Freeway Phantom - The Hospital

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

After a hiatus of 10 months, police find the body of 17-year-old Diane Williams on September 6th, 1972. Diane would be the final confirmed victim of the Freeway Phantom. Sadly, police attention would be diverted away from the case by the Watergate Scandal. Plus, a suspect is revealed.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, Tender 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. It began that evening. She had cooked dinner that afternoon and had done her little chores and what have you. And so she asked if she could go and visit her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend at the time who lived near the

reparation center where she worked at. And so because she had done all of that, my parents allowed her to go and visit him, which meant she had to take one bus and go straight up Martin Luther King to get to his house. And so I remember Diane going there and I remember my parents telling her you have to be back home by 10 o'clock. We used to have a strict rule that when the street lights came on we had to come inside.

It's now after 10 o'clock, my father worked at the Lord and Reformatory in Northern Virginia at the time, and he worked the graveyard shift, so he had gone to work. But my mom was home, and she had noticed that, you know, it's 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, and 12 o'clock, and Diane's still not home. All I remember is, Roy is dying going to get in trouble when she come home because it was, you know, after the time she was supposed to be there. And I was just thinking that, you know, she stayed out late. I'd never, ever,

ever thought that anything would have happened to her. So I was able to eventually dose off to sleep in the next morning when my father came home, and my mother said that Diane never came home. So that morning they wind up calling the police. They took a police report, and at one point my mother was trying to remember what Diane had on, and she had given them a description of her clothing and I remember Deborah, my sister intervening and saying no she had changed and she put on a gold shirt in the blue jeans. Please took the report and they left. Later that morning I remember my sister's and I we went to the corner of South Capital, Montlucke King Avenue.

There's a bus stop just in that block in front of a bank of trees. And so we thought, what if she got off the bus and got hurt? We went in the woods, seen if we could find Diane. We didn't find her, but when I got back to the house, my parents had been notified that there had been a young female found, and they wanted to have them go down to Baltimore to the medical examiner's office,

so they can see if that was dying. So while they were in Baltimore to identify the body that they found. The evening star newspaper came out and we were reading in the newspaper that there was a body found. And when they gave the description of what the person was wearing, it was a gold shirt and blue jeans. And without seeing anything more, we just knew that that was dying. The homicide detectives termed the cases to little girl cases. This child was laying on the side of the road.

I wouldn't go, no way. I would come out how. 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 ketchup. I thought it was just a matter of time. I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. My family had just moved to Washington, D.C. from El Paso, Texas in 1969. So we were movies in D.C. This is Patricia Williams, a sister of Diane Williams, who would be the sixth confirmed victim of the freeway phantom. Having to move to Washington DC,

I was still trying to get acclimated to living in the city and living in an area where it wasn't to me as safe as it was when we were living in out past Texas. But by the time 1972 came along, we were pretty much Washingtonians. We went to school, we all worked at the recreation centers during the summertime. We had friends and we would go to back then

they had house parties. That's what reminds me of 71 in 72. Earth went in fire, going to the outdoor concerts that they would have during the summertime for kids. And intertwined in that era was the freeway phantom. Because while we were young and still having fun, I knew, and we knew, and Diane knew that there was a serial killer in Washington, D.C. By the time 1972 came around, we were all aware that some girls had been murdered and it was attributed to the Freeway Phantom. By this point, the Freeway Phantom had killed five young black girls across the D.C. area.

But there had been no activity since November of the previous year. Still, Patricia says that those murders hung eerily over her family. So the feeling was almost atypical because I believe it took three, possibly even four girls to be murdered. Before they got any kind of recognition that Houston we have a problem.

The community was upset about that and that maybe they had been made aware sooner that there's a potential killer out there of young girls to watch your daughters cook a May be. We would have had less tragedy, but it took them too long to bring the public or make the public aware that there was a killer out there. And so a lot of people in the community were upset about it.

But Patricia says that the best her family could do was to keep living their lives. As far as myself and even, you know, like my sisters and stuff, we were aware of it. If it doesn't happen right in your neck of the woods, you may be aware of it, but it doesn't affect you. So we weren't so frightened that we stayed inside and behind locked doors. We were cautious, you know. There's never believing that anything like that could happen to us.

