Forgotten Girls [1]

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My mother was very strict with us. So the rule is when she leaves, the door is closed and locked, and you don't come out that door. And her favorite saying was, I don't care if Jesus Christ knock on that door and say open it, you better not open it. So that was the rule. We didn't open the door for any We were playing around, we were watching TV, everybody else was playing around where and my sister Valerie knocked on the door. I think I told him at first,

If you look up Freeway Phantom, you might find out a little bit about this strange and tragic case, but in all likelihood you're not going to find out much. You'll learn that during the early nineteen seventies, a serial killer murdered at least six young black girls in the Washington, DC area. You might learn their names, you might hear about a strange note left by the killer. You may even come across a few suspects, but not much else. And that's what makes the case of the freewaym so

When the Washington, d C.

Police Department tried to raise awareness about missing children and teenagers by posting their images on social media, the campaign backfired, sparking some national outrage and fears of an epidemic of missing children of color.

One of the most popular stories on our NBC app this week is about missing girls. Our story debunks of fake reports that fourteen girls went missing from DC in just one day. DC police told us there are simply sharing missing person cases more often on social media.

It all started when a post went viral all over social media saying young black girls were going missing at an alarming rate in DC, and admits the firestorm that particular post was proven to be untrue. However, behind the social media frenzy was a certain reality that for decades, people of color, particularly women, have been abducted or killed across the Capital region, and their cases rarely resolved or

While I was actually working on another story at the Post, I stumbled across this press release of these six little black girls. And the photo struck me because it was in black and white, and so the first thing I thought of, Oh my god, this is old, Like what is this? And then just saw these six bass of these six little black girls, and you could tell by their hairstyle and you know, the bows and their hair, and it sort of gave me pause, and I was like,

In twenty eighteen, Cheryl published a groundbreaking article about this seemingly uncovered story, and that's how we and thousands of others found out about the Freeway phantom case. She says the process was both difficult and significant.

What it was about it again was the fact that, like, how could this be, like six little black girls murdered in the nation's capital. And so then I started researching it and saw that there had been stories, some stories over the years, but it mainly faded from public view. I asked one of our researchers at the Washington Post

Cheryl decided to reach out to some people, and she says her best sources have always been the detectives who worked on the case.

Yes, I have called some of my sources over the years for stuff that might have happened thirty years ago, and they remembered details, right, how do you remember this stuff? So I then reached out to Detective Jenkins, Romaine Jenkins, because I figured, man, this is a woman, a black woman, and I know she had to take an interest in this for a lot of reasons, and some of which were the very ones that I mentioned. These kids could have been her daughters.

Detective Romaine Jenkins was a name that we kept hearing.

We spoke with one of the investigators, Romaine Jenkins, and she was like, if there was.

Dic there was also another woman by the name of Romayne Jenkins who was a sex squad detective.

One of our pick apart those files that Romayne's got, it would be an exciting interview.

Romayne Jenkins, she was one of the best.

She knew all adult dealers, she knew all the girlfriends, she was friends with all of them.

She got the latest school, she knew who pulled the trigger.

We decided to give Romayne Jenkins a call.

Hello is.

Yes, and we soon realized just how much she knew about this case.

I investigated many serial rape cases, and none of them are liked to these today. Is this sumitar padn somewhere? But the only pattern you have with these cases is the fact that they were young black females.

As it turns out, Romayne was the lead investigator on the Freeway Phantom case in the nineteen eighties. That was almost ten years after the case went cold, and she was the right person for the job. Romayne had an impressive resume up to that point as a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC back in the seventies. She was the first woman and the only woman for a long time in homicide. We told Romayne that we were looking into the Freeway Phantom case and she agreed

I am a native person from Washington, d C. I attended school here. I joined the Metropolitan Police Department June twenty first nineteen sixty five, and at that time there were only about maybe thirty police females on the department, and they were housed at something called the Woman's Bureau, and they did mostly social work, abandoned children, missing children. Then they joined us with something called the Youth Division and that was the male counterpart of the women's guas.

So Romayne went to work in homicide. She was there for approximately four years investigating battered children and abortion cases.

