civic societies, clubs and private individuals contributed the sum of $4,280 as a reward for the capture of the person behind, as they put it, “the foulest murder ever committed in Texarkana”.
Over 300 suspects were brought in for questioning. They were people who had criminal records, loners and odd-balls, people simply considered a little strange by their neighbours or those caught roaming dark spots at night. They were interrogated thoroughly but, in every case, released without charge.
With the police making little progress, rumours abounded—to the point where Bowie County Sheriff’s Office and Captain Gonzaullas had to issue a press release, which read:
The Texarkana newspapers have cooperated with us all through this investigation and we intend to cooperate with them in furnishing them the information they desire when the time comes for divulging that information. The newspapers are not printing rumors and have assured us they will not. Any information the public hears about the case will not be official unless it comes from us through the newspapers. We will continue to work day and night on the investigation. We will appreciate information from citizens and all such information will be treated confidentially.
The news of the killings spread across the country and internationally. Newspapers and radio stations covered the story and the
With little to report but local colour, the journalists focussed their attention on Captain “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas. In his khaki suit and a white 10-gallon hat—and packing two pearl-handled revolvers on his hips—he became the living embodiment of the Old West. He did not deny the oft-repeated tale that he was the Texas Ranger who sat in the cashier’s office in the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells and gunned down two ex-convicts who sought to rob the place. A good-looking man, he was particularly pestered by the female reporters. And on radio station KCMC, he told listeners: “Check the locks and bolts of your doors and get a double-barrelled shotgun to blow away any intruder who tries to get in.”
Unfortunately he was too busy giving interviews to investigate the case and the jealousy of other officers over all the attention he was getting did not foster good co-operation among the law enforcers. In any case, they were unprepared for what happened next.
At around 9 p.m. on the night of Friday 3 May, 38-year-old Virgil Starks was listening to the radio in his farmhouse on Highway 67 in Miller County, 12 miles from Texarkana. He had just opened the newspaper and, after a hard week’s work on the farm, he was easing his aching back with an electric heating pad. The dinner had been eaten and the dishes cleared away, and Virgil’s wife, 35-year-old Kate Starks, had changed into her nightgown and was lying on her bed reading the
This restful scene was shattered by a shot, following quickly by another one. Both hit Virgil Starks in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Mrs Starks leapt out of bed and ran down the hallway. She saw her husband covered in blood. She thought immediately—the Phantom.
She dashed for the phone and called the operator. But when the operator came on the line, Mrs Starks could not answer. She had been hit in the face by a bullet. As she turned, another bullet hit her, ripping her lower jaw from the upper, smashing her teeth and sending blood gushing to the floor.
Ducking further shots, she fell to the floor and crawled towards the kitchen. But, as she reached the pantry, she noticed that someone was trying to force entry through the back door. She could see the man’s silhouette through the curtains of the door’s window.
Kate Starks stumbled back through the house and made it out of the front door, just as she heard the back door give way. In her blood-soaked nightgown she made it across the prairie highway to her sister’s house. Finding no one at home, she made her way to the Praters’ farmhouse down the road. They called for help and she was rushed to the Michael Meagher Hospital—now St Michael’s—in Texarkana. Miraculously, she survived. The first bullet had penetrated her right cheek and exited behind her left ear. The second had smashed her jaw then lodged in the muscles under her tongue. Emergency surgery removed it. Her condition remained critical for several days, then she pulled through. But she remained scarred—physically and psychologically—for life.
When the police arrived at the farmhouse, they found two small bullet holes in the window of the front porch window. They were small calibre and had not smashed the glass. Entering the house, guns drawn, they found Virgil Starks’ body lying on the floor while the cushions of his easy chair smouldered from the unattended heating pad. There were bloody handprints on the walls and furniture. It seems that the intruder had dabbed his hands in the pools of Virgil Stark’s blood. Now the police had fingerprints, lots of them. There were more on a flashlight he had dropped.
Muddy footprints led in from the kitchen door to the Starks’ bedroom, where the killer must have gone searching for Kate. Then they led back to the living room and out of the front door. The trail then led across the highway. It seems that he had pursued his quarry. Later bloodhounds traced his scent along the highway for some 200 yards before they lost it. At this point, the killer had probably got into his car and driven off. Roadblocks were set up at both ends of Highway 67, but the killer got away.
Although the newspapers headlined this as another Phantom murder, detectives were not so sure. This time, the killer had not used a .32 handgun but a .22 rifle—an automatic as the killer had loosed off two rounds in rapid succession. Not only was the weapon different, but this time the killer had not struck a young couple in a secluded lover’s lane. Before, the killer had been careful not to leave any clues. This time he deliberately daubed the crime scene with fingerprints—and he left his flashlight. Some believed that the killer was not the Phantom at all, but the jealous lover of either Kate or Virgil.
But to Texarkanians the murder had to be the work of the Phantom. It seemed logical that the work of a maniac should become more and more savage with each attack. The change of weapon and MO was immaterial.
The pressure was now on and the police badly needed to make an arrest. But the fingerprints did not help. After being checked by the Arkansas State Police, they were sent to the FBI in Washington, D.C. Still no match was found. Kate Stark was little help either. Questioned weeks after her recovery, she could not give a description of her husband’s killer. She had, she said, seen only his silhouette against the curtains.
Two days after the attack on the Starks, the body of a man named Earl McSpadden had been found on rail tracks north of Texarkana. Some reporters speculated that he was the Phantom and that he had committed suicide. However, the coroner’s report revealed that McSpadden had been stabbed to death before his body was put on the tracks—which only led to speculation that McSpadden was another victim of the Phantom.
A week later, a sheriff in Atoka County called the Texas Rangers that he was holding a 33-year-old itinerant in Paris, Texas after he had threatened a rancher’s wife when she refused to feed him when he knocked on her door. The man was from Lewisville, Arkansas, 30 miles east of Texarkana. The Rangers, the Arkansas State Police and the FBI all questioned the suspect, but he had a solid alibi and his fingerprints did not match.
The authorities then threw their net wider. They contacted every law enforcement agency in the US, asking them for details of any case where the victims of a murder or rape had been parked in some secluded spot. The list they got back included two soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, who were also suspects in the “Black Dahlia” case, a 32-year-old mechanic from Fort Worth, a graduate student from the University of Texas who was dismissed from the US Navy for exhibiting homosexual tendencies and an inmate at San Quentin who had been jailed for the kidnap and rape of a 22-year-old nurse in California—though he had been in jail at the time of the Phantom attacks. Then there was a 42-year-old suspect from College Station, Texas, who owned a .22 calibre rifle and enjoyed sneaking up on courting couples parked in lovers’ lanes. He was thought to be in Texarkana at the time, visiting his sister. And there was a section hand on the Missouri Pacific Railroad who had written to the Governor of Texas admitting to the killings. But he also claimed to have killed Satan and challenged FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Harry Truman to a duel.
Closer to home there was a feed store owner in Texarkana, a 45-year-old farm hand, a Texarkana gas station attendant who had been accused of rape and a local Internal Revenue Service agent who had, no doubt, been fingered by a disgruntled taxpayer. They were all released when, once again, their fingerprints did not match those left in the Starks’ home.
The only suspect named by the Texas Rangers was 29-year-old Youell Swinney. Max Tackett, the Chief of Police of the Arkansas State Patrol, noticed that a car had been reported stolen just before each attack and, in July
