The Moniker [4]

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DC had never had a serial killing before, and so it wasn't something not that you ever get used to it, but it wasn't something they were familiar with. And so if there's a body found here, and then you know, a few weeks later, there's a body found here and some months later, and they don't connect it until the fourth one or so, then it sort of spirals and people take notice and then they said, oh, Houston, we've got a problem here. These deaths may be connected. And

The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.

This child was laying on the side of the road.

I wouldn't go no way, I wouldn't come up my house.

Those first five murders should have been a huge warning bell for the police.

We just want to know what happened.

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

This is me.

I thought that they would catch him.

I thought it just a matter of time.

I'm Celeste Hedley and this is Freeway Phantom. In the last episode, we learned about the third and fourth victims of the Freeway Phantom, Brenda Crockett and Nina Mosha Yates. Up until this point, these murders were largely considered by law enforcement to be unconnected, but the murder of Yates was a big turning point.

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.

This is author Victoria Hester, who co wrote a book with her father Blaine Pardo, on the Freeway Phantom Murders. She reminds us that Nina Mosha Yates walked to a nearby safeway around seven pm one night to pick up some groceries, and then after leaving, she was somehow abducted. She was found dead just over two hours later in Prince George's County.

Her body was found by a fifteen year old hitchhiker beside Pennsylvania Avenue, just sixteen hundred feet beyond the district line. Her body was still warm when it was found, so she had been dumped and killed very recently. She was literally just dumped on the side of the road.

Co writer Blaine Pardo told us about the evidence gathering process that law enforcement went through for Ninemosha.

They would have looked under fingernails, et cetera, not for DNA traceable, but to see if she had scraped her victim or fought back and that was done, but you don't get that tangible piece of Oh you've got somebody's skin, we can run DNA on it, etc. So while they may have found things like that, unfortunately those things usually wouldn't have been preserved and they didn't have the means

But police were able to identify and preserve a few pieces of evidence. They found what they called negroid hair on her sanitary napkin hairs that did not belong to her. They also found green fibers, much like the ones that had been found on previous victims.

No one knew about the green synthetic fibers until Detective Lloyd Davis. When Davis had requested that all the evidence be sent to the FBI. That's when they came back about the green synthetic fibers, which aren't really green if you see them visually.

This is retired MPD Detective Romaine Jenkins.

Now, this is what the FBI technician told me, the guy who handled the cases. To the naked eye, they're a different color. They're only green if you look at them under microscott. Then what are the sources of the fibers? That's what I wanted to know about the fiber evidence, I asked him. I said, well, you know, what's the source of the fibers? He said he thought they came.

From an auto.

He said, but let me get my notes that I'll get back to you. Well, it took for ages for him to get back to me. Fine, he didn't. He said, nah, I think they came from an auto. But I talked to Detective Lloyd Davis, who had all the evidence submitted. He said he was told that the fibers came from a bathroom mate like a bath mat and a bathroom, and that goes along with these victims being washed and cleaned. I said, that sounds about right, You know that as far as I'm concerned.

We'll explore the possible sources of these fibers in a later episode, but for now, there are two important things to keep in mind. Technology at the time just wasn't advanced enough to properly examine these fibers, so they were stored away, possibly in the boxes that Romayne has stored in her home.

Oh, these are glass slides, don't don't bother that. No, I'm not gonna open them.

For sure, but these are hairs and fire. These are actual glass slides with the hairs and fibers. It's possible that today we could revisit the fibers to learn more about their origin, but the evidence would need to be resubmitted for processing. The other significant matter, as Romaine alluded to, is that the FBI was now involved. After the murder of Ninomosia Yates, law enforcement finally started to recognize that these cases were connected, and that expanded the scope of the investigation.

The fourth body that brought more people in because where's the body found. You're talking about PG County, right, You're talking about crossing jurisdictional lines, So then he is PG County coming into play.