Patricia had a large family, but she says she was closest with her sister Diane. There were six of us, six siblings. Diane was the oldest, she was 17. Of course being the oldest, we looked up to her. We would always go to church and she actually said she was going to get baptized and we followed her and we were all baptized, following Diane's lead. Diane and I were very close, we actually shared the same bedroom. So we were always close. But at 17 years old Diane was starting to date. And so even though we were close,

we weren't as close as we used to be because I'm a younger sister, some older sisters. You know, they don't want to be around, not they don't want to be around, but I was younger and what do I know. But then on September 5th, 1972, 17-year-old Diane Williams went missing. It had been 10 months since the freeway fandom had killed his fifth victim, Brenda Woodard. But now, it seemed as though he had returned.

She had visited her boyfriend, which was pretty normal thing for her to do, and was told to be home by 10th the night before. This is writer Victoria Hester, who co-wrote a book on the Freeway Phantom with her father, Blaine Parto. Her boyfriend escorted her to the bus stop, so we know that she got at least to the bus. The bus driver did confirm that she got off at a bus stop, which was at 19th Street and Benning Road. It really didn't make any sense

how she ended up where she ended up. We have no idea how she got where she was based on where she was dropped off, whether she got a ride from someone else or whether she walked a different way home. It was just odd, especially that late at night. Yeah, it wasn't the bus stop that you would get off at to go home.

It was earlier, and it made no sense. This is Blaine Parto. The bus driver was fairly certain of where she got off and then she got off alone. Yeah, but it doesn't make sense that she would get off the bus there. There's a reason she got off and we'll never know what that was. But the killer wasn't with her then, so it's confusing. But it also tells me that he wasn't stalking these girls.

If you think about it, so many of them are caught going to a grocery store, I'm confusing, but it also tells me that he wasn't stalking these girls. If you think about it, so many of them are caught going to a grocery store running an errand. It's not like something that's a routine where he's following him for several days and knows their pattern and how to intercept them. These are all victims of opportunity. Her body was found the very next day. She was reported missing by her father when he came home at 8 a.m. that morning.

Her father actually ended up driving by her body on his way home from work. He was a corrections officer at Lorton Prison and didn't realize that he had driven right past his own daughter's body. He didn't know at that point that she was even missing since he worked the night shift. He was just going straight home and that's when he realized she wasn't there. At about 7 a.m. that day, the body had been found by a trucker who had pulled off the highway. It was alongside I-295, just south of the Maryland D.C. line. Diane's parents went to Baltimore to identify her body.

And while they were gone, Patricia and her siblings saw the news of their sister's death in the evening star newspaper. I remember all of us screaming and crying and just really breaking down because we found out that, you know, our sister had been murdered. I remember the next door neighbors. They later had said that they heard all this commotion going on next door. They didn't know what was going on, but obviously we were upset enough that we caused concern with the neighbors because of our reaction to reading that. So when our parents did come home, they of course told us that yes, that in fact was Diane that was murdered. At that time, our parents didn't share a lot of information with us,

so I didn't know a lot, but but at that time because Diane's body was found along a freeway they had almost immediately linked it to the freeway fandom. I don't even know if they had evidence other than her body being found on the freeway to say that she was infecting a victim, but the media had pretty much linked her to that as being a victim. But there was evidence linking Diane to the previous murders. The bus stop where she was last seen was just down the street from the location of Carol Spinks and Darlinia Johnson's abduction sites. And she was found just off the I-295 freeway,

about two miles from where she lived. According to the police report, Diane was wearing the clothes that she went missing in. Like previous victims, her shoes were removed. But this time, they were carefully placed next to her body. The name Diane was also written in one of her white sneakers, and police found a dollar and 26 cents in the pocket of her body. The name Diane was also written in one of her white sneakers, and police found a dollar in 26 cents in the pocket of her jeans.

According to the autopsy report, the official cause of death was strangulation. There was no sign of sexual assault, but Seaman was found on her clothing. Police believed this was because Diane had had sex with her boyfriend the night before, but the boyfriend told authorities they didn't have sex that evening. Despite this, police chose to not have the semen officially tested. The interesting thing about Diana is that her shoes were not missing from her body, unlike the other victims where one shoe was missing or both shoes, but her shoelaces were missing. Which is interesting because that's deliberate.

