The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror (39 page)

The following morning, the
Gazette
reported the proceedings in a modest one-column story on page 1, surrounded by larger headlines on other events.

HABITUAL CRIMINAL ACT INVOKED

AFTER CONVICTION FOR AUTO THEFT

For the first time, Swinney’s name made its way to a front-page headline. His continued stealing of automobiles during the few months following his release from the Texas penitentiary made the “habitual” tag seem perfectly logical.

FBI agent Hallett walked out of the old courtroom feeling justice had been served, more or less. He felt Swinney had gotten off light but had been taken out of society’s circulation, the objective.

Four days after the jury verdict, Judge Vance formally sentenced Swinney to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary.

The case ended so quietly that only a few in law enforcement on either side of the state line knew of it. It was legal, supposedly with the cooperation of Swinney himself, some of his family, and his attorneys. Officers and prosecutors believed he had been put away for the remainder of his years, and thus would never kill again, as they believed he had. If for some reason he managed to leave the penitentiary alive, the murder charges could be resurrected, possibly with stronger evidence.

It was the final act of the season of terror. Youell Lee Swinney had been taken off the streets in as effective and fast a way as could be designed.

The sentence came just less than a week after Swinney marked his thirtieth birthday.

Learning of the trial results, McVey wrote Cleo, saying that the Reverend Swinney had told him Cleo had made arrangements that Youell would get parole or a suspended sentence and would not be convicted under the habitual criminal act. McVey chastised Cleo for not confiding fully; if he had, Youell would not be under a life sentence. “This thing is not over yet. I intend to break this case . . . and that I am backed up by the ‘Biggest Guy’ in the world.”

Slightly over a week later, Parson Swinney reacted with optimism. “They have done exactly the thing we hoped they would do,” he wrote Cleo. “Convicted him without Counsel.”

The manner in which the habitual criminal act was used to take Swinney out of society was strictly legal and, according to others, acceptable to Swinney as well as to his captors. Based on his previous record of early release on each of his falls, he probably expected to pull no more than ten or fifteen years. Hallett’s memory was clear that Swinney attempted to plead guilty but was advised by the judge that he could not do so under the habitual criminal act.

Was the habitual criminal act a fair law? That was an issue the prosecutors in the 1940s had not created, nor Swinney’s lawyers challenged. It existed. It was the law. It had been used with others. Whatever argument might be raised against its use, on the other side was Swinney’s record of not only two previous convictions but of a multitude. Had the law required five prior jolts, they could have been documented. Additionally he could have been tried, and probably convicted, on a number of other crimes, in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The two cases used for enhancement were representative of his criminal career at that stage. If he’d been convicted of the other crimes in which he was implicated and the sentences had been stacked, or served consecutively, he might have been assured of dying in prison.

In balancing the need for public safety against the prisoner’s civil rights, the prosecutors appear to have served justice in the understanding of the law. Swinney’s life was spared, as it might or might not have been with the filing of a murder charge, his major concern. And he was kept off the street, the guiding motivation of his prosecutors.

It was as effective a trade as could be achieved at the time. It did not “solve” the Phantom murders, but it resolved the salient concern.

Swinney remained in the county’s custody for two months before he was transported to the state penitentiary at Huntsville. Following his conviction and sentence on February 15, he gave notice of appeal. On April 15, however, he withdrew it.

It is not difficult to reason why he appealed in the first place, once the significance of a sentence dawned upon him. It is less evident why he decided to withdraw his motion. It is possible that someone in authority, such as Sheriff Presley or District Attorney Welch, reminded him that should he succeed in overturning his conviction and sentence, he might face a charge in the Spring Lake Park murders, in which case the penalty likely would go beyond a life sentence.

Peggy’s statement in Austin was like money in the bank for the prosecution. Once she divorced Swinney, she could be subpoenaed as a witness. With him now locked up for life, she might choose to do so anyway.

Three days after his request, Swinney arrived in Huntsville.

