The Freeway Phantom Murders PT 1

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Using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. Hey, Kate, how are you doing? Great, Paul. How are you? I'm doing great. You know, I just had a very nostalgic moment doing a Zoom with my parents. Okay. You know, back in the day, you know, when I first started to drive, I inherited, it was a hand-me-down 1975 Datsun 710 station wagon as my very first car. So this is not a car that any high school boy wants to drive. Wait, what color? It was silver with a black roof. Okay. And, you know, it's so uncool, especially, you know, back in, this would have been 1984, something right in there, early 80s. And I proceeded to blow the engine up. Oh, how'd you do that? You know, just you get this little four banger vehicle and you kind of go too fast in it and there's no oil in the engine. Did you buy it with no oil or you just didn't keep up with it? I didn't keep up with it. I was not at that point. I didn't know much about cars at all. You know, so my dad had to get me another car. He found a used car. It was quite cheap. And so we drive up there. There's a little town called Winters, California that was about 10 miles north from Vacaville where I was living at the time. We wait for the owner with this other car to pull in. And he pulls in behind us. And my dad is looking in the rearview mirror. And he was just like, oh, no. Coming around the corner was this 1977 Mustang with the Cobra package, the Cobra 2 package on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, uh-ohs, right. So it was like completely cool looking. It had a, the owner had replaced the engine. And so it had this 302 V8 engine that had significant amount of power, stick shift. And I was just like, yep, I don't care what's wrong with the car. I want this car. Wait, and how old were you? 17? I would have been 16. So what did your dad say? He bought it. That was my high school car. And so when I was on the Zoom with my parents yesterday, I had looked for photos of that car, you know, in the photos that I had for my youth, and I couldn't find it. Well, my parents found a photo of that car in their collection. So they're going to mail me that photo, and that way I can scan it. I'll share it with you. And it was just so cool to see after, you know, what, 40 years, you know, and all of a sudden it was like, well, there she is. There's my car. Now, are you going to be that guy who wants to get that car again, you know, when you're 60 or something like that? Nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of people who do that. But, you know, that nostalgia comes back, of course. Yeah, but I will tell you for Mustangs, that was a horrible, horrible time period. They really sucked as cars. You want to do something either earlier in the Mustang series or later. Not in the 1970s. I gotcha. I, myself, at 16, had a speedy little Honda Civic. Oh, that doesn't surprise me. That was very practical. My dad was really practical, and he bought it for me. He bought it from his assistant. And I looked at the odometer, and I said, there are 85,000 miles on this car. My dad and stepmother lived probably about an hour drive from my high school. And so I would see them every other week. And so I was going to put miles on this car. And I said, Dad, this is 85,000 miles. And then you know what he says? He said, but she's never had any work done on it. So it's fine. And I just kind of thought, even as a 16-year-old, I thought, wouldn't that make you think there's a lot happening? And then I think probably about seven months in, the carburetor went out and it was a stick shift and the clutch went out. It was awful. And then we got it put back together. And then you know this. I was in a parking lot with all my friends shoved into the car and were blasting my Kasingal Def Leppard pour some sugar on me. And I run straight into a 1970s era parked Impala. and crushed that car. And it was... You didn't crush the Impala, you crushed your Civic, right? No. And the woman came out and she said, well, I just have to screw the license plate back on my car and don't worry about it. So that taught me a lesson. Right. So first cars, I think, I think are really interesting. I can't wait to see the car. I mean, I know you say in theory, it's not a great car, but I bet it looks really cool. And that's all that counts to me. Yeah, I would say it. Well, you know, for me, it looked cool. You'll see it. It's a little rough around the edges, but it worked for me during high school. And then we should repost that headshot of you with the mustache. I always go to mustache. And your feathered hair. Well, this photo has me standing next to the car. So you'll see. Okay. Yeah. 1980s Paul in all his glory. Love it. Love it. Love it. All right. Well, we are going from you and I zooming around as 16-year-olds to a very urban area where I'm not sure how many teens are actually driving around. This is in D.C., which is one of my favorite cities. It's in 1971, and it stretches into 1972. And so we're talking two or three years before I was born. And you were just a wee-wee lad at that point, I think, right? 1971, I was three. All right. Let's go ahead and set the scene. so now i'm going to get really serious because i'm going to give a very important trigger warning here so this is a case not only about sexual assault but it involves children we went through black dahlia which was just such a brutal case for both of us to talk about and this case is in other ways equally as disturbing so i just want to warn people before they see this that this will be, you know, there's some pretty tough parts in here. Now, it will appeal to you because we've got lots of clues, lots of profiling, and just a really, really interesting case. Cool. Okay. So there is a book. I'm not going to tell you the title of it. I could tell you the title of the end because it'll kind of give away everything, but it's from 2019 from two wonderful authors who I've interviewed, both of them, Blaine Pardot and his daughter, Victoria Hester, and they were the main source for this. So I have them to thank because they did such a thorough job. They had also written about the Colonial Parkway murder. And so, you know, they are really on top of this kind of story. OK, so 71. Let me just give you some historical context. So D.C. in 71, the city's on edge. There are a lot of anti-war marches, you know, that that are attracting between a quarter of a million and half a million protesters over the last two weeks of when this whole case starts. and there are May Day protests and there are, you know, government proceedings are being derailed. And so there are an awful, there's a lot of chaos in the city. Police are very, very busy, which is not great news for us. About 12,000 people have been arrested just over, you know, that time period. So chaos that will affect this case. So I'm just letting you know where we stand with the police. Well, you know, I was just recognizing that I moved to the D.C. area in 1974. So I pretty much have really good memory of, of course, you know, the mall in D.C. and kind of being in that environment roughly around the time that these cases were occurring. Okay. And this is also what's interesting is Patricia Cornwell, who's a very famous fiction author I've had on a couple of times, nonfiction too. So she was with a medical examiner in Virginia when this was happening. And so we're crossing some jurisdictions here. And so this is one of the things that kind of inspired the beginning of her writing career. She had already written before, but it kicked off her very famous, you know, investigator that became such a big name for her, Scarpetta. So it's interesting, the crossover there. I used to routinely read Cornwell. You did? I did. I was a big fan of the Case Scarpetta character. So this is the only person I've referred to in this way, but she is a hoot. She's great to interview. She was the one where I had asked her, is it difficult for you to come up with new forensic tools or do you just have tons of forensic tools that Scarpetta could use? And she said, no, what's hard is to get away from forensics. How am I supposed to have a killer, you know, deter police when literally they can get caught in 9,000 different ways, which is so different from when she started writing