebody in the military,
Speaker 7: someone in town for one of the Vietnam pro tests.
Speaker 7: They had so many transient people coming through the thought
Speaker 7: that this was somebody that lived in their neighborhoods. They
Speaker 7: struggled with that concept, so they floated that. They also
Speaker 7: pursued a number of mental hospitals. They went and visited
Speaker 7: the mental hospitals and tried to see that were there
Speaker 7: any patients out that were sexual offenders, etc. Who might
Speaker 7: be out during the day that could be involved with this. So,
Speaker 7: I mean the police really went through a very exhaustive
Speaker 7: search for anything that tied them in. There was a
Speaker 7: vehicle track found they're one of the victims that looked
Speaker 7: like a Volkswagen tire track, and they went looking for Volkswagens,
Speaker 7: which in nineteen seventy one, my own father owned one.
Speaker 7: So it was one of those things that people they
Speaker 7: were looking for anything they could, and they just really
Speaker 7: didn't have anything tangible.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about Diane Dennis Williams. She's eighteen years old,
Speaker 6: I believe as well, and she's supposed to go over
Speaker 6: to her boyfriend's house. His name is James, and he's
Speaker 6: she's supposed to be back by ten thirty and she's
Speaker 6: taking the bus. Tell us what happens to her and
Speaker 6: how she disappears and the reaction.
Speaker 9: So the interesting part about Diane is that this case
Speaker 9: happened so much later a lot. There was a lot
Speaker 9: of activity of the Freeway Phantom over the summer and
Speaker 9: fall of nineteen seventy one, but then it's almost a
Speaker 9: year later that we're in nineteen seventy two now on
Speaker 9: September fifth, so almost I mean, this is eleven months
Speaker 9: later with no activity. The Freeway Phantom now again is
Speaker 9: praying on Diane at eleven thirty at night, so he's
Speaker 9: sticking with the late night bus at this point. She
Speaker 9: leaves her boyfriend James's house around eleven thirty and he
Speaker 9: calls to check on her. He calls her parents home,
Speaker 9: asking is Diane you know? Did she make it home okay?
Speaker 9: And they start to worry as type goes on that
Speaker 9: she has not returned home after he's saying he took
Speaker 9: her to the bus stop and watched her get on
Speaker 9: the bus. Hours later, her body is found strangled all
Speaker 9: way along I two ninety five. Just like the other victims,
Speaker 9: she did not have her shoes near her body, and
Speaker 9: there was there was no signs of assault sexual assault
Speaker 9: on her, but there were traces of semen. Later on
Speaker 9: during investigation years later, those traces were determined to be
Speaker 9: her boyfriends. There was a denial let first from him
Speaker 9: that they had had sex that night, and eventually he
Speaker 9: did come out and give a sample of his DNA
Speaker 9: and it was proven to be whole. He was never
Speaker 9: really considered to be a suspect. For him to fit
Speaker 9: this green fiber, I mean, it just was just would
Speaker 9: have tied him to all the cases. There just wasn't
Speaker 9: anything there to tie him to anything else. But he
Speaker 9: was never pursued as a true suspect.
Speaker 6: What was the shared characteristic in terms of phone calls
Speaker 6: with Denise Williams's mother and the Johnson Johnson's mother.
Speaker 7: LENI, again, we've got the killer kind of making phone
Speaker 7: calls to the family. Well, what may be the killer?
Speaker 7: We don't know making phone calls in this case, on
Speaker 7: four separate occasions, she received a call from very sinister
Speaker 7: voice saying I killed your daughter. There were other crank
Speaker 7: calls that came in during that time. But it does
Speaker 7: make you wonder if during that period the killer was
Speaker 7: trying to engage the families and instill a little bit
Speaker 7: of terror in them. We just don't now.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about November nineteenth, nineteen seventy two and
Speaker 6: the Phantom hotline, and so this is a big story.
Speaker 6: This is a big man hunt, and let's talk about
Speaker 6: what they do and then how they stumble across the
Speaker 6: Green Vega gang.
