The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (38 page)

The inadvertent announcement of the “good suspect” in the midst of delicate negotiations came close to negating months of hard investigative work and legal maneuvers.

Back in Missouri, McVey continued to push his contention that the Phantom was someone other than Youell Swinney. His candidate was the same W— he had mentioned before. McVey wrote Cleo Swinney that he knew of two “suspicious characters around here,” one, he said, fitting the general description of W—. He passed on his suspicions to the local sheriff, but the “suspicious characters” suddenly left town. The next night
a man he did not see, but who also fit the description, inquired in town of the Rev. Mr. Swinney. Later in the afternoon while S. C. Swinney was at the post office, “this man”—whom he also didn’t see—rattled the door of the Swinney home, then ran when Mrs. Swinney went to the door. Swinney’s daughter (and Youell’s sister) insisted that W— was in Louisiana at the time, but McVey persisted in his belief that the man was in Missouri.

Stanley Swinney joined in with McVey in flailing out at W—, who he claimed, without evidence, was in Montgomery City with “a St. Louis killer” presumably stalking the elder Swinney. It was a pattern, tinged with paranoia and denial, that was to persist.

McVey remained suspicious. Cleo sent McVey a newspaper clipping that the reward fund had been dissolved. McVey wrote back for him to be on guard. “I am confident,” wrote McVey, “that it has not been dissolved and that it has been increased considerably in the past month or two.” By then John Frederick had called McVey to report his conversation with Maxwell Welch, soon to be Bowie County’s district attorney, who promised “that he would see that there was no crooked stuff or Third degree pulled off.”

A few days later, Frederick called McVey, reporting on another talk with Maxwell Welch. Welch assured Frederick “that Youell would be given every consideration; that he would never be indicted for murder, and that the only thing that Texas had against him was the car theft and parole violation, and that it was in view of this fact that he was a parole violator from The State of Texas that the Governor released him to Texas over our protests.”

On December 19, Peggy Swinney was released on her own recognition by the Miller County Circuit Court. She had cooperated. This was her reward, freedom for the time being. If things went well, she would never return to jail.

On the Sunday night before Christmas, Max Tackett and Tillman Johnson narrowly escaped death when a seemingly routine traffic stop escalated into a brief but bloody gun battle on Highway 67 East near Fulton, Arkansas. When the last shot was fired, Tackett lay critically wounded and their two prisoners dead. Tackett and Johnson had arrested a white man and a black man as suspects in the theft of a truck. Tackett
assembled the two men in the police car to take them to jail in Texarkana, with the white man in front, the black man in the back seat. Johnson, following behind in the stolen truck, saw the police car slow and roll toward a culvert. He got out and sprinted toward the car. The white man held a .38 caliber revolver, later determined to have been stolen from a hardware store in Texarkana, to Tackett’s stomach for several seconds. The officer twisted his body and the bullet went into the side of his abdomen. Powder burns scorched his clothing where the bullet had entered.

“This man has a gun—watch out!” Tackett yelled out.

The white man jumped from the car and began firing at Johnson. At close range by then, Johnson seized the man’s wrist, turning the gun toward the ground. The man kept firing, the bullets going into the ground. Johnson pulled his own pistol and emptied it into the man, who fell dead to the ground.

Johnson looked into the back of the police car, where the black prisoner was scuffling with the wounded Tackett. Tackett managed to pull his own gun and shot the man in the head, killing him instantly.

Johnson then entered the police car, with the wounded Tackett sprawled in the seat and the dead man’s body on the floor, and drove at top speed to the emergency room at Michael Meagher Hospital.

City officers rushed out to the bloody scene, finding the white man’s body. Nearby in the gravel, they found a flashlight, still shining.

Tackett recovered, once more reminded of the hazards of “routine” police work. It had been almost a year since the December 31, 1945, gun battle at Fulton when Tackett was fired upon five times before he and State Policeman Charley Boyd killed the ex-convict bandit initiating the shootout.

During this period, the elder Swinney struggled with his own personal crises. A Seconal addiction, which he attributed to his physician’s prescription during a previous hospitalization, kept him on the verge of “going to pieces” each time he faced withdrawal. Overshadowing his drug dependency, he lost his livelihood as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery City when deacons learned of his son Youell’s record and reputation. Church members knew nothing of the Seconal addiction,
but they didn’t want a pastor whose son had served time in the penitentiary. The minister wanted to relocate, to a Southern church, if possible, believing there such a situation would not be a taint.