these books where you didn't have DNA evidence, really, or anything like that. So she's finding it more difficult, really. Well, this is where, you know, when I get pulled into certain projects, not to deviate too far off from the case, but this is where, for me, like the forensic side is the boring side. It's the case. It's the story, you know. You throw, you know, a swab into the lab and wait for DNA results and you solve the case that way. that's great for public safety, but it's not great storytelling. Yeah. And so this is a really, really compelling story. Okay. We're going to jump right into this. There's not going to be any family dynamic talk or anything like that. We're going to start with a murder that is very disturbing for me. So we are 1971 and this starts with May 1st. Okay. There is an 11-year-old boy who's playing with his friends behind St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital, mid-afternoon, 2.45-ish or so. He wanders down a grassy embankment, and he discovers a body. And it's a body of a young Black girl. She is lying face down in the grass. She is fully clothed, except for her shoes, so no shoes. And he rolls her over, this 11-year-old boy. I cannot imagine doing that, but he did. and he can tell that she's dead. And so he waves down patrol officers on Interstate 295. And so we begin a massive investigation. We are first introduced to Detective Sergeant John Moriarty. He is assigned to the case. And when he gets to the scene, he sees the girl. He thinks she's been dead for two or three days. Her nose is bloody. Her lower lip is split. Her face, neck, and chest are all cut. Not abrasions, cut. There are bruises on her neck, but there's no blood. And it appears that her body has been cleaned. And I think they get that impression because, you know, she is spick and span and she's been laying in grass. So just backing up, you said her chest was cut. Was her throat cut? Her neck was cut? Her face, neck, and chest are cut, but they're not saying slit. I'll wait to comment on the injuries. The only observation I'm making right now, obviously she was killed elsewhere. She's lacking blood and she's got clothes on. I'd be interested to see if the clothes are showing the damage as if whatever the weapon was or if she was redressed. You know, if she's not bleeding from these wounds, then those wounds could potentially be post-mortem. So there's some aspects that I'm sure once we get to autopsy stuff would help me kind of sequence, you know, what happened to her and how the offender transported her to this particular location. Okay. There are a lot of clues that I'm going to be going through. So I don't know if you want to put your hand up if you want me to stop. I'm going to try to organize them. Okay. So there's evidence like stomach contents and things that they find on her body. There is evidence regarding sex assault. And there is evidence regarding what we just talked about, the injuries. So do you want me to start with the injuries and then go to the sex assault and kind of go outward? Yes, please. All right. So here we go. The medical examiner says it looks like she had been held captive for several days. There are crescent-shaped marks on the left side of her neck. They think she had been manually strangled. They do rule her death as asphyxiation. There are scrapes on her hands and traces of blood under her fingernails, which they say means she fought back. They identify hairs from a black individual, not hers, that are recovered on her shorts, her sweater, her underwear, her hairbread. They say she was repeatedly sodomized, yet there's no semen found on her body or her clothes. And then we've got citrus fruit in her stomach contents. And her mother, I believe, will say that she was not given citrus fruit, you know, when we identify her. And so they believe she was fed over a couple of day period. There are green synthetic fibers that are found on her shorts and inside her underwear. So as of right now, you know, just maybe to explain those crescent-shaped injuries, you know, that's entirely consistent with fingernails. And this could be something that is left by the offender as the offender is strangling her. Oftentimes, though, the victims will leave their own fingernail marks on their neck as they're trying to fight the offender's hands. And so now it's kind of looking at the positioning, how these crescent-shaped marks are positioned on the neck to try to determine, is this from the victim coming up underneath, let's say, the jawline? Or is this more consistent with the fingernails from the offender pressing down into her neck during manual strangulation? And then, of course, with being held captive for days, now get into kind of timeline information. Does the medical examiner's observation, does that add up with when the victim was last seen? Let's talk about that. So they identify the victim. Again, this is where things get hard for me. She's 13. They look at missing children reports, and the detectives identify her as Carol Denise Spinks. She is black. Her nickname was Bebe. And she was a typical seventh grader, pleasant little girl, liked to hula hoop, double jump, you know, and play jacks. Here's the timeline. She had been last seen on April 25th at a 7-Eleven about half a mile from her Congress Heights home. So we're talking roughly six, five to six days that she was missing then. Well, yeah, and she was discovered May 1st. And they think that she had died two or three days before. So they believe she was held captive. Okay, so she was seen at that 7-Eleven, about a half a mile from her house. She left her home to go to the shop at 7.40 p.m. When it started getting dark, because this is daylight savings, and she didn't come home, her mom, whose name is Alantine Spinks, reported her missing. But the D.C. police think that she is probably a runaway and they don't initiate a search immediately. I don't know if that's 1970s. I don't know if it's because she was black. I don't know if it was because of her neighborhood. I don't see anything about a troublemaker or anything like that. So I don't really know what the thinking was there. But it sounded like she called the police that night, like her kid doesn't come home by 10 or whatever, and she calls the police immediately. You know, just even, you know, out of my jurisdiction from this era, seemed like more often than not, law enforcement usually dismissed, you know, these missing kids as runaways very, very quickly, you know. And sometimes there's, you know, a previous history that would indicate, you know, that this is maybe a likely possibility that the kid has gone missing. There may be circumstances where it doesn't seem like it's, you know, a case in which you have indicators that there's foul play going on. You know, but when you have a parent reporting her daughter missing that quickly, this should be a red flag to law enforcement that, you know, this is something that the parent is going, this is not normal for my child. You know, sometimes you'll have a parent go, well, yeah, the next day we report the kid missing, but there's a history of the kid running off. You know, one of the observations, you know, I'm making, you know, here you have a 13-year-old girl that's, you know, half a mile away at a 7-Eleven. This was very typical I did that during the 1970s you know jump on the bike or walk and go I was going to buy football cards you know whether it be 7 or the various you know convenience stores And I forgetting the names This was predominantly like San Antonio part of my life You know so that you know that not a red flag to me She's just out probably doing something she did as, you know, a young girl all the time. I also wonder, and I don't know if this is the case now or then, what do you think the cutoff is for child at risk versus young girl, tween, or teenager who probably was a runaway? Like, I don't see the police having this reaction if she were 11 or maybe even 12. But because she was 13, I just wonder, and that's not an excuse, I just wonder now, what do police think about that? Yeah, usually 12 and under is, you know, you're looking at, you know, more of your prepubescent ages in which oftentimes kids those age aren't given the freedoms that, let's say, a 13 or 14-year-old is given. And I'd probably put 13 and 14 sort of and maybe 15 in sort of that