The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (51 page)

Despite the passage of decades, key physical evidence may still exist. The .32 automatic that killed four persons and the .22 automatic that killed Virgil Starks could be in the possession of innocent individuals who have no inkling of their importance, especially if the guns were handed down from an older person—who also would have no knowledge of the events. Unless either gun was tossed into a lake or river, it probably was sold or traded or given to someone unaware of its history. A surviving relative or friend of the man who bought or traded for one of the guns might still own it.

The pistols that Swinney sold at Waynoka, Oklahoma, would be of crucial importance. A person turning one in to authorities would render a major public service. Do the guns exist? Possibly. So far away from 1946, the most likely vehicle for attracting the present owners’ attention would be through detailed exposure on television. It’s a long shot, but might be productive. (It could also result in thousands of candidate guns being proposed.)

If the victims were innocent surrogates, who were the original targets they represented? There are several possibilities, which may merge or supplant each other at different times. Swinney complained of a stepfather’s mistreatment of him. From other sources we learn his real father, the minister, also treated him shabbily, at least on occasion. At best their behavior toward each other may be described as uneasy. He probably was
also dissatisfied with his mother’s role in selecting another husband who was unkind to him. His anger grew as he stewed over perceived slights.

We know at least two events that precipitated his anger—the hot dispute in February over Peggy, a deeply personal relationship issue, and the argument with Peggy’s sister on May 3. Max Tackett reasoned that Swinney, in search of Peggy and his rival in February, had headed to the vicinity of Peggy’s parents’ residence, relatively near the attack site, believing they had gone there. En route—continued Tackett’s scenario—Swinney discovered the parked car, believing he’d caught up with the couple. When he learned he’d made a mistake, instead of backing off he intensified his punishment of the substitute man and woman. If he did wear a mask, as his female victim insisted, it would make sense, to conceal his identity from those whom he at first thought he was attacking.

Flawed relationships frequently shaped his life. Yet a normal person would not have chosen such a bizarre and deadly way to strike back. One may take out spite on the proverbial innocent bystander, but not in such a violent manner. Even though violent language may occur, murder does not become a key to the solution. But for whatever reason, Swinney was not normal. He probably at birth, or early in life, suffered “an accident of genetics,” as Professor Paul Bloom put it. He seems not to have developed a normal conscience. He was classified as a sociopath. He had behind him decades of criminal pursuits and incarcerations, and seemingly never learned from his mistakes, repeatedly offending for more than fifty years. He was a troubled youth, breaking the law at twelve, in a broken family. He reacted differently than did his siblings to these events. Over the years a great rage had built up. Prison time only added to his resentments, especially after his state terms, beginning in a harsh Arkansas system. Sometime in that period he had ordered his tattoos, indicating he’d reached a boiling point, that his deep anger was a pre-existing condition just waiting to explode. Especially the tattoo revenge, as documented in prison records, established his frame of mind long before the attacks, suggesting the idea had festered in his psyche over time. He had failed repeatedly. As he entered his late twenties, he must have envisioned his situation as desperate, the state Jim Hollis had ascribed to his assailant. The behavior of 1946 was a way to lash out, to get even.

Although it is not evidence, it is interesting that, according to several reports, both Swinney relatives and Peggy’s family believed that he had committed the murders. Their beliefs were based on a variety of observations and behavior. Some of them had offered testimony that backed up their opinions.

Swinney himself may not have been fully aware of his motivation, even as he regularly reviewed his perceived hurts and grudges in the security of his mind. Many “normal” people do the same in their minds. But acting on those thoughts, as he did, constitutes the crime—and disturbs society and endangers its citizens.

The totality of evidence—physical, eyewitness, circumstantial, and psychological—linking Swinney as the perpetrator in all of the crimes is voluminous. Taken as a whole, it zeroes in on him and no one else as the offender. Although Peggy Swinney, Max Tackett, Bill Presley, Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, Elvie Davis, Tillman Johnson, and Katie Starks were all dead by the time this analysis was conducted, the compelling web of evidence left behind fills out a wealth of incrimination: Peggy’s signed statement while connected to a polygraph; .32 caliber bullets from the first two double murders; .22 caliber bullets from the Starks case; statements from a number of persons regarding Swinney’s itinerary and behavior in Arkansas and Oklahoma; and FBI reports, one of which assessed him as a sociopathic personality, plus his prison behavior and lengthy records of felonies.

