The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (30 page)

Swinney, on the other hand, spent approximately thirteen months of his five-year sentence in prison. He left the prison gates on December 22, 1945, in time for Christmas. His family, led by his minister father, successfully petitioned for clemency to the Board of Pardons and Paroles to secure his early release, which put him back on the streets with a checkered background of criminal activities and an incarceration record that few others had. His prison report had credited him
with two years’ service. Prison officials noted he had been “courteous and respectful, performing his duties in a diligent and conscientious manner.”

He signed a conditional pardon receipt on December 21, accepting the conditions “that I conduct myself in all things in an exemplary manner” and report to his parole board or face revocation and return to prison.

However, there was more to it. A further condition of the parole was that he be released to the custody of the U.S. marshal in Shreveport. If he should fail to comply, the parole could be revoked, returning him to prison.

He was free, with stout strings attached, as he returned to his rough-and-tumble hometown and the uncertainties of a tumultuous postwar society.

By that time, Swinney had established a pattern of functioning poorly in the free world, serving time for infractions, escaping from federal marshals, violating parole, repeatedly counterfeiting and getting caught, while violating state laws of felony automobile theft and robbery by assault, steadily progressing from lesser to larger and, eventually, violent behavior. Despite the long list of convictions, he had been remarkably lucky. By serving much less than the full terms, he had escaped the full consequences of his actions.

Max Tackett, for one, set out to investigate Swinney in depth. The state police files soon bulged with his reports. By the end of July, he had compiled a substantial stack of interviews aimed at documenting Swinney’s activities and possible culpability.

He followed the pattern of stolen and abandoned cars he’d observed earlier, starting with the Plymouth sedan stolen from Wayne O’Donnell.

“This car was stolen Mar 24 1946 between 7 and 9 PM, while parked in front of the Michael Meagher Hospital, in Texarkana Arkansas, by Youell Swinny [
sic
]. It was recovered in possession of his wife at a parking lot in Texarkana. She was arrested by Officer Boyd June 28 1946.”

The date, March 24, was the evening after Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore were found dead that morning. It seemed reasonable that their
killer would want to replace the car he’d driven, in case it had been seen and identified, with a different one.

Tackett questioned O’Donnell about the car’s interior and contents. O’Donnell said there may have been a pair of cotton gloves in the car, that there was a torn floor mat in the front of the car but no mat in the rear. His description of the seat cover was identical with that in the recovered automobile.

Tackett speculated: “The fact that the Booker girl was a close friend of the O’Donnells and knew their car well enough to have recognized it in any situation. This girl may have recognized this car and that could have been the reason for the killing.”

It was true that Betty Jo Booker’s parents and the O’Donnells were friends, and she might have recognized the car.

There was another piece of possible evidence, a pair of shoes that another family member contributed. They had belonged to Swinney. They had been put away while damp and mildewed until they seemed to be brown but actually were a dark tan. Tackett failed to match the shoes with plaster casts taken at the Starks crime scene, but the muddy tracks necessarily were distorted and exposure to water and subsequent drying also had affected the shoes. However, the shoes’ having been soaked at one time suggested he had washed them or waded in a creek to get, say, blood and mud off of them, which would fit in with the killer’s tracks across the wet plowed field at the Starks residence. By any measure, the tracks at the crime scene were inexact and hard to match with anybody’s shoes.

The condition of the shoes made it difficult to compare precisely with other tracks. The tracks in the plowed field were almost impossible to measure because of the soggy nature of the soft earth. Furthermore, the tracks inside the house were never definitively assessed to be those of the killer. They were believed to have been, by some, but others had their doubts. Deputy Tillman Johnson said, “I never in my mind could be certain they were made by the killer. There were too many men walking around in the house. I felt that possibly one of them had made the tracks. But I’m positive, in my own mind, that the tracks in the field were made by the killer.”

The shoes became a possible link of Swinney to the crime scene.

Tackett’s reports covered Swinney’s activities from several directions:

• Interviewing Luther McClure, whose 1941 red five-passenger coupe was stolen on March 3 at his home in Texarkana, Texas, he learned that there were no gloves, gun, or ammunition in the car when stolen, and nothing was left in the car, once recovered, to tie anyone to the car. The car was returned from Beaumont to Texarkana by the insurance company.