After about four years in the homicide squad, I went to the seventh District because at that time they decided they wanted to put policewomen in uniform and put them in the patrol division. And at that time I was a supervised I was a sergeant because I made sergeant when I was in homicide. So they wanted to see if females could supervise males in the prole Division. I went to the seventh District and that was quite an experience. Everything was solely new to me, but I made it suit.

During this time, Romayne got married and started a family. She eventually decided being a patrol officer wasn't what she wanted, so she applied for Sex Squad, which investigates sexually heinous crimes, and.

I stayed there ten years as a supervisor. And from there I went to the US Attorney's Office, where I supervised seven detectives and we handled cases. We worked up cases for the US Attorney's Office, and that's basically what I did. That's basically my career.

It was while in homicide in the early seventies that Romayne first heard about the so called Freeway Phantom murders. Though other officers were assigned to the case, she helped canvas neighborhoods and became intimately familiar with the case details. Years passed and remain heard little about the Freeway Phantom.

Two at a ten.

Okay, we got you and we can take him back up.

If that's now, you can leave.

Man that you got 'em bad, leave me, okay, cause they'll either go downstairs.

They'll probably end up going downstairs. Okay, you wanted to sit at the table, No, set him right here on the floor. Okay.

I'm in Romaine Jenkins home in Washington, DC, not far from where I live. In her home, Romayne has what's likely the largest collection of documents on the freeway. Phantom case.

Open Open.

I'm gonna open 'em up for you, all right.

I will just pull him out and we can take a look at what's here.

This is Brenda Crockett.

Oh my god, she looks.

This is the one that was she the one that was barefoot, that year old.

She's tiny, just a tiny baby. She was the one that went to the store barefoot.

And the only the only way she was identified with her other identified for the clothing. That's all they had.

The amount of information we came across was astounding. She had crime scene photos, original police reports, suspect lists. Most of this we had never seen before. We asked Romaine how she came to acquire all of these documents.

Basically by talking to detectives who were on the actual scenes of the cases. A lot of them gave me their notebooks, their notes. Some had copies of files. They gave me that going to the police department, like Prince Georgia's County, they turned over all their files to me because they micro fished the file so they didn't need the hard copies and they were going to dispose of them, so I said, well, I'll take them. So that's how

As Romayne said, law enforcement was disposing of the original case files. Had Romayne not tracked down and preserved these files, we would have no original documents to view today. This is significant because information in those boxes may provide new insight into the case. Throughout this podcast, we're going to reveal what we found in those boxes and maybe get one step closer to finding the Freeway Phantom. But first we need to take a step back to talk about

Harper.

Miss Harper is closely related to these cases, which you'll

I'm Blamed Pardo. I've written over eighty books. I'd write primarily science fiction, true crime, military history, political thrillers, things along those lines. This is a topic we've been writing about a lot about which is true crimes, and we tend to focus on the unsolved cases, especially surreal killing pieces that remain open on the saviors.

And I'm Victoria Hester. I've written a total of four true crime books alongside my dad and co author Blaine. The thing that really got me into true crime was actually my dad. Growing up. Our bonding moment was over the Zodiac, which go figure, that's a normal father daughter thing. But ever since then, I've been kind of hooked on true crime and it's fun to research. We enjoy the journey of research and then putting it all onto paper.

We had just finished our book on the Colonial Parkway murders and we were looking for the next project to get into. And it was really a matter of let's look in the local vicinity because we like dealing with people we can go interview and spend time with. So we started looking in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC to see if what open cold cases were out there, and there's a lot of them. I outlined a number of them

We asked Blaine in Victoria to walk us through the basics of the case, starting with the first victim.

First one that disappeared was a thirteen year old Carol Denize Things. She disappeared on April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one. She's found on the Anacostia Freeway, which is IWO ninety five. She's about two hundred yards south of the Suitland Parkway and her body's found by a group of children. It's a major freeway cutting right through the city. She had disappeared on the twenty fifth, but wasn't found until April thirtieth.

