away.
In February 1946, like the rest of America, the 44,000-strong population of Texarkana was just beginning to return to normal after World War II. Many of its young men were returning from action overseas. They were settling back into civilian life, looking for work. But there were also many grieving families who would not see their sons again.
Lyn Blackmon of the
But then people began bolting doors that had never been bolted before.
Despite its white-picket-fence image, the city did have its seamy side. With so many GIs passing through, there were bars and nightclubs with girlie shows. There were drunken brawls that had to be broken up by the police and even murders were not uncommon. However, the attack on two clean-cut kids like Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey was an unprecedented event. The story made the papers, but most readers assumed that the attack must be the work of a transient. Even the police thought the mysterious hooded man had jumped a freight car and was long gone. However, they were about to be proved most tragically wrong.
Early on the morning of 24 March, a driver on Highway 67 out in Bowie County noticed a 1941 Oldsmobile was parked about 100 yards off the highway in a copse next to South Robison Road. A man appeared to be asleep at the wheel. This was an odd place for someone to pull off the road for a sleep as there were a number of cut-price motels in the area. The driver went to investigate. Peering into the car, he saw two dead bodies. Both had been shot in the head.
Officers from Bowie County Sheriffs Office were summoned. They found 29-year-old Richard L. Griffin at the wheel. He was a US Navy Seabee—a member of the construction battalion—who had been discharged in November 1945. Lying face down on the backseat was his 17-year-old girlfriend, Polly Ann Moore, who worked at the Red River Arsenal on the outskirts of town. She had graduated from high school earlier that year and was living with a cousin on Magnolia Street. The couple had last been seen alive at about 10 p.m. the previous evening after dining with Eleanor Griffin, Richard’s sister, at a West Seventh Street cafe.
Both had been killed by bullets from a .32 calibre pistol, possibly a Colt revolver. While Richard Griffin had been killed where he sat, bloodstains and drag marks indicated that Polly Moore had been killed outside. She had been sexually abused. There were few fingerprints or footprints. A heavy downpour during the night had washed away most of the evidence.
Within three days after the murder Bowie County sheriff’s office questioned between 50 and 60 people and tracked down 100 false leads. Eventually they posted a $500 reward for information. None came.
As the investigation stalled, they joined forces with the sheriff’s offices of adjacent Cass County and Miller County, the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texarkana city police departments from both sides of the state line. Eventually the FBI were called in, but they too were stumped.
On the night of 13 April, the Rhythmaires were playing at the VFW Hall on Fourth and Oak Streets. The band had originally been formed by saxophonist Jerry Atkins to entertain the GIs. But they had lost none of their popularity since the war was over and Texarkana teenagers flocked their Saturday night dances.
With the men away at the war, Atkins had recruited female musicians for his band. One of them was 15- year-old Betty Jo Booker, who played the saxophone. As she was underage and the band often played venues that served liquor, Betty’s mother—like the mothers of the other girls in the band—insisted that bandleader Jerry Atkins drive the girls to and from the gigs. He had an impeccable reputation. But that night, when the dance ended at around 1 a.m., Betty told her boss that she would not be needing a ride home. Paul Martin, a former school friend, had come by. Paul and Betty Jo had both been at school on the Arkansas side of town. Later Betty Jo had moved to the Texas side where she was a Junior at Texas High School, while Paul moved away to Kilgore, Texas and was a Senior at Kilgore High School. He had come to town that Saturday night to visit her and volunteered to give her a lift to the slumber party she was going to held by her girl friends. Atkins checked out Martin. He seemed to be a clean- cut, sober-looking 17-year-old. Atkins gave his permission for her to go with him and told her to have a nice time.
The following morning Paul Martin’s coupe was found abandoned at the entrance of Spring Lake Park, miles from the slumber party Betty Jo had been invited to. Paul’s body was found near what is now Cork Lane, north of Interstate 30, a mile from his car. Betty Jo’s body was found one and a half miles from the car on Morris Lane by a patch of woods near Fernwood. Both had died from multiple gunshot wounds. She had also been raped.
Forensic examination confirmed that the bullets that had killed Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin were .32 calibre and matched those that had killed Polly Ann Moore and Richard Griffin three weeks before. Curiously Betty Jo’s saxophone was missing.
The police put two and two together and realized Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, and Polly Ann Moore and Richard Griffin had probably been attacked by the same hooded assailant who had attacked Mary Jeanne Larey and Jimmy Hollis in February. Up until this point the authorities had been reticent about mentioning the sexual aspects of the attacks. Now they announced that the female victims had been raped. This did not take them any further forward, but might prove an additional incentive of young couples to stay away from secluded areas.
The
After the murder of Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, the famous Texas Ranger, Captain Manuel Gonzaullas was called in to help with the investigation. Tall and lean, he was known as “Lone Wolf” because he tracked down and faced down criminals by himself. The first thing he did was to issue a bulletin that read:
WANTED FOR MURDER
Person or persons unknown, for the murder of Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, on or about April 13, 1946, in Bowie County, Texas. Subject or subjects may have in their possession or may try to dispose of a gold-plated Bundy E-flat Alto saxophone, serial #52535, which was missing from the car in which the victims were last seen… This saxophone had just been rebuilt, replated and repadded, and was in an almost new black leather case with blue plush lining.
It is requested that a check be made of music stores and pawnshops. Any information as to the location of the saxophone or description and whereabouts of the person connected with it should be forwarded immediately to the Sheriff, Bowie County, Texarkana, Texas, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, Austin, Texas.
This line of enquiry led nowhere as Betty Jo’s saxophone was found several months later in a marshy field in Spring Lake Park, where it had plainly lain since discarded on the night of the murder.
Detectives questioned friends of Betty Jo Hooker and Paul Martin. What puzzled them was how Martin’s car wound up so far from their destination. Friends swore that he and Betty Jo were just friends, not sweethearts, so why had they parked up on that secluded road? The best theory they came up with was that they had given someone a lift who had then pulled a gun on them. Perhaps it had been someone from the dance. Jerry Atkins noted that the place where Polly Ann Moore and Richard Griffins had been found on Highway 67 was not far from a place called Club Dallas. Perhaps someone hung out at dances looking for their victims. And there was another puzzle: why were the bodies so far from the car—and so far from each other?
Atkins and three other members of the Rhythmaires were pallbearers at Betty Jo Hooker’s funeral. And in her honour, they disbanded the band. They never played again.
After this second double murder, Texarkana was in a state of fear. Few people ventured out at night, and no one ventured out alone. Out-of-town cars were followed. People strung out pots and pans in their backyards so they would be alerted if the Phantom was on the prowl. Hardware shops sold out of locks and guns. And even in the fierce heat of summer, windows remained closed and locked.
Some favoured more direct action. Teenagers, incensed by the murder of two fellow high school students, formed vigilante bands which sometimes unintentionally disrupted police stakeouts. Armed couples would park on lonely roads in the hope of baiting a Phantom attack. With the two Texarkana police departments, the sheriffs’ offices of Bowie, Miller and Cass counties, the FBI, the Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety all on the job, Texarkana became the most closely guarded city in the United States. Meanwhile local businesses,