Speaker 7: Well, it's very interesting. For a while, the investigation kind
Speaker 7: of starts winding down, and that is the lead stop
Speaker 7: coming in. There is one more potential victim, which is
Speaker 7: Tierram Bryant, who a little bit different, but the FBI
Speaker 7: considered her part of the overall freeway Phantom cases. But
Speaker 7: as they got going at the same time these murders
Speaker 7: were taking place, there was a series of gang rapes
Speaker 7: taking place in the exact same neighborhoods in Washington, d C.
Speaker 7: In many cases very very close and it was a
Speaker 7: group that operated using a Green Vega. They would pick
Speaker 7: up young women as hitchhikers or women that were waiting
Speaker 7: for a bus, offer them a ride. They would then
Speaker 7: drive a half block down pick up somebody else and
Speaker 7: the poor victim would be trapped in a car with
Speaker 7: several men and be taken somewhere and gang raped and released.
Speaker 7: The group operated in the same area at the same
Speaker 7: time as the murders, and when they apprehended eventually the
Speaker 7: Green Vega Gang as they became known as several of
Speaker 7: them members of that gang used the Freeway fandom case
Speaker 7: as an opportunity to try to lessen their own sentences
Speaker 7: or their own conditions by offering to confess. And we
Speaker 7: have two of those members of the gang doing this,
Speaker 7: actually three at one point do it, and it really
Speaker 7: forms a very large task force, the largest task force
Speaker 7: in dcup up until at time, federal officers, park police,
Speaker 7: Prince George's County, Washington MPD, etc. Who are literally taking
Speaker 7: around some of these gang members who are imprison waiting trial,
Speaker 7: driving them around and having them describe where they're at, etc.
Speaker 7: And many of the locations where they picked up victims
Speaker 7: coincided with the Freeway phantom cases, and in many cases
Speaker 7: they tried to confess to them, but their confessions are
Speaker 7: so riddled with holes and we're recanted in at least
Speaker 7: the lead person, Morris Warren recanted his account. It really
Speaker 7: ended up being something that consumed a lot of time
Speaker 7: but didn't yield positive results other than it did get
Speaker 7: these rapists off the street, I mean, and they were
Speaker 7: guilty of it, dozens of rapes at least, but they
Speaker 7: were found guilty of a small number eventually and imprisoned
Speaker 7: for those.
Speaker 6: But there was not a consensus in this, and so
Speaker 6: there were detectives that believed that this the Green Vega Gang,
Speaker 6: were one and the same with the Phantom Killer, and
Speaker 6: we're adamant about that, and so there was opposing detectives
Speaker 6: and their theories about this that you write about. Tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about those people.
Speaker 7: Well, Victoria, if you don't mind, I'll take us one,
Speaker 7: because I spent a lot of time on the Green
Speaker 7: Vegas stuff. The detective Louis Richardson, which is one of
Speaker 7: the most highly respected police officers in the department and
Speaker 7: had a high closure rate, very strongly felt that the
Speaker 7: Green Vacant Gang was responsible for it, even though they
Speaker 7: were recanting their stories and admitting that they had misled authorities, etc.
Speaker 7: He strongly felt that those were the people that were
Speaker 7: involved with that. And I understand where he was coming
Speaker 7: from because it was a big desire to can we
Speaker 7: close these cases and give the families some degree of closure?
Speaker 7: And I think his motivations were good, but their stories
Speaker 7: in many cases just did not match up with the
Speaker 7: physical evidence, especially of the well known you know, green
Speaker 7: fibers that are found on so many of the victims.
Speaker 7: There was another detective, Lloyd Davis, who I kind of
Speaker 7: went on his own and said, I think the green
Speaker 7: Vegas stuff is all blunk. He went back to doing
Speaker 7: some gumshoe detective work and started really going, Okay, did
Speaker 7: we have anybody else out there that had crimes that
Speaker 7: were similar? And there was one person, Robert el would
Speaker 7: ask ns who had kidnapped his some of his victims.
