The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (42 page)

Youell Swinney died of natural causes in 1993 and no one will ever know if he was the Phantom. Texas Rangers Captain “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas did not think so. He continued to follow up leads and track down suspects well in to the 1950s. To this day, the case remains unsolved.

It is not even clear if the killings stopped after Swinney was jailed. Certainly there were no more Phantom murders in Texarkana, but the killer may simply have moved on. In October 1946, while Swinney was in jail awaiting trial, a murder took place a thousand miles away in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that had the MO of the Phantom. Lawrence O. Hogan from Miami Beach and his young girlfriend Elaine Eldridge from Massachusetts were parked in a secluded spot near the ocean when they were shot dead. Again the murder weapon was a .32 calibre pistol, though it seems to have been a foreign make, not a Colt. There were no fingerprints, no clues and the killer simply vanished like a phantom. The killer is still at large.

The Toledo Clubber

The “Toledo Clubber”, aka the “Toledo Slugger”, terrorized the Ohio city in 1925 and 1926. In 12 attacks, at least five died

Curiously, the Clubber seems to have started out as an arsonist. This is not as unusual as it may seem, as Henry Lee Lucas’s sidekick Otis Toole, as well as being a sex killer and cannibal, was also a pyromaniac who reached orgasm at the sight of a burning building.

In 1925, several timber yards in Toledo were torched within a few hours. When guards were posted at other yards to protect them, the arsonist started bombing tenements and private homes. Then, when explosives wrecked the mailbox of a Catholic priest, the FBI were called in.

The bombings suddenly ended, but then a series of attacks on women began. Using a heavy object, the attacker would hit his victims from behind. Then, when they were insensible, he continued to smash their faces in. Sensing the growing panic in the city, the newspapers quickly concluded that the perpetrator must be the same fiend who had set fire to lumber yards and blown up homes.

The first victim was Mrs Frank Hall. She had been sitting outside her home on 10 November 1925 when she was attacked. She was one of the lucky ones who survived. Next Emma Hatfield encountered the Clubber when she was walking down a dark street. Lydia Baumgartner fell victim the same way. Sadly, both would later die from their injuries. Beforehand they both managed to give a report to the police but they were of little help. There followed a series of brutal rapes, which invariably ended with the victim being clubbed unconscious. Three or four women died and at least five others were grievously wounded.

With seven attacks in seven days, the people of Toledo were terrified. The American Legion put a thousand men on the streets and escorts were provided to women who were now afraid to walk alone at night.

A total of $12,000 was raised as a reward for information leading to the maniac’s capture. Hundreds of informants called in, but none of their tips ended in an arrest or even the identification of a serious suspect. This may not have been helped by the city authorities, who put out a profile of the Clubber that claimed he was a man of super-human strength, beastlike in appearance with fiery eyes. Naturally, no one of this description was ever found.

Suddenly, the attacks stopped. But then they began again in the autumn of 1926, with two more slayings in a single day. In the early hours of 26 October, 26-year-old schoolteacher Lily Croy was raped and bludgeoned to death within sight of her classroom. That afternoon 47-year-old Mary Allen was found dead in her home. At first the police said that she died from gunshot wounds. Later they admitted that Lily Croy and Mary Allen had been done to death with the same blunt instrument. This all too clearly recalled the Clubber.

A bigger reward was raised and the Toledo police swept the streets of “odd-balls” and anyone who could be locked up in a mental institution. While there were no more attacks on women, on 23 November 1926 there were more arson attacks. At one single timber yard, $200,000-worth of damage was caused. A nearby ice company suffered another $10,000 in damages. The fire went on to engulf two other businesses, an apartment building, a railroad freight car and the city street department’s stable.

Then the crime-wave ceased once more, leaving the police no closer to the perpetrator. They had never found or even identified him. Indeed, to this day, it remains unclear whether the rapist and killer was the same man as the arsonist and bomber.

The Twin Cities’ Killer

Between 1986 and 1994 the corpses of up to 34 women littered the streets of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Most of them were prostitutes in their twenties and thirties. Several were mutilated, dismembered and sometimes even decapitated. No one has been arrested or charged.