By the time we get to Ninomosia, people are beginning to think this is the same perpetrator. They didn't have a phrase of serial killer. They may be called it a pattern killer.

Ye pattern case.

The homicide detectives term the case is the Little Girl cases because they didn't know anything about Freeway pantom.

Up until this point. The FBI was only vaguely aware of the first few murders in the Little Girl cases.

I would hear them talk about the first two is I recall the bodies were found with only about fifteen feet of each other, and that kind of peaked their interest what we got going on. We've never had a serial murder here, but we've had multiple murders, and I thought, there's something in here that would be interesting to get into and see how you would how you would work it out, how you could figure out who did it.

This is retired Special Agent Barry Culvert, one of the FBI investigators who worked the case. He says that once victims started turning up both in DC and over the state line in PG County, the FBI officially got involved.

At the time of this case in nineteen seventy, I'd been working fugitives and bank robberies four or five years, and that lets you know just about every corner in their dark alley and Washington, d C.

If you work those kind of cases, Colvert says, the Freeway phantom murders felt different to him. He was struck by the innocence and youth of the victims and felt compelled to work their cases.

All of these girls were not from runaway families. These girls, from what I can remember just hearing from the detectives, these were families that went to churchs and watched after their girls and wanted to know where they were. They were good families. They didn't take chances that would have led them to that kind of death. I don't think. I don't know that they would have taken a chance of getting in a car with somebody that they didn't

Colvert remembers when they got the call to join the investigation.

I think the Chief of Police in Washington re down to our agent in charge of the Washington office. They had so many leads and so many things to cover, they just didn't have the manpower. There was a lot of things going on in Washington then. This was only two or three years after Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael had killed the pigs, burned the pigs, and we

Colvert says the FBI's investigation of the Freeway phantom murders was broad, intense, and incredibly hands on.

We figured there had to be someone that got away, someone that was lured to the car, and we even had a couple of cases where they were forced into the car, duct taped, but they got away. So you would take that thinking maybe that could be our guy. There has to be someone that he's not successful with when working those cases, because we actually had evidence and witnesses. There was one that was dropped on the side of

Culvert didn't provide the name of his suspect, but we reviewed the FBI case file. He was thoroughly investigated and cleared of suspicion, and so it was just one of many dead ends.

That was the kind of leads we got. Mostly they would come in by the phone or they would give you a nickname. We heard that bow Ray had done something like this. He had raped the girl and got mad at her or something, and he was afraid she was going to go back and rat on him because she knew him and he killed her. We didn't have an internet to look. We had to go through hand files, these index cards. Bow Ray, Who's bow Ray out there? Because everybody went by street name in DC, so you

As a result, Culvert says, their investigation became both frustrating and exhausting.

We had spent so many nights away from home, so many weekends, so many holidays, out on the street, either in a surveillance or just trying to catch somebody. If you had a suspect, you didn't have any evidence. The only chance you had maybe was following some night and catch him in the act of trying to get a little girl in the car, pull him over, charging with a misdemeanor. Till you could get prints and hair samples or something. That's what you were hoping for, And it

To get them.

At the end of the day, you thought, is there something else we could do right now? Your shift is up, you've done your eight ten hours, and you're ready to go home. Man, if we could swinging by that corner one more time and look and see if we see a white man, let's do it. Let's do it now. You were bone tired the next day, but no one was looking at their watch, no one was looking to see, all right this time, let's cut it off. Let's go home.

The work of retired FBI Special Agent Barry Culvert was impressive. Up until this point, it seemed like law enforcement wasn't taking these cases seriously, but Culvert's team appeared to be different. He says they were dedicated to solving these murders. Culvert and his detective Jimmy Owens interviewed dozens of people from the community and talked to numerous family members of the victims.

We were going out to a woman's house and I think it might have been the aunt of one of them, and I was going to take this picture to show her these items like ring, ear rings, maybe some little trinkets that a teenage girl would have. And I remember that because it was the one that made that the

Meanwhile, public perceptions about the murders were shifting. Now that the cases had all been connected, things were changing in the neighborhood.