Here's Victoria Hesterigan. You don't just run out of your shoelaces or they just disappear. You deliberately have to take the shoelaces out. So was that done to tie her up at some point and he forgot about it or was this done as a souvenir to take home and remember it by? It kind of seems like little things like shoes or books are missing from each of the girls and it does kind of seem like a souvenir type deal for the killer which is another creepy factor that there's a box sitting in someone's basement somewhere that they may not know why these random things are there.

And the other thing about her was that she had money in her pocket of her jeans. So we know that the motivation here was definitely not money in it was to kill her. Her cause of death was strangulation as well, and she did have bruises on her ribcage, a scrape on her elbow, and fingernail marks on her neck. The police report suggests that this evidence was submitted to the FBI, however, the FBI had just been handed another significant case. Richard Nixon's future as the president

of the United States has now apparently moved beyond his control. On Capitol Hill, the House Judiciary Committee has started a formal inquiry into whether it should approve the impeachment of the President. The Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing proposals that would shift control of the Watergate investigation from the White House to a court-appointed prosecutor who could investigate the President himself. In June of that year, the Watergate scandal broke, and this diverted the FBI's attention and

manpower away from the freeway fandom case, which meant that the investigation, while technically ongoing, was relegated to not obscurity, just the shadows. The case was not forgotten, but it was also not top of mind for law enforcement, and that's put to get lightly. There were things that happened where the freeway fan thum and also other murder victims, their cases were not a priority over something else that may have been going on in Washington DC. Everybody knows that the color of the case gets the less chance of your actually closing the case.

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 the AI, but who is Flavio? I see a movie with Arm Diller son 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 steel 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 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. The fallout from Diane Williams' murder was even more chaotic than the previous five murders. Community member Wilma Harper wrote about this in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.

In fact, she had some relation to Diane Williams, as she writes. On September 6, 1972, my brother, Leon Williams, had promised to come to my house and help plant tulip bulbs. At 5 o'clock PM, the telephone rang. It was Leon. He said the girl that was reported missing is my Diane, and she is dead. My reply, I'll come over immediately." Wilma says the media frenzy around Diane's death was also bigger than it had been for previous victims.

Circumstances surrounding Diane's death were similar to those present in the other murders committed, giving much rise to much publicity and media headlines blaring after 10 months. Freeway Phantom strikes again. With an period of 18 months, six black girls had been killed and their bodies placed on the freeways around Washington, D.C. None of the murder cases had been solved. Who is this mysterious person? Is there a freeway Phantom? As a result of this frenzy, the Williams family was bombarded with strange calls and visitors.

The family also had to deal with the lunatic fringe. Some people with sadistic tendencies presented extreme anguish to the family by telephone. Calls came in around the clock, increasing their anxiety during the day and disturbing their sleep at night. They received four particularly sadistic calls, obviously from the same person at 2 o'clock a.m. who said, in a sinister voice, I killed your daughter. Others asked for Diane by name. Some of the messages were obscene.

Lastly, Wuma Harper writes that while Diane's body was being prepared for the funeral, the family became aware of evidence that had been ignored by the Maryland coroner's office. There seems to have been no end to the horrors that confronted the family during that time when the funeral arrangements were being made. When Diane's body was taken in Mason's funeral parlor, the mortician found certain evidence that she thought was worthy of police scrutiny. She insisted that a pathology test be made that night before evidence was destroyed by embalming fluids. Seaman and hair of a certain color in texture were found in the mouth of the deceased. The autopsy conducted at the corner in Maryland had not revealed these facts.

Had there been gross negligence on the part of the persons in the coroner's office? Was forensic medicine the most fascinating field of police work neglected? How did the hair get inside of the mouth of the corpse? Was this a clue planted or left by the freeway phantom? We don't know the answer to these questions, but we do know that Diane Williams was the last confirmed victim of the Freeway Phantom.

With no new murders and federal authorities occupied with Watergate, it seemed like the investigation had hit a wall. However, a small team of investigators continued on the case for the next few years, including now retired FBI special agent Barry Colbert, who says that those years after the murders stopped were particularly difficult. The main thing you were hoping, sometime at one of these crime scenes, that the assailant would drop something. He would lose something that was his.

