Freeway Phantom - The Moniker

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

On October 1st, 1971, a fourth victim was taken and later found dead: 12-year-old Nenomoshia Yates. Finally, news outlets begin to pick up the story of these murdered black girls. And the media gives the killer a name...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. DC had never had a serial killing before, and so it wasn't something not that you ever get used to, but it wasn't something they were familiar with. And so if there's a body found here, and then, you know, a few weeks later, there's a body found here, and some months later, and they don't connect it until the fourth one or so, then it sort of spirals and people take notice.

And then they said, oh Houston, we've got a problem here. These deaths may be connected. And I'm not sure why that is, maybe because, you know, there were different detectives assigned to each of the cases. Maybe because, you know, one of the bodies or so was found across the district line in Maryland and they didn't communicate, Maryland and DC. Or again, maybe it's because there were so many homicides in the city and six little black girls from not the best parts of town, you know,

did anyone really care outside of their families. 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 of the house. 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. In the last episode, we learned about the third and fourth victims of the Freeway Phantom, Brenda Crockett and Nina Moshe-Yates.

Up until this point, these murders were largely considered by law enforcement to be unconnected, but the murder of Yates was a big turning point. She was 12 years old and she was found on October 1, 1971. She was the seventh grader and she was a very quiet and well-behaved child. In the evening, she went to Safeway.

That was a few blocks away from her home to buy a bag of sugar. This is author Victoria Hester who co-wrote a book with her father Blaine Parto on the Freeway Phantom murders. She reminds us that Nina Moshe Gates walked to a nearby Safeway around 7pm one night to pick up some groceries, and then after leaving, she was somehow abducted. She was found dead just over two hours later in Prince George's County.

Her body was found by a 15-year-old hitchhiker beside Pennsylvania Avenue, just 1600 feet beyond the district line. Her body was still warm when it was found. So she had been dumped and killed very recently. She was literally just dumped on the side of the road. Co-writer Blaine Pardo told us about the evidence gathering process that law enforcement went through for Nina Mosha.

They would have looked under fingernails, et cetera. Not for DNA traceable, but to see if she had scraped her victim or fought mag. And that was done, but you don't get that tangible piece of, oh, you've got somebody's skin, we can run DNA on it, et cetera. So while they may have found things like that, unfortunately, those things usually wouldn't have been preserved, and they didn't have the means to preserve those things. But they said the problem was at the time the police always had kind of a standard blanket in the back of their car for when they found dead bodies and they threw that blanket on them. And it's

not like the blanket went off got sterilized completely cleaned before it was used again it was a blanket that they used over and over. So the contamination could have come from any number of sources. And I think that's one of the complicated factors when it comes to the DNA is how this evidence was physically handled. These guys then put on rubber gloves when they touch things that, you know, they just picked it up. And you're gonna pick up Tracy and A of everybody that's ever touched that piece of clothing. So it's a real tricky thing.

But police were able to identify and preserve a few pieces of evidence. They found what they called Negroed Hares on her sanitary napkin. Hares that did not belong to her. They also found green fibers, much like the ones that had been found on previous victims. No one knew about the green synthetic fibers until detective Lloyd Davis When Davis had requested that all the evidence be sent to the FBI

That's when they came back about the green synthetic fibers, which aren't really green if you see them visually. This is retired MPD detective, Romaine Jenkins. Now, this is what the FBI technician told me, the guy who handled the cases. To the naked eye, they are different colors. They're only green if you look at them under a microscope. What are the sources of the fibers? That's that's what I wanted to know about the fiber evidence. I asked him I said, well you know what's the source of the fibers? He said he thought they came from an auto. He said, but let me get my notes and I'll get back to you. Well it took for ages

for him to get back to me. Fine, he didn't. He said, no, I think they came from an auto. But I talked to Detective Lloyd Davis, who had all the evidence submitted. He said he was told that the fibers came from a bathroom mat, like a bath mat and a bath room. And that goes along with these victims being washed and cleaned. That's it. That sounds about right, you clean, that sounds about right, as far as I'm concerned.

