1946 he arrested Swinney at a bus station when he returned to Texarkana after attempting to sell a stolen car in Atlanta, Texas.
According to Tackett and his assistant Tillman Johnson, Swinney said: “Hell, I know what you want me for. You want me for more than stealing a car!”
Swinney had a long record of car theft, counterfeiting, burglary and assault, and in the hotel room he shared with his wife they found a shirt with the name “Stark” stencilled in it. In the police station, Swinney refused to answer questions, but his wife, who had a short rap sheet herself, sang like a bird. She said that they had recently married 70 miles away in Shreveport, Louisiana, and came to Texarkana not long before the murders began. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, rather than deny all knowledge of the killings, she said she had been with her husband when he had committed them. She even filled in details that were not widely known and, according to some sources, told her interrogators about a book found at the scene of the murder of Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin that only Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley knew about.
The problem was that, each time she told the story, she changed the details. For example, in her first statement about the Booker-Martin killings she said that she and her husband had gone to Spring Lake Park in a 1941 green Plymouth they had stolen to drink a bottle of beer. At one point, Swinney had got out of the car to urinate. After he disappeared, she heard two shots ring out from beyond a clump of trees. When he returned later, his trousers were wet and muddy, and he refused to tell her where he had been. But, later, she said they had gone to the park for the sole purpose of robbing someone and, when they spotted a couple in a parked car, he pulled up alongside it and ordered them to get out. Then, to her horror, her husband had shot Paul Martin, killing him instantly. Swinney had then shoved Betty Jo Booker into the Plymouth and had driven off with her, leaving his wife to wait in Martin’s car. After an hour, he returned alone. Later, after persistent questioning by his wife, he confessed that, overcome with lust, he had raped and killed Betty Jo.
Not only was Mrs Swinney’s testimony inconsistent, she also had a criminal record, making her, in the eyes of the law, an unreliable witness. What is more, she refused to testify against her husband, which was a wife’s right. Nevertheless the police were convinced they had the right man.
Swinney was taken to Little Rock for further questioning under sodium pentothal—the “truth drug”—but they gave him too much and he fell asleep. With no shots left, the authorities had to be content with charging Swinney with car theft. It was his third felony conviction and, under the Habitual Criminal Act, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Texas State penitentiary in Huntsville.
In 1970, Youell Swinney filed a request for a writ of
Youell Swinney died of natural causes in 1993 and no one will ever know if he was the Phantom. Texas Rangers Captain “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas did not think so. He continued to follow up leads and track down suspects well in to the 1950s. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
It is not even clear if the killings stopped after Swinney was jailed. Certainly there were no more Phantom murders in Texarkana, but the killer may simply have moved on. In October 1946, while Swinney was in jail awaiting trial, a murder took place a thousand miles away in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that had the MO of the Phantom. Lawrence O. Hogan from Miami Beach and his young girlfriend Elaine Eldridge from Massachusetts were parked in a secluded spot near the ocean when they were shot dead. Again the murder weapon was a .32 calibre pistol, though it seems to have been a foreign make, not a Colt. There were no fingerprints, no clues and the killer simply vanished like a phantom. The killer is still at large.
The Toledo Clubber
The “Toledo Clubber”, aka the “Toledo Slugger”, terrorized the Ohio city in 1925 and 1926. In 12 attacks, at least five died
Curiously, the Clubber seems to have started out as an arsonist. This is not as unusual as it may seem, as Henry Lee Lucas’s sidekick Otis Toole, as well as being a sex killer and cannibal, was also a pyromaniac who reached orgasm at the sight of a burning building.
In 1925, several timber yards in Toledo were torched within a few hours. When guards were posted at other yards to protect them, the arsonist started bombing tenements and private homes. Then, when explosives wrecked the mailbox of a Catholic priest, the FBI were called in.
The bombings suddenly ended, but then a series of attacks on women began. Using a heavy object, the attacker would hit his victims from behind. Then, when they were insensible, he continued to smash their faces in. Sensing the growing panic in the city, the newspapers quickly concluded that the perpetrator must be the same fiend who had set fire to lumber yards and blown up homes.
The first victim was Mrs Frank Hall. She had been sitting outside her home on 10 November 1925 when she was attacked. She was one of the lucky ones who survived. Next Emma Hatfield encountered the Clubber when she was walking down a dark street. Lydia Baumgartner fell victim the same way. Sadly, both would later die from their injuries. Beforehand they both managed to give a report to the police but they were of little help. There followed a series of brutal rapes, which invariably ended with the victim being clubbed unconscious. Three or four women died and at least five others were grievously wounded.
With seven attacks in seven days, the people of Toledo were terrified. The American Legion put a thousand men on the streets and escorts were provided to women who were now afraid to walk alone at night.
A total of $12,000 was raised as a reward for information leading to the maniac’s capture. Hundreds of informants called in, but none of their tips ended in an arrest or even the identification of a serious suspect. This may not have been helped by the city authorities, who put out a profile of the Clubber that claimed he was a man of super-human strength, beastlike in appearance with fiery eyes. Naturally, no one of this description was ever found.
Suddenly, the attacks stopped. But then they began again in the autumn of 1926, with two more slayings in a single day. In the early hours of 26 October, 26-year-old schoolteacher Lily Croy was raped and bludgeoned to death within sight of her classroom. That afternoon 47-year-old Mary Allen was found dead in her home. At first the police said that she died from gunshot wounds. Later they admitted that Lily Croy and Mary Allen had been done to death with the same blunt instrument. This all too clearly recalled the Clubber.
A bigger reward was raised and the Toledo police swept the streets of “odd-balls” and anyone who could be locked up in a mental institution. While there were no more attacks on women, on 23 November 1926 there were more arson attacks. At one single timber yard, $200,000-worth of damage was caused. A nearby ice company suffered another $10,000 in damages. The fire went on to engulf two other businesses, an apartment building, a railroad freight car and the city street department’s stable.
Then the crime-wave ceased once more, leaving the police no closer to the perpetrator. They had never found or even identified him. Indeed, to this day, it remains unclear whether the rapist and killer was the same man as the arsonist and bomber.
The Twin Cities’ Killer
Between 1986 and 1994 the corpses of up to 34 women littered the streets of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Most of them were prostitutes in their twenties and thirties. Several were mutilated, dismembered and sometimes even decapitated. No one has been arrested or charged.
The police were not keen to ascribe the murders to one serial killer, with the attendant media hoo-ha. But if it is not the work of one serial killer then two or more are at large, or there are a number of men who have all killed