We didn't do it. We just didn't have it. We couldn't find anything like that. Even a confession with no backup evidence, they could come to court and retract their statement, and you really kind of had a loss. We just didn't have that many witnesses that saw a victim with somebody and then they never saw them again. Barry says that the best they could do was to start building a profile of their suspect. The first thing most people agreed on Barry tells us is that the killer

was likely someone from the neighborhood. I think these girls, if they got in a car and went with somebody, I think they would have seen them, they would have recognized them, they may not know them by name, but they've seen them where they hang out, where they go. And if he said, wet out tonight, when we give you a ride, they might get in the car with him.

As far as getting in a car with a stranger, something tells me that that may not have happened. We were looking for someone that there would be some familiarity. It's somebody that they've seen from Oxen Hill Athletic Club. It could be a coach, it could be a basketball coach. It could be somebody that, oh, I know him, we see him at Rec Center, or we see him when we go up here to school at night. This was a sentiment shared by former NPD detective, Remain Jenkins, the lead investigator on this case.

Whoever did the cases, it 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. Because of this and other evidence, many felt that the killer had to be a black male, most likely in his 30s.

I concluded from looking at the reports from the FBI, niggroid head hairs, unlike the victims who were found on the victims. When you look at the crime scenes, there were no black detectives on the scenes close enough that their hair could have dropped on these victims. So where did the black hair have, which was not the victims, so that is what I was basing it on.

And they had to have fit into the community without being noticed. Right, right. And it wasn't unusual for white males to be in the neighborhood. Who was a white male who came to the neighborhood almost every week? They're sure it's man. Everybody had a grandmother had a nickel policy,

and he come there every week and collect his money, and nobody never robbed him or anything. Every week, so nobody said anything about him. In your opinion, it wouldn't be a white person. Forensically, I would say that's correct. It was not a Caucasian, It wasn't a white person. No. Romain concedes that some of the official suspects were white,

but she never believed it. They had some white guys who were over in the 4900 block of Ben and Road, South Lees, picking up black females off the street and stuff like that. But if you go by the forensic evidence, and that's the problem, if it doesn't match, you know, if it's niggroid head hairs, why would niggroid head hairs be on the victim's underclothes?

If some black male hadn't been closed to her, you see what I'm saying. So, and I think Brenda Woodard is the only one where substantial Caucasian hares were found. But they weren't able to do anything with them because I think in one case some of the hares were dyed red. You know how many white males you know dyed a hair red, you know. So we don't know whether it's cross contamination or not. We don't know. However, someone else who reviewed the case

had a different perspective on the suspect. Former PG County homicide detective, Hillary Zuckalowski believes it may not have been someone from within the community. Well, you know, typically you'll have a conversation with the people you work with and, you know, everybody has their own series as I did and I kind of agree with everybody else. We we thought perhaps that it may have been somebody

that was transient that area is highly transient. People are coming going all the time. I thought perhaps it could be somebody that they're temporarily working for the government or even perhaps a military person because they're always coming and going to that area. And we thought it's a good possibility that somebody was there for a period of time. And since they stopped, so a replica, we thought that was a possibility

that somebody may have been transferred out of that area. I mean, it was all speculation. Nobody really knew anything at the time. It was just nothing but guesswork. To some degree, the transient idea makes a lot of sense. It was very common for serial killers in the 70s to travel, leaving behind bodies in various places. Some examples include Samuel Little and the Golden State Killer. And even though she still believes it was a black male from the community, Remain Jenkins admits that the FBI did investigate

similar cases across the country, looking anywhere for a connection. If you look at all the submissions, I mean, they traveled to Connecticut because Connecticut had some cases similar, not the exact but similar, they went to Connecticut because Connecticut had some cases similar, not the exact but similar. They went to Connecticut, they went to upstate New York, they went to New Jersey, they went everywhere that there was a series of pattern cases where females were raped and strangled and thrown on the highway.

And some of these cases were solved. They even interviewed the suspect in those cases, so lots of work was done. It was. But then how to explain the fact that the freeway phantom stopped killing? Remain has an idea about that as well. I think he was upset. He felt he had vindicated himself. it vindicated himself. He had gotten authorities or whoever to see that he meant business. It was no need.