Speaker 7: He had bathed his victims. He had one of his
Speaker 7: victims write a note and left that note on her body,
Speaker 7: so these were sexual assaults. But he clearly intended to
Speaker 7: kill both of the women, so you know, they were
Speaker 7: fortunate enough to get away from him. He had previously
Speaker 7: been involved with a poisoning murder in his youth, tried
Speaker 7: to kill several women with poison. He had been committed
Speaker 7: for years in to see Elizabeth Hospital for mental evaluation
Speaker 7: and treatment. It really I respect where Lloyd Davis went
Speaker 7: with us, which was, let's let's back away from the
Speaker 7: Freeway fan or from the Green Vega group and really
Speaker 7: look at where does the evidence take us. And I
Speaker 7: got to tell you, Robert Askins certainly fits the bill
Speaker 7: on many accounts.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about Robert Askins and also this Saint Elizabeth hospital.
Speaker 6: We mentioned that all the victims were close proximity to
Speaker 6: this Saint Elizabeth hospital. Tell us about the St. Elizabeth
Speaker 6: hospital and Robert Askins stays in that hospital.
Speaker 7: Well, Askins spent you know, decades in the hospital for
Speaker 7: the crimes that he committed, a murder, et cetera. So
Speaker 7: he was well familiar with that area, you know, and
Speaker 7: for him that was really more of a home probably
Speaker 7: than his his actual homes.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 7: He was eventually put on release and allowed to work
Speaker 7: outside of the hospital. It was eventually his his time
Speaker 7: there elapsed and he was freed and turned loose on society. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Askins is a creepy character in many respects. Yeah, when
Speaker 7: you look at what he did in terms of poisoning
Speaker 7: and stabbing young women, kidnapping women, et cetera. He definitely
Speaker 7: is that kind of person now Seen Elizabeth is this
Speaker 7: ancient hospital. I mean it was there right after the
Speaker 7: Civil War. It's a massive complex, and it was one
Speaker 7: of those large asylum complexes where you sent mentally ill people.
Speaker 7: And you know, this was a time when we've locked
Speaker 7: up people who were threats to themselves or threats to
Speaker 7: other people, and that's why Askins was there. You know,
Speaker 7: times have changed and we tend to medicate now and
Speaker 7: put people on the street more than we do kind
Speaker 7: of lock them up, And there's a lot of good
Speaker 7: reasons for that, but in this particular case, they may
Speaker 7: have very well turned somebody loose on society who eventually,
Speaker 7: and every time he's been freed, turned to crime one
Speaker 7: more time, and each time was just as violent as before.
Speaker 7: So it's Saint Elizabeth is a very interesting complex.
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Speaker 8: You do?
Speaker 4: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting. Really, yes,
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Speaker 7: The conditions plus So Victoria and I've spent some time
Speaker 7: walking around seeing Elizabeth and it's even to this day,
Speaker 7: it's quite creepy.
Speaker 6: In all of these cases of the Phantom Freeway phantom,
Speaker 6: there is an idea that police questioned and the families
Speaker 6: question why these people seemingly got into a car with
Speaker 6: a stranger it would look like or some or they
Speaker 6: disappeared with someone that no one knows who these people were.
Speaker 6: There is some when you talk about Askins, you talk
Speaker 6: about his background as a police informant. Tell us why
Speaker 6: you think that this fits the bill. In some regards
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 7: Well, Askins drove a late model car that resembled the
Speaker 7: police vehicle at the time of the killings. In his youth,
Speaker 7: he did do undercover work as an informant for the
Speaker 7: police department, usually against prostitutes. Askins had a real issue
Speaker 7: with prostitutes. He had gotten venereal disease from one, and
Speaker 7: that's when he decided to start killing all the city's prostitutes,
Speaker 7: which led to his initial arrests. You know, he when
Speaker 7: the last two victims that he apprehended, which were in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy eight, seven and seventy eight, he in both
Speaker 7: cases impersonated a police officer. He convinced them to get
Speaker 7: in his vehicle and took them to his house. So
Speaker 7: you know, he fits that mo of how he could
Speaker 7: engage with those people and get them in off the street.