• Carl Chaffin, Swinney’s stepfather, stated that Swinney and Peggy had been at his house on College Hill on Friday, March 8, and stayed until the following Tuesday, March 12. He believed Swinney had stolen his .38 caliber pearl-handled Smith and Wesson revolver.

• Swinney admitted he had taken the pistol and pawned it at the New York Pawn Shop on West Broad Street for twenty dollars.

• Swinney’s sister, Maxine Whetsone, while looking through his clothing at her rural home where he had stayed briefly in May, found a shirt with the name
STARK
on it. She mentioned it to her husband, Wade Whetsone. A quarrel immediately arose. Her husband said he’d “always believed that Swinney was the guilty man in all of these Texarkana murders.” Her husband took the shirt to the police. She didn’t know how long it had been in Swinney’s possession.

The shirt was to become a major piece of evidence almost immediately.

• Peggy’s mother was interviewed about the painter’s clothing from Swinney’s stolen car. She said Swinney had tried to leave it but her husband had put it back in Swinney’s car. She described the clothing as a clean suit of one shirt and one pair
of white overalls and a dirty suit of one shirt and a pair of dirty white overalls. Both had paint stains on them. Tackett was unsuccessful in having Texas officers search the house.

Tackett’s shoe-leather detective work turned up suspicious factors but no hard evidence, unless the shirt marked
STARK
could be linked to the crime.

It didn’t come to mind immediately, but after a while Tackett’s thoughts returned to the man with a rifle he’d stopped at the Index bridge over Red River. He kept turning it over in his mind. That had been many weeks before. Since then he’d stopped and questioned probably hundreds of men. The more he thought about it, the surer he became that the man had been Youell Lee Swinney. He soon persuaded himself he had stopped the Phantom killer that afternoon. If the man was going from Texarkana, as he obviously was, on his way to Delight, Arkansas, or some other Arkansas venue, Highway 71 was one of the obvious routes. Driving was one of Swinney’s pastimes; he knew all the roads and back roads in the region. If he wanted to stay away from Texas, where the heat had grown intense, he would concentrate his driving in another area, across the state line in Arkansas. Living in Delight, he could go to Texarkana via either of two routes, Highway 71 or Highway 67. Highway 71 crosses the bridge at Index; if he took Highway 67 he would pass Virgil and Katie Starks’s farmhouse, situated right off the highway. The circumstances fit, and Tackett decided that, in fact, he had stopped Swinney that week before the Starks murder and had been conned into accepting the explanation for the rifle in the back.

He didn’t mention this to others. It would serve no purpose. There also was the chance that the man hadn’t been Swinney, and that this was potentially a case of psychological projection. The encounter had been brief and weeks before. But the thought nagged at him.

If, indeed, that had been Swinney and he had used the rifle at the Starks home, what had he done with the gun? There were no reports of his having a rifle. Did he heave it into the Red River as he crossed the bridge several miles away from the crime scene, or into some other waterway between there and Delight? It was all conjecture, with not one
iota of definite evidence. There was, furthermore, the possibility that a pistol had been used in the Starks murder.

Tackett took Swinney to the state police district offices at Hope. Swinney gave a statement beginning with February 23. This would have been the Saturday night
after
the Hollis-Larey attacks, and the Arkansas officers may have confused the dates, thinking they were questioning him about events of February 22. From time to time, the Friday night crime was mixed up with the Saturday date, February 23, in other accounts. At any rate, Swinney, skipping any mention of February 22, offered his version.

“On the night of Feb. 23, 1946, Saturday night, Peggy Stevens and I and Jess Roberts went to Chaylors Night Club in Texarkana, Arkansas. I had a quarrel with Peggy and slapped her. Peggy got [Clarence] ‘Fats’ Anderson [a bouncer] to come back to our table and quieted it down.

“We left Chaylors place and went to Stockman Hotel. Jess Roberts was with us. While at Stockmans Hotel I had trouble with Peggy and Jess Roberts took it up and Took Peggy and left me at the Stockmans Hotel. We’re riding in Jess Roberts car this night. They left hotel bout 11
P.M.