How often do you find serial killers who kill women for years and they get married? They become what is it? One guy was it a BK? BTK? Yeah, you know, these people return to society and act like they hadn't done a thing. When trying to determine the characteristics of your suspect, what you're doing is creating

what's usually called a psychological profile. But there's another type of profile to consider, the geographic profile. It's a technique used in criminal investigations to help detect this focus on the offender. Even though these are often stranger crimes like a serial murder or a serial rape, it's typical to generate a lot of suspects, like literally hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of suspects. So finding who you're looking for is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Geographic profiling provides a way to prioritize suspects, hundreds or thousands.

It gives you a place to start looking through the needle in that haystack. This is Dr. Kim Rosmo, a professor of criminology at Texas State University. He worked with law enforcement to help develop the geographic profile. What we do with geographic profiling is we take the locations of a connected series of crimes. So by a connected series of crimes, I mean, crimes that it's clear the same offender has committed them. The role of geographic profiling is to analyze the locations. It gives us a map of where to start our search.

Doesn't give you an exit marks the spot. If you're looking for a place to start, geography is a very powerful tool. One of the people who worked closely with Dr. Rosmo was Jim Traenem, a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Department. Years after the murder stopped, they tried using the geographic profile.

I had worked a lot with Dr. Kim Rosmo. He's about the most brilliant police officer that I know. But he developed this process called geographic profiling where you actually look at the different crime scenes. The more crime scenes you have, the more that you can you know work with his program. And what he does is he's able to feed all of these like what the abduction site, the body recovery site, you know things like that into the program. You come up with what he calls anchor points. And these are areas not like a specific point,

but like an area of the city that the suspect has some sort of significant connection to either his employer, his residence, things like that. The process essentially narrows down a location where the killer likely resides, based on a map of the murders. It's much more complicated than that, but it was very impressive to writers Victoria Hester

and Blaine Parto. One of the things Jim Trayden did when he did this was, he did what's called geographic profiling. And they look at where the victims lived, where were they picked up, where did they have the encounter with the killer? Where were the bodies dumped? He looks at traffic patterns at the time and roads and everything else. They narrowed it down that the killer had some sort of a connection to seen Elizabeth's hospital.

Or as we call it, the DC area, C-T's. Or as we call it the DC area, St. Thieves. I guess right now they're in the middle of demolishing it, slashing, changing it into like townhouses. Very creepy mental hospital, and it's got very psych vibes to it. Like it's a very old, multiple buildings, kind of, it's very condemned looking. You know, if you were going to film a horror movie, this would be a place to film a horror movie.

The windows have bars and the bars are rusting. Even in broad daylight, it is a creepy place to be. You're standing here and you realize, okay, the killer had some sort of connection to this. The first two victims were found on the other side of the fence from St. Elizabeth's on the highway. I mean, it's literally within 40 feet of the fence of St. Elizabeth's. So this guy, he had some sort of a connection to it. Now, it could be that he worked there, could be who was patient there. He had something that tied him to that.

It's an anchor point, they call it. You don't know what that is, because we don't know who the killer was, but there's definitely at least one suspect that has a scene Elizabeth's connection and some creepy coincidences that tie into a lot of this. some creepy coincidences that tie into a lot of this. In the podcast Alphabet Boys, we take you inside undercover investigations. I'm Trevor Aronson.

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 specified grenades, a lot of ammunition. It's a mystery wrapped around an international arm steel, 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 do.

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 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. The geographic profile done by Dr. Kim Rosmo triangulated areas of interest in DC based on certain types of evidence and the locations of various murder sites. And as he tells us, the profile seemed to work. It was interesting because there's one specific location that showed up very high in the profile

that we all thought was interesting. Maybe had nothing to do with it, you know, maybe just a coincidence, but it was certainly something that would be worth following up on in some sort of later efforts. And that particular location was St. Elizabeth's Hospital. I believe it was the oldest mental health hospital in the United States. I think it goes back to the Civil War. And it was located at 2700 Martin Luther King Avenue, Southeast Washington. And it was ranked very highly. Now, given that the offender's behavior in these crimes was

somewhat bizarre, not what we would consider good behavior or healthy behavior, you have to think at least about maybe he had served time there and knew that location. Other possibilities maybe he worked there, maybe he visited somebody there. So you don't know, but the idea is if you had a list of suspects, you could see anyone with a connection to the hospital, would be worth exploring and then seeing if DNA or fingerprints or something else matched. Years later, in 1977, investigators did make a match. They were able to identify one suspect with ties to the hospital and his name was Robert