kind of that transition age until now you're dealing with a 16 year old on up. And even though legally a 16 year old is not considered an adult, oftentimes they have a lot more freedoms than the younger kids. And law enforcement pays attention to that. And this is where, again, victimology is huge. What, you know, what is going on in Carol's upbringing? How much freedom did she have leading up to her going missing? had she been at that 7-Eleven before, is it possible along the route that she's, you know, riding her bike or walking that somebody is seeing this girl alone at a certain time of day and decides to go ahead and snatch her? Or does somebody at the store, you know, see her alone and follow her out? I mean, there's so many possibilities. Well, and I'm glad that you brought up the 1970s and you wandering off to go buy football tickets. Fran Tarkenton, football cards. Football cards, sorry, not football tickets. Yeah, Skull Vikings here. Oh, you're such a little boy. So I'm glad you gave the context, though, because I was thinking, okay, so her mom was okay with her walking at night. I know that it was lighter outside in May, walking alone at night to a convenience store, and it's a half a mile away. But I'm glad, you know, I was a young, young, young little girl in the 70s, and so I really, I didn't get to do that kind of thing. But I'm glad you said that this was not surprising to you. Well, it was just a sign of the times. You know, this is like you go into certain communities during this time and they wouldn't lock their doors to their house or, you know, their windows. And predators took advantage of these freedoms. You know, there's so many cases from the 60s into the 70s where, you know, the kids are out playing and they're a distance from their home and they never return. and it's not due to, you know, today you see a child of this age by themselves. You go, I do that. I go, where's mom? Where's dad? You know, I get a little bit worried because, you know, that's an isolated kid, you know, but back then this has nothing to do with, you know, any neglect on the parents part. This is just what was accepted. And then over time, once people started to realize that, you know, these kids, it's not a high frequency thing, But these kids are, you know, a target for predators, you know, and that's the worst case scenario for any kid or any parent for that matter. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, and on our podcast, Buried Bones, Paul Holes and I analyze historic crimes through the lens of modern forensics. And we're thrilled to announce that now you can watch us investigate the past every week because Buried Bones is on Netflix. Just search Buried Bones on your Netflix homepage and be sure to click the double thumbs up and remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show. See you on Netflix. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable? Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question. Who do you want to be and what's the song that can take you there? Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right? That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year, I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon Gene Chatzky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Groves, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone, Questlove. They'll bring the strategies. I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Hesterprin's Music is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police? Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in, hoping to find love the right way. And instead, I found chaos, cringe, and comedy. And now, I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel. The meet awkward, the near misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let me tell you what happens with Carol. So after they find the body, so she had been missing for, what did we agree on, five, six days, five or six days. Now they start looking at the community and they find a witness who says that she saw Carol with two black men who were abducting her and taking her into a blue car, dragging her into a blue car. So when Carol's mom hears that, she thinks maybe the kidnapper or kidnappers had been impersonating a police officer. because she said Carol was smart. I don't know about streetwise, but smart. And she really believes her daughter would not have gotten into a car with any strange man except for a police officer. One note before you react to that is I think this is the only instance where a witness saw two people. I don't think that's been repeated ever since now. It's always been one person. Okay. Well, and then, of course, it's like, well, what in terms of how these two men were getting Carol into the car, did they pick her up? Was she fighting? Was she walking with them cooperatively, you know, which could mean that they just ordered her? You know, it's something I often will go on a rant is that just a, you know, the physical presence of an adult male with a younger kid, you know, that male authority, that man's authority is something that can be the controlling mechanism to have the child do what that man wants. You're coming with me. The man doesn't necessarily have to use force. And it doesn't mean that the child has, you know, well, has consented, you know, just that now you're being ordered. And in some ways, this is like Delphi, you know, the two girls there on the railroad trestle. And we now know that the man had a gun, but did he even have to use that gun or display the gun to order the girls down the hill. No, you know, he could have just said, get down the hill just because of his physical presence and that perceived authority that he has over them. Yeah. Well, I don't have the detail about the witness and how the witness described this kidnapping supposedly with two men. I don't get the impression that it was fighting and kicking because for the mom to have the reaction, her reaction was, well, maybe it was a police officer because it must have been convincing, you know? But as I said before, I'm not sure how reliable this witness is because I don't hear the story repeated of two people. I do hear one person repeated. So police are working this case, finally. And we are now two and a half months later. We're right in the middle of the summer. You know, this is going to be an outdoor scene. And I think that that's going to come into play. Now we have another victim. So this is July 12th and it's 545 p.m. The Metropolitan Police get a disturbing report that the body of a young girl has been discovered on the side of I-295 Light Carol. Here's the problem. It's a report, and it sounds like the caller did not identify themselves. And so now police have to go search for this body, which may or may not be there. So you have lots of reports coming in over the next week about where the body might be. They search, but they don't search on foot in this area. I have no idea why. They cannot find the body. Seven days later, July 19th, they find this girl's body. She is 15 feet from where Carol's body had been discovered. She had been exposed to the sun, hot days in July. Yeah. She had been in an extreme state of decomposition. They don't know whether she had been sexually assaulted. They don't know how she died. She was fully clothed. She was not wearing shoes. I have no idea why they didn't search on foot. That's lazy. And we don't get a lot of that, Paul. We get cops who don't have the right tools, but we don't get a ton of lazy, I don't think, lazy cops. We get a lot of cops who don't know any better, maybe, on our cases. Well, and they may just be, okay, we have a body in a general area. So they're just kind of cruising around, seeing what they can spot from their patrol car. You know, but to have this body being found basically in the same spot where Carol's body was, that seems like that would be a logical location just to get out and, you know, walk around and see. Now, I'll tell you, based on the, you know, the circumstances, the amount of time, the time of year, the exposure, surface deposit of this body. I mean, basically, this body is going to be close to skeletal due to the insect activity, desiccated due to the hot, hot sun. Now, one of the factors is the D.C. area can be quite humid. And so, it may not be as desiccating as like in my