I think, just like during the DC stipe of time doing that when we talk about mass murders or killings, the communities started to close ranks a little more, be more watchful.

This is Derek Davis who we talked to in episode two. His family has owned a barbershop in the neighborhood since the sixties.

People were more watchful of our youth then. Okay, they were looking out for him. People were talking about it more. It was more talk. For instance, what I mean when people came to barber shop, that was that was the discussion in the barbershop. And people were saying, well, watch out, you know, watch out and doing it this and that that.

Yeah, you know, we're doing this. I'm getting off.

At this time, you know, people were kind of like somewhat forming their own groups or own not like police school, but something like neighborhood watches or the orange chat watches when you said these orange hat where communities were started to walk.

The blocks and stuff like that.

So the community were kind of like somewhat policing the sells the best way they could to stop what was happening. We couldn't stop what already happened for surely, and we didn't necessarily see where that support was coming from.

Also sitting with us was Derek's friend, Reverend Anthony Motley, and we got to talking about why it is that there was practically no media coverage on this case. It's astonishing to me that someone could snatch and murder young black girls and now we can't even find coverage.

How come because they're black.

Even today we had a six year old murder walking to the store with her father and mother and they get caught in a drive by The mother and father wounded, two more people wounded, the little baby gets dead. The media, they show up, they do a press conference, and then they go by.

It's like sensationalism exactly what it is.

That's what they do. Don't do you have any what they call invest investigative reporters anymore? And if they do investigate, they don't investigate when it comes to black people, you know, unless it's something that that that's juicy, you know, like the government. But as far as the community is concerned, since another day in the park.

This frustration was evident in community throughout the murders. Community member Wilma Harper wrote about it in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.

The bizarre murders of these black girls had not aroused the press to an acceptable degree. The communities seemed to have forgotten. Families of the victims bore their sorrow alone in hopelessness and terror.

Harper writes that at one point, members of the Congress Heights neighborhood took it upon themselves to hold a press conference. They wanted to protest what they called poor police protection and a lack of media coverage.

The press conference was called by Calvin Rolark, editor publisher of the Weekly Washington Informer and president of the Washington Highland Civic Association. He accused the police and news media of failing to give equal attention to crimes in the Southeast. He condemned newspapers for bearing news of the deaths of the three girls. If it was a blue eyed, white girl from Silver Spring, her picture would have been all

Harper remembers that just before Ninomosia Gates was murdered, the media went entirely dark on the case.

During the months of August and September, the news media made no reports of the progress in the investigation of the murders. I was recuperating from an automobile accident and was free to diligently watch for information. My interest in the cases had been heightened because I knew family members of two of the victims. I was also in accord with the earlier interest taken by citizens of the Southeast

If you'd look through news releases and police departments, I mean, you're not gonna find a whole lot of photos from fifty years ago.

This is NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl Thompson who we heard from at the top of the episode. When she thoroughly investigated this case in twenty eighteen, she says it was difficult to find any substantial news coverage.

Initially at some of the microfish I looked at, it was lobbed in with you know, like, Okay, a girl's body was found here, and then you know, some guy found across town. You know, it was just sort of like in passing. So there was coverage, but again then it just sort of faded. You know, in the early seventies, Vietnam was all the daily, NonStop coverage, right every single day, day in and day out. And you had these May Day protesters, thousands of them on the nation's capitol, and

However, there was one major piece of news coverage following the murder of Ninamoshi Gates, the Daily News published an article about the now connected murders and they named the killer the Freeway Phantom. We haven't been able to find this news clipping. There are some conflicting reports as to the exact date of this article, but we know it came before the killer's next victim was found. But they still didn't refer to the Freeway Phantom as a serial killer, and Romaine Jenkins explains why.

Well, at the time, the term serial killers was not even in existence. The FBI didn't even have its profiling unit. So if we had a pat and of cases, we call them pattern cases.

The reason you.