We'll explore the possible sources of these fibers in a later episode, but for now, there are two important things to keep in mind. Technology at the time just wasn't advanced enough to properly examine these fibers, so they were stored away, possibly in the boxes that Romaine has stored in her home.

Oh, these are glass slides. Don't bother that. No, I'm not gonna open them for sure, but these are actual glass slides with the hairs and fibers. It's possible that today we could revisit the fibers to learn more about their origin, but the evidence would need to be resubmitted for processing. The other significant matter as Romain alluded to is that the FBI was now involved.

After the murder of Nina Moshe Yates, law enforcement finally started to recognize that these cases were connected, and that expanded the scope of the investigation. The fourth body that brought more people in because where's the body found? You're talking about PG County, right? You're talking about crossing jurisdictional lines, so then here's PG County coming into play. By the time we get to Ninoemotia,

people are beginning to think this is the same perpetrator. They didn't have a phrase of serial killer. They may be called a pattern killer. Yeah, pattern case. The homicide detectives turned the cases into little girl cases. They didn't know anything about freeway fan. Up until this point, the FBI was only vaguely aware of the first few murders in the little girl cases. I would hear them talk about the first two is I recall the bodies were found with only about 15 feet of each other. And that kind of peaked their interest what We've never had a serial murder here,

but we've had multiple murders. And I thought there's something in here that would be interesting to get into and see how you would work it out, how you could figure out who did it. This is retired special agent, Barry Colvard, one of the FBI investigators who worked the case. He says that once victims started turning up both in DC

and over the state line in PG County, the FBI officially got involved. At the time of this case, in 1970, I'd been working fugitives and bank robberies for about four or five years. And that lets you know just about every corner, a dark alley in Washington, D.C. if you worked those kind of cases. Colbert says the freeway phantom murders felt different to him.

He was struck by the innocence and youth of the victims and felt compelled to work their cases. All of these girls were not from runaway families. These girls from when I can remember just hearing from the detectives, these were families that went to church and watched after their girls and wanted to know where they were, they were good families. They didn't take chances that would have led them to that kind of death. I don't think.

I don't know that they would have taken the chance of getting in a car with somebody that they didn't know to get a ride home or something. I don't think they would have. Colvert remembers when they got the call to join the investigation. I think the chief of police in Washington reached out to our agent in charge of the Washington office. They had so many leads and so many things to cover. They just didn't have the manpower. There was a lot of things going on in Washington then. We, this was only two or three years after Martin Luther King

and Stokely Carmichael had killed the pigs, burned the pigs and we were pigs. So they were really shorthanded. And the fact that it was a federal crime, we could assist the Metropolitan Police in leads that were just over the line in Maryland or in Virginia, because we had jurisdiction in those places. And I think the boss came around

and he was taking agents off of various squads to see if they wanted to work on the homicide case, this particular case. And I immediately offered my services. I said, I like the detectives that I work with over there. I'll be one of the volunteers for it. And that's how I got involved in this case. Colvert says the FBI's investigation of the freeway phantom murders was broad, intense,

and incredibly hands-on. We figured there had to be someone that got away. Someone that was lured to the car, you may even have a couple of cases where they were forced into the car, duct taped, but they got away. So you would take that thinking, maybe that could be our guy.

There has to be someone that he's not successful with when working those cases because we actually had evidence and witnesses. There's one that was dropped on the side of the highway. It seemed like a truck driver went by and thought he saw a white van or a white pickup truck or something. If you had a partial tag number, you couldn't go on a computer, you had to go through files. We got leads from psychics that were weird, but you were almost afraid to discount any of them. The one good suspect that we developed,

the young girl was coming out of a drug store, I think, on Minnesota Avenue. And a white man called to her to come to the window, and I think when she backed away thinking he was just asking for information and he was really trying to get her in the car. Either he reached out for her and she pulled back and screamed and other witnesses came forward and gave us a tag number. And when we identified this person, he was a contractor that either built houses, apartments, main building schools, and all not only the district, but in Maryland and Virginia.

