The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (11 page)

Added to this, Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore, though they had both lived in Texarkana, were not widely known because they had moved there from Cass County. Nor were they as young as Paul Martin
and Betty Jo Booker, who had gone to school in the city and had a broad range of friends locally.

That bright and sunny Palm Sunday morning, as young Jimmy Morriss arrived at First Methodist Church, Texas, teenager Ross Perot, who decades later would make his name internationally known, came up to him. Perot told him there’d been a murder of a boy at Spring Lake Park. Betty Jo Booker may also have been a victim. Her escort had been found dead. Officers were looking for her or her body. Perot didn’t yet know that Morriss was to have picked up Betty Jo the night before, had her plans not changed.

Deep shock was the only way to describe Morriss’s reaction. He vaguely remembered Martin’s name from his brief telephone conversation with Betty Jo the night before.

After church, he drove his parents home and then rushed in the family’s 1937 Chevrolet to see the Browns. He saw a line of cars parked on Anthony Drive. In his haste to go inside, he put the gear in reverse, opened the door to get out before he realized he hadn’t turned off the engine. The car jerked backward before he could remedy the error. Then he went inside and joined the mournful crowd.

Jerry Atkins and Sonny Atchley experienced the worst day of their young lives. They talked with Sophie Anne White and Betty Ann Roberts, who had both been in the band the night before. They soon realized that the Rhythmaires were the last to have seen Betty Jo alive. They needed to tell officers whatever they might know or could remember from the night before.

The radio and word of mouth spread the news that the Texas Rangers were descending upon Texarkana in force. They would want to talk to anybody who knew the victims. The musicians hadn’t heard anything on the radio about Betty Jo’s saxophone. That led to a guess that it hadn’t been found in Martin’s car.

About nine o’clock Sunday night the teenagers went to the sheriff’s office. Captain M. T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas had arrived that afternoon from Dallas to lead the Rangers’ investigation. The four musicians spent considerable time talking to, and answering questions from, Sheriff Presley and Captain Gonzaullas. Right off, they mentioned the saxophone. It hadn’t been found in Martin’s automobile, making it an important key to the mystery. They described every detail they could recall about the night
before and the dispersal of the musicians. Had anything unusual happened at the dance? Did anybody among the customers do anything unusual or suspicious? Did anyone seem to direct his attention especially toward Miss Booker or the other girls? Had anyone followed her to the car? Had anyone loitered near Paul and Betty Jo outside the building? The answers were consistently
No
or that they didn’t know. The gap between the couple’s leaving the VFW and discovery of their bodies remained a mystery.

The
Gazette
captured the scene in a front-page photograph of Atkins, Betty Ann Roberts, and Sophie Anne White talking to the officers. Gonzaullas, wearing the traditional ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots adorning his crossed legs, sits in profile, dominating the scene, while Presley, in suit and tie with a felt business-style fedora, sits listening in the background. Every face in the picture is grimly serious.

There was no thought of school the next day. Atkins went to the Beasley Music store, where Betty Jo had bought the instrument, and acquired the make and serial number of the saxophone, which was circulated to music stores and pawnshops over several states. By then Atkins had learned that Ernest Holcomb had gone early Sunday morning to Vivian, Louisiana, with his parents to visit his married sister. They hadn’t returned until late Sunday night. The Holcomb family learned of the trouble soon after returning to Texarkana, when a Texas Ranger rapped on their door. Holcomb remembered seeing Betty Jo push her saxophone behind the seat of Martin’s coupe. Betty Jo had already told him she wouldn’t be leaving with him, because Paul Martin was picking her up. He’d not thought to tell Atkins about her change in plans.

On Monday, Atkins went to see Betty Jo’s mother and stepfather. Weeks of anguish lay ahead.

T
ension hung heavily over the town. Four young people had been murdered, almost at random, over a three-week period. Where might the killer strike next?

The death certificates were less revealing than the newspaper reports: “Murdered—Shot to death.” The difference in the new case was that the death scenes were not at a single site. Inez Martin, Paul’s mother, signed his certificate; Clark Brown, Betty Jo’s stepfather, signed hers.