Said pattern because there was something about the cases that linked them together. Either the suspect wore the same clothing or said the same thing in these instances. They weren't sure that it was the same person. It was hard for them to believe that one person could have committed all of these crimes. So a lot of times you had investigators going off in their own direction, you know, looking for suspects you know that they felt might fit the profile of the person.

They might not have had a name for it at the time, but the Freeway Phantom was likely Washington, DC's first serial killer.

Let me just say, I really hate the way that we give these killers these names. I know we have to do it like you know, just that's what it is. But I think that naming them, giving them this quasi mythological status, just elevates them. And these are despicable human beings, you know.

Doctor Jean Murley is an author and professor of English at Queensborough Community College. She specializes in true crime and has studied the history and psychology of serial killers. To get a clear picture of the Freeway Phantom, we need to understand what a serial killer is. So I sat down with doctor Murley and asked her to fill in some missing pieces on that front.

The standard definition of serial killing for a long time was three or more victims with a kind of.

A cooling off period between each.

That's been revised, right, That's been changed to two victims at two different times for any reason.

What were these killers called before we I mean, we clearly had serial killers before the nineteen seventies, right, I mean, if nothing else, everybody knows about Jack the Ripper. But what were they called? What did we how did we or law enforcement make sense of them.

Before we had this language to comprehend and to articulate this phenomenon, we use a more gothic terminology of the monstrous. Right, these people were monsters. They were wicked, evil, demonic even And so you're moving from a more emotional rhetoric into one that's more scientific and objective in a way.

Can I put to you some of the most common myths about serial killers and have you respond to each one? The first one, I think, shows like Criminal Minds makes us think that there are way more serial killers than there are. I mean, they have someone to catch every week, and the FBI says, I mean every murder is awful, but no more than one percent of all murders were committed by a serial killer. Why do we think they're so ubiquitous? Is it only the true crime shows.

It's not true that the country is sort of crawling with serial killers. It never really was true. What is true is that serial killing as a phenomenon goes through waves and troughs, right, and so in the post war period, right in the nineteen fifties to the nineteen nineties, there was a very large uptick in the number.

Of serial killers who were.

Apprehended who were active and apprehended. In nineteen fifty, there were seventy two known serial killers in the country. Nineteen sixty there were two hundred and seventeen, nineteen seventy wow, six hundred eighty, seven hundred and sixty eight, nineteen ninety six sixty nine, two thousand and three, seventy one, twenty ten, which is the latest statistic, one hundred and seventeen.

So next myth serial killers are almost all white men.

That's a good one too, and similar to the ways that the numbers of killers sort of peaks and troughs, race and serial killing is a very interesting thing. Early on, there were more white men than any other race. It was about sixty percent white men, thirty or thirty five percent black men, the rest Hispanic Asian Native Americans, very very very small numbers that started to become more even more fifty to fifty as the seventies, eighties, and nineties

What about the myth that serial killers are isolated dysfunctional, Well.

That isn't actually, I wouldn't say on myth. I would say that's pretty true. We're talking about people who are psychopathic, and that means they have trouble with long term relationships of any type. They have trouble keeping jobs, they have trouble fitting in antisocial personality disorder. They tend to also commit a range of sort of lesser crimes and so interactions with the system, whether it's misdemeanors or smaller felonies.

A lot of friends.

They are people who are.

Just like, oh, you know, that guy's weird. I don't want to you know.

The charming, charismatic, seemingly normal guys are the outliers, right, And that's what true crime has fed us, and that's what a lot of the movies and fiction television feeds us. So I would say that the majority of serial killers are not people who are successful human beings.

The term serial killer wouldn't come around until the late seventies, but the killer took notice of the attention that this new Moniker Freeway Phantom gave him. Not long after Ninomosia Yates he would attack again, and this time emboldened.