Y
ouell Lee Swinney’s mug shots as he reentered the Texas Prison System as Inmate # 108586 reflected the face of a man much aged from the one who had been processed less than three years earlier. He was still fairly good-looking with barbered and combed hair as he stared into the camera. But the boyish look was gone. The hard set of his mouth was grim. He was back in stir, beginning another chapter in his troubled life.

The data on his prison log, self-reported, provided a detailed accounting: five feet eleven inches tall, weight 154 pounds, with blue eyes, brown hair, and ruddy complexion. He wore size nine shoes.

The clerk recorded other features at check-in. A tattoo on his lower left arm included a heart with the word revenge spelled out. He used tobacco and considered himself “temperate” in his habits. He classified himself as a Baptist.

He told the processing clerk he’d attended school twelve years and had finished the twelfth grade. He could read and write, as he claimed, but he hadn’t gone nearly so far in school. The sixth grade was closer to the
truth. He probably hoped to get an inside office job by exaggerating his education.

There were other inaccuracies. He claimed he’d been born in Texas, although his birthplace was Arkadelphia, Arkansas. His mother and father, he said, were born in Texas; actually she was born in Georgia, the father in Arkansas.

As for occupation, he first gave
electrician
as his answer. That was marked out;
bookkeeper
replaced it. (While in Arkansas custody he no doubt had focused frequently on electrical operations.) He knew he ran a better chance of an inside job as a bookkeeper. As for his residence, he first gave San Angelo, Texas; it was marked over, substituting Texarkana, Texas. On the line for Ex-Service status,
Marines
was written but then marked through and left blank. Swinney was not a native of Texas, his mother and father were not born in Texas. He was not an electrician (nor a bookkeeper), his residence was not San Angelo, and he was never in the Marines or any other branch of the armed services. In a penal population where most inmates were not high school graduates, some of the false answers might be attributed to seeking better treatment as an electrician or bookkeeper with a high school education and as a World War II veteran. Other inaccuracies—if caused by him rather than the clerk—seemed to serve no purpose. His responses seemed to be aimed at avoiding hard labor on the prison farm. He knew how prisons operated.

Swinney’d never had to complete a sentence, for one reason or another. Why would this fall be any different? He hadn’t been charged with murder, his greatest fear. Men with a murder rap sometimes got out in as little as ten or fifteen, even seven or eight, years. A life sentence for a stolen car? Unlikely! Swinney could convince himself that the more time passed, the farther he would be from having to stand trial for any killings, enabling him to gain release from a life sentence for a mere stolen car. He could do six or seven years, a good exchange.

Three entries reflected a bleaker future.

Offense:
Theft and prior conviction
.

Terms of Imprisonment:
Life

Expiration of Sentence:
Death

Outside, the world was in flux. A Cold War had emerged on the heels of the deadliest war in history. The Allies and the Soviet Union wrangled over arms control. Communists assumed power in Poland, with Hungary months behind. President Harry Truman dispatched aid to Turkey and Greece to thwart Soviet ambitions and contain Communism.

Great Britain endured turmoil. Her colonies in India, Pakistan, and Nigeria began breaking away. Beset by Middle Eastern strife, Britain signaled readiness to transfer her Palestinian woes to the fledgling United Nations, leading to the founding of Israel.

In the United States, President Truman faced a recalcitrant Congress. As if that was not enough, his aged mother broke her hip in a fall at home. In sports, Tony Zale held on to his middleweight boxing title, and Jackie Robinson broke the major league baseball color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a hint of things to come, Edwin Land demonstrated his “instant camera,” the Polaroid. Reports of unidentified flying objects (UFO) made the news from Washington state to Roswell, New Mexico. In mid-January, an unsolved brutal murder claimed the life of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, in Los Angeles. In early April, tornadoes swept viciously over Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, killing 181 and injuring 970.

Texarkana’s crime and violence hardly slowed: six men indicted for attacking two policemen; Johnny Thompson, a local police character, in custody for automobile theft as part of a larger ring; a downtown fire ravaged Bryce’s Cafeteria, Four States Business College, and the Mayflower Cafe; and a teenager, just out of reform school and in a stolen car, wounded by an officer’s shotgun blast.