“After Peggy and Jess Roberts left me at the Stockman Hotel I walked down to the apartment where Peggy and I had been staying.”

Their room was at 1904 West Sixteenth Street, in the Rose Hill neighborhood on the Texas side. Three blocks away, on West Seventeenth Street, Police Chief Runnels and Deputy Sheriff Riley lived, totally unaware that the suspect and his girl friend had lived near them briefly.

“On the same night,” Swinney’s statement continued, “Jess Roberts threw rocks through the window of Mr. [Garland] Wells [i.e., his landlord] window. I later paid Mr. Wells for the damage. I left my room and went to 220 Senator St. where my sister lives. I slept in room that night alone.”

The statement contained a number of interesting aspects. Tackett believed that Swinney’s statement dealt with the night of the Hollis-Larey beatings, a Friday rather than Saturday night, despite the date on the statement. If Swinney is relating his experience of Saturday, February 23, it is much less germane to the investigation, for it would be the night
following the Hollis-Larey assaults. If, on the other hand, the actual date was confused and the relevant night was Friday, February 22, a quite different scenario unfolds.

First, an angry situation built up at Chaylor’s nightclub to the point that Swinney slapped Peggy, a violent act. The altercation was “quieted down” only when the bouncer intervened. Later at the hotel, according to Swinney, Jess Roberts took Peggy’s side of the argument and took her away from Swinney, leaving Swinney by himself at the hotel. Swinney had no car at the time. Swinney said Peggy and Roberts left at eleven o’clock. Selecting that particular time, if accurate, would provide an alibi for the Hollis-Larey case, for on Friday night that was about the time the attacks took place. If, however, the quarrel at the Stockman’s Hotel took place earlier, it would have left time for Swinney to steal a car and drive out to the Richmond Road area where the attack occurred roughly around that time. Swinney said the couple left him “about eleven
P.M.
,” an approximation open to interpretation.

The Stockman’s Hotel was situated outside the city limits on Highway 67 West, or West Seventh Street, near where the Griffin-Moore murders were committed approximately a month later. If, as he claimed, he walked back to the West Sixteenth Street address where he and Peggy lived, it would have taken him at least thirty minutes, probably more, to cover the distance on foot. And after that, he went to his sister’s house on the Arkansas side, all the way across town, where he spent the night “alone.” This distance would entail a very long hike, not impossible, but highly improbable. He, being alone, had no documentation of where he was at the times he claimed.

Tackett held to a theory that the altercation with Roberts inflamed Swinney and inspired him with revenge. He was known later that spring to have stolen a car at Robison Courts, a short walk from the Stockman’s Hotel. It was an area with which he was familiar. In fact, at one point, a nephew remembered, Youell and Peggy had lived in Robison Courts. It is not clear when this was, for the nephew was a small boy at the time. Robison Courts was much closer than the room on West Sixteenth Street, and anyone could have walked the distance of a few blocks within a matter of minutes.

The February 22 attack occurred in the general area where Peggy’s parents lived. Tackett believed Swinney stole a car soon after his quarrel with
Peggy and Roberts and drove out Richmond Road looking for them, guessing Roberts was taking her to her parents’ home. Seeing a car parked on a side road, he turned off his lights and drove in, parked, and walked in on the couple, believing them to be Peggy and her boyfriend. Tackett’s theory was potentially valid. Although presumably Swinney carried no flashlight with him, he could have found one in the stolen car or could have driven to his room on West Sixteenth, retrieved a flashlight, and taken off on his quest.

Swinney’s last previous conviction had been for robbery by assault, which fit snugly with the action that Friday night, and the gunman, according to both Hollis and Larey, was a man filled with rage, which must have accurately described Swinney’s emotional state at that hour. If at some point he realized he had come upon the wrong couple, he hardly would have offered an “Excuse me!” and quit the scene. Tackett’s theory might also account for the vicious abuse the criminal had inflicted upon the female victim, as an act of vengeance upon Peggy for her part in rejecting him. The gunman apparently believed he had left Hollis dead, which would have paralleled Swinney’s feelings toward Roberts, whom he had feared confronting in person earlier. With the comfort of a gun, he held the upper hand, and wielded it.