former jurisdiction out in the Bay Area. But this is going to be a problem. I can completely understand why they can't determine whether or not there is any signs of sexual assault or how she was killed, which the pathologist or an anthropologist is going to be looking at the various bones to see is there any knife defects in the bone? Are there any fractures to the skull? And they're not seeing that as my presumption. And so you could still have a stabbing death and not see bones being damaged and just the soft tissue. However, we know what happened to Carol and the victimology is the same. The body dump location is the same. Clothing, no shoes, it's all the same. This is really sounding like the same offender, you know, killed Carol and killed the second child and probably strangled the second child just like Carol. So because they can't show any photos, you know, they just have a general description of this girl. They go back to the missing children reports like they did with Carol. And that's how they're able to identify this victim also. She's 16. So Carol was 13. Her name is Darlene Denise Johnson, and she also lives in Congress Heights, about a five-minute walk from Carol's family. So she had last been seen on July 8th. So Carol had last been seen on April 25th. Darlene has left her house at 10.30 that morning, July 8th, she went to work at the Oxon Hill Recreational Center. She told her family that she was going to spend the night chaperoning a retreat for some kids, but she told her friends that she was going to be spending the night at her boyfriend's. So her mom, whose name is Helen McNeil, reported her missing July 9th when she learned that Darlene never even made it to work that morning. So she left at 1030. I don't know when she was supposed to be at work at this rec center, but her mom assumed she went to work and then assumed she went to this retreat. And then when she didn't come back the next day, that's when she knew something was wrong. Did Darlene walk to her place of work? Yes, I believe that she walked. I don't see anything about a car. I don't know if any of these people had cars. So yeah, it sounds like she walked. So we have Carol going out to the 7-Eleven basically in this same neighborhood in the evening time. And she's either on foot or on a bicycle, right? 13-year-old, she's not driving a car. And Darlene is walking to her place of work and never makes it. So now the offender in both instances is crossing paths with these two girls in that neighborhood. and this is where, you know, is there any common path that Carol and Darlene would take? And then now I've got a potential target of houses that I'd be knocking on the front doors and interviewing the occupants and seeing who hinks up, right? Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be a little bit of a twist that I think could help us figure out who this killer is. Darlene's mom, Helen, tells the police that she had started getting disturbing phone calls after her daughter's body was found. And she said that the caller would breathe heavily and then say, I killed your daughter. Sounds very Golden State Killer. And Phil Hughes, another serial killer that I dug into, and one of his first victim that he was actually convicted of killing, after he had abducted and killed that victim, he called the dad the next day and basically said, I've killed your daughter. This is, you know, a way for the offenders to reach out and get a thrill because they enjoy causing suffering and pain, not only to the, you know, physically to the actual victims, but also to the family. And there is a paraphilia, this is scatologia, where it's the use of the telephone. It can be very sexually gratifying for these offenders. With D'Angelo, there's a psychological sadism that is occurring. He enjoys instilling fear. You know, we don't know about this particular offender and why he's doing it. But right now, I would I would suspect that that's, you know, part of what's going on in his mind. It's also now how is he getting the family's phone number? Did he get that from Darlene? Did he hold her captive? Does he know who the family is? Or, you know, does he just knows where Darlene lives and looks in, you know, looks in a phone book? There used to be these reverse directories, you know, that you could just look up the address and find the phone number assigned to that address. Obviously, today we have all the online resources. But back then, the phone books that were put out by the phone companies, you could only look up the phone number by the person's actual name, not by an address. Yeah, but if he held her, he would know her name, right? Yep. Because when people, when you have someone who is kidnapped and they are held, and we've done a lot of these stories involving children, we see evidence that they're fed sometimes. Of course, sometimes they're, you know, kept in terrible conditions and then killed or let go or whatever. But there's a lot of time there. We have no idea what the killer knows about them or what they find out about the killer. So it's interesting. And this gets much deeper down that road, too. You know, I'd be asking mom, did Darlene have a purse with her? Does she have an ID in the purse, you know, which would have all this, you know, her personal information on it. So there's ways a killer could easily have gotten information to torment the family or to torment the mom. Yeah. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable? Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question. Who do you want to be? And what's the song that can take you there? Music changes what you feel. And what you feel changes what you do, right? That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year, I'm talking to experts across every area of life. Like personal finance icon Gene Chatzky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Groves, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone, Questlove. They'll bring the strategies. I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Hester-Krin's Music is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police? Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. 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I'm also excited to tell you that you can now get access to all episodes of season 1, 2, 3 and 4 of The Girlfriends And every single episode of The Girlfriends Spotlight 100% ad-free And one week early through the iHeart True Crime Plus subscription Available exclusively on Apple Podcasts Plus you'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows you love like Betrayal, Paper Ghosts, Piketon Massacre, The Brothers Ortiz, What Happened in Nashville, Hell and Gone, The Godmother, and more. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. Well, he's not going to just torment families. There is a community organizer who very rightfully so decides she's had enough of all of this. She gathers people together. Her name is Dorothy Wheeler, And she's planning a series of street meetings for Congress Heights residents. These meetings come together. They discuss the failure of the Metropolitan Police in protecting Black communities. Dorothy Wheeler gets threats over the phone now. And it is a man with a deep voice. And he threatens to rape, murder, and then drop Dorothy's daughter on the side of the road. And we don't know if it's the same guy. And ultimately, nothing happens to Dorothy's daughter. Yeah you know you could see you know possibly the offender that is responsible for these two homicides is making that threat just because he wanting to kind of expand you know sort of the mythology of him across the community with Dorothy the one that leading these meetings Or you could have somebody who really just doesn't like Dorothy and is aware that these cases are going on and decides to torment her, even though that phone caller is not the one responsible for the homicides. Mm-hmm. Let me just go through this timeline, Paul, real quick. So Darlene went missing on July 8th. The report of a body was four days later. She was not discovered until 11 days after she went missing in the decomp and all of that stuff. So we don't know if she was kept. They can't tell. But, I mean, if these are really connected cases, then that could be likely, I suppose. She's older, though, and probably more capable of fighting