If he was working on those buildings and offices, he had a place because I know at least two of our victims were kept for a day or two, and then bathed. He could tell he had been washed before they were dropped on the side of the road. So we figured that would fit. He'd have a place to take some. He was not a threatening looking person at all. So I thought, this guy looks good. They did a polygraph exam on him, and I think he passed.

I thought he was a good match. Colbert didn't provide the name of his suspect, but we reviewed the FBI case file. He was thoroughly investigated and cleared of suspicion. And so it was just one of many dead ends. That was the kind of leads we got. Mostly they would come in by the phone or they would give you a nickname. We heard that Buray had done something like this.

He had raped a girl and got mad at her or something and she was He was afraid she was gonna go back and rad on him because she knew him and he killed her We didn't have a internet to look we had to go through hands files these index cards Buray who's Buray out there? Because everybody went by a street name in DC. So you never got an aim It was Buray or Mumpsy bumps or Neenie or something like that. So you go through the monocrophile. You never have one.

You'd have six Burays in there. As a result, Colbert says their investigation became both frustrating and exhausting. We had spent so many nights away from home, so many weekends, so many holidays, out on the street, either in a surveillance, are just trying to catch somebody. If you had a suspect, you didn't have any evidence, the only chance you had maybe was following some night and catch him in the act of trying to get a little girl in the car, Pull him over, charging with a misdemeanor

so you could get prints and hair samples or something. That's what you were hoping for. And it was labor-intensive. You sat in cars with these guys all night long. And the worst weather, hoping we get a line on somebody. Somebody that's going to call up here and try to do this and we're gonna get them. At the end of the day, you thought,

is there something else we could do right now? Your shift is up, you've done your eight, 10 hours, and you're ready to go home. Man, if we could swing by that corner one more time and look and see if we see a white band. Let's do it. Let's do it. Now you were bone tired the next day, but no one was looking at their watch. No one was looking to see, all right, this time, let's cut it off, let's go home. There's nothing else we can do. Is there something else we could do right now that we couldn't do tomorrow. It's one o'clock in the morning, but sometimes that's the most ad-band patient's time to find this kind

of person doing this. And sometimes I met driving away the heck out in PG County to just see where my friend was at that time. There was no doubt these guys were committed to solving this thing. And I really thought we might, I believed it. At that time, I believed it. I said, he's gonna do something stupid, somebody's gonna get away and we'll get him. In the podcast, Alphabet Boys, we take you inside, 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 see, 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 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 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 work of retired FBI special agent Barry Colvert was impressive. Up until this point it seemed like law enforcement wasn't taking these cases seriously. But Colvert's team appeared to be different. He says they were dedicated to solving these murders.

Colvert and his detective Jimmy Owens interviewed dozens of people from the community and talked to numerous family members of the victims. Colvert remembers one night when they visited a family member to show her some evidence they'd found at a suspect's residence. We were going out to a woman's house and I think it might have been the ant of one of them. And I was going to take this picture to show her these items like ring earrings, maybe a some little trinket that a teenage girl would have. And I remember that because it was the one that made it the hardest to get off of this case. Jimmy was on the phone in the police cruiser and he said you just take it in there and usually the police, they were the said you just take it in there and usually the police

They were the evidence custodians at these things says you go in and do it So I can remember knocking on her door and she came to the door and Tora, this is my name is Barry Barry covert. I'm an FBI agent and I'm I'm trying to find who killed her niece cousin and she said come in who killed your niece, cousin. And she said, come in. As soon as I came in the door, she took my arm and she led me over to the dining table to sit down and I said, I have this picture. If you've ever seen any of these things on that she had and she put that paper down like she was, it was she was being so gentle with that picture of those items. And she kept brushing the edges, looking, and then she'd pick it up, and then she'd back

away and put it back down. And I noticed that her eyes were tearing up when she looked at the picture. And then she said, I don't recognize any of these. It must be one of the other girls. The boy, that just, I didn't know what to say after that. I know I said, well, we'll do the best we can. We're going to try to find this person. We got up and she held my arm all the way back to the front door.