The police were not keen to ascribe the murders to one serial killer, with the attendant media hoo-ha. But if it is not the work of one serial killer then two or more are at large, or there are a number of men who have all killed just once. It is hard to say which is worse.

Virginia’s Colonial Parkway Killer

Between 1986 and 1989, a serial killer stalked the Colonial Parkway, a scenic route that runs from Jamestown, through Williamsburg to Yorktown. The perpetrator specialized in abducting couples.

The first two victims were 27-year-old Cathleen Marian Thomas and 21-year-old Rebecca Ann Dowski, a lesbian couple who used to like to park at a secluded spot on the Parkway to make love in privacy. Cathleen Thomas was from Lowell, Massachusetts and was one of the 100 women of the class of 1981 at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis – the first co-educational graduating class at any federal military academy. She then became a stockbroker in Norfolk, Virginia. Her lover, Rebecca Ann Dowski, was from Poughkeepsie, New York. She worked as a senior business management major at the College of William and Mary.

On 12 October 1986, a jogger found their car, a Honda Civic, beside the York River, seven miles east of Williamsburg. The vehicle had been pushed down an embankment near an area of the Parkway popular with gay couples. The women’s bodies were discovered in the back seat of the car. A post mortem found rope burns on their wrists and necks, signs of strangulation and their throats had been slashed. Their purses and money were found inside the car, and there was no sign of a struggle. Both women were found fully clothed and there was no indication of sexual assault. Their bodies had been doused with a flammable liquid, and several matches were found. Detectives believe that the killer had tried to set the vehicle on fire. Failing, the culprit then pushed the car over the embankment, hoping it would career off the bluff into the York River.

Twenty-year-old David Lee Knobling of Hampton, Virginia and 14-year-old Robin M. Edwards of Newport News were last seen alive on Saturday, 19 September 1987. They had met at an arcade. The two of them left to cruise York County in Knobling’s black Ford pick-up truck with David’s brother and another friend. The three boys dropped Ms Edwards home before 11 p.m. and went back to the Knoblings’ home. But David Knobling left the house again soon afterward. It seems he must have gone back to pick up Ms Edwards.

The two were not reported missing until Monday morning because it was not unusual for David Knobling to spend a night or two away from home. Robin Edwards’ parents thought she might have run away, so they were waiting for the social services office in Newport News to open on the morning of the 21st to report their daughter’s disappearance.

David Knobling’s pickup was found on 21 September near the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge at the foot of the James River Bridge. There were no signs of a struggle. The keys were in the ignition, the radio was on and Knobling’s wallet was on the dashboard. The driver’s door was open and the driver’s side window was wound halfway down.

“It was raining out that night,” said David’s mother Kathy Knobling. “So why would David have had the window down, unless someone with a badge approached him and asked for ID?”

Two pairs of underwear and Robin Edwards’ shoes were found in the vehicle.

A few days later, their two partially clothed bodies washed ashore almost two miles downriver on the south bank of the James River in Isle of Wight County, near Smithfield, Virginia. Robin Edwards’ bra was around her neck under her blouse and the belt on her jeans were undone. It is not known whether he had been molested by the killer or disturbed in her lovemaking with David Knobling. Knobling still had 13 quarters in the pockets of his jeans. The police believe that the two were marched more than 1½ miles through the woods and down a wooden pier, where they were killed and dumped in the river.

Although Smithfield was on the other side of the James River from the Colonial Parkway, the murder of David Knobling and Robin Edwards was linked to that of Cathleen Thomas and Ann Dowski because the Ragged Island Wildlife Refuge was a well known gay cruising area – it became so popular in the early 1990s that it was closed to the public.

On 9 April 1988, Richard Keith Call (known as Keith) from Gloucester County, Virginia and 18-year-old Cassandra Lee Hailey were reported missing. They were students at Christopher Newport College in Newport News and had been out on their first date together.

At about 9 a.m. the next day, Call’s 1982 red Toyota Celica was found abandoned on the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia by a ranger. The driver’s door was open. The keys were in the ignition and the front seat was folded forward. Keith’s watch was on the dashboard and Cassandra’s purse was on the passenger seat. All their clothes, including their underwear was on the back seat.

