Freeway Phantom - Congress Heights

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

In early July of 1971, multiple drivers reported seeing a dead body just off a freeway in D.C. Only weeks later was the cadaver recovered. Police eventually discovered it was the body of 16-year-old Darlenia Johnson, who had gone missing weeks earlier. The killer had struck again...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a podcast that takes you inside undercover investigations. In the second season, we've got an alphabet soup with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say, can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia? No, no, no. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm's deal. Alphabet Boys, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm deal. Alpha Bet Boys.

On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events.

Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Freeway Phantom is available each week on Wednesdays. To hear each episode add free and one week early, check out TenderfootPlus at TenderfootPlus.com. You'll listen to Freeway Phantom, a production of I Heart Radio, Tinderfoot TV, and Black Bar Mitzvah. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals

participating in the podcast, and do not represent those of I Heart Media, Tinderfoot TV, Black Bar Mitzvah, or their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Prior to these killings start happening, three-way friend, you didn't hear a lot of killings, a black kid's per se in the district of Columbia, not like that, that one behind, of a behind, the other unresolved, you didn't hear that. So the community was in shock and it put them on caution.

People were scared. I mean, parents were scared, children were scared, they wanted to know what more police could do, what were they doing. All that conversation was coming up. People were keeping an eye out on things, anything that may have seen unusual. People were more visual, I think, doing that time because it was getting close to home right in the community, close, especially over here.

I'm Derek Davis, I'm calling or Davis-Bobber service, been here 53 years, right here in the same location. I was actually in high school myself. In 1972, I was in 11th grade. So it was close in that regard because the girl that went blue was in the 11th grade too. The girl named Denise, even though I didn't personally know her, a lot of these kids, you know, they came

out and get the hair cut at the shop. We're talking about it and how they were, you know, depressed or saddened about what had happened to her. And then a lot of the customers had talked about it in terms of, you know, the crime going on in the city and how they couldn't test this person. So it was a sad day for DC. I do know that. But you don't really want to know what somebody would tell me the other day.

What did they say? Lord, I'm mercy. Woo! They would give me some deep stuff about this phantom stuff, where if some people that was close to that person's family may have been tied up into that, and possibility, it could have been a police officer involved. I said, do you want to go and wreck it with that? I don't know how true that is,

but the way she was laying that out said, you need to come on camera and say what you got to say, but they won't talk. They're not going to tell the police. They're not going to tell the camera, the media, they're not going to do it. The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases. This child was laying on the side of the road. I wouldn't go, no way. I would come out help.

Those first five murders should have been a huge warning bell for the police. We just want to know what happened. This person must have saw that they were thinking that maybe it's just one person. He says, oh, they need to know. This is me. I thought they'd take with Ketchum. I thought it was just a matter of time. I'm Celeste Headley, and this is Freeway Phantom.

On the last episode, we covered the background of the freeway phantom murders. Six victims, all young black girls, all of them, snatched off the streets of Washington, DC, between April 1971 and September 1972. Their bodies were all dumped by the side of the freeway. And we know that all six murders were committed by the same person. And never solved. The first victim was 13-year-old Carol Spinks, who went missing on April 25, 1971. In episode 1, we heard from Carol's sisters, Carolyn and Evander, as they described the horror

of losing their sister. Today we'll dig into what happened after Carol was found, or at the least what we know from the official investigation. As you heard last episode, we were able to obtain the official police report. Here's what it said about Carol's known whereabouts leading up to the murder. Sunday, April 25, 1971, at around 7 p.m., Carol Denise Spinks, Female, black, 13 years of age, was sent to the 7-Eleven store located on Wheeler Road and Southern Avenue. She was last seen in the vicinity of Wheeler and Southern Avenue by her mother, at which

time she was reprimanded for being out of the house. Her older sister had sent her to the store. Later the same day, she was reported missing by her mother to the 6th District Police. It wouldn't be until almost a week later that Carol Spinks' body was found. Here's another excerpt from the police report. On Saturday, May 1, 1971, Carol Denise Spinks was found in the grass area of the northbound lane of Route 295 near Soutland Parkway by children playing. The children hailed a traffic division officer who was traveling north on Route 295.