And I turned around and stopped and I said, this took her by the shoulder. I said, we're going gonna find out who did this. We are gonna find out who did this, and I gave her a hug. And then we walked out the front, and it was hard, because she just stood by that front door,

that class door, watching me get in that car. And when I got in the car, Jimmy Owen said, hey, you know, you've got lipstick on your shirt. Let me get a, get me get a clean next to that. And I said, you know, Jimmy, let's don't wipe it off for a while. Let's leave that on here. I don't know that I ever, I'm sure I sent the suit

to the cleaners, but I think I wanted it on there for a while. I think I did just because of that interview with that woman. I had made a pledge and I'm from the south. We touch and hug a lot of people and I'm a hugger. But in this case, it was more than just a hug. It was like, this is me promising. This is more than a promise. I just want you to know. I mean what I say. We're going to find the person that did this. And I wanted her to know that and not some perfunctory handshake or I'll see you later. It's meant more than that to me. And then later, when I rolled stopped, I remember that promise to that woman. And it just kind of hard to walk away from it.

That's why this was different. I could not do this three months, six months, that we did this. This was hard. This was hard stuff. Meanwhile, public perceptions about the murders were shifting. Now that the cases had all been connected, things were changing in the neighborhood. I think just like doing a DC sniper time, doing that, when we talk about mass murderers

or killings, the communities started to close ranks a little more, be more watchful. This is Derek Davis, so we talked to in episode two. His family has owned a barber shop in the neighborhood since the 60s. People were more watchful about youth then, okay? They were looking out for them. People were talking about it more. It was more talk.

For instance, what I mean, when people came to Bobbyshop, that was the discussion in the Bobbyshop, that was the discussion in the Bobbyshop. And people were saying, we watch out, you know, watch out for the door to the dissonnet, and they said, yeah, you know, we're doing this, I'm getting off at this time. You know, people were kind of like somewhat forming their own groups or own, not like police groups, but something like neighborhood watches, the Orange Hat watches, we said these orange hats where communities were started to walk the blocks and stuff like that.

So the community were kind of like somewhat policing themselves the best way they could to stop what was happening. We couldn't stop what had already happened for surely. We didn't necessarily see where that support was coming from. Also sitting with us was Derek's friend Reverend Anthony Motley. And we got to talking about why it is that there was practically no media coverage on this case. It's astonishing to me that someone could snatch and murder young black girls and now we can't even find coverage. How come? Because they're black. Even today we had a six year old murder walking to the store with her father and mother and they get caught in a drive-by.

The mother and father wounded, two more people wounded, the little baby gets dead. The media, they show up, they do a press conference, and then they go away by, it's like sensationalism. And exactly. That's what it is. That's what they do.

See, don't. Do you have any what they call invest investigative reporters anymore and if they do investigate they don't investigate when it comes to black people. You know unless it's something that that's juicy you know like the government, but as far as the community is concerned, it's just another day in the park. This frustration was evident in the community throughout the murders. Community member Wilma Harper wrote about it in her book, The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom. The bizarre murders of these black girls had not aroused the press to an acceptable degree.

The communities seemed to have forgotten. Families of the victims bore their sorrow alone in hopelessness and terror. Harper writes that at one point, members of the Congress Heights neighborhood took it upon themselves to hold a press conference. They wanted to protest what they called poor police protection and a lack of media coverage. The press conference was called by Calvin Rolark, editor, publisher of the weekly Washington

Informer, and president of the Washington Highland Civic Association. He accused the police and news media of failing to give equal attention to crimes in the southeast. He condemned newspapers for bearing news of the deaths of the three girls. If it was a blue-eyed white girl from Silver Spring, her picture would have been all over page one. About 75 persons attended the press conference

at 1058 Waller Place, southeast. Harper remembers that just before Nina Moshe Gates was murdered, the media went entirely dark on the case. During the months of August and September, the news media made no reports of the progress in the investigation of the murders. I was recuperating from an automobile accident and was free to diligently watch for information. My interest in the cases had been heightened because I knew family members of two of the victims. I was also in accord with the earlier interests taken by citizens of the Southeast community to protect their children from such crimes. The law ended on October 2, 1971, not with the announcement of a solution, but with the headline of yet another Black Girls murder.