I grew up. As I said in Washington, d C. I wasn't far from the freeway to ninety five. And when I was in elementary school, Harris Elementary School, one of the victims was in the class with my sister in the fifth grade, and I remember in the school they announced it and we would devastate. My sister was crushed. It was just a really scary time. And I remember my mom. You know, she was from the South, so you know, she wasn't playing anyway, but it just heightened the fear.

This is Rita McCoy who we heard from an episode two. She's now a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Department. But she went to school with Nenomoshia Gates and remembers when she was murdered.

So when that happened with her, I think I was about eleven or twelve. When I was in junior high school. There was an incident. It was about four thirty in the afternoon, and I'm you know, I'm a teenage girl, and I had another little kid in my neighborhood. We were going to get some can d and stuff for her and just hanging out after school. And we were walking up this hill off of Benning Road, just walking along, laughing.

It's unclear if the man who tried to abduct Rita was the Freeway Phantom, but it's very possible she was the exact demographic that the phantom was targeting, black, young and petite. She was also on Bending Road that's the same road that nine Moosha was snatched off of. And there was one other strange similarity.

Back then, they had this in school. It was one piece like shorts that we used for our gym class and it was like a one piece jumper but the shorts and I had that on and you know, it wasn't provocative or anything, you know.

So you were in the gym outfit, which is one of the other girls.

Was in as well. Did you know that?

No?

I didn't. I did not know that. Are you kidding me? I never knew that. Well, you know, it was issued and I could see myself in it actually because there were different colors and minds was the part the top part is as pin stripe and it was in the pants were like gold.

You know.

The thing is, I don't know that I've award again.

As it turns out, Rita had worn DC Public School issue jim shorts, the same shorts that Carol Spinx had on when she was killed. The coincidences in Rita's case are just too many to ignore. And so if this man she's describing was in fact the killer, we thought we should learn a little bit more about who he was.

He was dark skinned. He wasn't very tall. I'd say it was probably about between maybe five eight five nine. He was strong, very strong. He looked like he could have been either in his late thirties or early forties, mid forties. He had like cyburns. He was kind of scruffy. He wasn't dirty, but like you know, wasn't neat. But he had facial hair, not a beard, but he had cydeburns, and he had a mustache and it was dark. He wasn't like he had no gut or anything. He was

We asked to reader how this event impacted her life.

It was mostly mental. I was definitely fearful after that. I don't remember ever walking up there again that way ever again, you know, I remember even after that years later, driving you know, and I never talked about it. I mean even within my family, we didn't talk about it. And the girl Wanda, she lived next door, and we were recently talking about it because we're still friends, and

Rita says that afterwards she was expecting to learn more about the man or what happened, but she never heard anything else about the incident.

After that day. I was never called. There was never anything after that. I don't know what happened to that guy. The only thing I had learned was it was his birthday. I don't know his name or anything like that, but it was his birthday, which really creaked me out a lot. What was his plans?

Rita could have been the fifth victim of the Freeway Phantom, if there was any connection at all. Either way, she was lucky, but not everyone was so lucky. Soon another girl would go missing. Just a little over a month after Nina Moosi Yates was murdered, eighteen year old Brenda Woodard was found dead and in her coat pocket police found a handwritten letter, the first communication from the killer.

I hund hand him out to my own sons and him and two people of not howing women. I one met the other when you catch me and canna how freeway Haando.

Next time on Freeway Phantom. When I got home today, my wife was crying. She said she got off from work and she couldn't catch the bus because of all the police tape.

We live basically in the same neighborhood, I mean the same type of apartments, the same people, and I used to hang out where she lived. I had friends up there.

She had been strangled, and what was different with her is she had also been stabbed. So I've liked previous victims. She put up a serious struggle with her as Sam.

And it makes you wonder too, did she fight back because she basically wrote her own killer's note.

Here he is. He's taunting the police.

He knows enough to know not to write the note himself because he could potentially be connected to it.

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

Hiley.

The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright and Celes Hiley. Executive producers on behalf of Our Heart Radio include Matt Frederick and Alexilliams, 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