Although results of a medical examination were not made public, it was assumed by many that Miss Booker had been raped before her death. Outwardly, however, there was no concrete proof, although it could not be completely dismissed. She had been fully clothed, as well as wearing her coat on that cool night, indicating she had not been undressed. Sheriff Presley emphasized that neither body had been abused. Considering the almost haphazard manner in which the two bodies had been left, apparently just as they had fallen, it seemed unlikely that the killer would have raped the girl, then had her put her clothes back on before shooting her.
However, one detail in the state’s file at Austin, never made public, noted that her vagina displayed bruising. No mention was made of semen or rape, and the bruise could have been caused by a handgrip, or an object such as a pistol barrel, as was done with the female beating victim, or other means. No one but the two earlier victims, however, had connected the beating incident to the murders. There was another note in the same file, however, that indicated she had had her coat off—outside—at some point: a leaf was found between her coat and her blouse.

On the other hand, and more telling, FBI lab results a week later, on April 20, revealed that a swab test of the girl’s vaginal passage was positive for male seminal secretion. No foreign hairs were present among her pubic hairs, though they did contain semen. A saline solution wash of the boy’s penis ruled out the possibility of intercourse between the young couple, thus leading to the conclusion that her killer had raped her. The evidence was as precise as the science could make it at the time and definite enough to assign blame to an unknown man. In the absence of today’s DNA studies, results were unable to tie the event to a specific man.

One phrase alluded to the previous double murders: “Not definitely known if victim Moore had been raped.” No data had been presented that she had been raped, which meshed with evidence cited earlier that she had not been “criminally assaulted,” as a physician had stated, and that she was wearing a sanitary pad, which may have saved her from that crime if the killer had had rape in mind.

In the same April 20 dispatch, the FBI confirmed that the same firearm—a .32 automatic—had killed all four victims. But, also, three latent fingerprints could not be explained. One found on the steering wheel, while not necessarily that of the killer, was not the owner’s print or that of either victim.

No publicity was being released about the bullets and cartridges or the unexplained latent prints—nor that the girl had been raped.

The report signed off with the most disturbing part:
No definite suspect known
.

Despite the lab evidence, a reflective analysis would tend to conclude that the killer was not a conventional rapist who more likely would have sought a lone vulnerable female, although attacks, followed by rape, on
couples were not rare. He had, however, eliminated the male first in both cases, which left a lone vulnerable female in his grasp. Betty Jo Booker’s killer also had taken care that her body was normally clothed and left in a condition unlike that of many rape-murder victims. The body was not hidden, beyond being left in the woods, and was not desecrated or mutilated. The single bruise appeared to be incidental. In addition, unlike the first double murders, the killer had faced Betty Jo Booker when he shot her, rather than in the back of the head. Although the results were the same in all four deaths, the Spring Lake Park killer had modified his tactics in these small, but possibly important, ways. Why? What was going on?

By Sunday night, six Texas Rangers were on the scene, all under the direction of a seventh, Captain M. T. Gonzaullas. The Department of Public Safety dispatched an additional contingent of four technical experts, along with a technical laboratory, from Austin.

The city grew tense. Hundreds of cars jammed the highway and roads near the park. Rumors snowballed, some wild and without any basis in fact. The girl’s body had been abused in unimaginable ways, according to one. The city embraced panic as never before.

Immediately, officers began rounding up anyone who might have been involved, whether transients walking the streets or the objects of tips. Telephone calls poured in. Officers within a hundred-mile radius followed up on all reports, whoever the suspect, whether male or female, white or black, of any age, wherever they might be found. Alibis were checked. Officers toiled through the night.

Residents in the area of the shootings were systematically questioned. Tom Moores, the farmer living near where Betty Jo’s body was found, told officers what he had heard at five-thirty that morning. The sound seemed to come from the direction of Morris Lane, he said. This would tend to tie Betty Jo’s death to that time. However, Mrs. L. L. Swint, who lived only about two hundred yards from where the body was found, had heard nothing. She hadn’t known anything had happened until the hearse passed to collect the body.

