Moonlight Murders

Youell Swinney was sentenced to life in prison in 1947 for being a habitual car thief. For twenty-six years, he insisted he was innocent of murder. Then in 1973, his conviction was overturned on constitutional grounds. The man everyone believed was the Phantom Killer walked free. He went right back to stealing cars. He died in 1994, never charged with the murders. Two years after the killings, a U...

By late 1946, prosecutors faced an impossible choice. They believed Youell Swinney was the Phantom Killer. The stolen car pattern was too perfect. Peggy's knowledge of Paul Martin's secret datebook was damning. That question about the electric chair haunted everyone who heard it. But Peggy had recanted everything. The star witness was gone. If they charged Swinney with murder and lost at trial, do...

Arkansas State Trooper Max Tackett saw what everyone else had missed. Before each murder, a car was stolen. After each attack, that car was abandoned. The Phantom wasn't using his own vehicle. He was stealing them. If Tackett was right, the key to catching a serial killer was finding the right car thief. On June 28th, 1946, a routine stakeout of a stolen Plymouth led to the arrest of Peggy Stevens...

The Phantom had a pattern. Every three weeks, a young couple on a lovers' lane. Police saturated those roads, waiting for him to strike again. But on May 3rd, 1946, everything changed. Virgil and Katie Starks were a farming couple in their late thirties, miles from town, safe in their own home. When bullets shattered their window that Friday night, it proved no one in Texarkana was truly safe. Kat...

Easter weekend 1946 brought Texarkana's worst nightmare to life. Fifteen-year-old Betty Jo Booker was a talented saxophonist with the Rhythmaires, playing gigs around town and building a promising future. After finishing a late-night performance at the VFW Club, she left with her childhood friend Paul Martin. By Sunday morning, both teenagers were dead, shot by the same .32 caliber pistol used in...

Episode 2: Double Murder on Spring Lake Road March 24, 1946. A motorist discovers Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore shot execution-style in Griffin's Oldsmobile on South Robison Road near Spring Lake Park. Both victims have been shot in the back of the head with a .32 caliber pistol. A pool of dried blood twenty feet from the car reveals the killer moved the bodies after shooting them. The crime...

Episode 1: The Town Between Two States February 22, 1946. A masked attacker with a white hood and pistol terrorizes a young couple on a secluded Texas lovers' lane. Jimmy Hollis suffers multiple skull fractures. Mary Jeanne Larey is sexually assaulted and flees half a mile for help. The brutal attack on the outskirts of Texarkana goes largely unreported by local newspapers. Police dismiss it as an...