Askins. Askins had ties to St. Elizabeth. He spent decades there as a patient, middle patient. Here's writer Blaine Pardo again. Askins was a creepy individual on so many levels. He tried to kill several prostitutes by poisoning them and didn't kill one of them. Was confined for years at that location

and then released later, killed another woman, was tried for that, spent more time at St. E's. As Blaine says, Askins was convicted for the 1938 murder of a sex worker named Ruth McDonald. He was admitted to St. Elizabeth's Hospital sometime in the 1950s, and then the following decade went to work there as a computer technician. And then in the late 1970s, he attacked two women, kidnapped them, posing as a police officer, took them back to his place, held them hostage, sexually assaulted them, bathed them, and

in one case, the woman got away and the other one, he drove her out and let her go, which was kind of creepy. Asking if you think about he's capturing women, bringing him to his place, bathing them, which is just a creepy little thing all on its own. And in his apartment, they found one of his legal documents when police searched it in 1978, which is a half decade after all of this. They did find a court document with a word tantamount at it. And he was said to have used that word, often at word. He was gifted person, he was an intellectual person, but he had very little control emotionally. He literally

spent the rest of his life in jail, but he had distinct ties to to St. Elizabeth's. Askins is largely considered to be one of the strongest suspects. He mostly fit the profile. He was a black male who lived and worked in the region. He was high school educated and employed at a key location. And most of all, he also had a prior history of violence and sexual abuse of women. When they searched his home, police discovered a number of peculiar things. As Blaine said, they found a court document where a judge described Askins' behavior as, quote, tantamount.

But they also found soiled women's scarves and a knife used in a prior crime. However, none of it was direct evidence that could implicate him in the freeway phantom murders. In this case, it happens to match up. That doesn't mean he did it. They never found any physical evidence. No source for the green rayon fibers that could tie him back to that. I gotta tell you, at one point, I was tempted to get some fentanyl and go to his house and ask the owners there if I could

go in the basement and spray around to see if there's traces of blood. But you know, there's no way to introduce that conversation without sounding a bit crazy yourself. And there's a part of me that wonders, you know, he had a house that was fenced, it had a garage, he could pull in the back, it had a basement, there's so many little things that it works for him. But just because he matches the profile doesn't mean he did it. It just means he happens to coincidentally match the profile. If you watch any of the Trichram stuff on TV, you'll see all the time where they go,

this guy matches the profile and he's got an iron clad alibi. And it happens a lot. If you look at the psychological profile, they said that killer was probably in his 30s. Haskins was older. He was in his 40s at the time of the freeway fan of killings. Does that mean he didn't do it? Can you exclude him? No, it just means he doesn't 100% fit the profile, but every other aspect, he kind of does. So there's a lot of objectivity that you have to step back and challenge yourself. I'd love to tell everybody, I know for sure it's Robert Elwood-askets.

I know for a fact he did it, but we don't have any physical evidence yet that can tie him to it. I say, yeah, because DC has thrown out a lot of their evidence, but there is some evidence I still think in Maryland that could DNA wise be tied to him or to the killer. Another interesting thing about Askins is his not only history, but known issues with women, which kind of stand out.

Here's writer Victoria Hester again. He had a real issue with prostitutes, so much so they started poisoning them, and he had an interesting relationship with his mother that kind of shaped his hatred for women, but he would always seek them out. Obviously with the poisoning of the prostitutes and the abduction of the other women. So he kind of fits the profile, in this case too, just for his insensitivity to people, especially women.

It's just creepy. The one thing it always stood out with me is his mother remarried and he was living with his mother and he wouldn't allow his stepfather to move in to the house. But she let him have that kind of control. She let him have that degree of control and I'm like how abnormal is that? Because people get married all the time and remarry, if you imagine somebody going, well no, you can't have a move in. So the point where you go, okay, I'm not gonna do it. You know, until he was locked up and then she did.