back than I would guess Carol was at 13. Yeah, but now, at least with two data points, you see an offender that appears to be going after children that are in puberty or post-pubescent, if you will, versus going after the really, really young kids. When you're starting to evaluate, okay, what kind of offender am I looking for? We'll see if he has more victims, you know, what their victimology is. But right now it's 13 and 16. That seems to be his target age. And likely that's his sexual preferences, his girls in that age range. Okay. Now we are moving on to July 27th. So this is, it's so confusing because it's like, when do they go missing versus when they're discovered? Right. So July 27th, these two sort of come together. It's 9.40 at night, and there is a family called the Crockett family, and there is a little girl who's nine, and her name's Bertha. The phone rings. Bertha picks up the phone. Nothing is wrong, as far as she knows. On the other end of the line is her sister, who is 10, and her name is Brenda Faye Crockett. She's a fifth grader. Standard good kid. Went to church and school safety patrol. So an hour and 40 minutes earlier, Brenda had gone out to get some dog food and a paper from Safeway grocery store, which was a block and a half from her house. So this is not a long walk, but it is at night. When she didn't return at 830, her mom had gone out to look for her. So I'm assuming because of these two other cases, everyone is on high alert. When she didn't come back a half an hour later, her mom went out. but Brenda's on the phone and she tells her younger sister that a white man had picked her up and driven her to his home in what she says is Virginia. And although Brenda is crying, she tells Bertha that she'll be coming home soon. And at 945, Brenda calls again, and this is really Brenda. A family friend is there because Bertha has told the story and you have people converging. I'm assuming they've called the police. A family friend picks up. Brenda's not crying, but she says the same thing. White man picked her up in Virginia. And she says, did my mother see me? The family friend can hear loud footsteps echoing in the background behind her. Brenda says, well, I'll see you. And then the line is disconnected. Shit. Well, that's very ominous. Again, you have Brenda is 10. So you have a young girl walking to a store, just like the first case with Carol. You know, this offender, he's definitely out there trolling for victims. He's looking for victims in this particular area and is seeing these girls that are by themselves. The phone calls is fascinating. He's allowing Brenda to make this phone call or he's made the phone call and is forcing Brenda to communicate. The second phone call and asking, you know, if mom saw anything, the offender is a little paranoid. You know, it's like, oh, this is very close to her house where I got her. You know, is it possible? You know, mom was outside when I pulled her into the car. You know, so he's trying to figure things out and having Brenda basically tell the family, I'm OK, I'll be coming home. And so this is going to cause the family to, I don't know if you want to call it relax, but in essence, maybe some of the urgency to try to find him isn't quite there because they're expecting, or at least they've been told by Brenda herself, I'm coming home. Yeah, but still somebody picking her up, a white man. No. Again, you know, this is your worst nightmare as a parent. Yeah, absolutely. I'm assuming they called the police. And the next day, Brenda's body is discovered by a hitchhiker. So this is on the grassy shoulder of Route 50, which is just outside of D.C. in Maryland. I have a map. I need you to ignore all the other points of the map. But, you know, I have a map that kind of can give you, I think this gives me an idea of these roads. Because now we're not on 295 anymore. We're on 50. Or can you kind of picture that? What do you want to do? Well, I'm looking at a map of D.C. as it exists today. And it's interesting to me. I saw where St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital was located and how close the first two victims were. And it sounds like this is also roughly the same area where Brenda was living. So he's picking these girls up here. Now, 295 going northeast eventually does kind of intersect with Highway 50. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if Brenda is being told, and remind, did she say that she was in a house in Virginia? She said he had driven her to his home in Virginia. Okay. But she's found in Maryland. Yeah. And how does she know? At 10 years old, if she's been abducted, does she really know the location of his house? Or has he told her, we're in Virginia? And this would be what I would call this verbal staging where he's now having Brenda feed the family misleading information. And then I would I would say if that's what's happening, then he doesn't live in Virginia. You know, he's he's trying to misdirect the investigation away from possibly that whole Congress Heights area of of Maryland, of the southern part of D.C. Yeah. Do you want to see this map or do you want to wait? I'll take a look at the map. So I'm looking at this map. This is a very simplified map that shows the location of the White House and the Potomac River, showing the I-295, its route along the east shore, roughly the east shore of the Potomac River, but not right up against the river, just kind of follows the river up to the northeast. And then it's got marks on the map showing where each of the victims' residence was located and then where they were last seen and then where their bodies are found. You know, with these, you know, three cases, it is showing how close each of the victims were to their own residence when they were last seen. You know, like when I work serious, I'm a huge Google Earth person where I'll put push pins just like this. this map is attempting to do. And I do the same thing. You know, where did they live? Where were they last seen? Where their bodies were found? And then I start looking for patterns with just three cases. It's hard to say a pattern outside the first two. You know, he's picking Darlene and Carol up roughly in the same neighborhood, and he's dumping their bodies, right next to each other. Now, with Brenda, it is interesting is that she's now much further away in terms of where she lived and her body is being dumped a significant distance away from where the other two bodies are. That in part may be influenced by this possible paranoia that the offender is wondering, you know, did mom see him? You know, and he's not wanting to go back to where he dumped the previous two victims and have further witnesses at that location that possibly could say, hey, I saw a blue car, if that's even relevant. But with just three cases at this point, it's hard to really discern much of a pattern outside. Out where Brenda's body is found is in the direction in which I-295 and Highway 50 end up kind of linking up through a complex interchange. Yeah. Well, keep the map handy because I think it'll help with the, I don't know if it's geographic profiling, but it'll definitely help coming up. Okay, let me tell you about the condition of her body. She is about five feet from the curb of this road laying face up, just like the first two victims. She is fully clothed, but she had white tennis shoes on, they're missing. And she is also missing several pink plastic and foam hair curlers that were in her hair. There's a scarf knotted around her neck. This is new. And Prince George's medical examiner believes that Brenda had died five or six hours earlier by asphyxiation. She went missing on the 27th and they found her the next day on the 28th. So if, if she were kept, then he didn't keep her very long, like he might've done with the others. Yeah. And that also may be, again, he's, he's wondering if he was spotted. And so now he can't keep her as long as what he kept Darlene or, or, or Carol. Um, that's, that's what I'm reading into that. Um, you know, so he's redressing his victims. I mean, there's no question there's a sexual motivation to these crimes. This is something people often don't understand how frequently offenders will redress victims. So just because a victim is fully clothed doesn't mean that there wasn't sexual assault. You still have to look for that sexual assault