In mid-January the minister wrote Youell of the deacons asking him to resign. He assured Youell he would work to get him released—even if he got a life sentence, he would serve less time than he had previously. He also enclosed a self-explanatory letter from Texarkana defense attorney Elmer Lincoln. Lincoln offered to take Youell’s case for a fifty-dollar retainer and a nominal fee to defend him, and start work on the case. The odds were that Lincoln, knowing only the father’s version, failed to realize the full nature of the case. The Reverend Swinney did not follow through. He appeared to have a less expensive remedy in mind. He advised his son that, the prosecutor being inexperienced, he should not try to defend himself and not ask for court-appointed counsel. Just plead Not Guilty and any conviction would be overturned.

The minister insisted, to his son Cleo, that a lawyer would get Youell off with a light or suspended sentence. Later in the month he changed his mind, saying Youell should plead Not Guilty by reason of insanity, contradicting his earlier advice, no doubt to the bewilderment of the recipients of his directives.

On January 13, 1947, the Bowie County Grand Jury for the Fifth Judicial District convened in the stately 1890s courthouse in the county seat, Boston, in the west end of the county and indicted Youell Lee Swinney for felony theft. His bail was set at $7,500, a large sum for the time.

Bowie County could be called the County of Three Bostons. Within miles of each other in the western end there were Boston, Old Boston, and New Boston. The county seat was in just plain Boston, consisting of one square block on which the courthouse and jail were set. Decades later, the seat was moved to New Boston.

The indictment, prepared by the new district attorney, Maxwell Welch, accused Swinney of stealing, on March 3, 1946, the automobile belonging to Luther McClure, valued at five hundred dollars. The grand jurors also noted Swinney’s previous convictions, August 28, 1944, in Texas for felony robbery by assault, and his February 11, 1941, Arkansas conviction for grand larceny.

Witnesses before the grand jury included Luther McClure, the owner of the stolen car, FBI agents Horace Hallett and J. C. Calhoun, and J. B. Como, deputy sheriff in Beaumont.

The foreman of the grand jury, G. Ross Perot, a Texarkana cotton broker, signed the indictment. Perot’s teenaged son, H. Ross Perot, was a senior at Texas High.

There is no extant documentary evidence that Swinney and his defenders cut a deal with authorities, but numerous lawmen have attested that such a negotiation did occur. Each side had a goal: the authorities wanted to keep Swinney behind bars, Swinney wanted to escape the electric chair. Several officers have asserted this as a fact, though not written on any public document that exists. Tillman Johnson, the last lawman to die, repeated the same story. In essence, Swinney was offered the opportunity to be transferred to Texas and be tried for felony theft under the state’s habitual criminal act, for which a conviction would likely mean a life sentence. But whatever sentence he received, it would not be death. Anxious over his fate in Arkansas, according to this version, Swinney was eager to accept the transfer and plead guilty in Bowie County. The details, the oral recapitulation goes, were worked out by members of Swinney’s family and his attorneys in Texarkana. Some of the events that followed tend to bear out this account.

While the shadow of the Phantom’s deeds hung over the town like a Halloween wraith, Swinney’s name had never appeared in print or on the radio. Only lawmen and members of his family knew the reason he was being held. Even though he made the front page of the
Texarkana Gazette
on February 11, 1947—two days after his thirtieth birthday—his name appeared almost as an afterthought, as better-known local police characters, notably Maxie Lott and Johnny Orr, Sr., hogged the headlines. Even then, it was only a one-column story at the bottom of the page.

Maxie Lott was to be tried as part of a $150,000 stolen-car ring in Bowie County. The previous week, Johnny Orr, Sr., had been sentenced in Upshur County to five years in the pen for car theft. Swinney’s name didn’t appear until the sixth paragraph of the eight-paragraph story, a tiny recognition in a dim spotlight.

“Cases besides Lott’s scheduled for trial this week include: Youell Swinney, Texarkana, felony theft; Harry Spahler, Gregg county, forgery and attempt to pass forged instruments.”