In essence, the story of Youell Swinney is one of an abnormal break at birth or in the first few years thereafter and his responses to the world around him, eventually touching the lives, negatively, of almost all those with whom he came into contact. He probably didn’t think of it in the way normal persons would have, ensuring tragedy for everyone, himself included.

One of the most intriguing ideas is that of his emotional environment during his childhood and youth. Assuming he somehow suffered a “genetic accident” that contributed to an abnormal mind, would he have turned to violence even if he had had a stable, supportive family experience as he grew up? If the answer is No, untold tragedies might have been prevented and lives saved. While too late for this American tragedy, it is a
question worth considering in future mental-health studies, arguing for intervention. Yet even if his was a case of “bad seed” entirely, that is, being sociopathic, that abnormality alone doesn’t lead to repeated murders. Sociopaths are vastly more numerous than sociopathic killers, indicating much more is at work in serial killers’ minds, probably tracing back to life experiences making a difference.

Glenn Owen’s plan to clear the case by exception, following FBI guidelines, would accomplish what hadn’t happened in 1946 and has been elusive since then. It would provide a public service rare enough in so many serial killings: stamp closed on the case, laying out for the first time all of the evidence attesting to Swinney’s guilt, and offering some modicum of closure to the victims’ extended families.

The approach could be used in both Texas and Arkansas, as well as in Oklahoma for the lesser felonies committed there.

T
ime transformed Texarkana, sending all the major players of 1946 to their graves.

Youell Lee Swinney died in a Dallas nursing home in 1994 at age seventy-seven. His wife Peggy, as noted, divorced him and remarried. She died, also in Dallas, in 1998 at seventy-two.

Ultimately Swinney received the notoriety he craved, in this book. He wanted credit without the consequences. His guilt is nailed down, with him beyond the reach of the law—but the small comfort is that he is unable to enjoy the “credit” that comes with being revealed as the Phantom. Conversely, relatives and friends of his victims are more likely to benefit from the enlightenment.

All of the lawmen and prosecutors died over the years, long before Tillman Johnson finally passed away in 2008, at age ninety-seven. Max Tackett left the state police in 1948 to become Texarkana, Arkansas, police chief; in 1951 he became president of the Arkansas Peace Officers Association. Tillman Johnson left the sheriff’s office where he had served as chief deputy and accepted a job as an insurance claims adjuster until he retired. As he was leaving the sheriff’s office in October 1957, he conveyed
to Max Tackett, by then police chief, a pasteboard box containing a cast of the shoeprint he’d found in the field next to the Starks home, along with a piece of linoleum from the house with a shoeprint on it, and the flashlight. He thought having the box in Tackett’s hands was the best way to safeguard it. They’d also found .22 cartridge hulls at the murder site.

Tackett retired as police chief in 1968 and died in 1972, only fifty-nine years old, remembered in his obituary as “a colorful, outspoken, and sometimes controversial figure.” Johnson never found out what happened to the evidence, now long vanished.

Johnson wrestled with the Phantom mystery for the rest of his long life. Deep into his nineties, still agile of mind, he reflected on clues, records, interrogations, and memories, always searching for new insights and fresh ideas.

Even in sleep the case haunted him, invading that most intimate zone of dreams, rendering detailed, vivid, unambiguous scenes. It was as if his unconscious mind was determined to highlight signals overlooked in his waking hours.

For years he’d believed the Starks case was unrelated to the Texas crimes. As he examined material he’d not seen before, much of it from official files acquired through Freedom of Information requests for this book, he revised his opinions. He concluded, as his friend Max Tackett had years before, that Swinney had killed all five victims and had shot Katie Starks, and that Peggy had accompanied him.

Both sheriffs—Elvie Davis and Bill Presley—were gone by the end of the 1970s. Davis was defeated for reelection as Miller County sheriff in the 1950s. Presley did not seek reelection in Bowie County when his second term ended in 1948. He characterized his four years as sheriff as the worst time of his life, which included Army service in France during World War I. “I haven’t averaged six hours sleep per day—or night—since I became sheriff, and financially I figure I’m about where I was four years ago.” Out of office, he sold cars for the local Ford agency until the political bug bit him again and he served three four-year terms as Bowie County treasurer. He died in 1972 at seventy-seven.