So the next victim is Darlinia Denise Johnson. The reason why we put the middle names in with each girl is because it does play a huge role down the role in the investigation of the middle named Denise. So that's why we make a point to mention that she was sixteen when she disappeared on July eighth, nineteen seventy one. Her body was found July nineteenth, nineteen seventy one, in

Brenda Fake Krockett was ten years old. She disappeared on July twy seventh, nineteen seventy one. Her body was found off of Route fifty, which is one of the major thoroughfares in Chevrolet. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She had been left on the grassy shoulder of John Hanson Highway. She was found face up, and it was really only a short period of time after she had disappeared, so the killer had kind of shifted at least from the first case. He's not spending as much time with

Just over two months later, the fourth victim was discovered. Her name was Nina Mosha Yates.

She was twelve years old and she was found on October first, nineteen seventy one. She was a seventh grader and she was a very quiet and well behaved child. In the evening, she went to the safeway that was a few blocks away from her home to buy a bag of sugar at eight forty five PM.

Then a month and a half later, the fifth.

Victim, Brenda Denise Woodard, was eighteen years old. November fifteenth, nineteen seventy one, she disappeared in the evening. She had gone to a night class, left with a young man. They went to Ben's Chili Bowl in DC, which is this iconic restaurant, and she rode the bus to go home, and she was last seen around the eighth and H Street intersections, but her roommate reported by eleven thirty that she hadn't come home. She was found along the Baltimore

And finally, the following year, the sixth and last confirmed victim.

Diane Williams, is seventeen. She was found on September fifth, nineteen seventy two, ten months after the last case with Brenda. Her body was found the very next day. She was reported missing by her father when he came home at eight am that morning. She had visited her boyfriend, which was pretty normal thing for her to do, and was told to be home by ten thirty. The night before, her boyfriend escorted her to the bus stop, so we know that she got at least to the bus.

If you think about it, so many of them are caught way to a grocery store running an errand it's not like something that's a routine where he's following them for several days and knows their pattern and how to intercept them. These are all victims of opportunity.

Six victims, all young black girls from around the same area, all disposed of in identical ways. When we sat down with Romaine Jenkins, we asked her about her first involvement in the case.

Well at the time when Carol Spinx was murdered. I was in the homicide unit, and at that time I was the only female in the unit. I was interested in the case. But what happened was we were inundated with the May Day demonstrations.

From May first to May fifth, nineteen seventy one, thousands of people gathered in Washington, d C. To protest the Vietnam War. This would become the May Day Protests.

We have seventy five thousand people from all walks of life, with differing ideologies and purposes, marched from the White House to the Capitol.

More than five thousand Metropolitan Police Department officers, including Romayne, were tasked with shutting down the demonstrations. By the end of the week, over twelve thousand protesters had been arrested to this day, the largest mass arrest in US history.

And so I never got the chance to go and dig into the investigation like I could have. The first day I recalled we were going out on the case, and the division command to stop me and said, where are you going. I said, well, we had a little girl murdered over in Southeast and we're going to the neighborhood and we're going to work on the case. He says, notice, may they demonstrations. This is a red alert for the police department. You will get involved in the demonstrations.

But Romayne went home that night and thought more about Carol Spinks. She was familiar with the neighborhood and something just didn't add up.

The girls come from neighborhoods that are densely populated with black people, their kids in and out, their cars going up and down wheel or road. You know, there's never a time it's not busy. So you could send you a child to the store. Nobody's gonna bother your child or what. The neighborhood never even thought like that.

No, they were even safer because there's always somebody.

Somebody that's right. And everybody knew everybody, you know, they said, oh, that's miss so and So's daughter, it's time to be in the house. It's close and dark, I mean, and people looked out for each other.

You know.

I've spent my entire career working in public media as a radio journalist and national talk show host. One of the things that I love about working for public radio is that I rarely have to report on crime. Well, we never neglect a story about terrorism, Mass shootings or corporate mouth. Individual crime stories don't generally get coverage, and

We grew up at ten thirty four Wall to place southeast will place is on the top part of Valley Green. Infamous Valley Green, very well known for a lot of activity, negative activity, but they're good people in the worst of places.

This is Evander Spinks, the older sister of Carol Spinks, the first victim. At the top of the episode, you heard Evander talk about the night that her sister Carol went missing.