The object of the nationwide manhunt had been reduced to a brief, obscure sentence shared with another alleged felon.

The jury list for Swinney’s trial consisted of twenty-three potential jurors. Twelve of the first thirteen were chosen. Gus Looney was elected foreman. Coincidentally, Looney had the same surname as Swinney’s mother’s maiden name. They were not related.

Under state law at the time, theft of property valued at fifty dollars or more constituted a felony.

FBI agent Buzz Hallett watched the proceedings closely, from beginning to end. He had a special interest in the case. Not only had he investigated the series of murders, he and his wife Frances lived at 3104 Anthony Drive in the Sussex Downs subdivision of Texarkana. Betty Jo Booker’s mother and stepfather Clark Brown lived at 3105 Anthony Drive, directly across the street. He committed to memory every detail as he sat quietly in the courtroom.

The defendant appeared without an attorney. Judge Robert S. Vance, a highly competent jurist, asked him if he had an attorney and then if he wished to have an attorney appointed by the court. Swinney replied that he did not and wished to represent himself. The judge again asked if he wished to have an attorney appointed. Again Swinney said he wished to represent himself. This tends to confirm the unofficial story, that he had agreed to plead guilty, whether he had a lawyer or not. It also coincided with one, out of many, advisories from his father to let them proceed without his having a lawyer. His father’s various strategies had included pleading not guilty on the basis of insanity but hadn’t advised him to refuse court-appointed counsel, only to let them convict him without a lawyer.

The judge next asked the prisoner, “How do you plead to the charge as read?”

“Guilty, your honor.”

Judge Vance rejected the plea, explaining that in a proceeding under the habitual criminal act, the defendant was not allowed to plead guilty.

“I am entering a plea of not guilty in your behalf,” the judge said.

That exchange was to remain burned into Agent Hallett’s memory the rest of his life. He didn’t think it mattered who represented Swinney, for the evidence of the stolen car made for a cut-and-dried case. Luther McClure testified to having the car stolen.

Prosecutor Welch introduced Swinney’s signed statement to the FBI, in which he said that he and his wife drove the Chevrolet the day of the theft, March 3, 1946, to Hope, Arkansas, and then to Wichita Falls, Texas, and from there on to Lubbock, Texas. He admitted picking up three hitchhikers on the trip. At Lubbock he gave a note to one of the hitchhikers, asking him to drive to car to Beaumont, Texas, and deliver it there to a man who turned out to be nonexistent. As evidence, the deputy from Beaumont, J. B. Como, testified to recovering the car and finding a wartime tire-ration card in the glove compartment that bore the name Luther McClure. Como identified Swinney from a description given by the hitchhiker. Prosecutor Welch had no difficulty sealing the case for the State. He then introduced previous convictions that included a three-year sentence for felony car theft in Arkansas and the five-year term for robbery in Texas, for which he was paroled after eleven months.

Welch indicated that Swinney was implicated in the theft of at least five automobiles; he was being tried for only one.

Swinney attempted to cross-examine witnesses with unimpressive results. The clincher was his criminal record, which was extensive enough to prove the prior convictions quite readily. The term “three-time loser” was made to order for Swinney. The prosecutor felt he had an airtight case.

As his own attorney, Swinney chose not to put himself on the witness stand, certainly a prudent move. Judge Vance’s charge to the jury underscored very strongly that his failure to take the witness stand should not be considered in deliberations. The judge also emphasized that the burden of proof was on the State, that the defendant was presumed innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; and if any doubt remained, he should be acquitted.

The rest was up to the jury, and the decision wasn’t prolonged. No mention was made at any point about murder or the Phantom case. The focus remained strictly on the lesser, but multiple, felonies.

Within an hour, the foreman, Gus Looney, orally and in handwriting delivered the verdict:

“We the Jury find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment.”

The jury also found the defendant Swinney’s conviction to be the third felony conviction as pursuant to Article 63 of the Texas Penal Code, thereby enhancing the punishment. The jury recommended life in prison. The habitual criminal act was a threat held over repeat offenders at the time. A violent crime such as murder was more likely to net death or perhaps ninety-nine years, amounting to longer even than “life.”