Captain M. T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas retired from the Texas Rangers in 1951 after thirty years’ service, consulted for a Hollywood studio
filming movies about the West, later helped dedicate the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. He died in Dallas of cancer in 1977 at eighty-four. He never wrote the memoirs he had in mind. Eighteen days before he died, he gave his last interview, for an oral history project for the Texas Rangers museum. Several of his comments seemed in conflict with previous statements and the facts. He said the killer knew the murdered couples and they knew him—clearly not true. Just as surprising, he claimed the Rangers got no credit for their work, that newspapers “never said anything in any paper from all over the United States.” On the contrary, the Rangers—and Gonzaullas—were front and center in almost every article. The most likely explanation is that the cancer and its treatment led to his confusion and impaired memory.

Newsmen who covered the story locally joined the parade of death. Editor J. Q. Mahaffey retired from the
Gazette
in the 1960s, worked in public relations for the Model Cities program before retiring again. He lived to ninety-two. Calvin Sutton, the
Gazette
city editor who labeled the Phantom, subsequently joined the staff of the Fort Worth
Star Telegram
, where he retired as executive editor, after which he ran a smaller newspaper in Arkansas, where he died of a massive stroke. Louis “Swampy” Graves, who’d served as sports editor and the
Gazette
’s greeter for out-of-town news people, a few years later went into the printing business, then bought a country newspaper in Nashville, Arkansas, which he and his family ran till his death. Others who’d covered the big story—Bob Mundella, Ernest Valachovic, Lucille Holland, Sally Reese—died over the years. Charles B. Pierce, who had focused attention anew on the case with his movie,
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
, died in 2010. He was seventy-one. (Occasionally the film showed, late at night, on Turner Classic Movies, as it did twice in 2012. A MGM-funded remake of the movie was completed in 2013.)

The judges and prosecutors in both counties were gone. Stuart Nunn, who’d presided over Swinney’s evidentiary hearing, died of cancer. Lynn Cooksey, who as D.A. had opposed Swinney’s release, died in 2008. His adversary in the hearing, Jack Carter, the sole survivor, became a district judge, later gaining a seat on the appellate bench; he retired in 2013.

Bessie Booker Brown mourned her young daughter till her own death in 1977. She lived among her memories, hoping justice would be served in
the murder of Betty Jo, who would always be, in her mind, fifteen years old with a promising life before her. Paul Martin’s mother and brothers died not knowing who had wantonly taken his life at sixteen, on the cusp of adulthood.

Mary Jeanne Larey remarried and led a rewarding life cut short by cancer in Montana at age thirty-eight in 1965. James Hollis, her date that night, remarried after his own divorce, siring a set of twins before his second marriage ended, and finally settling down in a subsequent marriage with a family of four. As a Civil Service employee, he traveled far and wide and served a stint with NASA in its early days. He died in 1975 in Oklahoma, where he’d travelled for his older brother’s funeral. He was fifty-four.

Lizzie Moore, Polly Ann’s mother, died in 1958. Polly’s brother, Mark Moore, survived them both and in retirement lived in northeastern Texas. Of Richard Griffin’s brothers and sisters, only David Griffin in his nineties remained at this writing.

Richard Griffin’s niece, Andrea Anderson, who never knew him, probably spoke for other victims’ families, though they never knew her, when she said, “It has always been like there was a hole in the family where Uncle Richard should have been.” The same large hole existed in other families as well.

Katie Strickland Starks, like other surviving victims and relatives, never fully recovered emotionally from her night of terror and near-death. As soon as she was physically able, she attended business school and lived with a sister and brother-in-law for ten years, working as a secretary. In 1955 she remarried, to Forrest Miller Sutton, who worked for a milk company. She carried on a normal life, except for those fearful moments that haunted her for the rest of her life. A noise at night would wake her; she would ask her husband to investigate. He would go outside, usually find nothing, and temporarily soothe her imagination.