A new campaign to drive the “undesirable elements” out of town made headlines but no headway.

Swinney, untouched by the swirl of events outside, re-entered the prison population with a central idea in mind: to get out. His first assignment reinforced the intention. His keepers dispatched him to hard farm labor. After he thought it over, he decided someone from Bowie County was responsible. He settled on the sheriff, Bill Presley, as the culprit. But for the sheriff, Swinney concluded, he’d have an easier life. In early 1948, he wrote to Elmer Lincoln, the Texarkana criminal defense lawyer his
father had written but never followed up on. In his letter, Swinney accused Sheriff Presley of giving him a negative report that consigned him to hard labor. He then brought up what he characterized as his unfair conviction. He hoped Lincoln would help him gain a better role in prison as well as find a way to liberate him.

Lincoln by return mail replied in a sympathetic tone, explaining why he couldn’t help him. Lincoln by then was a member of the Texas Prison Board and thus unable to ask officials to do anything for a person he knew.

Lincoln recalled that the elder Swinney had made contact with him regarding Youell’s case but that he’d heard nothing further from him. At the time, Lincoln wrote, he could have prevented Youell’s conviction as a habitual criminal, but by the time he was writing the letter it was too late, as well as his being in no position to help.

Lincoln added: “If Mr. Presley gave you a bad report your record will probably disclose that. However, I am sure you understand that repeaters are almost invariably sent to Darrington or Retrieve Farm and it is not necessary for anybody to give a bad report on a man to get him sent there, if he has been in prison before.”

As for the conviction, Lincoln continued, Swinney would need to have a lawyer explore the matter.

Whether Lincoln might have prevented Swinney’s conviction as a habitual offender, as he wrote, is problematical. His claim was never tested. He evidently did not have access to the evidence that officers had compiled. Whether he might have, indeed, succeeded in freeing Swinney or reducing the sentence, it also would have tested whether a new series of murders would have followed.

On April 14, 1947, exactly one year to the day after Betty Jo Booker died, Gloria Donaldson, a sixteen-year-old Texas High School student, committed suicide with a shotgun in the bathroom of her home on West Eighteenth Street. She left a rambling note suggesting knowledge of the circumstances of Betty Jo’s death. The girl’s note was discounted as having any connection with the case, beyond her admiration of Betty Jo and unresolved guilt over her death. The suicide inspired rumors that swept the city, some of them persisting for decades. The
girl could not have had knowledge of the facts of the murders, despite her contentions. It added another bizarre dimension to the tragedies of the previous spring.

Nor was Miss Donaldson’s tragic act the only reminder of the murders. More than a year later, another young student’s suicide revived the case after he left self-incriminating notes. In November, 1948, H. B. “Doodle” Tennison, the eighteen-year-old son of a prominent Texarkana family, swallowed rat poison at Fayetteville where he attended the University of Arkansas. His death made headlines over the nation, none outdoing the blazing front-page banner of the
New Orleans Item
. In his note, he apparently confessed to the murders, and so the papers said that:

Despite their skepticism, Texarkana lawmen drove to Fayetteville to investigate, finding nothing to change their minds. His “confession” didn’t fit the facts, to begin with. Young Tennison was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, the resting place of Paul Martin and Virgil Starks. Family friend J. Q. Mahaffey was a pallbearer. His suicide-note confession was attributed to the mental illness and depression that caused him to justify the taking of his own young life.

Over the years similar groundless, but less tragic, confessions abounded. Max Tackett reported than nine men had personally told him they committed the crimes; none of their accounts meshed with facts that had not been made public.

Despite being behind bars for life as an habitual criminal, Swinney was not scot-free of a murder charge. This became evident in 1948 when he was returned to Bowie County on a bench warrant. The move coincided with a life change for Swinney’s wife, whose statements had focused on him.