There's parts of this that, to me, it almost screams askins, but until somebody can find that physical connection and struggling. Retired MPD Detective Roman Jenkins had a lot to say about Robert Askins as a suspect. No, I didn't like Robert Askins and I felt Robert Askins was too old. I don't think that these young girls would even have gone up to him. What would be the conversation that he had, maybe if he had a gun, he could get in the

car. But then you go back to a crocket. The first time she sounds like she's upset. And you were talking about the first phone call she made. You had the first phone call she made. The second one, she doesn't seem to be upset. And if asking to grabbed her, and she didn't know them, how would the suspect know if her mother had seen them or not

if he didn't recognize her mother because he knew him. See he knew these victims. Because she asked on the phone, do you know if my mother saw me? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And he allowed them to make contact. Ms. McLeodolene Johnson's mother said that she got a strange phone call. I killed your daughter. Brenda Woodard, her body is left on the grounds

out there where her mama worked at the hospital. So was it just his age that made you think it wasn't Robert Askins? Yes, it was his age and I know in reading the FBI evidence reports. his hairs did not match the niggroid head hairs. None of the fiber evidence that was removed in a search warrant at his house matched. They could not find any type of green synthetic fibers that matched these. But he did know about the word tan amount because it

was used quite often in describing him. And his court proceedings. Yes. And generally, that's where it comes from. You know, if you look at the note, there's a saying now that it somebody tells you who they are the first time you best believe it. That person told us who he was. Somebody else called him insensitive. You don't call yourself insensitive, okay? Somebody else in some document made him the insensitive person. Detective Jim Trinum agreed with Roman Jenkins. He believes investigators were blinded

by the word tantamount. When you start looking at some of the suspect bottles, you see that coming up. Oh, he uses the word tantamount. When you start looking at some of the suspect biology, you see that coming up. Oh, he uses the word tantamount in this document or that document. In reading the search warrants and the investigation into him, it was like the detective was really obsessed with him and he was really trying to push a square peg into a round hole, in my opinion. I mean, some of the

leaps that he was making to try to connect Askins to these girls was pretty kind of eye-rolling. Askins is now dead. He's never admitted to anything when some detectives did go down. The question him, he was extremely paranoid. But then again, I think I would be too if I'm in prison as somebody trying to put the murder of five girls on me. I don't think that's at normal behavior, though they thought it was. Askins was given a life sentence for the kidnapping and sexual assault of two women. He died on April 30, 2010 at the age of 91. One of the detectives communicated with Askins until his death, and he continued to deny any involvement in the murders.

Whether or not Askins was the killer, the fact remains that St. Elizabeth's hospital is a significant location in this case. I visited the grounds last year with my producers Jamie and Trevor. So we're standing here at the place where St. Elizabeth's Hospital stood in 1971. This was the place where one of the prime suspects Robert Askins was treated for years, held actually. And because of its proximity to so many important locations in the Freeway Phantom cases, that's one of the reasons why people felt Robert Askins was a good suspect. Because the geographic profile landed on this location

where we're standing as sort of the hub of this killer's life as that this would be an incredibly important location for him. And Askins was held here for years. And again, it's close, it's close to everything. I mean, we haven't gone far from that neighborhood where Carol Spinks lived and where D'Airlineia lived. It's close, it's all in the same. I mean, for me, it's walkable. The hunt for suspects throughout the 70s was mostly unsuccessful. But in a strange turn of events, investigators briefly

determined that it wasn't one person who was responsible, but an entire gang. Here's Jim Trainham again. One of the things that happened right about this time period was 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 Vega 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. Next time on Freeway Phantom. It was a gang. It was going around abducting young women and raping them. The investigators for Freeway Phams said, well, maybe these guys are the same guys. And they opened a multi-jurisdictional task force that involved the FBI, the park police.

I think I 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. So, why was she not included among the freeway Phantom victims? I have no idea. I guess mainly because she was only victim found in the ward. And sometimes I get the feeling that police officers get in their mind who they think did it. And in their mind, they think did it,

and in their mind the cases are closed even though nobody was ever brought to trial for it. Fruei Phantom 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 Ar. 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 Tenderfoot TV include Donald Arbright and Payne 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. Soul 216, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set, special thanks to a team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord 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-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. 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. 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 I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows.

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