Speaker 7: And in those cases they were not young girls, they
Speaker 7: were older women. But in both cases he was able
Speaker 7: to intimidate them and convince them enough that he was
Speaker 7: law enforcement to get them into his vehicle. And if
Speaker 7: you think about it, that probably would have been one
Speaker 7: of the ways that he could have done the same
Speaker 7: thing with the freeway phantom victims. You know, if he
Speaker 7: had a fake badge, he had the knowledge of police
Speaker 7: procedure enough to get them into the vehicle.
Speaker 6: He's also arrested with a pistol as well.
Speaker 7: Oh yes, yes, So he had a lot of ways
Speaker 7: of exerting control, and he held his victims in nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy seven and seventy eight, he held his victims overnight,
Speaker 7: so he held them captive in his house. His neighbor's
Speaker 7: never heard a thing, so you know, he had the
Speaker 7: mechanisms that fit the bill for the Freeway Phantom. There's
Speaker 7: only one thing that doesn't stand out with him, and
Speaker 7: we were fortunate enough to get a copy of the
Speaker 7: FBI profile from two two thousand and five or six
Speaker 7: on the Freeway fan. He doesn't fit from an age perspective,
Speaker 7: but you know, the FBI even in their intro to
Speaker 7: the profile, so you don't exclude somebody just because the
Speaker 7: profile says it doesn't fit. You know, the profiles are
Speaker 7: guideline to help neurow investigation and focus. Askins would have
Speaker 7: been fifty two, I think at the time that the
Speaker 7: Freeway Phantom victims were apprehended and murdered.
Speaker 6: What are some of the other things that you discovered.
Speaker 6: You know, what was fascinating is the confession that he has.
Speaker 6: You talked about that he hated all prostitutes, but there's
Speaker 6: there is a detailed confession that you read about here
Speaker 6: where he said he got the social disease from a
Speaker 6: prostitute and he wanted to kill them all at one
Speaker 6: time if he could, or kill them all all the
Speaker 6: prostitutes in town. So what I mean in terms of psychologically,
Speaker 6: and you talked about the FBI getting involved in profiling psychologically.
Speaker 6: What kind of clues for you and for them were
Speaker 6: in that confession and some of the things he said
Speaker 6: aslong with the obviously behavior that's disturbing parallels to what
Speaker 6: happened with the victims.
Speaker 7: Well, it's very clear that he suffered and was diagnosed
Speaker 7: as such as a schizophrenic, and there seemed to be
Speaker 7: almost two sides to his personality. He's very much a
Speaker 7: person that would kind of talk of by himself a
Speaker 7: most third person when he spoke, and he would he
Speaker 7: very much downplayed that. You know, in his initial confession
Speaker 7: where he attempted to poison several women who were prostitutes,
Speaker 7: that it was really an attempt to kill himself, that
Speaker 7: he was planning on taking the poison as well, but
Speaker 7: he just lost his nerve. He denies any kind of
Speaker 7: involvement throughout his entire life. We got his prison records
Speaker 7: and you know, Askin's even when he met with psychiologists
Speaker 7: or psychiatrists in two thousand, I want to say two
Speaker 7: thousand and two or two thousand and three was kind
Speaker 7: of denying that he had ever been involved in any
Speaker 7: of these crimes. It was women that had set him up.
Speaker 7: Women lied to him. And if you look at his
Speaker 7: early life, his father dies when he's I think nine
Speaker 7: or ten years old. He's raised by his mother and
Speaker 7: his aunt and his sister, So here's no strong male influence.
Speaker 7: When his mother decides to get remarried and he's in
Speaker 7: his teens, Askin is so dominating of her in this
Speaker 7: that he won't let his new father move in, his
Speaker 7: stepfather move into the house until he moves out. And
Speaker 7: it's years later. Well, you know, he he the he
Speaker 7: had mommy issues in many respects, I think, and I
Speaker 7: think without that dominant male influence in the critical stage
Speaker 7: of his upbringing, we just don't know what happened that
Speaker 7: kind of turned him into the person that he.
