The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (32 page)

Katie Starks, hearing a noise in the back yard, had asked her husband to turn down the radio. This would have coincided with the intruder’s coming from the welding shop. Minutes later the shootings began.

Tackett compiled a detailed chronology of Swinney’s whereabouts from February 22 until deep into May, based on information from Swinney and Peggy. There were gaps for days when data were not available, plus the timeline was based primarily on what Swinney and Peggy had told him, subject to error and variations depending on memory and motivation. It did, however, establish their presence in Texarkana during the Texas-side crimes and in the vicinity the night of the Starks shootings. Although details of their lives in a portion of May were not clear, a new phase began in May when they left Delight, winding up in Waynoka, Oklahoma.

Waynoka, a railroad center of three thousand in northwestern Oklahoma, is not far from the state’s Panhandle. Hundreds of miles northwest of Texarkana, Waynoka was a short drive north to the Kansas line. Swinney found work with an extra gang on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, a leg of which operated from Wellington, Kansas to Amarillo, Texas. Waynoka was an important stop on the line.

Swinney later contended that he only worked there three or four days in the latter part of June and the first part of July—clearly untrue, for
he had been in Shreveport on June 28, getting married. Peggy said he had worked there about two weeks versus just a few days. Tied to other accounts from people in the area, her statement seems to be more accurate. He put her in the Commercial Hotel at first, a reasonably priced lodging where railroad people stayed. Later they stayed at private homes.

In late August, Tackett typed a note referring to a stolen car.

“The gray Dodge sedan, used by Swinney when he stole the clothing in Nashville, Ark., from the sailors, has been located in Salt Lake City, in possession of two sailors, who claimed that a strange man gave it to them to use. The subjects and car at Salt Lake City at this time.”

Two days later he had an even more interesting report, about Swinney’s behavior in Waynoka.

“The FBI of Dallas, Texas, has received information from some officer of Waynoka, Okla., that a Negro man purchased a pistol from a stranger, believed to have been Swinney. The Negro later shot up the railroad camp near Waynoka where he was employed and was fired by the foreman the following day. The pistol was taken from him by the foreman on the night of the disturbance but given back to the Negro on the following morning when he was fired.

“The pistol or Negro have neither been located at this time. I have been told by the local FBI agent that the office at Dallas, Texas, is attempting to locate the Negro and pistol.

“The information that we received here is ‘That the pistol in question was a .22 caliber automatic pistol.”

That would have fit the caliber of the gun that killed Virgil Starks and wounded his wife, Katie.

The search was on for Harry Woods, alias Lawton, who had obtained the gun from Swinney. Woods had been a cook in Extra Gang #1, but the records weren’t clear as to which foreman was over the gang at that time, as each of them had worked in that capacity at one time or another near Waynoka.

Tackett drove to Dallas, chasing down claims Swinney had made that would have established partial alibis. Swinney had told Texas-side officers that he could prove he wasn’t in Texarkana the night of the Martin-Booker murders, because he had been involved in a minor traffic violation in
Houston that day, for which a Texas highway patrolman had issued him a warning ticket. Tackett had the highway patrol office in Dallas check with Houston authorities. “We ascertained that no such ticket was ever issued to either the name Swinney or to the license numeral on his car.”

Swinney had claimed to Arkansas officers that he had a minor accident with a city bus in Dallas that day, presuming to establish an alibi. Tackett called upon the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County sheriff’s office, and the Dallas city bus officials. None of them found a report of the claimed bus accident. The company running the city bus service, Tackett said, “stated that under no circumstances would their driver have failed to report even a minor fender bumping.”

Swinney said that he frequently made trips for Mack’s Travel Bureau at 708 Commerce Street in Dallas. “Upon checking there,” reported Tackett, “I located a former operator of the establishment who knows Swinney, but who would offer no assistance in checking on him. He was very unfriendly to any policeman. The bureau only keeps the signatures of the people who ride with them for a period of one month at a time, for the purpose of maintaining their own books. At the end of that time the cards with the signatures are destroyed.