If you look through news releases and police departments, I mean, you're not going to find a whole lot of photos from 50 years ago. This is NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl Thompson, who we heard from at the top of the episode. When she thoroughly investigated this case in 2018, she says it was difficult to find any substantial news coverage. Initially, at some of the microfiche, I looked at it was lobbed in with, you know, like, okay, a girl at it was lobbed in with, you know, like, okay, a girl's body was found here and then, you know, some guy found across town. You know, it was just sort of like, in passing.

So there was coverage, but again, then it just sort of faded. You know, in the early 70s, Vietnam was all the daily non-stop coverage, right? Every single day, day in and day out, and you had these Mayday protesters, thousands of them on the nation's capital, and so that was the coverage. I mean, you know, Detective Jenkins will tell you that even at the time when they found the first body

that they were going to the scene, the supervisor pulled them off and said, no, no, I need for you to go down to the mall and deal with the protesters. And murder always took, homicide, homicide always took precedence, but not in this instance. So I think that was probably part of it. However, there was one major piece of news coverage

following the murder of Nina Moshe Gates. The Daily News published an article about the now connected murders, and they named the killer, the Freeway Phantom. We haven't been able to find this news clipping. There are some conflicting reports as to the exact date of this article, but we know it came before the killer's next victim was found. But they still didn't refer to the Freeway Phantom as a serial killer, and and remain Jenkins explains why. Well, at the time, the term serial killers was not even in existence.

The FBI didn't even have its profiling unit. So if we had a pattern of cases, we call them pattern cases. The reason you said pattern because it was something about the cases that linked them together, even the suspect wore the same clothing or said the same thing. In these instances, they weren't sure that it was the same person. It was hard for them to believe that one person could have committed all of these crimes. So a lot of times, you had investigators going off in their own direction, you know, looking for suspects, you know, that they felt might fit the profile of the person.

They might not have had a name for it at the time, but the freewifentom was likely Washington DC's first serial killer. Let me just say, I really hate the way that we give these killers these names. I know we have to do it, like, you know, just that's what it is. But I think that naming them, giving them this quasi-mythological status just elevates them. And these are despicable human beings, you know. Dr. Jean Merle is an author and professor of English at Queensborough Community College. She specializes in true crime and has studied the history and psychology of serial killers. To get a clear picture

of the freeway phantom, we need to understand what a serial killer is. So I sat down with Dr. Merle and asked her to fill in some missing pieces on that front. The standard definition of serial killing for a long time was three or more victims with a kind of a cooling off period between each. That's been revised, right? That's been changed to two victims at two different times for any reason. What were these killers called before we... I mean, we clearly had serial killers before the 1970s.

Right, I mean, if nothing else, everybody knows about Jack the Ripper. But what were they called? What did we, how did we, or law enforcement make sense of them? Before we had this language to comprehend and to articulate this phenomenon, we used a more Gothic terminology of the monstrous, right? These people were monsters. They were wicked, evil, demonic even. And so, you're moving from a more emotional rhetoric into one that's more scientific

and objective in a way. Can I put to you some of the most common myths about serial killers and have you respond to each one? The first one I think shows like criminal minds makes us think that there are way more serial killers than there are. I mean, they have someone to catch every week and FBI says, I mean, every murder is awful, but no more than 1% of all murders were committed by a serial killer. Why do we think they're so ubiquitous? Is it only the true crime shows? It's not true that the country is sort of crawling with serial killers. It never really was true.

What is true is that serial killing as a phenomenon goes through waves and troughs, right? And so on, goes through waves and troughs. And so in the postwar period, in the 1950s to the 1990s, there was a very large uptick in the number of serial killers who were apprehended, who were active and apprehended. In 1950, there were 70 to known serial killers in the country. In 1960 there were 217, 1970, 680, 768, 1990, 669, 2003, 71, 2010, which is the latest statistic, 117. 2010, which is the latest statistic, 117. So next myth, serial killers are almost all white men.