Speaker 6: Is in this story. It's incredible to you talk about
Speaker 6: a man that's clearly again schizophrenic, psychotic, and yet he's
Speaker 6: released from this hospital and one hundred and thirty, one
Speaker 6: hundred and eighty three days you write after his release,
Speaker 6: new charges of murder, yet no physical evidence. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: so tell us how he doesn't go to prison. He
Speaker 6: goes back to Saint Elizabeth again incredibly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, it was easier I think for the
Speaker 7: criminal system back then to have people committed that it
Speaker 7: was to have them declared guilty of murder. And Askins
Speaker 7: was very unstable, and I think he was only really
Speaker 7: stable when he was in seeing elizabeths. You know that
Speaker 7: we don't hear anything from any of the court testimony
Speaker 7: of him having a violent tendency. I think when he
Speaker 7: was under observation and under medical care and treatment, he
Speaker 7: was fine. It's you know, his ability to operate out
Speaker 7: in the real world gets imperiled. And you know he
Speaker 7: immediately when he was released the first time, you know,
Speaker 7: turns right around and starts killing again. And you know
Speaker 7: he tended to strike it at prostitutes, so you know,
Speaker 7: the the amount of investigation done for the death of
Speaker 7: a prostitute is much different than the death of a
Speaker 7: young woman or a young girl. So you know, he
Speaker 7: really struck it where he could operate the best. It
Speaker 7: wasn't until nineteen seventy seven and seventy eight that we
Speaker 7: see him moving away from women of ill repute and
Speaker 7: just attacking women that for some reason click with him
Speaker 7: as the wrong type of people and he's going to
Speaker 7: make them pay.
Speaker 6: Now. In this what basically an reinvestigation of this to
Speaker 6: try to find you right, it's the pursuit of the
Speaker 6: freeway phantom serial killer. You dismiss, as other detectives do
Speaker 6: as well, that the Green Vega Gang was the phantom,
Speaker 6: but you put various reasons why you believe Askins is
Speaker 6: the phantom. Tell us what you find it proves that
Speaker 6: to you, and did you find any evidence contrary that
Speaker 6: was significant to shake that belief victory?
Speaker 7: Do you want to do that or do you want
Speaker 7: me to.
Speaker 9: I'll touch on Askin's portion. As we've said, there's certain
Speaker 9: things with his background that fits the bill. The focus
Speaker 9: out of all these cases when you put them on
Speaker 9: a map and geographically the center of all the bodies,
Speaker 9: where they were dumped, where the girls were picked up,
Speaker 9: very center is Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. The person, whether they
Speaker 9: realized it or not, the person behind these murders was
Speaker 9: operating around this center point, which was Saint Elizabeth. They
Speaker 9: clearly knew the area and focused on that portion of
Speaker 9: the area that they knew the best. That tells us
Speaker 9: that the person is very familiar with that part of
Speaker 9: town or it means something to them to be near
Speaker 9: Saint Elisami's Hospital. Otherwise, DC is so large, you would
Speaker 9: have moved to different sections, especially if you thought the
Speaker 9: police are onto you, or in this case, many of
Speaker 9: the same neighborhoods where you know people are on the
Speaker 9: lookout for cars or odd activity. Why would you continue
Speaker 9: to stay in the same area if you're worried about
Speaker 9: getting caught? The reason you know, Askins spent so much
Speaker 9: of his life and his time at Saint Elizabeth that
Speaker 9: it kind of does point to someone who hits the bills.
Speaker 9: And although his age is a little bit older than
Speaker 9: what the profile says, that you know the killer is.
Speaker 9: We can't exclude him based on his violent behavior, is
Speaker 9: hatred for women, his proved track records. It's just the
Speaker 9: list goes on and on for him. To me, especially
Speaker 9: with bathing of the victims and the things in his
Speaker 9: background and leaving notes, It's like, how could you how
Speaker 9: could you exclude him? At one point there was a
Speaker 9: search warrant on Askin from the and in his death
Speaker 9: drawer was court documents from Meres prior that Askins had
Speaker 9: obviously held onto And the word tantamount is used in
Speaker 9: those court documents, And like I said previously, that's not
Speaker 9: a word that is used frequently that it's not. It
Speaker 9: wasn't even used correctly in the note that was left
Speaker 9: on the body of one of the victims. He held
Speaker 9: on to certain things, as you know, and used certain
Speaker 9: words as people with psych issues do. They focus on
Speaker 9: odd things or words, phrases, that type of thing. That
Speaker 9: word is just odd that it was found in his
Speaker 9: death draw and then later you know, previously found on
Speaker 9: a victim's body as well. It's just a creepy little
Speaker 9: things like that. How could you write him off as
Speaker 9: not being a potential filler?
