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