Months later, in November, a former resident who’d moved to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, forty-five-year-old Ernest Browning, told of seeing an
old-model automobile coming out of the lane around six in the morning. He’d lived at the intersection of a side road and Summerhill Road. He’d heard shots, followed by a car starting. He saw an old-model car drive to Summerhill Road for about a hundred yards, then turn south toward Newtown, a black section of Texarkana. He’d wondered what was going on. It was not quite light enough to tease out the license-plate numbers. He wasn’t sure he could identify the driver. The report seemed to tie in with the time and the place. He was described as “the only living witness found to date.” Browning saw the car’s driver only momentarily early that morning as the man drove out of the lane and passed Browning’s residence. The killer had come very close to being identified or his license tag noted, yet had managed to escape again.

When the news traveled to the 3100 block of Anthony Drive, Betty Jo’s mother and stepfather were hardly the only ones shocked. The neighbors knew each other and felt closely linked. Floyd Edwards, a teacher at Texas High, and his wife lived in the same block. Directly across the street from the Browns’ home, a special agent of the FBI, lived—Horace S. “Buzz” Hallett. Hallett and his partner Dewey Presley (no relation to Sheriff Presley) had already been deep in the investigation of the Griffin-Moore case. Now Hallett had an added, deeply personal motivation for finding the culprit and seeking justice for the little teenager who lived across the street.

On the following morning, a bold eight-column headline in the
Texarkana Gazette
heralded the tragedy.

The two-column deck head identified the victims in three lines, followed by an assessment of the emotional state of the community:

BETTY JO BOOKER, PAUL MARTIN KILLED IN DOUBLE SLAYING
TENSION GRIPS CITY AS INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED TO SOLVE
SECOND TWIN MURDERS

Large photographs of the teenaged victims accompanied the account. The one of Martin taken four years before, when he was twelve, depicted him
boyishly as much younger than his sixteen, almost seventeen, years. In the photo, he is wearing a suit and tie. Characteristically, he is smiling. Betty Jo, in a picture not quite typical of her face and appearing older than her fifteen years, is also smiling. It was a photo she had given her friends in the Delta Beta Sigma sorority. Within a short time, she was to have had her portrait done by local master photographer Nathan Guier when he returned from a conference in New York.

Unlike the funerals of Polly Moore and Richard Griffin, which had been held in neighboring Cass County, the new funerals became citywide events. Hundreds attended—relatives, friends, and others, including the curious and the morbid.

The funerals were held at different times on Tuesday at the Beech Street Baptist Church on the Arkansas side, a church both victims had attended. Martin’s services were in the morning, at ten; Betty Jo’s, at two in the afternoon. Pelting rain fell throughout the morning service; Martin’s mother, heavily veiled, leaned on the arms of her surviving sons as she descended the steps of the church. Martin was buried alongside his father Ruben S. Martin, Sr. and the space that eventually would hold his mother, in Hillcrest Cemetery, just west of the city on the Texas side.

Texas Senior High classes were dismissed at noon for Betty Jo’s funeral. The Texas High School choral group sang hymns. Berta Sue Phillips, who had been a classmate of the dead girl, sang a solo. As a long line of teenagers filed by the open casket, it was more than Bessie Brown could stand. She broke down, sobbing. Sightseers trickled in. Watching the mourners file by the casket, Sue Phillips saw a middle-aged woman in a rough homemade dress, who she couldn’t believe was related to or knew the dead girl. The woman held a child of three or four by the hand. As they reached the casket, the woman picked up the small child and held her up, for a long moment, so that she could view the corpse, then filed on past. Sue Phillips was horrified. The scene left an indelible, distinctly unpleasant, impression. Betty Jo was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, on State Line in Arkansas, alongside her father and brother, Billy Boy. She was almost Billy Boy’s age at death. The three graves bore mute testimony to the multiple tragedies
that had visited the family. Her pallbearers included members of the Rhythmaires band—Atkins, Atchley, and Haskell Walker—as well as Jimmy Morriss and others.