evidence. Now, they were limited back in 1971, 1972 in terms of what they could find, and they didn't put a lot of relevance on it, especially semen evidence. because they couldn't do anything with it at the time. It was just like, yeah, there was a sex act that left semen on or inside the victims at that point. They couldn't type it like we can today. But the redressing is significant. With Carol, I think it's obvious he cleaned her up with the amount of injuries that she had. He's probably cleaning up both these other victims. That may just be a practical matter, so they're not getting a bunch of blood inside his vehicle. With Darlene, we don't know, due to the condition of her body, whether she had been cut up as much as Carol had. I'm assuming with Brenda being such a fresh body, we've got some good information from autopsy. Yeah, and let me give that to you because this feels different to me. The medical examiner says there are, okay, let me just say, this is a 10-year-old, and these are pretty disturbing details to me. So if you guys want to 30-second your way through this, you can. There are circular bruises that resemble bite marks on her nipples. There is blood and semen found in her underwear. I don't quite understand this, Paul, but they say there is human tissue in her vagina. And in her right hand, she clenches hair from a Black person. And then there's some external, like, Black textile fibers and green synthetic fibers that are recovered from her scarf and her shirt and her shorts and her underwear. This seems brutal and more than I think the details that we've gotten, although Carol had cuts and we don't know what happened to the second victim. But, you know, leaving the scarf around her neck, I thought was interesting. This seems like he just wasn't like you had said before. It was rushed. Yeah. You know, the use of, you know, with Carol, we know it sounds like it was manual strangulation because you didn't describe any type of ligature marks at all. the use of the ligature could be just an evolution, but also this also could indicate that he realized he had to get rid of her pretty quickly. He wasn't going to be able to spend as much time with the body in captivity. So now he doesn't develop, you know, certain fantasies about how the homicide is going to go if he's, you know, some of these offenders are killing just to eliminate a witness. And so I don't know exactly how this offender is thinking. But with a ligature being applied to Brenda, it may be he puts that around her neck and instantly scoops her up into her vehicle and drives and dumps her body. And so the ligature is effecting the kill while he is in the process of making his escape plan, if you will. Okay. So here we go. the police think that they get a break in the case in a pretty unfortunate way. There is a month that goes by with no leads, and then September comes, and there's a report that we have a survivor, if this is the same person. The survivor is a 20-year-old named Judy Ann Garrison, and she says on September 30th, she had been walking alone when a Black man pulled up beside her, forced her into his car and attempted to sexually assault her. She kicked the shit out of him with the heel of her shoe and she got out. But she did memorize the attacker's license plate number. Love Judy. I mean, amazing. So they get the license plate number. They figured out it's registered to a guy named Jesse Tobin. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and he has a history of sexual violence against women. He at one time, Paul, had been a patient at St. Elizabeth's. I was going to ask. Mm-hmm, which is in that. That place kind of comes back a couple of times, which is where Carol and Darlene's bodies had been found. So let me tell you this little tiny bit. They arrest him for assault, and they think finally they've caught the guy. The problem is, is while he's under psychiatric evaluation, there is another murder. That I'm assuming parallels the first three. So obviously, this is assuming that now all four cases are related to one offender, which seems likely. And if that's the case, Tobin is in custody for the fourth one. We can eliminate him as this particular killer. And when you described Judy, she is older than the first three. She's an adult. And it's not saying that whoever's killing the other girls couldn't attack on a 20-year-old. But the victimology is a little bit different. But the pulling into the car, being forced into the car and sexually assaulted in the car is significantly different than what's happening to the other three. And this is not an uncommon crime. You're looking at the D.C. area, you are going to be having multiple rapists and even multiple serial rapists doing these types of crimes at the same time. You know, so that's part of the difficulty law enforcement is working with is, well, is this the same or not? Right now, the circumstances up front didn't sound the same. And then we have a fourth case that I'm you're now going to give me details that I'm assuming parallel the first three. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think what you had also been getting at, which is it sounds like there was coercion control with the first three victims because, you know, well, at least Brenda with the phone call doesn't sound panicked. So it does seem very different. And you're right. There's probably sleazy guys everywhere. Oh, yeah, there are. You know, even in 1970, you'd be shocked at the number of serial predators that were out there. You know, it just was constant. Okay, we're going to have another body. And when I'm done telling you, you can look at the map again so you can see where this occurred in relation to our other three cases. So this is October 1st. And as I said before, Jesse Tobin is safely locked away for psychiatric evaluation. Around 8.45 p.m., this is a fourth body that's been reported in the grass near Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, which is just a quarter of a mile from the border of D.C. and Maryland. This is a young girl who is lying face up. She is wearing all her clothes. She also has a pair of white tennis shoes. I don't know if these are her white tennis shoes or if they're Brenda's, but she's wearing shoes. There is an extra shoe that they think might have belonged to Darlene Johnson that is kind of thrown haphazard near her body. There is a small tire track nearby and an abandoned Safeway groceries bag on the sidewalk near some woods. And even though, this seems key to me, even though it's been raining, raining, raining, her body is dry. So they're thinking she had been dumped after the rain, I guess. Sure. And so this is another fresh body. I mean, right now we don't know when she was last seen missing. What do you want to know about the timeline, which is startling to me, or do you want to know injuries before she's identified? I'll go with the injuries, but first let me make a comment about the shoes. You know, I've worked a fair number of cases, and missing shoes is a frequent thing that happens. You know, and it's for a variety of different reasons depending on the offender and the circumstances of the case. oftentimes the offender is dumping a body that is completely nude, gets rid of the clothing in a dumpster, and then is throwing the shoes out of a car window as he's driving away or however. Some people think, oh, there must be a shoe fetish. I was like, well, no, there's practical aspects to why the shoes are not with the body. Sometimes the shoes during a struggle come off inside a car, and then the offender, as he's gotten rid of the body, looks down and sees there's shoes on the floorboard, right? Or something to that effect. In this particular case, the shoes are on this victim's body, but then there's an extra shoe that they think possibly might be Darlene's. And is this a shoe that was in his vehicle and he just happened to see it as he's getting rid of this victim? And that's why that shoe was deposited. or is this a taunt? He had kept Darlene a shoe in his residence or in his vehicle, and now he's leaving a message. I'm the same guy. So that's a step up in terms of he wants at least law enforcement to know I'm a serial predator, and he's sending a message by leaving Darlene a shoe. Let's talk about the injuries of this girl. We haven't identified her yet. It's, we're now at