Jacqueline Birch was later discovered; 42-year-old Emile Dennis, whose body was found in a crawl space beneath the townhouse where Turner lived with his wife in December 1997; 41-year-old Jessica Cole, whose mutilated remains were discovered in October 1996; and Priscilla Mosley, aged 49.
As well as the DNA match to the semen found on Toni Burdine’s body, Turner’s former girlfriend provided damning testimony. In 1997, Turner was charged with choking and raping her. She testified that Turner told her that he preferred violent sex, including strangulation, because he had “trouble achieving sexual enjoyment any other way”. And, during the attack, Turner said he was “tired of paying you [women] for sex”.
Darryl D. Turner was convicted for first-degree murder. He is now on death row and is soliciting for pen pals via the internet. But as the other murders remain unsolved, there is always the possibility that there is another killer or killers out there.
Washington, D.C.’s Suitland Slayings
In 1986 and 1987, a serial killer was stalking the black community of Washington, D.C. He had murdered eight young black females, before disappearing. He has never been identified or caught.
On 13 December 1986, the body of 20-year-old Dorothy Miller was found in the woods near the Bradbury Recreation Center in Suitland, a suburb just outside the district of Columbia in Maryland. Although she had seemingly died of a drug overdose she was thought to be the killer’s first victim because four more bodies were found in the same woods the following month. And, like the others, Dorothy Miller had been violently sodomized.
On 11 January 1987, the kids using the recreation centre noticed a woman’s clothes hanging on nearby trees. When they went to investigate, they found the body of 25-year-old Pamela Malcolm, who had been missing from her home in Suitland since 22 October. There was no doubt that she was a murder victim because she had been stabbed to death.
The day after Malcolm’s corpse had been recovered, a team of 50 police were combing through the wood for clues when they found two more bodies to the north of the headquarters of the US Census Bureau. They belonged to 22-year-old Cynthia Westbury, who had been missing since mid-November, and 26-year-old Juanita Walls. Both been sodomized and stabbed to death, and both had gone missing from D.C.
The very next day the body of 22-year-old Angela Wilkerson, another D.C. resident, was found near Suitland. Four of the victims had lived within a mile of each other in Southeast Washington. The D.C. residents were all unemployed and at least two of them frequented the same restaurant on Good Hope Road.
There followed three more murders that did not conform to exactly the same pattern, but were thought to have been perpetrated by the same killer.
On 15 January, the naked body of 20-year-old Janice Morton was found in an alley in Northeast Washington. She had been beaten and strangled. On 5 April, the naked body of an unidentified woman was found in a secluded driveway near Euclid and 13th Street, in Northwest Washington.
A 31-year-old suspect, Alton Alonzo Best, was indicted for Morton’s murder on 7 April. He confessed to the crime on 9 June. The police maintained that Best knew two of the victims found in Suitland, making him a prime suspect in their killings. However, his arrest did not stop the attacks. On 10 April, with Best behind bars, an unidentified van driver attempted to abduct a 25-year-old woman, just one block from the home of Suitland victim Pamela Malcolm. Five days later, Donna Nichols was beaten to death in a Washington alleyway. On 24 June, Cheryl Henderson, aged 21, was found in a wooded area of Southeast Washington, not more than two miles from Suitland. Her throat was slashed from ear to ear. Then on 21 September another unidentified African-American female was found dead at a Southeast Washington apartment complex. The cause of death was not released and the police refuse to discuss any connection her death might have to the other unsolved cases.
Best has never been charged with any of the other killings and the killer or killers are still at large. The culprit’s preference for killing African-American women has led to speculation that the “Freeway Phantom” may have resurfaced, after 15 years of inactivity, but homicide detectives have revealed no evidence of a connection to the earlier unsolved crimes.
Washington, D.C.’s Freeway Phantom
The Freeway Phantom’s first victim was 13-year-old Carole Denise Spinks, who was abducted on 25 April 1971. She lived in a quiet block of Wahler Place in Southeast Washington. That Sunday evening it was warm and her older sister sent her to the 7-Eleven half-a-mile away on Wheeler Road, just across the Maryland line in Prince George’s County, to buy bread, TV dinners and sodas. She paid for the items, left the store and disappeared. Her body was recovered six days later, a mile and a half from home, lying on the grass embankment of the northbound Interstate 295, one of several freeways passing through Washington east of the Anacostia River, 500 yards south of Suitland Parkway. She had been strangled and, probably, raped.
Ten weeks later 16-year-old Darlenia Denise Johnson disappeared. At 10.30 a.m., on 8 July, she left her apartment to go to her summer job at a recreation centre. Eleven days later her body was found on the side of the I–295, within 15 feet of the spot where Carol Spinks was had been found on 1 May. Her remains were so badly decomposed that the coroner could not determine the cause of death, though it was thought that she had been strangled. Both bodies had been tossed down the hill from above.
Meanwhile, a third victim, 14-year-old Angela Denise Barnes, had been abducted from Southeast Washington on 13 July, shot dead and dumped the same day just over the state line near Waldorf, Maryland. As the method of murder was different, one cannot be sure that Angela Barnes was the victim of the Freeway Phantom, though much of the rest of the MO is the same.
On 27 July, ten-year-old Brenda Crockett was sent to the store by her mother. There was no reason to fear for her safety. The Crocketts lived in a quiet neighbourhood of terraced houses at 12th and W streets in Northwest Washington, about a block from Cardozo High School.
Her sister Bertha, then seven, recalled that Brenda was very responsible for her age, but when she did not return within an hour, the family grew anxious. While Bertha waited at home, other family members searched the neighbourhood.
“Even at that young age,” said Bertha, “I knew something was wrong.”
Three hours after Brenda had left, the phone rang in the living room. Bertha answered. It was Brenda on the line. She was crying.
“Momma is going looking for you,” Bertha told her sister.
“A white man picked me up,” said Brenda, “and I’m heading home in a cab.”
She added that she thought she was in Virginia.
Then Brenda quickly said, “Bye” before hanging up. The police believe that Brenda had been forced to make the call and provide a misleading description of her abductor and the location.
Minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, Bertha’s mother’s boyfriend answered. Brenda told him what she had told her sister, and said that she was alone in a house with a man.
“Tell him to come to the phone and tell me where you’re at,” said the boyfriend, “and I’ll come and get you.”
“Did my mother see me?” Brenda asked.
“How could she see you when you’re in Virginia?” the boyfriend replied. “Tell the man to come to the phone.”
The boyfriend then heard heavy footsteps in the background.
“I’ll see you,” said Brenda, and the line went dead.
A few hours later, Brenda’s body was found by a hitchhiker on US Highway 50 near I–295 in Prince George’s Country, in a place where she could not be missed. A knotted scarf was tied around her neck. She had been raped and strangled.
The killer took a two-month summer break in August and September. Then on 1 October, 12-year-old