“Swinney and his wife stated that on April 13 they picked up an old painter at Mack’s Bureau in Dallas and contracted to take him to Shreveport. They claim that he got out of the car near Longview, Texas, and that they brought his clothing on to Texarkana, arriving about dark on the evening of April 13. Upon checking at the travel bureau, there was no record of this man and no one apparently remembered him.”

Sergeant O. D. Morris of the Arkansas State Police’s criminal division wrote the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe’s superintendent of special services in Amarillo about Swinney, noting that he was being held for Virgil Starks’s murder. He mentioned a supervisor’s statement that Harry Woods, alias Harry Lawton, working as a cook on gang #1 at Heman, had purchased a pistol from Swinney. A special agent for the railroad investigated.

“I drove to St. Vrain and talked to Mr. [Albert] Calloway; he stated he seen a gun, a .32 or .38 caliber which he thinks was a Colts make, in the possession of Harry Woods, that Woods told him he bought from Swinney.
He also stated there was two guns in camp, one a .22 automatic, which he never seen but talked to Jim Snapp, who
did
see this gun.

“Calloway also stated this man Snapp seen Swinney give his wife a gun to hold on a man whose name he does not know; then Swinney whipped this man with a chain; is possible this gang can be located at Plains, Texas.”

A crucial statement began to fill in the blanks of Swinney’s activities. Albert O. Calloway, a relief section foreman for the railroad, was foreman of gang #1 at Heman, Oklahoma. One evening he watched a dice game between members of a work gang. Harry Woods, another employee and the cook, also was watching the game after going broke. Woods pulled a pistol from his pocket, either a .32 or .38 caliber automatic, a Colt, and tried to borrow money. Calloway didn’t see anybody lend him money. Calloway asked him where he’d gotten the gun. Woods said he bought it from “the bootlegger.” Calloway later learned “the bootlegger” was Youell Lee Swinney.

“I also know that Swinney had a .22 automatic in his possession as he was trying to sell it,” stated Calloway. “I never did see the gun, but a man, Jim Snapp, now on gang #5, seen the .22 pistol and told other boys that they could buy it.

“This man [i.e., Jim Snapp] also seen Swinney have his wife hold a gun on a man who was working on gang #13, and Swinney then took a chain and whipped this man. I don’t know who the man was that was whipped.”

Peggy’s version was that Swinney held the gun, a shotgun he’d rented, and made her whip the man. This would reverse the role the other witness had assigned her, her account protecting herself by claiming she had no choice but to comply while Swinney held the gun on both her and the whipped victim. The conflicting version made her more of a collaborator, suggesting that Swinney derived deep pleasure from beating the man himself while ensuring that his victim couldn’t fight back.

The incident reminded officers of the savage Hollis-Larey beatings.

It became difficult to trace witnesses who had seen and told others of the events. The extra gang laborers didn’t stay on the job long and were reluctant to provide information to officers. Turnovers were fast. Some
worked a few days or a week or a month, often using “flag,” or fictitious, names.

The report concluded: “It seems that Swinney had two or more pistols while working on this gang and that you might be able to pick them up for ballistic examination.”

An excellent suggestion, easier said than done.

The string of circumstances implicating Swinney steadily mounted. Swinney, taking Peggy with him, had fled Arkansas and Texarkana for western Oklahoma soon after the Starks murder. Desperate for money, he had done what he rarely did—he took a job at hard labor, far off from Texarkana. This suggested that he was feeling the heat following the Starks shooting. He needed to get away—far, far away.

If he’d had nothing to worry about, he could have remained in the Texarkana area, his comfort zone.

A pattern had formed. The spat with Peggy’s sister over unpaid board money—a triggering mechanism—had stirred his anger. The Starks shootings followed—within hours. He’d gone to Texarkana. On the way back, a prosecutor could postulate, he had seen the un-shuttered light from the Starks home with Virgil Starks’s silhouette by the window. He parked across the railroad tracks from the residence, waiting for darkness to deepen. Indications were that Peggy was with him, for he rarely, if ever, went anywhere without her. His car was parked heading north, away from Texarkana and toward Delight, where he later claimed to be.

If he’d only intended to steal from Starks’s shop, he wouldn’t have needed a gun. Being armed indicates that he intended to use it, possibly to kill the stranger by the window and anybody else in the house.