Speaker 7: Well to offer counter to that, you know, there are
Speaker 7: a few things that point away from Askins all fairness.
Speaker 7: The search wards that were executed on his house in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy eight and his backyard didn't turn up a
Speaker 7: single bit of evidence. They did not turn up the
Speaker 7: source of the mysterious green synthetic fibers. If they had
Speaker 7: found that, they would have had their smoking gun. They
Speaker 7: didn't find that. But you got in mind the Freeway
Speaker 7: fan of murders took place in nineteen seventy one and
Speaker 7: seventy two. They executed the search warrant in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 7: and it was because of these other two victims that
Speaker 7: triggered that there's a gap there. So it's if, for example,
Speaker 7: this was let's say a bath mat where he threw
Speaker 7: their clothes while he strangled them in the bathtub or
Speaker 7: cleaned them in the bathtub, you know that it's possible
Speaker 7: that bathmat got thrown away through normal course of action.
Speaker 7: But the killer also did keep souvenirs. There were things
Speaker 7: that are missing from most of the girls that in
Speaker 7: the freeway phantom cases. None of those souvenirs were found.
Speaker 7: Police desperately looked for those things and they couldn't find them.
Speaker 7: So there are some things that, you know, if you
Speaker 7: lay it all out, and we try to do that
Speaker 7: for a reader, let them form their own opinion, you know,
Speaker 7: there's certain things that do point a way that it
Speaker 7: seems like they would found some of those things in
Speaker 7: his possession.
Speaker 6: You talk about the frustration you had filing many freedom
Speaker 6: of information actions and so, and also that the lack
Speaker 6: of cooperation with Washington Metropolitan Police Department. But then in
Speaker 6: two thousand and eighteen, you and Victoria had attended crime
Speaker 6: con in Nashville, and you met an FBI supervisory special
Speaker 6: agent Fitzgerald, who had created a field of forensic linguistics,
Speaker 6: and he was involved in the capture of the unibomber.
Speaker 6: Tell us what he had to say about Robert Askins
Speaker 6: as a suspect, and what he felt was most important
Speaker 6: about all of the evidence and what he had analyzed.
Speaker 7: You know, Jim Fitzgerald is a legend in that, you know,
Speaker 7: he is the person that brought in the unibomber, you know,
Speaker 7: and invented that entire field. And we essentially sent him
Speaker 7: a copy of the note and corresponded with him over
Speaker 7: the course of a year or two regarding this, and
Speaker 7: he says, sound some interesting avenues to pursue. He really
Speaker 7: felt that the word tantamount was important, but he also
Speaker 7: felt that the word freeway was important. And the reason
Speaker 7: is the word freeway is hyphenated and DEA's strange. And
Speaker 7: we looked, for instance distances where that appears in the press,
Speaker 7: and we really couldn't find places where someone would have
Speaker 7: read it that way. The only thing that we found
Speaker 7: that was kind of creepy was there was a book
Speaker 7: called Studies in the Psychology of Sex Sexual Inversion, which
Speaker 7: was a textbook published in nineteen oh six. It was
Speaker 7: a book on homosexuality. That book used freeway hyphenated in
Speaker 7: it extensively. And it's what's really interesting is that's the
Speaker 7: kind of thing that you might find in seeing Elizabeth Hospital,
Speaker 7: you know, in their library, et cetera. But we never
Speaker 7: did get that. But you know, I think what Fitzgerald
Speaker 7: really pointed out was the note that the killer left.