That's a good one too. And similar to the ways that the numbers of killers sort of peaks and troughs, race and serial killing is a very interesting thing. Early on, there were more white men than any other race. It was about 60% white men, 30 or 35% black men, the rest Hispanic Asian, Native Americans, very, very, very small numbers. That started to become even more 50-, as the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled on. And that's a very interesting thing that, you know, it is true that serial killers do tend to victimize members of their own race, but the fact is that the racial categories of black and white seem to become more even as the decades were on.

What about the myth that serial killers are isolated, dysfunctional? Well, that isn't actual. I wouldn't say that's a myth. I would say that's pretty true. We're talking about people who are psychopathic, and that means they have trouble with long-term relationships of any type. They have trouble keeping jobs. They have trouble fitting in. Anti-social personality disorder. They tend to also commit a range of sort of lesser crimes.

And so interactions with the system, whether it's misdemeanors or smaller felonies. These are not people who, you know, generally you would wanna be friends with and have a lot of friends. They are people who are just like, oh, you know, that guy's weird, I don't wanna, you know. The charming, charismatic, seemingly normal guys

are the outliers, right? And that's what True Crime has fed us. And that's what a lot of the movies and fiction television feeds us. So I would say that the majority of serial killers are not people who are successful human beings. The term serial killer wouldn't come around until the late 70s, but the killer took notice of the attention that this new moniker, freeway phantom, gave him. Not long after NinoMocia Yates, he would attack again, and this time, emboldened.

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 see, 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 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 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. My group, as I said in Washington DC, I wasn't far from the freeway 295. And when I was in elementary school, Harris Elementary School, one of the victims was in the class with my sister in the fifth grade, and I remember in the school they announced it, and we were devastated. My sister was crushed. It was just a really scary time.

And I remember my mom, you know, she was from the south, so, you know, she wasn't playing anyway, but I just heightened the fear. This is Rita McCoy, who we heard from in episode two. She's now a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Department, but she went to school with Nina Moshe Gates, and remembers when she was murdered. So when that happened with her, I think I was about 11 or 12.

When I was in junior high school, there was an incident. It was about 4th or 3rd and afternoon. And I'm a teenage girl and I had another little kid in my neighborhood. We were going to get some candy and stuff for her and just hanging out after school. And we were walking up this hill off of Benning Road. Just walking on laughing. It was a beautiful day. And all of a sudden I saw this white catalact. We on the sidewalk and it pulled up and like it was parking. And all of a sudden I saw this white Cadillac. We on the sidewalk and it pulled up and like it was parking and all of a sudden the guy he comes out of the driver's side and he comes around the front of the car and snatches me and he's not saying anything

and he grabbed my arm and he's holding me and he's pulling open his passenger door and I'm looking at this guy and there's no emotion on his face none and I'm like you know screaming and hollering and the little girl is hollering her name is Wanda and I'm trying to grab stuff I grabbed a piece of brick off the ground and hit them and nothing deterred him and he just was strong and I was kicking and fighting and I was almost in a car and people were driving up and down the road Bro, they like So all of a sudden coming down the hill that good old God there were some friends of my older brother

Name Roosevelt and his friends were coming down the hill and they say Isn't that road sister and I mean for them to even see me over his car It blows me away, but they saw guests coming down the hill they could see it. And they said, hey, they screamed to the guy because it was warm out in the windows were down. And the guy dropped me and I fell to the ground. And I'm telling you, you almost slammed the door on my leg and I jumped up, you know,

because I just was so scared and he closed the door and jumped in the car and drove off. So the guys flagged down the police officer. I don't know what they said to the police. They were older than me. They had to be like 16, 17, 18, whatever. And so they told the police what they saw and everything. The police officer let them go because the police officer wanted to see if he can catch the guy.

So we got in the car, police car. Next thing I know, the police officer, I guess he got a radio call or something, because I gave him the description of car and everything, and they found him in still him being rude. So he just went down to where he was, and there was another officer already talking to him, and this officer got out, he said, you stand apart. Next thing I know, I see him cuff him and put him in the police car car and then took me also to the station where my mom came and got me. I don't know what they did with him. I know they took him that day, but I don't know what happened as a result because I never was cold. So I don't know what they did or whatever. But when

we were talking about this case, when I was talking with you know, others about it years later matter effects I mean we're talking about maybe a couple years ago. It hit me Could this have been the freeway phantom? I don't know It made me wonder because this guy was very fierce and he was very determined. And I mean, it was no conversation, just snatching off the street. And when you look at those cases, that's what happened. In each one of those cases, they were just snatched off the street.