Keith’s brother, Chris, had been driving along the Parkway at about 4.30 a.m. when he noticed a parked car with a door or trunk open. But he was not certain if the car he saw was his brother’s. An employee at the Eastern State Hospital also saw a car with an open driver’s door at about 5.30 a.m. Neither body has ever been found, but both are presumed dead as their disappearance fitted a chilling pattern.

On the morning of 5 September 1989, 18-year-old Annamaria Phelps left her Virginia Beach home with 21-year-old Daniel Lauer, the brother of her fiancé Clinton, both residents of Amelia County. They were last seen alive between noon and 1 p.m. at the rest stop for westbound Interstate 64 traffic in New Kent County. At 5.30 p.m., Daniel Lauer’s gold 1973 Chevrolet Nova was found at the rest area between Williamsburg and Richmond. The keys were in the ignition and the gas tank was three-quarters full. Annamaria Phelps’ purse was in the car, along with clothes that belonged to Daniel Lauer. There were no obvious signs of a struggle inside the car.

The following month, their remains were found by a hunter, covered with a blanket, in the woods less than a mile away. The state medical examiner determined that Annamaria Phelps had been stabbed to death. Phelps, too, had suffered stab wounds but, in his case, cause of death had not been officially determined. However, both were clearly the victims of homicide.

The FBI said that the crimes were related, but no one has ever been identified as the Colonial Park Killer. Investigators have speculated that the killer might be a law enforcement officer, possibly a policeman or a security guard, who had caught the couples in a compromising position in their cars and used the authority of their uniform to get them to get out without putting up a fight. Another theory is that the suspect is a rogue CIA agent from their major training facility known as “the Farm” at Camp Peary in York County.

Washington, D.C.’s Petworth Prostitute Killer

In 1998, the police in Washington, D.C. arrested a suspect in the deaths of two of six women whose bodies were found in the city’s Petworth neighbourhood over a 13-month period. Darryl D. Turner, aged 34, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of 39-year-old Jacqueline Teresa Birch and 34-year-old Dana Hill. Both women were known to have worked as prostitutes.

Jacqueline Birch’s body was found on 18 November 1997 inside a building about three miles north of the Capitol Building, next door to where Turner lived. Dana Hill lived in the same block as Turner. Her body was found on 1 December 1997 behind an abandoned fast food restaurant about 1½ miles from the Capitol. Both women died from manual strangulation.

Five women who lived in the neighbourhood or visited frequently had turned up dead since November 1996. Three of them were found inside a pair of gutted buildings. The torso of a sixth woman who was thought to have frequented the neighbourhood was found in an alley nearby.

The Princeton Place Task Force that arrested Turner was put together in November 1997, after the community began weekly meetings and
The Washington Post
speculated that a serial killer was at work. The task force included agents from the FBI and the DEA.

On 5 January 2001, Turner was charged with a third murder – that of 32-year-old Toni Ann Burdine. A known drug-user and prostitute, she was found in an open field in the north-eastern section of the city where Turner lived, on 4 May 1995. After Turner’s arrest, the police had reopened the Burdine case and the authorities were able to match DNA in the semen taken from her body to Turner’s. Turner pleaded not guilty to all three murders.

But killings of other women in the neighbourhood who worked as prostitutes remain unsolved. The cases still open are those of 28-year-old Lateashia Blocker, whose body was found in 1995 in the same empty house as Jacqueline Birch was later discovered; 42-year-old Emile Dennis, whose body was found in a crawl space beneath the townhouse where Turner lived with his wife in December 1997; 41-year-old Jessica Cole, whose mutilated remains were discovered in October 1996; and Priscilla Mosley, aged 49.

As well as the DNA match to the semen found on Toni Burdine’s body, Turner’s former girlfriend provided damning testimony. In 1997, Turner was charged with choking and raping her. She testified that Turner told her that he preferred violent sex, including strangulation, because he had “trouble achieving sexual enjoyment any other way”. And, during the attack, Turner said he was “tired of paying you [women] for sex”.