Speaker 7: It's his language, even though the victim wrote it. This
Speaker 7: is the killer talking to the authorities, and this is
Speaker 7: the kill are talking to the victims families, and he's
Speaker 7: telling them, telling us things from his perspective. So the
Speaker 7: word tantamount is important, and so's the word freeway. So
Speaker 7: there's a lot of things I think that we can
Speaker 7: still pull from that message. Victoria, when we sat through this,
Speaker 7: spotted one of the things that Remaine Jenkins was saying,
Speaker 7: asking us, what do you see in the note? Victoria
Speaker 7: spotted one of those things you may want to talk
Speaker 7: about that, Victoria.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we were actually just staring at the note trying
Speaker 9: to come up with you know, I'm just studying it,
Speaker 9: you know, just looking at every word, the way it's written,
Speaker 9: and then I realized that it's not just paper that
Speaker 9: it's on. It's notebook paper, and the notebook paper is
Speaker 9: like ripped, like clearly ripped from a spiral notebook. The
Speaker 9: edges were jagged, you know, the words are written really
Speaker 9: uh heavy, like it was either trace or uh. It's
Speaker 9: just odd the way that it was written. So this
Speaker 9: notebook that comes from this note the note itself came
Speaker 9: from a notebook, So where is this notebook? Where a
Speaker 9: lot of times in books and notebooks, when you write
Speaker 9: pretty hard on one page, the intention of what you
Speaker 9: wrote would be on the next couple of pages, although
Speaker 9: the ink wouldn't leap through. If you write hard enough,
Speaker 9: you know that intention would be on the next couple
Speaker 9: of pages. So it was just interesting to study the
Speaker 9: note and find these small facts and wonder, where is
Speaker 9: that notebook? Where did you know?
Speaker 7: Was it?
Speaker 9: What death floor is it?
Speaker 6: In?
Speaker 9: It clearly came from someone's notebook, So it was just
Speaker 9: interesting to realize that small.
Speaker 7: Detail and the way it was cut out of the
Speaker 7: note book. You can kind of see the edge. It's
Speaker 7: almost like he went to the middle of a notebook
Speaker 7: and cut the page out and then had her write
Speaker 7: at so that he wouldn't leave that kind of an indentation,
Speaker 7: and it shows that he understood some stuff about how
Speaker 7: police gather evidence and he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely, you at the end of this book leave
Speaker 6: phone numbers and a website for people if they have
Speaker 6: any information at all, if they're shy of going to police,
Speaker 6: or but you provide that, could you provide that for
Speaker 6: us as well? Or sure is that on the website.
Speaker 7: It's on the website, but I'll give the number in
Speaker 7: the email address right now. If you have any information
Speaker 7: on this these are open cases and the authorities do
Speaker 7: want to hear from you. You can reach the Washington
Speaker 7: Police departm at two oh two seven two seven nine
Speaker 7: zero ninety nine. If you're more comfortable emailing, you can
Speaker 7: send it to Unsolved dot Murder at DC dot gov.
Speaker 7: There is still a reward for one hundred and fifty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars for whoever generates a tip that allows police
Speaker 7: to close these cases. So we encourage your listeners please
Speaker 7: if you know something, if you've heard something, if you
Speaker 7: suspect something, reach out to the authorities.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. I want to thank you both very much for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about Tantamount the pursuit of the
Speaker 6: Freeway Phantom serial killer Blaine Pardo and Victoria Hester. Is
Speaker 6: there a website or a Facebook page we might refer to.
Speaker 6: I know this is a wild blue press release. Tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit more how they might contact look
Speaker 6: at more information.
Speaker 7: You could always get us in Facebook, and I keep
Speaker 7: an active blog at Blame Pardo dot WordPress dot com.
Speaker 7: We'll be posting up stuff as we go through this,
Speaker 7: especially as new facts and information become available, and you
Speaker 7: can always reach us at Twitter, you know, just search
Speaker 7: for our names, you'll find us.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Blaine Pardo, and thank you very much,
Speaker 6: Victoria Hester. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very
Speaker 6: much for talking about Tantamount. You have a great evening.
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good night, good night,