All circumstances pointed toward him. He had no alibi. The couple at the hotel in Delight refuted his claim there. Statements added up to place him near the scene and in a sour mood.

Then there was his marriage to Peggy after months of rambling around together with hardly a care to legitimize their relationship. She had filed for divorce from Stanley Tresnick after the Texas murders had thrown the area into turmoil. The day after her divorce became final, he hustled her to Shreveport for an impromptu courthouse wedding, suggesting that
he was in haste to gain legal control of her so she could not testify against him, a maneuver that succeeded by mere hours.

Ironically, if an unpaid debt had led to his trip to Texarkana on May 3, another deadbeat episode—not paying rent due Jim Mays—had led to his eventual arrest.

Tracing and locating the .32 and .22 automatic pistols Swinney had been known to possess proved to be a major frustration. Harry Woods, the extra gang’s cook, could not be found. The Santa Fe Railway special agents were unable to locate Woods. The chief of police in Denver reported that Woods had no criminal record there. The draft board in Denver described Woods as born in Mart, Texas, in 1894 (making him fifty-two), five feet six, 150 pounds. His wife’s name was Hortense.

Harry Woods, however, seemed to have vanished, taking with him the suspect weapon that might have tied Swinney to the Starks murder.

Carl Miller of the Arkansas State Police summarized the status of the Swinney couple. His report included several relevant points, indicating the certainty with which Arkansas authorities suspected Swinney’s guilt. His treatment of Swinney’s brief Waynoka experience thickened the plot.

FBI agent Dewey Presley also followed Harry Woods’s trail. Woods had quit the work gang at Hoover, a small town in West Texas. The foreman of the extra gang at Heman confirmed that Woods had purchased the .22 automatic pistol. Records verified that Swinney was employed from May 13 to June 3—close to Peggy’s contention.

Meanwhile, Peggy was still talking. She told Tillman Johnson that while they were in Waynoka, Swinney bootlegged whiskey. At one point, she said, officers got wind of his illegal activities and seemed to be chasing them.

“Swinney got out of the car and ran off to hide,” Johnson reported. “There was another man in the car, name unknown, and they—Peggy and this man—drove off with the whiskey in the car and hid it out in the woods. They sat in the car for awhile and the man tried to get her to have an entercourse [
sic
] with him. She refused and later told Swinney about it. It made Swinney mad and they drove over toward Woodward, Oklahoma, where he rented a double-barreled shotgun and returned to
the camp at Heman where the man worked. Swinney tried to get her to go into the camp and bring the man out and she refused. He went in and came back to the door of the cook shack and told her to bring the shotgun. She took it to the door and went back to the car. Swinney brought the man out and made him get in the car and then drove off down the road and into the woods on a side road. They got out of the car and Swinney held the gun on the man and made her whip him with a short chain.”

Johnson wrote at the end: “Peggy states that there were several men in the cook shack when they drove up to get the man, that she was sure they knew what was going on. Swinney did not report back for work after this and they left that night.”

Johnson added, as if an afterthought, “Peggy states that she stole the wrist watch from a Mrs. Williams in Waynoka.”

Tackett prepared a sheet listing the assaults and murders by date, commenting on Swinney’s whereabouts on each date.

First, the Hollis-Larey beatings: Swinney and Peggy occupied a room at 1906 West 16th Street, only about three miles from the crime scene.

Second was the Griffin-Moore case: “Peggy was in Miller Court (proven) and Swinney was seen at 9
P.M.
on Broad Street, walking alone. He cannot account for his time from there on.”

Third, the Martin-Booker murders: “Swinney states he was at Mr. Stevens’ house that night. Stevens (i.e., Peggy’s father) denies this, but states he was there early the following morning.”

The Starks shootings: “Swinney and Peggy state they were in Delight, Arkansas, in a hotel. They are unable to describe the room. They were seen at about 5
A.M.
following morning coming into Antoine from the Prescott road. The people who operate the hotel state they sold a room to a couple about midnight or after.”

Every one of the notations placed Swinney near the scene of each crime. Witnesses disputed his claimed alibis.