the Baltimore Medical Examiner's Office because she was found in Baltimore. And they discover that this girl had been violently raped. There are fingernail marks, possibly from a left-handed individual, on her neck and her face. There is semen recovered from her body. She was strangled manually and with a ligature. and hair from a black individual is embedded in her sweatshirt her jeans her underwear and a sanitary pad and there are those green synthetic fibers that are also found on her body that we seen on a couple of the other victims Yeah okay So them determining his he left based off of these fingernail marks, I don't put any weight on that at all. Of course, now we're seeing consistently across at least three of the four victims. I'm not sure in Darlene's case because their body was, well, maybe they had black hairs as well with Darlene because it's possible those hairs would survive the elements, you know, in terms of on the clothing or in her underwear, wherever. Well, and remember the problem with Darlene is that she had been so badly decomposed. I'm not sure. Yeah, her clothing would be a mess too. It's just that how, you know, I just know how, you know, analysts operate and they may take a look at that pile of goo that's her clothing and go, no, we're not, we're not even going to bother looking for trace evidence off of that. Yeah. But, you know, at least consistently, it's looking like these are hairs from a black individual. You know, so that's also, you know, tying these cases somewhat together. Of course, all of the victims are growing up in black families because some of these hairs be, you know, attributed to members of the family or, you know, other hairs within their residence. but the one victim had black hair that was clutched in her hand. And that's interesting. That suggests that that's contemporaneous with her being killed. Let's see. So that was our unknown victim. And our first victim, Carol, had fought back. So she was a 13-year-old because they found hairs from a black individual recovered on her shorts and her sweater and her underwear and in her hair barat. And she had blood underneath her fingernails, which could be her own blood. But, you know, it's possible she fought back. Did she get, you know, did she cause him to have a bleeding injury? And she got some of his blood underneath her fingernails. And this guy's leaving. He's leaving semen, you know. And like I said, back in the 1970s, they couldn't do much with that. But today we could identify who this guy is. So be interesting to see where this case stands. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because Blaine Pardo, you know, the author that I have interviewed, he wrote in his book Tantamount, which is about the freeway phantom murderer. And so that's what this case is officially called, freeway phantom murderer. Blaine says that although semen samples were recovered at the Baltimore Medical Examiner's office, there's an FBI report that comes out in December of that year, 71, that says there was no semen found. So I don't know. There's nuances, especially when you have different entities looking at the evidence, you know, and how the medical examiners look at semen versus how a laboratory does is usually a different process and potentially off of different items of evidence. Typically, a medical examiner's office, let's say they do a vaginal swab. What they do is they take that wet vaginal swab and rub it on a microscope slide. It's what we call a smear. And then they will put that underneath the microscope and look for sperm. It's a very, very poor technique from a sensitivity standpoint. We frequently have smears made by, you know, whether they be sexual assault nurses or, you know, pathologists and say negative. And then in the laboratory, when we actually do a more robust method of extracting the cells from the swab, staining, you know, differentially staining these cells so the sperm actually really stand out, we often are positive for sperm, which, of course, is positive for semen, when we have previous professionals using that smear technique as saying it's negative. Now, here we have the opposite. it. And so this is where I would need to evaluate, okay, the FBI lab, what are they looking at? Are they looking at the same swab that the pathologist used to create a smear? Are they looking at a different swab? And you can have two vaginal swabs taken and one can be positive and one can be negative just because of what those swabs contacted inside the body when they were collected. So that would be part of the evaluation. And I would say that that's where today, if they haven't done this, I would be going back to the ME's office to see if they still have that smear that the pathologist said, well, what's positive for sperm? Okay. Well, that would be really interesting. And I think there's a lot of genetic material, it sounds like, in this case. Just if they keep it, you know, that's going to be the big question. Right. Okay. Now, they are able to identify this victim, and she is a 12-year-old. And her name is Nina Moshe Yates, and we call her Nino. So she's 12, and this is what's really, to me, difficult, okay? So this is her body is discovered at 8.45 p.m. She was returning home from Safeway, picking up, which is a block away, she had bought some sugar and flour and some paper plates to celebrate the birth of her half-sister. So people saw her get into a car with a blue Volkswagen with a yellow stripe. So this was an hour and 40 minutes before they found her body. So this all happened within hours of the police responding. Right. Now, this is a more typical type of case that I would generally see versus holding victims captive for a period of time. You know, so generally, you know, we know offenders that do the stranger abduction on children often will get to a location where they feel safe enough to be able to carry out what they want to carry out with that child. and they do this as quickly as possible. So the children are generally often killed within 30 minutes of being abducted. And then, of course, the offender can take some time to figure out where the body's going to be placed. So Nino's case is kind of more typical, but why the change? Yeah. And, you know, one thought is if the offender is actually taking these kids back to his residence, does he now have a roommate? Does he have a wife or a girlfriend that's inside the house at this point at the time of Nino's seeing and he can't take the victim back there? I'm kind of curious, you know, green synthetic fibers were found pretty much up to this point with all the victims. Does Nino also have the green synthetic fibers? If I look back at Nino's autopsy report, now that we know who she is, violently raped, fingernail marks, and green synthetic fibers found on her body. Okay. And so now it's what kind of fibers are these? What kind of product is it on? And, I mean, either scenario I can't eliminate since we have green synthetic fibers, you know, across the series. You know, does he live close enough by? So he gets Nino, takes her back to the residence, fibers are transferred on her body from there, and then he kills her right away and has time to dump her body. So that gives at least a, what you'd say, sort of a geographic spread in terms of how far could he have driven back to his residence and then get out to the location where her body's found. And now you have sort of a, it doesn't narrow down much, but it gives you at least he's in the general area. It's not like he's coming from out of state if the source of the fibers are back from something at his residence. Well, speaking of geographic areas, now is a good time for you to pop up your little map and look for number four, Nino Yates, in relation to one, two, and three. Yeah, it's further, definitely further east. So, of course, you know, where she was last seen and where residence is, it's close together. It is interesting. You know, we seem to have Safeway popping up in multiple cases, you know. So right now, don't know what that means. But, you know, I could speculate that in just a second. I think Nino's body is being deposited, you know, relatively close, a little bit further south than where she was last seen. where her residence was and where her body is is deposited is northeast from carol and darlenia but it is along that i-95 corridor