Now known as Interstate 295 or the Anacostia Freeway, the road was a major thoroughfare which cut right through the city. As we heard, the police report says some children playing near the highway spotted the body, and then one of them either called or flagged down a police officer. Here's how the report describes Carol's body at the scene. Tenishu's missing, cold to the touch,

rigor evident in the right knee and left arm, dried blood around the nose and mouth, right arm across the chest and left bent under the torso, grass embedded in left leg and thigh, crushed cardboard milk carton pressed against the area of the right eye, laceration to lower lip, several marks on body throat knees and arms Aside from her missing shoes Carol was fully clothed in one hand written note by a police officer It was said that her second and third snap on pants buttons were unfastened Preliminary testing showed Carol had blood under her fingernails But the amount was too small for any conclusive testing or grouping.

No semen was found anywhere on her body. However, the police did find Negroid hairs, unlike her own, on her shorts, sweater, panties, and hair barrette. And also, on her sweater and underwear, investigators found some mysterious synthetic green fibers. She did have a ligature mark on her. Some small crescent shaped marks on CyberNec that indicated could have been somebody was strangling her. Her nose was bloody, her lower lip was split open,

and she had been satomized. That's writer Blaine Pardo, who investigated and co-wrote a book on the Freeway Phantom murders. What is really interesting about Carol Spinks that I think is the creepiest factor of hers, despite the gruesiveness of how she died, was that she had been a kept alive for at least three days. The Korean authorities, you know, she had only been dead for two days. And they actually found that her murderer had fed her and they had given her a citrus fruit during that period.

So whoever the killer was, it wasn't just a matter of kidnapping the girl, taking her to his place where he was going to do what he was going to do, and dumping the body. He kept her for several days as a prisoner. It tells you a lot about the killer because it tells you you had to have a place where you could do that. He had to have the means of doing it. She didn't have any marks where it looked like she was tied up, so how

did he keep her? It really gets you start thinking a little bit about the environment that she had to have or the killer had to have in order to keep her as a hostage. Police also interviewed a number of potential witnesses, including 17 year old Vanessa Alice Copeland, who was near the 7-Eleven the day Carol went missing. Copeland said that between 3.30 and 4 p.m., she saw a man exposing himself in a burned out building by the store.

She also saw Carol walking behind her towards the Maryland state line, but when she looked back a minute later, Carol was gone. Another witness, 12-year-old Cecilia Edith Diggs, says she saw Carol in the 7-Eleven parking lot that day between 6.30 and 7pm with a girl named Deborah Harrison. Diggs was riding passenger in a car going north on Wheeler Road. While sitting at the traffic light on Wheeler and Mississippi, she claims to have seen two men, both black, jump out of a car to grab Carol and put her in the car.

Then the car went south on Wheeler. The police then interviewed Deborah Harrison, the 17-year-old reportedly with Carol at the 7-Eleven. Harrison said that she walked with Carol to the store, but left without her. When she was leaving the store, she looked back and noticed that Carol was walking towards a burned-out building near the store, and this, she says, is the last time she saw Carol. But then, Harrison says that the next day the phone started ringing at her home.

And when she picked up the line, she heard a man's voice. Harrison would say that at the time, she didn't know Carol was missing or who had called her. Lastly, police interviewed Dorothy Wheeler, who'd helped organize a search party for Carol. Wheeler told police she also received threatening phone calls from a male with a deep voice. And then, Wheeler says she started receiving letters at work, one of which said the following. You have daughters. And if you don't want them raped and dropped on the side of the road,

you'll keep your nose out of this." The police report says these letters were handed to investigators, but there's no record of the notes themselves. And some believe that the testimony of Wheeler and the other witnesses were not credible. You follow a lead until it takes you nowhere. And they got all kinds of leads. I mean, everybody was a suspect.

This is retired Metropolitan Police Department Sergeant, Remain Jenkins, who you met in episode 1. She investigated the freeway phantom murders years after the case went cold. At the time of Carol's murder, she was assigned to work elsewhere. But she remembers hearing about the investigation. Everybody became a suspect because people were calling in tips. And sometimes the information that people phoned in would lead you on a merry ghost chase.

But you had to follow the lead until you couldn't follow it anymore. And then some of the people eventually admitted that they lied, they never sort of girls being abducted or anything that they lied. Remain fully believes that those witness statements for Carol were completely false, and that might explain why investigators made no progress with those leads. Eventually there was an autopsy. According to the autopsy reports, they collected specimens from pubic hair, vaginal spears, rectal smears, and stomach contents. But remember, this was pre-DNA technology,

so at the time, police had no way of making connections through those specimens. And so the police ran out of leads, and thus, Carol's case went cold. But many believe the police could have done more and chose not to. Here again, is Evander Spinks, the older sister of Carol Spinks. As a young teenager, I don't think the police did a good job. I didn't feel this though they actually cared

during that time. And as an adult, I know they didn't do a good job. And I know down where they didn't care. Remain believes this may have been due to a disconnect between white officers and the black communities in and around DC. People bring their own prejudices and biases to the job. I read information in the files where some of the detectives,

the white ones said, well, they wore tight clothes that Carol Springs had on tight clothes. Carol Springs had on DC Public School gym shorts. If you know anything about DC public school gym shorts, they balloon out a nothing tight about them shorts. Instead of reviewing the whole case, and that's the number one problem. Most on these tasks,

for they're given assignments to do. Look, I want you to cover the 4900 block of C-street. I want you to cover 14th in you. And you're given assignment, and that's what you do. Look, I want you to cover the 4900 block of C-street. I want you to cover 14th in you. And you're given assignment and that's what you do. You have no idea what the other 999 pages in this investigation has revealed. Okay. But see, I'm not like that. I'm going to read everything. I was taught. If you want to know something, you must read. There's nothing that you don't know that you can't find out isn't written some way, so I read everything.

And sad to say, they didn't have a female on the team. Remain believes there may have been some willful neglect when it came to investigating Carol's murder, and she wasn't the only one. When the first victims went missing, when it came to investigating Carol's murder. And she wasn't the only one. When the first victims went missing, there was a really kind of immediate police response. This is Jim Traenham,

a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Department. But also during that time, there just wasn't the attention that was being paid, especially when these girls haven't been found yet. You know, I'll just young black girl run away or she probably had a relative's house, you know, that sort of thing. There wasn't the full court press that you would often see with a John Bene Ramsey or something along that line, you know, to be honest. That's unfortunately has been a fact of life for God knows

hundreds of years, but even today. Jim started reviewing the case when he launched an initiative called the Violet Crime Case Review Project. Our goal was to go back and look at all homicide cases to see if we could take advantage of any of the new technology that was coming out such as DNA. And as I was doing so, I was pulling these case files up and looking at them. I kept hearing about this one case that was kind of a legend in DC back in the 70s, and that was referred to as the freeway phantom case. So one of my first goals was to see what I could find or that case, what evidence was available,

and could we take advantage of, especially DNA technology today. Jim says he quickly realized that the original investigators did a subpar job of maintaining documents and preserving the evidence. When we first started looking at the freeway phantom case, the most frustrating thing was that just about all of the fight-holes were gone. We just didn't really have anything, and so we were trying to dig up whatever we could through newspaper accounts and things like that. The other frustrating thing is as we were going through the evidence and all, we were finding out that the evidence was also missing, not only in DC, but also in PG County.

And in fact, the PG County detectives who had done their own independent re-examination of some of the cases had only found evidence in one. And that was evidence that having kept up the medical examiner's office. When the medical examiner or back then would do a sexual assault kit on a body, they would take these swabs and they would smear them on a slide, look at the slide, and see whether or not there was any sperm visible. And if it was, they would send a kit over to the FBI or to whatever lab they were using at the time, but they kept the slide. And so in one case, they actually found the slide.

They sent it in for testing, hoping that it had enough on there to extract a suspect profile. However, at that time, DNA testing wasn't as advanced as it is now, and unfortunately they used up all of the sample and they were not able to get a usable profile. And so, any hope of finding Carol's killer through DNA was officially lost. In the podcast, Alphabet Boys, we take you inside undercover investigations. I'm Trevor Aronson. And in our second season, we have an Alphabet Soup with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case.

At the center of this story is Flavio, but who is Flavio? I see movies with arm dealers on TV. Okay, I'm going there for C.A. but I'm gonna die. When I land, there's Flavio in a suit. It's like follow me and he slams down his badge in my passport and I'm like, uh, something's going on here. So you do personal security all over the world and you have somebody call you and say,

can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia? Not, not certified grenades, a lot of ammunition. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arms deal who are the cops, who are the criminals and is anyone really who they claim to be? Listen to alphabet boys on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know.

Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government hover ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We spent a decade applying critical thinking

to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you find your favorite shows. I was curious to see the neighborhood where Carol Spinks lived. Last summer I found where the Spinks house used to be and I brought along my producers, Jamie and Trimmer. I wouldn't hide it. I would absolutely say my child is a tired squirrel. The complex where the Spinks family lived was torn down decades ago. Today the neighborhood is densely populated, yet quiet. Single-family houses, duplexes and row homes with narrow, tidy lawns out front.

There's a mix of old and newer buildings. When the weather is nice, people still sit outside of their homes and watch the activity on the streets. The Congress Heights neighborhood is still overwhelmingly black, but like so many urban neighborhoods in the 21st century, there's surely been some gentrification since the 1970s. Back then, this was a working class,

tight-knit black community. Tell us what you remember about that particular time, Derek. Oh, I thought it was more family-oriented. Yeah. This is Derek Davis, who's run a barber shop in the neighborhood for decades. You heard from him at the very top of this episode. Also sitting down with us is his friend, Reverend Anthony Motley. They called us Chocly City.

Chocly City. Chocly City, the bomb, parliament, Funkadelic. I mean, we had a good black leadership, black superintendent, black police, black city council, black mayor. We had a lot of pride in the day, back in the day. We were from DC, you know, it wasn't a knock on DC.

It was you from DC, man. You must be, you know, you must be on the ball. Right. You know. There were a lot of bustling businesses. We had in total what eight. I think we probably had about maybe five movie theaters that we no longer have even one.

That's right. You have a roller skating ring. Things kids could do. We had a bowling club. We had a bowling alley. Right. Boys club, girls club. We had all these type of activities.

Sit down, restaurants. Sit down, restaurants. Yeah, we had all those things. Restaurants, it was really community oriented. I mean, people were friendly here. They helped out, didn't seem to like a lot of anger like sometimes I see today.

I see a lot of anger or frustration or stuff like that. It was just more community, definitely. The community felt safe. People could keep their doors open. Yes. Your child could go to the store. Right.

By herself. We used to say everybody come in Yes, your child could go to the store right by herself We used to say everybody come in when the street lights come right come on, right? But then the kids are blocked don't come off the block, you know, yeah, but there wasn't nobody nobody Survelling you and then it did dots had more say the adults had more say. The adults had more control, where if Reverend Martin saw my son or do it out there, he said, I'm gonna talk to your daddy,

I'm gonna talk to your mama or whatever, that kid would listen or straighten up. The day you get cursed out, you might get shot of keel if you approach somebody's kid. So we had more family, more structure back in the early 70s. Did you think of this as a safe place for families and children at that time?

Oh yeah. This was a family oriented. My mother and father, they were right up the street. Like Derek said, you look out for each other. In the black community, we always say, nothing goes on as somebody didn't see. Here's Remain Jenkins again. There's always, you have a certain portion of the neighborhood

that hang out. Some of the older guys who'd like to drink liquor, they would sit outside 365 days a year but they're there. So if something happened, they would see it. Then you had the older people like my mother and her posse, they would sit in their window and they saw everything that went down. So if you were around the corner acting up, your mother got a call or your grandmother said she's around there showing off,

oh yes, and when you got home, you got it. But they looked out for each other. You felt safe, you know? You felt safe in your neighborhood. Nobody was going to bother you. This is why it's strange that supposedly no credible witnesses actually saw what happened to Carol. And it's exactly why when she went missing, the neighborhood was in full gear to find her. The community was kind of upset at the very beginning because there were lots of people

out looking for Carol's spinks, because it was not like her not to come back home. She should have been headed home and she was seen headed home in the direction of her house. They had lots of search for all these people looking but to no avail. I mean I was born in 1970 in LA. They sounds very much like it was here. There was always somebody out. There was a, you know, somebody's uncle in a tank top, drinking a 40 and somebody's auntie down the street sitting on their front porch fanning themselves with their church fans and I keep wondering as I read about

these cases, how did nobody see anything? Because whoever did the cases that right into the community never raised any suspicion at all. And that's how he was able to do what he did. Nobody would question it. They saw him talking to a little girl or anything. They wouldn't question it. That's my personal feeling on it. Like you said, there's always somebody out.

While many in the community felt the police didn't protect them in their neighbors as well as they could, officers on the force in the district have a very different perspective. We're very protective in our neighborhoods, even though we know we heard each other. We know about the guy in the neighborhood, this is a weirdo. You know, we know about these things, you know, our families even. But let even but let's some happen to them oh you know we need to be real and that's the only way we can heal my name is Rita McCoy I'm a retired DC homicide detective I was on the Metropolitan Police Department Washington DC

I'm a Washingtonian I'm presently single. I only want to talk about what my husbands I have, but I had a rack of husbands for it to be exact and three were police officers. Rita says that folks in the community tend to know more than they're willing to tell. And for a police officer, that's tricky to navigate. We have people all the time, they knew family members, people that knew and would not, I know snitch. Snitches get stitches and all that foolishness. This is your neighborhood. You know, we had to start giving away money

to get people and I'm telling you that the talk, what do you want? You know, that's the hard part about us. We hate the police, but yet the police come to our neighborhoods more than anywhere else. So what are you going to do? You got to find that area, you know, where you work with the police or whatever

to get what you want so you can have a safety. But Rita says there just wasn't enough trust between black neighborhoods and white police officers. When I was a child, I remember the police being called in the community. You know, it was all black and the cops were white. They were white. And they were just physically like assault the two guys that had been fighting or whatever. And sometimes didn't lock up anybody.

Just beat them up and get back in the car and leave. People take advantage of their authority. I saw a lot of prejudice and racism on this department. I saw prejudice, I say, it was because it was black people, and then racism I saw from the white officers, and a lot of them did not grow up in this area. They're from all over the place, from West Virginia, Southern Virginia, whatever they chewed to back or you know the things that we not accustomed to in our community. But then I will say that some of them, when they saw that you were good, real police, they changed with you. But you know, and it's like us too, when we around all white people.

And you know, we are initially uncomfortable if you're not getting what raised around them until you find that they are like you. them until you find that they are like you. Comments like this suggest that somebody in the community likely knew something about Carol, but wouldn't come forward to tell the police. And with no leads, it seemed like the story was over. But then, less than three months later in July of 1971, yet another girl went missing. I'm Trevor Aronson, and in our second season, we have an Alphabet suit. With the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI, all mixed up in the same case. At the center of the story is Flavio, but who is Flavio? I see movies with arm dealers on TV.

Okay, I'm going there for the AI, but I'm gonna die. When I land, there's Flavio in a suit. It's like, follow me, and he slams down his badge in my passport. And I'm like, uh, something's going on here. So you do personal security all over the world, and you have somebody call you and say, can you get grenades and guns for this guy in Colombia? Not, not certified grenades, a lot of ammunition.

It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm steal, who are the cops, who are the criminals, and is anyone really who they claim to be? Listen to alphabet boys on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI?

What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers, saying government cover-ups from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. We've spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon

civilization and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Darlinia Denise Johnson was 16 years old. She grew up in a large family with five brothers and five sisters. Darlinia was petite, about five feet two inches and 110 pounds. She lived in the same neighborhood as Carol Spinks. Their homes were only three blocks apart.

Darlinia had a boyfriend and a job at the local Rec Center, a half-mile or so from her apartment. Most days, she'd walk to and from work, and that was her plan on the morning of July 8, 1971. In the stack of boxes at Detective Romaine Jenkins' house, we found a police report detailing statements given by Darlinia's mother, Helen McNeil. She gave this account to police about the day that Darlinia went missing. On Thursday, July 8, 1971, I had to be at DC General Hospital at 8 o'clock in the morning. Before I left, I looked in and saw Darlinia sleeping her room. I told my son Nick to be sure that he got her up to go to work at the Oxen Hill Recreation Center.

I came home from the clinic at 12 noon and she had gone. That night, I didn't look for her to come home. On Friday I expected her in about 5 o'clock PM. I got home from the store about 6-10 PM and asked the kids if Darlinia had been home and they said they hadn't seen her. I sent the kids around in the next court and they asked the people if they had seen Darlinia and they said no. Around about 10 or 10.30 PM on Friday I called the precinct and they sent two police officers around.

I told them everything and they took down all the information. The next day the police came back and got a picture of her. The first thing Monday morning, I called Miss anchor at the Oxenheal playground. She said Darlinia was supposed to go on the camping trip, but that she didn't show. Didn't Miss Anchor says, do you know about a black car that picks her up in the evening? She said that this black car picked up Darlinia

and another girl on Wednesday. She said that the other girl said Darlinia acted like she knew the fella pretty well. The other girl insisted that they let her out of the car, and she had no where they went after that. After I talked to Miss Enker, I went across the hall and talked to Miss Allen. I told Miss Allen that I had called the Recreation Center, and that Miss Enker had told me about Darlinia getting in the black car.

Her daughter Sylvia Allen told me that a fella called Alfred drove the black car, and he hangs around Alabama Avenue. It seemed like Helen was on to something, but this promising lead about a guy named Alfred in a black car led nowhere. We know that at some point the police did question Alfred. They even gave him sodium pentathol, the so-called truth serum, but he didn't crack, and so they moved on. For the rest of that first week, Helen was more or less on her own,

calling around, asking people in the neighborhood if they'd seen Darlinia, she called police stations and morgs and DC and in Prince George's County. Some kids said they found Darlinia's body in the nearby Oxen Hill Highrise apartment complex, but that was also a dead end. The police report showed that something horrifying happened next.

McNeill started to receive unsettling phone calls. According to McNeill, one afternoon she answered the phone and a man spoke. Was this a message from the killer? Or was it just a prank call? We don't know. Of course, there was no caller ID in 1971, and the record suggests that the police didn't take those phone calls seriously. They had very few follow-up questions to make Neil's story, and they never bring it up

again in the police reports. Meanwhile, there were rumors floating around the neighborhood about a dead body left near the side of the 295 freeway. And on July 19th, her body was officially found. One man who found the body was Curtis Vincent, who worked for the DC Department of Highways and Traffic. On July 21st, 1971, he gave this statement to police. On Friday, July 16, 1971, I was on duty and was at the highway garage at second and Bryant streets northeast. I was working with Bill Farrell. We were looking at the lawnmower

shop there, which is supervised by Mr. Roy Tyler. And we were chatting with him. Mr. Roy Tyler asked us if we'd been out around Firth Sterling and Route 295 lately. We asked why, and Roy said that there was a body of a dead lady out there, and he described the location to us. He told us that he notified the police, but the body was still out there. If I remember correctly, he told us

that the body had been out there about a week. On Monday, July 19, 1971, I was working with Bill and about 1pm or so we got to talking about what Roy had said about the body. And we decided to go to the location he described and see if we could locate the body. On 295, about 100 yards south of Firth Sterling on the north side of 295, I guess about 10 feet from the embankment. We found the body. I got the impression from the dress that the body was that of a female. The body was lying on the stomach with the head down the embankment and the feet up toward Route 295. As far as I could tell, the body was clothed, and I definitely remember that she was wearing blue shorts. Other than that, I recall a blouse.

I do not remember any other clothing. In the end, it was his coworker Bill who had a connection at the Metropolitan Police Department. Bill called his friend, a police sergeant named Charles Baden. And only then, after the body had been outside for over a week, did the police finally recover it. The sad part about this is that there was actually motorists that drove by on the super busy highway on July 12th, seven days prior to when her body was actually recovered and reported there's a body on the side of the road.

Multiple times people called in saying that before she was finally removed days later. So if the police had actually found her body, it may have not been that decomposed five days prior. This is author Victoria Hester, who we heard from last episode. She and her father Blaine have written extensively on the Freeway Phantom case. We actually saw the autopsy photos of this

and all of them were very disturbing. These are young girls, but hers was very disturbing just because she almost looked mummified. It's July and Washington DC. She's laying out exposed. You know, temperatures are all always in the 80s, 90 degrees. You know, it's just it was terrible. It was just horrible.

We found transcripts of the 911 calls reporting Darlinia's body. This call came in at 6.50am on July 12th, a full week before she was picked up. at the intersection. No, it was over in a bank minute or something. You're laying over on the side. From steering in 2.95? Yeah. Oh, I'll bet it's just an unconscious or just a man down. 40 minutes later at 7.30 a.m., police received a second call about the body. May I help you? Yeah, I've moved down on Route 295 right opposite boiling field photos center this morning. Yes sir. And there's a dead woman. I think it's a woman. It can be a man lying in the bushes. It's northbound on 295 right opposite the

photos center boiling field. Okay, is it a pretty obvious thing? No, it's in the bushes. You couldn't see it from the road. Okay, sir. We'll send somebody out to find it. As Blaine tells us, police followed up on these first few reports about the body, but they couldn't have looked very hard. Police did drive by. You know, they did a slow drive by and looked and didn't see the body, but people kept saying they're out there.

It was a real embarrassment, I think, for long enforcement. And the body was found 15 feet from where Carol Spinks body had been found. So, you know, at the time, that was the link that really tied these two together. That was perhaps the most shocking detail. Darlinia was found only 15 feet from where Carol Spinks had been found.

But still, police didn't officially connect the two murders. We did however find one police report where an officer interviewed a suspect in Darlinia's murder named Alfred Henry Holmes. The officer asked Holmes if he also knew about Carol Spinks to which he answered, no. But other than this question, there's little to suggest that the police department considered them connected. Meanwhile investigators were still trying to piece together what had actually happened to Darlinia. There's lots of stories of meeting up with a boyfriend or going to stay somewhere else,

but in a time before cell phones and ways to contact your kid when they're off doing whatever they're doing, it's hard to tell what happened. There's not a whole lot of information about her specifically just because her body was so far decomposed. I think Darlenea went to meet the killer because she's the one who was decomposed, and we have nothing on her case, nothing, per se. But that's quite when this was written. And she was still missing.

Right, she's right. This is Romaine Jenkins. We're sitting in her living room going through boxes of evidence and discussing Darlinia Denise Johnson. Romaine was especially frustrated by this murder. The police department was truly incompetent. I mean, let's face it, she leaves home on July 8th. The remains are found, I think,

July the 12th, the guy who worked for the department of DC Highways and Traffic. He calls the police. When his coworkers pick him up, he shows them the body. They call the police. And if you look at the radio runs transcript of the radio runs, every scout car that was dispatch came back in 10, 8, nothing found. Well, you're not going to see a body if you don't stop the car. If you go in 65 miles an hour down 295 trying to keep up with traffic,

you're not going to look so that was in competence on their part, total incompetence. Because it might have been something, some evidence that we missed because we did not have a cause of death on her, you know. So Darlinia's case was a dead-end. But then, just a few weeks later, the killer would strike again. On July 27, a 10-year-old girl named Brenda Crockett went missing. And later that night, Brenda called home and talked to her stepdad. and a lightning house. The lightning put in the car and shared me over to the house.

My mother's home. Next time on Freeway Phantom. When I got there, I guess there was a crowd starting to come out. Arriving on a scene, I was directed to where this child was laying on the side of the road. She was the child of God. She loved church. She was going to refrigerator and eat raw bacon. But you know, the pigs were better back then.

I asked her again, tell a man to come to the phone. I heard someone walking in heaven, she said, really low. I'll see you and someone just cut the phone. So the killer had kind of shifted, at least from the first case, he's not spending as much time with the victims, he's killing them and now just dumping them. Whoever grabbed these young ladies, grabbed them right in their own neighborhood.

Fruey Phanum is a production of I Heart Radio, Tinderfoot TV and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is Celeste Hiddley. The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie. Our host is Celeste Hiddley. The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Arbright, and Celeste Hiddley. Executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio include Matt Fredrick and Alex Williams with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tinderfoot TV include Donald Arbright and Payng Lindsay with producers Jamie Arbright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of Black Bar Mitzfa include myself Jay Ellis and Aaron Bergman

with producer Sidney Fooves. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright, artwork by Mr. Soul216, original music by makeup and vanity set, special thanks to a team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing and the North Group. Tinder for TV and I Heart Media as well as Black Bar Mitzvah, have increased the reward for information

leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for their freeway phantom murders. The previous reward of up to $150,000 offered by the Metropolitan Police Department has been matched. A new total reward of up to $300,000 is now being offered. If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the Metropolitan

Police Department at area code 202-727-9099. For more information, please visit freeway-fanom.com. For more podcasts from our radio and Tinder for TV, visit the IHR radio app, Apple Podcast, or ever listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening. Alphabet Boys is a podcast that takes you inside undercover investigations. In the second season, we've got an alphabet soup, with the DEA, the CIA, and the FBI all mixed up in the same case.

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