I can't say my mother was the best person in the world, but my mother took care of us. We could not rip and run the street. We could not go anywhere. You better not talk about no boy. You stay very close to home. We played outside like any normal kids have, races in the street, played kickball, double dutch boy games outside. Water Place was a well known street, but there were a lot of good families on that street. Things happened on that street that were bad, but we

On April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, the day Carol would go missing, the entire Spinx family, with the exception of their mother, was home.

I was home fourteen, Carolyn. Carolyn was home thirteen, Tanya was home twelve, One was home eleven, and Joseph was home one or two years old.

Carol and Carolyn Spinks were twin sisters. Their nicknames were and Yaya, respectively.

They looked identical, they were identical. They could sometimes fool us, but me not that much because they had different personalities Baybe. Carol was more laid back and quiet Carly and Yaya a mouthpiece and a social butterfly. But they stuck together. You wouldn't see one ten feet further from the other one. They were always together.

My mom and all that. Brothers and sisters. They knew us apart. But some of our own friends that we had outside of the house, some of them knew. Some of them didn't. That would be dressed to Nike, you can forget it.

This is Carolyn Spinx. She was incredibly close with her twin sister, Carol.

Oh, we did okay. We of course played. We all did each other's hair, We dressed it like we fold the teachers. We jumped double dutch, played Jack's, all kinds of stuff. We did everything together. She was smart, She was very smart. She wasn't a smart mouth as I was. Then she was smart. It was funny then she was. She was my friend. That was my left hand because I'm right here, so she was my left hand. That day. I wish, Oh my god, I wish I could take it back.

Wish I could take that day back.

That day, my mom told us do not go outside. So we all was in the house. I don't even remember what we were doing, but I know it was me, event and baby, and my baby brother was home because he was a baby, and my other brother. All of us, all six of us was in the house. And I remember when Battery knocked on the door saying, see when somebody go to the store, and like, no, most in no, most that don't go out. I don't know what made her say I'll go. I don't know, but I was like,

But for whatever reason, Carol volunteered to go to the store, and so off she went.

Didn't think nothing of it right then and there. The next thing I knew, I was like, dang. An minute she didn't come back, and I remember I said that I went out that door. I'm like, no, I gotta go to a Vatamy. She ain't come back. We got to go to the store, and I remember me and Battery went to the store and we asked the man did he see it? And he said, yeah, he seen the girl look just like me, and she had her She got her stuff, and that was it. We came

Do you remember why they said they couldn't do anything.

Because they said to be twenty four hours. I remember that well, in like a couple of hours. No, something ain't right. Mm hmmm. I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I told her I'd be something wrong, something wrong. Mm hmm.

During that time when you didn't know what had happened to her, when she was just missing, what were you thinking had happened?

I thought somebody had got her or did something to her.

He did.

I knew something had happened to her. I knew it did because she wouldn't run away. We never ran away from home. We never did any of that, So I already knew something was wrong. I knew something bad had happened. I knew that, I just didn't know what. But after like the second day that when I started feeling the pains, and I used to sit on the bottom month in bed and this rock and I would get pained, and oh I'd be in and out, in and out. Oh my god. It was terrible. It was Oh god, it

Search parties were dispatched, the community was determined to find Carol, but they never did. And then, according to the official reports, five days after Carol Spinks's disappearance, a group of kids were playing by the side of Interstate two ninety five when they discovered Carol's body. But Romayne Jenkins has always been skeptical of this report. Here's how she described it when we talked to her over the phone.

There's no indication how her body was discovered.

No.

After the crowd gets there, of course they call the police. But what initially caused somebody to say there's a body on two ninety five. I don't understand it. Why would the kids, even kids wouldn't even be playing on two ninety five. There's nothing there's no reason for them to have been there unless they were told there was a body and they went to see what it was, you know,

Man.

People just don't do that. Most people don't even want to see a dead body. My mind questions a lot of things.

We were curious to see what Romayne was talking about. So we found the coordinates for where Carol's body had been found, right off the Itune ninety five highway just to our right you can see in the distant Suitland Parkway, and the police reports say that Carol Spink's body was found about fifteen hundred feet south of Suitland, which is about where we are. The thing is is that, you know, Romayne brought up the idea that why were there people near here to find the body? And I gotta say

Did not have this many lanes back then.