if you will but a little off i-95 so he's now switched i would say his his hunting ground for a victim but he's consistent in terms of coming across a girl that is isolated by going to a store. Now, is he purposely choosing Safeway because that just seems to be something that works for him? Larger parking lot. That's a possibility. Does he have a connection to Safeway? Whether he's employed by Safeway, whether he's doing deliveries, truck driver delivering to Safeway? Is he security for Safeway, a loss prevention officer? And as he's at work, gets off work and is trolling for victims in the area of his employment. But the spread across these four cases now, and I'm going to go back to that map, what is starting to stand out between these first four cases is that he is not attacking in D.C. proper. Now, too few data points, But sometimes what you see, what geographic profilers will observe is what's called this smokestack. So if you're to kind of take a look straight down on a smokestack, you have like a circle. And you have cases that are all around the circle, but nothing in the middle of that circle. Well, that can be interpreted, well, that's an anchor point for the offender. That could be where he lives and he doesn't want to offend too close to his residence. It could be where he works, could be, you know, a family member, a girlfriend, whatever. You know, we don't know at this point. So as further cases come, that's going to be one of those things I'm going to be taking a look at is does the smokestack pattern continue to stand up over the next few cases? So let me give you a little bit more information about Nino Yates. So, you know, I told you that they found her spilled groceries. And it was in a wooded area near where her body was found. Remember, she had been getting into a blue Volkswagen with a yellow stripe. We've heard blue before. I think the first witness who said that, they thought that Carol had been forced into a blue car. I don't know if those are going to correlate. By two black men. By two black men, right. And we haven't heard that since. So, you know, they find the groceries. The neighborhood kids say that there was a strange man that had been exposing himself when they were walking to and from school right around this area. So I don't know if they make that connection yet. Yeah, it's so hard to say if it's the same guy or not. You know, you have this guy, he's into exhibitionism. This is where you have these nut jobs that are doing this type of thing. You know, the typical stereotypical thing with the guy in the trench coat has nothing on underneath, walks up and then opens it up. It's just it's something that the investigators have to pay pay attention to because this guy would be doing this on multiple occasions. It's somewhat of a compulsion to do. And maybe he's been contacted prior, you know, because of the exhibitionism. And, you know, this is where you look at what we call F.I. cards. You know, was he arrested? Then you can you can find out, do we have any arrests for this crime? Do we have any bookings into the jail for this crime? Or do we have an F.I. card where you have strange man in a neighborhood? You know, the frequent thing that law enforcement patrol will go out to with this, somebody doing this, it's not the trench coat type of guy. It's the guy that is sitting in his car and he's exposed in the car and draws, you know, let's say a woman's attention to him. And then he's like exposed and she sees it. Well, I have a question about that. You know, we've talked about how peeping Toms are not harmless, that oftentimes they escalate to sexual assault. It's sort of the origin of it, right? Right. Does it seem weird to you? Let's say that this is a viable suspect. Does it seem weird to you that someone who has been, it seems like, relatively well organized in what he's doing? I mean, we are now at victim number four. Nobody knows who he is. There really don't seem to be witnesses that can point to him. Who would, before killing his fourth victim, be seen in the area by multiple children exposing himself? That just seems like too high risk for what he's trying to do. What is, you know, and this is that's a perfect observation that you just made. You know, offenders that are at least, you know, reasonably got their their act together. You know, they're going to try to do things to minimize their risk. But there's also this risk-reward aspect that is going through their head. And as I mentioned, somebody that is an exhibitionist, these guys often have such a strong compulsion that the reward they get from doing that crime is something where they're willing to take on the risk, even if they're also abducting and killing kids at the same time. So it really comes down to that balance. Now, you may be dealing with what I call the troll under the bridge type of guy. He happens to have a car and, you know, seems to be reasonably with it in terms of the homicides. But he may not necessarily be your most sophisticated, intelligent offender that can really truly evaluate the risks he's taking. And those are the types of offenders that get caught versus somebody like a Joseph D'Angelo. Yeah. We had to wait for technology to improve in order to actually get him. And his name after 44 years, we never had in our case files, in our master suspect list, because he was intelligent and minimized as much as he could the risks that he took to get himself caught. Right. It seems like two totally different offenders. And like you said, there were, you know, throw a rock at this time period and you'd hit a dirty, you know, nasty guy who's doing all kinds of weird stuff in D.C. So there's so many guys that are involved with this exhibitionist. You know, it's a serious crime in a way, but it's also when you read these types of, you know, what these guys are doing. You know, we had one guy is six, five, 300 pounds watching the sex workers at night. And we had a series of unsolved homicides of sex workers at the time. Patrol finds him and he's completely nude inside his truck and he's got Vaseline smeared all over him, literally smeared all over him. These are just weird guys. Weird. I think that's an understatement. So finally, we're getting it together with the police. And of course, I know you've, since the issue is with making these connections, you've got Maryland and you've got D.C. You've got Maryland State Police. You've got the Metropolitan Police Department of D.C. And so they don't seem to be talking to each other. Now they are. So they've got two victims in one jurisdiction, two in the other. and now the FBI enters the scene. And this is where the media really, really ramps up. And this is where we get the name of our case, which is the Freeway Phantom Killer. And that is where we need to leave this episode because we have covered so much material. And unfortunately, we are not done talking about victims and things maybe for you. I think I might start giving you assignments on these two-parters to think about for next week. Good God. So don't answer this now, but I want to know, without DNA confirming, without witnesses or living survivors being able to corroborate things, how will they figure out whether or not these are truly part of a series or do we have copycats because a lot of this has been reported in the media as we go on, and this has been going on for months and months at this point. Yeah, so, okay, I've got my assignment. I will be a good student and be prepared for the next time we sit down. Very good. Okay, thank you, Paul. I'll see you next week. All right, Kate. Thank you. This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladeh. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now. Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, and on our podcast, Buried Bones, Paul Holes and I analyze historic crimes through the lens of modern forensics. And we're thrilled to announce that now you can watch us investigate the past every week because Buried Bones is on Netflix. Just search Buried Bones on your Netflix homepage and be sure to click the double thumbs up and remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show. See you on Netflix. Hi, listeners. I'm Anna Sinfield, the host of The Girlfriend Spotlight, and I've got some great interviews coming your way. 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