Texarkana - a city that was afraid of the night and moonlight (14 photos)

When it comes to the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, the number of questions about this case far outweighs the number of answers.





Texarkana is a city located on the border between the states of Texas and Arkansas in the United States. This is the name of the area where the cultures of the two states mix. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders occurred in Miller County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas, over a ten-week period from February 22 to May 3, 1946.



Texarkana

A total of eight people were attacked. Five victims were killed, leading to an investigation riddled with mistakes. Texarkana has had its share of violence, but these attacks shook residents to their core.



Streets of Texarkana

The first attack occurred on the evening of Friday, February 22, 1946. A young couple returning from a movie date parked their car on a popular path for lovers to enjoy hugs and kisses. Jimmy Hollis, 25, and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Mary Jeanne LaRay, were approached by a masked man who shone a flashlight into the couple's car. The man had a gun and demanded they leave. The worst night of their lives has just begun...



Jimmy Hollis - first victim

The masked man ordered Hollis to remove his pants, and when he did not comply, he was hit twice in the head with a pistol. LaRay later told police that the man hit Hollis in the head so hard that she thought he had been shot.

Horribly, the sound that Larey heard was the crack of a broken skull. In a panic, she gave Hollis's wallet to the stranger, thinking that the masked man had come to rob them. But this was not the case, and the man told Larey to get up and run.



Search for evidence in the case

Police questioned her and the victim reported that her attacker was a black man who had a white bag or pillowcase over his head with holes cut out for his eyes and mouth. When Hollis came to, he denied her words, saying that the attacker was a white man.

The conflicting stories sounded suspicious to police, and given how brutal the attack was, they assumed Laray was lying and that she knew her attacker. But she said he was black to cover up for the mystery man. Perhaps the police did not believe the girl because of her gender and decided that she was embarrassed that she had become a victim of violence, and therefore was lying.

But they both suffered head injuries. Given this, one can understand how the victims could identify two men of different races. LaRay was so traumatized and upset that she decided to leave Texarkana.

Second attack



Richard L. Griffin and Polly Ann Moore

A month later, on March 24, a motorist noticed a car with two passengers parked in the same lovers' lane. He thought the couple in the car had gotten carried away in their embrace and fallen asleep there. When the driver came closer to the car, he realized that the people were not sleeping, but were dead.

Police discovered that the man, 29-year-old Richard L. Griffin, had been shot twice. His girlfriend, Polly Ann Moore, was lying in the back seat. Outside the car, officers found a blanket covered in blood and determined that Moore had been killed on the blanket and then moved to the back seat of the car.

Unlike the first attack, evidence was found at the crime scene. A bullet casing was left behind. The Texas Rangers and FBI analyzed the bullet and determined it was likely fired from a Colt .32 caliber automatic pistol.

Strangely, both victims were buried before a pathologist could examine them. And this is not standard police investigation protocol. There were rumors that Moore was not sexually assaulted. But it is still unknown why an autopsy was not performed and whether Moore was a victim of violence before her death.

Third attack



Betty Booker and Paul Martin

Three weeks later, in the early hours of April 14, 1946, 17-year-old Paul Martin picked up his 15-year-old girlfriend Betty Jo Booker from a club where the girl was attending an evening musical performance.

Booker's mom became concerned when her daughter didn't come into the house to leave her saxophone before heading out on a date with her boyfriend. The mother called the couple's friends, but no one saw them. The police were called, a search began, and Martin's body was soon discovered on the side of the road. He was shot four times: in the nose, in the back of the head, in the right arm and in the ribs.

Booker's body was found 3 kilometers from her friend. The girl was found behind a tree with two gunshot wounds, one in the face and one in the chest. Martin's car was found five kilometers from Booker's body with the keys in the ignition.

Police were unable to determine who was killed first. As with the previous murder, the shell casing indicated that the murder weapon was a Colt .32 caliber automatic pistol.

Fourth attack



The Phantom Killer's last attack occurred on the evening of May 3, 1946. And it was very different from the previous ones. Virgil Starks, 37, was shot twice in the back of the head through a window while reading a newspaper. When his wife Katie heard glass breaking, she rushed to see what had happened.

Having discovered her husband's body, she ran to call the police and came face to face with the killer. She was shot twice in the face, again through the same window, but managed to escape to a neighbor's house across the street and tell a neighbor that her husband was dead before losing consciousness.



Flashlight found at the murder scene

Katie Starks survived and made a full recovery. However, when police interviewed her after emergency surgery, she was unable to tell investigators who attacked her and her husband because they never saw who shot them outside the house. At the crime scene, only a black and red flashlight remained, which no one could identify.

Phantom?



Arkansas High School Class of 1948 with Suspect H.B. Tennyson

In an attempt to solve overnight murders in Texarkana, police brought in more than 400 suspects for questioning. The investigator, Texas Ranger Manuel Trazasas Gonzaullas, realized that attacks were occurring every three weeks and tried to set a trap for the Phantom Killer.

Two undercover officers with mannequins posed as teenagers while parking in lovers' lanes. But the police were unlucky: the killer did not attack again. Residents of Texarkana began buying guns, guard dogs and window blinds. A curfew was imposed and people locked their doors for the first time.

The killer was never identified. But there were two real suspects. The first possible ghost was 18-year-old H.B. Tennyson. Tennyson committed suicide in 1948.



Cops working the Texarkana Moonlight Murders case

He left behind a suicide note in which he admitted that he was guilty of the murders of Martin, Booker and Starks. Tennyson played on the same high school team as Booker, but they were not friends. However, Tennyson's friend came to the police and said that he did not kill anyone. They were playing cards at home when they heard a news report about the murder of Martin and Booker.



Ewell Swinney

The second possible ghost in Texarkana was a notorious car thief named Ewell Swinney.

Swinney's wife was seen driving the stolen car, and the couple were arrested. Swinney's wife admitted that her husband was the killer, but the woman's story was inconsistent - she changed her testimony every time she was interrogated.

She mentioned the place where Swinney left some of Martin and Booker's belongings. But other than her confession, there was nothing reliable to link Swinney to the Moonlight Murders. His wife was considered an unreliable witness and could not testify against her husband in any trial.

He was sentenced to prison on grand theft auto charges, where he died nearly 50 years later in 1994. Many found it suspicious that Swinney and his wife got married a few days before his arrest. Did he use marriage to silence the only person who could send him to the electric chair?



Still from the film "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" 1976

The phantom killer responsible for the Texarkana moonlight murders has yet to be identified.



Still from the film "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" 2014

The murders became part of the area's dark history. Every year around Halloween, the local park plays the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown. And the killer, who appeared in the light of the moon, disappeared into the darkness, never to appear again.