So it's just something to ponder. Thank God, it was saved from that. It's unclear if the man who tried to abduct Rita was the freeway phantom, but it's very possible. She was the exact demographic that the phantom was targeting, black, young, and petite. She was also unbending road. That's the same road that Nina Mosha was snatched off of.

And there was one other strange similarity. Back then they had this in school. It was a one piece like shorts that we used for our gym class. And it was like a one piece jumper, but shorts. And I had that on. And, you know, it wasn't provocative or anything, you know. So you were in the gym outfit,

which one of the other girls was in as well? Did you know that? No, I did. I did not know that. Are you kidding me? I never knew that. Wow. You know, it was issued.

And I could see myself in it, actually, because there were different colors. And mine was the top part is, is, is pen stripe. And it was in the pants were like gold. You know, the weird part is, it's pinstripe and it was in the pants are like gold. You know, the weird thing is I don't know that I have a war again. As it turns out, Rita had worn DC public school-issued gym shorts, the same shorts that Carol Spinks had on when she was killed. The coincidences in Rita's case are just too many to ignore.

And so, if this man she's describing was, in fact, the killer, we thought we should learn a little bit more about who he was. He was dark skin. He wasn't very tall. I'd say he was probably about between maybe 5, 8, 5, 9. He was strong, very strong. He looked like he could have been either in his late 30s or early 40s, mid 40s.

He had like siburns. He was kind of scruffy. He wasn't dirty, but like, you know, wasn't neat. But he had facial hair, not a beard, but he had siburns, and he had a mustache, and it was dark. He wasn't like, he had no gut or anything. He was, he was pretty fit. I wouldn't even doubt that he could have been military or some type of job at that age to keep, you know, in pretty good shape. You know, now with my police skills, I can really break it down a little

bit. I really believe I was being stalked. The whole thing was, I wonder how long he was stalking. Because when he pulled up, he pulled up father enough so that he was literally by the time he got out, it was like pre-playing. By the time he got out of his car, he met me. You see, as I was walking. We asked Rita how this event impacted her life. It was mostly mental. I was definitely fearful after that. I don't remember ever walking up there again that way, ever again. You know, I remember even after that years later driving, you know, and I've never talked about it.

I mean, even within my family, we didn't talk about it. And girl Wanda, she lived next door. And we were recently talking about it because we're still friends and she's so, oh yeah, she's, it was, you know, terrifying. And I never really talked to her even about her perspective. Because it had to traumatize her because she was younger than me about three or four years. But they didn't go after her. Rita says that afterward she was expecting to learn more about the man

or what happened. But she never heard anything else about the incident. After that day, I was never called. There was never anything after that. I don't know what happened to that guy. else about the incident. Rita could have been the fifth victim of the freeway phantom if there was any connection at all. Either way, she was lucky. But not everyone was so lucky. Soon another girl would go missing. Just a little over a month after Nina Moshe Yates was murdered, 18-year-old Brenda Woodard

was found dead. And in her coat pocket, police found a hand, and you can find free way and found. Next time on Freeway Phantom. When I got home today, my wife was crying. She said she got off from work and she couldn't catch the bus because of all the police tape. We live basically in the same neighborhood. I mean, the same type of apartments, the same people.

And I used to hang out with, with she lived. I had friends up there. She had been strangled and what was different with her, she had also been stabbed. So unlike previous victims, she put up a serious struggle with her asylum. And it makes you wonder too, did she fight back? Because she basically wrote her own killer's note. Areas, he's taunting the police, he knows enough

to know not to write the note himself, because he could potentially be connected to it. is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and Celeste Hiddley. Executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio include Matt Fredrick and Alex Williams with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tinderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payng Lindsay with producers Jamie Albright 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 Barmatsova, 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 FBI all mixed up in the same case. So you do personal security all over the world

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