We saw the photos. But you have to imagine someone just driving up this highway with a dead girl's body in their car, stopping the car right here, pulling her body out of his car, and then placing it. It's distressing and incomprehensible. Yeah, Carolyn Spinks said she doesn't remember much about hearing that Carol was dead, only that she remembers feeling it.

I'm feelingly was killing her when she was gone. On the days I felt everything.

What did your family say to you they knew something.

Was wrong with me. They knew something was wrong because I used to sit and rock, just sit on the bed and rock and rock and cry and hold myself. And then something was wrong, something was hurting.

A few days later, the family held a public funeral for Carol.

Oh my god, that was the worst day of my life. I didn't know what it was. I had never been to a feeling before, so we did. I didn't know what it was. We went to this funeral home first. I remember they took us to get these white dresses and shoes and stuff. And then we went in this funeral home and they had this noise. I guess it was the piano or whatever it is, and that noise ooh, it was curb. And then they had the big gray casket. I ain't know what it was, but it was closed.

I said, no, it's not.

When I looked at that face, I was like, oh, my god, who was that? He looked like a monster. And they said I passed out of something. Something happened to me. I don't know what happened. Well, when I woke up the next time, I remember we was back at home. I don't remember anything else.

So you said your family never talked about it after the funeral, nobody even mentioned her.

They did, but I'd never want to hear it. I didn't want to hear it.

And you think that it was an until you were an adult that you were able to hear about her or talk about her.

Yeah, Actually it was after I got married to my husband, who lived on our block. He knew my sister. When he told me one day we talked about it, because we never even talked about it for a long time, but he told me he carried my sister Casky, And I said, no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did.

My mother had a book, a whole book of the funeral, and I was always I never wanted to look at it, but this when my mother was still living. So one day I just went over went to look at the book and I saw him current her casket. And when he told me that, that's.

When I said I need to talk. I needed to talk to somebody because I just came, couldn't keep hold of it because I know it was hurting. It was hurting me. After a while, after I had my kids and my sister told the kids. That's when I just started to try to talk about it.

Me and my.

Husband talking a little bit from time to time, but I didn't want to talk about it. There was nothing to talk about. You.

Have you talked with others in your family since then?

Yes, most of me and my sister Evan talk about it more than anybody, but not nobody else really.

Yvan Is Evander spinks my brothers have never mentioned one way to other Caurling. It hurts her, she says, never wanted to talk about it, and I've always wanted to talk about it because I can't forget. My sister Valerie has never talked or spoke about it that I know of, so I had to over the years keep talking yeah, yay, curling about it, and I know she can't forget, but I know she hurts behind that. That's why I her entire life changed and it wasn't for the better, totally

We don't want to do it.

It's not like we want to be recognized, because we still get recognized as soon as somebody hear the name Space Spinks. Oh, I know about the Spinx family. You don't know about the Spins family. You don't even know about the incident that happened.

To the Springs family.

My sister was an innocent little girl. People say, you know, these kids fast they grow. She was out there having sex, not with my mother, that's a no. She was an innocent little girl that was taken from her family and abused. We want to know why. As a young teenager, I don't think the police did a good job. I didn't feel as though they actually cared during that time, And as an adult, I know they didn't do a good job, and I know down where they didn't care and today.

The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.

This child was laying on the side of the road. I wouldn't go nowhere, I wouldn't call it my house.

Those first five murderers should have been a huge warning bell for the police. We just want to know what happened.

This person must have all that. They were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and he says, uh, they need to know.

This is me. I thought that they would catch him. I thought it was just a matter of time.

I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. Next time on Freeway Phantom.

People were scared. I mean parents was scared.

Children were scared. They wanted to know what more police could do.

What were they doing.

He kept her for several days as prisoner.

When the first victims went missing, there was a really kind of a muted police response.

You follow a lead until it takes you nowhere. They got all kinds of leads. Everybody was a suspect.

I got home in the store about six ten pm and asked the kids if Darlenia had been home, and they said they hadn't seen her. I sent the kids around in the next court and they asked the people if they had seen Darlina, and they said now.

Roy said that there was a body of a dead lady out there. He told us that he notified the police, but the body was still out there.

Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is CELESE.

Hilly.

The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and CELESE.

Hiley.

Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and Aaron Bergman with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright.