Freeway Phantom - Green Vega

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

More suspects come to light. And we learn about two other murdered girls who may have been unconfirmed victims of the Phantom: 18-year-old Teara Bryant and 14-year-old Angela Barnes.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. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ 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, Tenderfoot TV, and Black Barmetsville. 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 Barmetsville, or their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. There was a series of rapes of adult women, of kidnapping some rapes of adult women that were done by this group of men, called the Green Vega rapist. And they were basically, I guess, the best way to describe them is like a rape club. I mean, some of them would go out some nights, others would go out other nights, and they would drive a green Vagabra around, and they would kidnap women off the street, look at bus stops and

things like that, take them to someplace, rape them, sort ofize them, and then let them go. Some of the rapes were pretty brutal. And when they finally got captured, one of them started making noise and saying, well, I know who the freeway phantom is. And he starts naming people within the group and starts talking about how you knew about the different murders and stuff like that. We call him Jell Howe Snitches or Informus.

He's desperate because if he can give up information, that that increases this chance of getting a deal and getting out from under this, we're desperate because, you know, of course, we want to solve this case. Joe House informants are really good at suckering us as detectives because we want to believe, and that's exactly what happened. exactly what happened. 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. 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 and 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. is Freeway Phantom. In 1974, two years after the last confirmed Freeway Phantom murder, investigators turned their attention to the Green Vega gang. Also known as the Green Vega rapists, this group of five or six men were known to drive a green Chevy Vega around the DC Maryland area. They were collectively responsible for numerous rapes and abductions that occurred near the Washington Beltway. But through somewhat strange circumstances, they became prime suspects in the Freeway Phantom case.

It started when a few of the green Vega members had been arrested and put on trial for a case involving two gang rapes. And when they were brought into court, the lawyer made the comment of, well, they weren't even looking for the green bag of guys, they were looking for the freeway phantom. Well, the investigators for the freeway phantom said, well, maybe these guys are the same guys. This is writer Blaine Pardo. As he says, an off-handed mention of the Freeway Phantom case during this trial sparked

the idea that the two cases were connected. And they opened a multi-jurisdictional task force that involved the FBI, the park police, Washington DC, Metropolitan Police, Maryland State Police, the Prince George's County Police, etc. they all began to crawl into this. And unfortunately these green vega guys saw this as a bargaining chip. In other words, if we flip on our fellows and say they did the freeway fan of murders, maybe I'll get a lighter sentence or get some benefits

on the side of doing this. So several of the members flipped. The Green Vega gang members were individually interviewed by the Metropolitan Police Department at Lorton Prison between 1974 and 1975. One of the members provided a statement implicating another member. His testimony substantiated the investigators' belief

that the Green Vega gang was responsible for the freeway phantom murders. And that's because the informant provided signature details of the crimes that were not released to the public. Police took the informant to sites where he said the victims were abducted, assaulted, murdered, and disposed of, and he provided a concrete alibi ruling himself out as a suspect. This informant asked to remain anonymous. Then, information that a Green Vega member at Lordin Prison

had provided a break in the case was leaked to the media by a political candidate in Maryland. It literally consumed the case for months. One of the investigators looking into the Green Vega gang was former FBI special agent, Barry Colvert. The thing that came by our attention with the Green Vega cases, it was a gang that were going around abducting young women and raping them.

That might be the way to solve it, that there was something in common with our freeway vanum cases in these Vega rape cases. I think Lou Richardson, he was one that continued from the freeway phantom cases to that case. He thought that might be the same people that our girls were killed by the Vega rape people. Lou Richardson was one of Colbert's partners on the freeway phantom case, but Colbert

says he had his doubts during the investigation. He says most of the eyewitness accounts placing the green vega gang near the murder sites were unreliable. People described cars in the damnedest ways. And what they think was the green vega may have been a shivvy chavelle or something. They just don't always kid it right. Unless you get a guy or a woman,

we've had a couple of women, man they knew their cars. If they said it was a green Vega, probably 69 because it had a spoiler up here and this kind of hubcaps don't count on that being your car. If it was green and small and two door, go with that. That's what you probably had. all and two door go with that. That's what you probably have. As investigators looked deeper into the green vega gang, things only got weirder. Here's Blaine Parto again. Remarkably, what stunned me was, as they were going through these cases, they started realizing the confessions didn't match the physical evidence. No way could they describe, and they didn't know the physical evidence, no way could they describe and they didn't know about the green ray on fibers, but none of them could describe that

we took the victims to the same place each time. They always sat in the same vehicle in the same place. There's no consistency with this and they describe the deaths of these girls very differently. It doesn't match physical evidence. To the point where they described one of the ten-year-old victims as being dressed provocatively, you know, I'm sexy. No, she was dressed like a ten-year-old girl, you know, and just the stuff just didn't match up. But unfortunately the police were under such pressure to close these cases. will we talk to Jim Trinum? He brought that up. Detective Jim Trinum, who you heard at the very top of the episode,

never believed the Green Vegas could be responsible. He says the informant was a complete fraud. So what happened was they took him to some of the crime scenes and things like that, and he was cloning out stuff and all. And later, as all of this unfolded, it turns out and he admitted and other people admitted that he was just playing these detectives. He would kind of gather bits and pieces of information from them. If they took them to a crime scene, he would kind of like watch them and see what they would want him to maybe point to, he would get clues from them.

It's kind of like a false confession in that, okay, I want to confess to a crime that I didn't commit. How do I get the information about it? And so, you know, those guys, they really didn't fit. Their victims were all adult women. These were not adult women. I mean, totally different. And also, the fact that this guy really didn't have any information. And in fact, there were no charges brought against any members of the Green Vega gang for the freeway phantom murders. There was reportedly a grand jury hearing, but the evidence was insufficient to reach a conviction. Wilma Harper wrote about this in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom. Sources close to the investigation who asked for anonymity independently told the star

that the probe was closed after a disagreement in the U.S. Attorney Earl Sober's office about how to proceed. One source said the dispute involved two opposing groups. One wanted to submit freeway Phantom-fantom evidence to the grand jury and the other that argued that the evidence was insufficient to go before the grand jury. On August 3, 1980, the Washington Post published an article that summarized what occurred after the grand jury made a decision on the Green Vega rape suspects, saying, quote, law enforcement officials involved with the cases believe that four men involved in hundreds of brutal rapes in the city from 1969 to 1973 were implicated in the child murders, but the men were not convicted.

It is difficult for the families to come to grips with the fact that eight or nine years later, the deaths have not been solved. As this article mentions, many investigators still believed the green vegas were responsible for the freeway phantom murders. Here's Blaine Parto again. Despite the fact that they never filed charges against the Green Vega guys, there's this prevailing attitude that even exists today in Washington, do you see that? Well, we know who did it. It was the Green Vega guys we just couldn't prove it. Lane recalls that Jim Trinum even struggled with this decades later.

When he tried to reopen the case in 2006, there was a lot of pressure of why are you doing this? We already know who did it. It was a green mega-guys. And you're like, no. Green mega-guys, they recanted. All of them recanted their confessions. And the confessions never held water. They just didn't hold against the physical evidence. And that was a huge distraction. Retired MPD homicide detective Roman Jenkins agrees. A lot of time was wasted,

especially when they got to the green Vega guys. That really was a waste of time. Roman says, even before she was assigned to the case, she was paying attention to the suspects. And she found it strange that the investigators at the time were so convinced. What peaked my curiosity, because I knew many of the investigators, and especially the lead investigators on the cases, and I asked them, well, how are you making out with the case? What is going

on, you know, and that's when they started talking about the green Vega guys. And one day I was sitting in sex squad, like I said, I like to read everything. And I came across this document, which was about almost the size of a telephone book. And it was on the investigation of the freeway Phantom cases. And I started reading it. And the more I read, the angrier I got. Because it showed that the green vagad cases

were a hoax when it came to the freeway cases. They had nothing to do with each other. And I mean, this is- Well, now why do you say that? Because the police multiple times official said that the reason they thought this could be real is because one of them had information that no one else had. So what, you're laughing already?

Why do you think this is a red herring? Because they, you know what the FBI went back and they re-invueed a lot of these suspects, the people involved, and they admitted that it was a hoax. The witnesses said that, hey, they're playing this thing because some of the guys, one of the guys wanted immunity from prosecution. Now, I'm not saying they're not rapists

because they should have been in jail, under the jail, probably. But they didn't do these cases, okay? They did not do these cases. And this is in plain black and white. While writer Blaine Parto agreed with Romaine, he was still curious about the green vigas suspects, particularly the informant who we now know was named Morris J. Warren. Blaine tells us he communicated with Warren via letters from prison.

His correspondence was kind of rambling. I took the approach when I wrote him of, I know what your involvement in these cases are, I just need to hear it from you. And he thought I was implying he was involved in the cases, so he vehemently denied it. A lot of religious texts woven into it, which I always find interesting how convicts find Jesus and God when they get to prison. And, you know, he was like, no, no, no, you're on the wrong track. Didn't have anything to do with me, wasn't me, didn't do it.

And he really wanted us to come visit him which we were unable to do. The authorities wouldn't put us on the list for him. And he admits I never had anything to do with this. I did it on a spite and revenge. He came right out and said it. And yeah, I believe it. They were trying to cut deals for themselves. And once they realized, oh my God, we're going to be brought up on murder charges, multiple murder charges. I think at that point,

they said, forget it. We're not, we're not the guys that did best. And they do it. The reality is the Green Vega gang was a major distraction, one that potentially had significant repercussions on the freeway fandom investigation. Unfortunately, when you get a huge task force put together of all these officers and investigators and they're focused on this, that's time that the real killer wasn't being investigated.

And unfortunately, there were very few people that bucked the system at the time. So, there's this weird, twisted thought of, we already know who did it. To most of the people we talked to, that tunnel vision is just one more reason why this case was never solved. However, the same year the green vegas were investigated, another suspect cropped up. Actually, a pair of suspects. Two police officers. 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 forcié, 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's 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 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. There were six confirmed victims in the Freeway Phantom case.

Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nina Moshe Yates, Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams. However, early on in the case, there was another suspected victim, and her name was Angela Barnes. On July 12, 1971, just a few days after Darlinia Johnson went missing, Angela Barnes also disappeared. She was walking home from a friend's house

when she was kidnapped. The next day, her body was found in Waldof, Maryland. Her cause of death was a gunshot wound to her head, and her murder was initially attributed to the Freeway Phantom. Young girl, same profile as one of the victims. So by the time you get to the second and third freeway Phantom victims, the real Freeway Phantom victims, her name gets thrown in with those victims. Here's writer Blaine Pardo again. It made no sense and it definitely muddied the investigation

because of course the other officers in the Metropolitan Police didn't know that she wasn't connected. So they're wondering did the freeway phantom now have an M.O. where you used a gun, literature strangulation, etc. to kill as victims? The gun didn't make sense. You know, from an investigative perspective, it totally did because a gun would be a great way to force young victims into a car. You pull up alongside them, window down, you aim the guns, you get in the car, makes total sense from a control perspective, and it could be that the freeway phantom did use a gun to get his victims into the vehicle. It made very little sense though when you look at in the context of all the other victims,

you only have one that was stabbed. Clearly that was, you know, someone who resisted him and was stabbed. The rest were all strangled, and while there were evidence of fighting or resisting, it was all more manual than anything else. There wasn't the use of a weapon like that. The only other weapon that the Freeway Phantom used was a knife, and it was only on one victim. Wilma Harper wrote about the curious case of Angela Barnes in her book, The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.

One view was that Angela was not a freeway Phantom victim. She was the only one of the girls that had been shot. Based on the fact that the bullet that killed Angela had ricocheted, it was the opinion of Detective Simpson that Angela's death had been accidental. Police would eventually determine that Angela wasn't connected. And sometime during the Freeway Phantom investigation,

her name was removed from the victim list. But years later, in 1974, someone was arrested for the murder of Angela Barnes. It was actually, they found out a police officer who killed her. And it was a real creepy circumstance. He and his partner abducted her, got her in the car, performed sexual acts with her, and inadvertently shot her in the car. And the way they caught them was one of the police officers' wife was involved with cleaning up the car. And they had kind of played

it off that it had nothing to do with them killing anyone that was, you know, the blood from one of their suspects that they brought in, but she was like, it's all over the front sea, which didn't make sense. And after a while, she slowly pieced it together and actually reached out to law enforcement. And they got a full confession. The two police officers were named Edward Sullivan and Tommy Simmons. They were both convicted and sent to prison for Barnes murder. But investigators said they were not responsible for the other six freeway phantom murders.

Still, the murder of Angela Barnes brought up some troubling implications. Many families in the area started to believe that a police officer could very well have been responsible for the freeway phantom murders. You may remember that when we talked with Evander Spinks, older sister of Carol Spinks, older sister of Carol Spinks, she revealed her biggest suspect.

It probably was the police. With somebody that worked with the police. That's the only thing really made sense to me. I think it got covered up. As an adult, I see it differently than when I was a kid. Plus as a kid I didn't know a lot of stuff that had happened. How the police was handling things because we weren't privy to that. There was definitely a feeling and what it really contributed to I think was and you read the interviews with the families at the time. they really then began to suspect the police department or someone in the police department was involved. Because the minute you get one young girl who's killed by police,

you start wondering, well, are other cops out there killing young girls? And is that what's really feeding this? And it really added to what I would call the extreme distrust the family started developing towards a police department. And it was by the way completely earned. You know, when you've got something like that happening in a community like that, you're not going to shake that and there's no amount of goodwill you can put out that's going to change people's perceptions of that. And I don't blame the families at all.

I would still be kind of wondering where the police involved. When I spoke with Carolyn Spinks, the twin sister of Carol Spinks, she revealed some haunting thoughts about who she believed killed her sister. Have you had thoughts about who you think was responsible? Yes. I mean, who do you think might have done it? I thought that it was a white man in a police car. Hmm. Why?

Because it makes me sound crazy to you all, but because one day I was at the store where my mom was, because my mother was the last person to see her, I lie, and right there at the store where my mom was, it used to be a phone booth right there. So one day, this was years later, I was at that phone booth and the vision came over me. I don't know where it came from,

but it was a white police. but he was in a police car but I don't know if he was a police where he was dressed like one and he was in a police car and he hurt my mother, tell her that he seems going to get her when she get home because he told her not to come out the house if he was walking home and he followed her. This is in your vision. Yes. And then the day of my sister, Phil and Lo, afterwards, we went to my aunt house.

And we was outside and I looked across the street. And there was a police officer, but he had that helmet thing, but a big glass, black thing across his face. And he was in that motorcycle thing that looked like where one could ride a satit that's made with the thing on the side. And he was just staring at me, but he was across the street, way across from my aunt's house, but I could see him looking at me. And I got scared and ran into the house. And I told my mother, could see him looking at me. And I got scared and ran into the house.

And I told my mother, their police keep looking at me. What did she say? When they came out, he was gone. Do you feel like you trust police? No. I mean, have you ever, or just since that time when your sister was murdered, was that the end of your trust for law enforcement?

I never had any get into law enforcement, you know, at that time, so I didn't know, but as I got older, I was like, no, I don't trust them. Because you know some police just do, they do unhand it, you know, unhand it stuff. And you guess you can't trust them. I don't trust no man. Author Wilma Harper wrote about this theory as well.

Questions continued to be asked but not answered. Like, why no one ever saw the girls picked up. Was the killer someone so utterly trustworthy like a policeman that a bystander would take no notice? Was he someone they knew? Did the killer know the freeways, the neighborhood? And what were the chances that he lived among them?

A person of normal appearances stalking and killing adolescent girls? We asked Blaine Parto if he thought a police officer could feasibly pull off these murders. There's a feeling that the police department is either involved simply because these girls are so easily pulled off the streets and a policeman pulling up in a police car could do that. You know, you can say get in the car. So many of these are in broad daylight. And they're the streets are so busy. To me, that's the one thing that this whoever this killer

was had a technique for securing these young women in his vehicle. We need to know what that is. Because he did it on streets where everybody knew everybody, where people were out, and these girls simply vanish. So how he did it without raising attention, a policeman could easily do that. Despite this, Blaine ultimately doesn't think the freeway fandom is a police officer. I don't get that vibe, especially with the leaving of a note.

A police officer is going to go, look, I'm not going to do anything at all to leave evidence, even evidence where I've got the victim writing out a note. Why taught police if you're in the police department? They're not going to do that. And that note still sticks with me That's someone who's literally flipping the finger off at the police department. Yeah, he's saying catch me if you can't and I'll confess the others when you do If this was a police officer I just can't picture him being

Divolicle enough to go well throw the scent off by pretending I'm a crazy. And it's something that's very rare among serial killers to actually communicate to the authorities. They just don't do that. There's too much risk involved. And I think even in that time frame, I don't think a police officer would do it. But the tragedy of Angela Barnes proved that not everything was as it seemed.

Her inclusion in the Freeway Phantom case skewed perceptions of what was possible. And she wasn't the only one. As it turns out, there was yet another unofficial freeway phantom victim and her case is even more terrifying. 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, ah, 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's deal. Who are the cops? Who are the criminals? And is anyone really who they claim to be? Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio 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. Angela Barnes wasn't the only unconfirmed victim of the freeway phantom. In November of 1972, just two months after the last confirmed victim Diane Williams was killed, police found

the body of 18-year-old Tara Bryant. To many investigators, Tara Bryant is considered the seventh victim of the freeway phantom, but she was ultimately ruled out for a number of reasons which we'll get into. Still, we and others believe the similarities are too striking to ignore. Tara was a young mother with a one-year-old son at home. On Sunday, November 26, 1972, just three days after enjoying a Thanksgiving with her family, Tara's mother dropped her off at Leeland Memorial Hospital for a medical appointment. She was wearing a shiny red jacket over a striped red white and black dress, along with white, knee-high socks, and brown loafers.

Her mother gave her bus fare so she could ride the bus home after her appointment. According to a relative, Tera called home just after 5pm and spoke to her brother Terrence. She checked in on her son and said she decided to use her bus fare to purchase Dunkin' Donuts and was walking home instead. They said goodbye, and unfortunately, that was the last time that anyone heard from Tara. When Tara didn't return home, her mother contacted the Prince George's County Police Department. But according to the relative that we spoke to, law enforcement didn't respond very swiftly. Since Tara was an adult, the police told her mother

there was nothing they could do at the time. Tara's family knew that something was wrong. They believed she would not run away and would definitely not leave her young son behind. That night, the Bryant family conducted their own search. Tara's one and a half mile walk from the hospital took her south on Rhode Island Avenue, so her family retraced her steps. One relative recalled seeing a suspicious man walking alongside

the road in a dark, long coat, but there was no sign of terror. Two agonizing days later, on November 28th at 9 a.m., Tara's body was found floating in shallow water in the Anacostia River, one mile downstream from where she was last seen. When police discovered her, one of her shoes was missing. Police did an investigation along the banks and they found just 200 yards from her house the other shoe. So she was very close to being at home when she was attacked and apparently killed. Here's writer Blaine Parto again. But we don't know is was she killed there or taken somewhere and dumped back there. And that's the tricky part with this and having driven the area,

And that's the tricky part with this, and having driven the area, you could almost see both scenarios playing out, but it's certainly you've got a strangulation, you got a body being dumped, you know, along that borderline with Washington DC and the surrounding communities. You know, this one was a little different. She was dumped in water, you know, in a river,

but it's also further out from any of the other freeway phantom victims, so it would make her the final of victim of all this. According to the FBI, Tara's autopsy report determined that her cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation. Her neck bone was intact, and there was no damage to the cartilage around her neck. The autopsy couldn't determine if the strangulation was manual or ligature.

The examination also couldn't determine if Tara was sexually assaulted, but noted there was no evidence of injury to her vagina or presence of semen. But since Tara had been in the water for several days, it's possible that evidence may have washed away. The FBI analysis stated that sexual assault was probable since Tara's panties were located at the site where the assault most likely occurred, and the teddy that Tara had on under her dress was unsnapped between her legs. Officially, sexual motivation for her murder was not rolled out, and there were no defensive

wounds on her body. A Washington Post news article entitled, quote, police seeking help in slaying of girl was published following the discovery of Tara's body. The article included a photo of Tara and urged the public to contact the homicide division with tips. An excerpt of the article stated, Prince George's county police today appealed for help from anyone who might have seen Tara and Brian 18, their home in North Brentwood on Sunday before she was slain.

Police say they believe the girl met her to say when she walked south on Rhode Island Avenue between the 5,000 block of high school and her home at 4522 Rhode Island Avenue in North Brentwood between 5. and 630 pm on Sunday. In November of 1973, a year after Tara was killed, a letter was published in the Washington Evening Star written by Tara's brother, Terrence Bryant. In loving memory of my sister who passed away one year ago today of Ember 26, 1972, this flower's restaurant on your grave may the Lord be with you through the day.

It seems like yesterday when you passed away. We think about you every day. Your loving brother, Terence Bryant. Sadly, the investigation into Terras murder never bore much fruit. Here's Blaine Parto again. There were no charges ever filed against anybody for this. So it's still considered a cold case. I requested copies of the case file and was told,

no, it's still an open investigation, which, you know, after 1972, I'm curious what actual investigating they're doing, but you guys know how that goes. It was very fascinating for me because to me, I wonder, was this the last of the Freeway Phantoms true victims? She fits the profile in so many ways. There was nothing in the police reports about her being sexually assaulted that I've been able to find, which might be the telling clue in all of this.

But for the FBI to consider her one of the freeway phantom victims is probably good enough for me at this point in time. The question of whether Tara Bryant was in fact the seventh victim of the freeway phantom is a hotly contested issue in this case. When we spoke with MPD Detective Romaine Jenkins, she fully believed that Tara was killed by the freeway phantom. So, why was she not included among the freeway phantom victims? I have no idea. Some people did because I see where there were submissions made to the FBI to examine fiber-evidentes and so forth, and they included her case with it. Some did, some didn't.

I can't tell you why. I guess mainly because she was only victim found in the water. Why are you so sure that she is the seventh victim? Because on the periphery, it's the same. You have a 18-year-old petite, young black female. She's dropped off at the hospital. By her mother, her mother says,

I'll come back and pick you up. A few hours later, she calls home and says, tell my mother, don't pick me up. I'm going to catch the bus home. She's walking on US one, Rhode Island Avenue, which is heavily traveled. People see her walking towards her house. She's here at home and she doesn't make it and and that's the same thing with these victims.

Also the fact that she's in the water underpants have been removed. There was no sign of forced vaginal entry So they couldn't say that she had been raped, but she's in the water. So any fiber evidence or anything is gone. And like I said, she's headed home and she's only like 40 yards from her house is where she's attacked. And the same thing with these girls, they are snatched in their neighborhoods and they're deposited back in their neighborhoods so to speak, you know. We were able to contact a relative of Tara Bryant.

They believe she was not a victim of the freeway phantom. According to the relative, the Bryant family shared this information with law enforcement, even telling them who killed Tara. They believed it was one of Tara's former boyfriends. The relative we spoke to said, the ex-boyfriend bore visible scratches and marks the day following her disappearance. We asked Blaine Parto about this,

and if he thought it could possibly be the ex-boyfriend. You know, I don't know what the motivation would be, and if they think the boyfriend did it, then charge him with it. To me, it just doesn't make sense. There had to be something that was impetus for this. And how would the boyfriend know that she'd be walking home from the hospital

in the early evening hours? You know, if the boyfriend was gonna intercept her, how would he know where she is? Her mother didn't even know she was walking home. Her mother gave her dollar to ride the bus home. So the concept that he was driving by saw her and decided now is the time I'm going to kill her just doesn't make sense. I'm not saying that there weren't terrible relations between her and her boyfriend. I just don't see what the connection is and if the family

believes he did it, by all means, then the police should be investigating him and charging him with a crime. According to the relative we spoke to, the unnamed ex-boyfriend was never investigated. The relative says this forced the family to live in the same community with the person they believed to be Tara's killer. According to the relative, that individual went to prison for other violent crimes and is now deceased. We've reached out to Prince George's County for comment on Tara's case and to date have not heard back.

Blainepartow says the investigation of Tara Bryant speaks to a bigger issue within the Prince George's County homicide department. And he compares it to another case that occurred almost a decade after the Freely Phantom murders. There were a whole number of murders that took place in the 1980s as well,

called the Scythlean Slings. A number of bodies found right across the DC line and a park, all women sexually assaulted, strangled, et cetera, and dumped in this very small area. It was clearly a dumping ground for a serial killer. The suitland slaves, they tried to attribute to somebody else, but they never charged him for the crimes, but he was arrested for kidnapping a young woman

in the district, so they said, well, he must have been the one that did all of these. There was absolutely nothing that I ever saw that connected him to these victims. But the suitland slings all remain open at this time, and Prince George's County will not release anything on a cold case at all. Nor will their public relations people even pick up the phone and call you back. It's really weird. Even the Metropolitan Police Department actually communicates with me openly still to this day on the Freeway Phantom stuff, which I expected the Washington D.C. police to be a lot more rigid than anybody else, but Prince George's County won't even return phone calls.

They don't want to talk about it. And sometimes I get the feeling that police officers get in their mind who they think did it, and in their mind the cases are closed, even though nobody was ever brought to trial for it. Blaine says both Terras murder and the Soutland slings had to a larger picture of how investigations are handled depending on who the victim is or what the victim looks like.

You're talking the 1970s and in the suit look cases the 1980s, early 80s. There tends to be this approach that I've seen with large scale police departments and if they can't get an immediate, hey we figured out who did it, got the evidence, let's move them to trial. If it goes cold, they let them stay cold. They don't focus on them, et cetera. And some of that's budgetary. Now, the focus is very much on how much money

are you spending and things on those lines. And I think cold cases are just as important. They're still victims' families. They're still somebody who's dead. It doesn't matter that it took place 50 years ago or 40 years ago or 10 years ago. They need the same level and attention. They probably need more because they haven't been completely resolved yet. Like Tara's case and the Soutland slangs, the rest of the freeway phantom murders went unsolved.

With the green vigagang ruled out as well as Robert Askins, the case went dark until it was picked up again by Roman Jenkins in the 1980s. I was transferred, I guess after 10 years, I ended up being transferred over to the U.S. Attorney's Office. And there I supervised seven former homicide detectives because they had a new division command and he didn't like any of these old investigators. So he put them under the career criminal unit and they made me the supervised. I said, Oh, good.

Now I can get into my freeway Phantom cases. So I had that MyDisposal. I had seven senior homicide detectives. And they said, Sarge, we're going to work on this case, but we're not going to do Jack the Ripper. I said, don't worry about Jack the Ripper. We're going to work on this. And we did it. Now that the FBI's criminal profiling unit was more advanced, the first thing Romaine wanted to do was create an official profile of the potential killer. What did you think of the FBI's profile that they did back then? They did the first one they did was mine, for me.

And I thought they did a pretty good job considering the circumstances. You mean considering how little we knew about it. Right. But they did come up with some things that had to be keyed in on. They felt that this person was in the military. Well at that time you had all these military people coming back from Vietnam who were in hospitals here and in salations here. So you had a lot of that going on, but that was really interesting. And the reason why I thought it was so interesting was because when I showed the note to the FBI,

I said, this is military. This person was in the military. I showed the same note to the investigator at Naval Investigative Service. He saw whoever wrote this notice military. I had two different brains saying the same thing, you know, that this person was in the military. In February of 2022, a new profile of the killer was made.

And that idea came up once again. I believe this was the beginning of his offending career, and I think something significant happened right after this. That could have been he moved, was arrested, went into the military. Next time on Freeway Phantom, this is exactly who we wanted, and he was willing to take a great risk to get her. Black officer came to say, look Sergeant, be careful, there's white officers who get you. I don't know what they're planning but they flattened something. He said I was in the locker room and I got bits and pieces of the conversation.

He actually went out and knocked on the doors of the detectives who actually worked on the case originally. It turns out that a lot of the missing files have been taken home by the original case detectives. He's obviously loving the moniker. This is why we tell media outlets to not nickname offenders. What it does is it gives other people who are like-minded the idea that they can become famous too. Frouet 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 Obr Our host is Celeste Hiddley. The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Arbright, and Celeste Hiddley. Executive producers on behalf of IHAR Radio include Matt Fredrick and Alex Williams with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tinderfoot TV

include Donald Arbright and Payne Lindsay with producers Jamie Arbright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of Black Bar Mitzfa include myself, J. Ellis and Aaron Bergman with producer Sidney Fooves. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright, artwork by Mr. Soul 216, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, special thanks to a team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing and the North Group. Tundrafoot 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-phantom.com. For more podcasts from our radio and Tinder for TV, visit the IHR radio app, Apple Podcast, or ever you 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. 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, no. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm steel, Alphabet 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. you