June 21, 2023 • 44 mins
More suspects come to light. And we learn about two other murdered girls who may have been unconfirmed victims of the Phantom: 18-year-old Teara Bryant and 14-year-old Angela Barnes.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listen to the Freeway Phanom, a production of iHeartRadio,
Tenderfoot TV, and Black Bar METSVAH. 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 iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, Black Bar, MITZVAH, or
their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may
(00:24):
not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
There was a series of rapes of adult women, of
kidnappings and 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 knights, and they would drive a green Vega around
and they would kidnap women off the street, look at
(00:53):
bus stops and things like that, take them to someplace,
rape them, sodomize them, and then let them go. Well,
some of the rapes were pretty brutal, and when they
finally got captured, one of them started making noise and saying, well,
I know who the Freeway Phantom is and he starts
naming people within the group and starts talking about how
(01:15):
he knew about the different murders and stuff like that.
We call him Joel House snitches or informists. He's desperate
because if he can give up information that that increases
this chance of getting a deal and getting out from
under this. We're desperate because you know, of course we
want to solve this case. Joe House's informants are really
good as suckering us as detectives because we want to
(01:39):
believe and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl case.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
This child was laying on the side of the road.
I wouldn't go no way. I would call out my house.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Those first five murders should have been a huge warning
bell for the police.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
We just want to know what happened.
Speaker 7 (02:05):
This person must have saw that.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
They were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and
he says, oh, they need to know this is me.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I thought that they would catch him.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I thought it was just.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
A matter of time.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
I'm Celeste Hedley and this is Freeway Phantom. In nineteen
seventy four, two years after the last confirmed Freeway Phantom murder,
investigators turned their attention to the Green Vega Gang, also
known as the Green Vega Rapists. This group of five
(02:39):
or six men were known to drive a green Chevy
Vega around the DC Maryland area. They were collectively responsible
for numerous rapes and abductions that occurred near the Washington Beltway,
but through somewhat strange circumstances, they became prime suspects in
the Freeway Phantom case. It started when a few of
the Green Vega members had been arrested and put on
(03:00):
trial for a case involving two gang rapes.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
And when they were brought into court, the lawyer made
the comment of well, they weren't even looking for the
Green Bega guys, they were looking for the freeway fanom Well,
the investigators for a freeway fan said, well, maybe these
guys are the same guys.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
This is writer Blaine Pardo, As he says, an offhanded
mention of the Freeway Phantom case during this trial sparked
the idea that the two cases were connected.
Speaker 8 (03:31):
And they opened a multi jurisdictional task force that involved
the FBI, the Park Police, Washington DC Metropolitan Police, Maryland
State Police, the Prince George's County Police, etc. They all
began to crawl into this, and unfortunately, these Green Vega
guys saw this as a bargaining chip. In other words,
(03:53):
if we flip on our fellows and say they did
the Freeway phantom murders, maybe I'll get a lighter sentence
or get some benefits on the side of doing this.
So several of the members flipped.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
The Green Vega Gang members were individually interviewed by the
Metropolitan Police Department at Lorton Prison between nineteen seventy four
and nineteen seventy five. One of the members provided a
statement implicating another member. His testimony substantiated the investigator's belief
that the Green Vega Gang was responsible for the Freeway
phantom murders, and that's because the informant provided signature details
(04:31):
of the crimes that were not released to the public.
Police took the informant to sites where he said the
victims were abducted, assaulted, murdered and disposed of, and he
provided a concrete alibi ruling himself out as a suspect.
This informant asked to remain anonymous. Then information that a
Green Vega member at Lorton Prison had provided a break
(04:52):
in the case was leaked to the media by a
political candidate in Maryland.
Speaker 8 (04:57):
It literally consumed the case for months.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
One of the investigators looking into the Green Vega Gang
was former FBI Special Agent Barry Culvert.
Speaker 9 (05:09):
The thing that came to our attention with the Green
Vega cases, it was a gang that were going around
abducting young women and raping them. That might be the
way to solve it. That there was something in common
with our Freeway Phantom cases in these Vega rape cases.
I think Lou Richardson, he was one that continued from
(05:30):
the Freeway Phantom cases to that case. He thought that
might be the same people that our girls were killed
by the Vega rape people.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
Lou Richardson was one of Colvert's partners on the Freeway
Phantom case, but Colvert says he had his doubts during
the investigation. He says most of the eyewitness accounts placing
the Green Vega Gang near the murder sites were unreliable.
Speaker 9 (05:54):
People described cars in the damnedest ways, and what they
think was the Green Vega may have been a Chevy
Chevelle or something. They just don't always get it. Right,
unless you get a guy or a woman. We've had
a couple of women. Man, they knew their cars. If
they said it with a Green Vega, probably sixty nine
because they had a spoiler up here and this kind
(06:16):
of hoodcap. Don't count on that me in your car.
If it was green and small and tudor go with that,
that's what you probably had.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
As investigators looked deeper into the Green Vega gang, things
only got weirder. Here's blein Pardo again.
Speaker 8 (06:34):
Remarkably what stug me was as they were going through
these cases, they started realizing the confessions didn't match the
physical evidence. No way could they they describe and they
didn't know about the green rayon fibers, but none of
them could describe that. We took the victims to the
same place each time. They always sat in the same
(06:56):
vehicle in the same place. There's no consistency with this end.
They described the deaths of these girls very differently. It
doesn't match physical evidence to the point where they described
one of the ten year old victim as being dressed provocatively,
you know, and sexy, and no, she was dressed like
a ten year old girl, you know, and just the
(07:17):
stuff just didn't match up. But unfortunately the police were
under such pressure to close these cases. When we talked
with Jim Trenum, he brought that up.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
Detective Jim Trainum, who you heard at the very top
of the episode, never believed the Green Vegas could be responsible.
He says, the informant was a complete fraud.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So what happened was they took him to some of
the crime scenes and things like that, and he was
pointing out stuff and all. And later as all of
this unfolded, it turns out and he admitted, and other
people admitted that he was just playing these these detectives.
He would kind of gather bits and pieces of information
from them. If they took them to a crime he
(08:00):
would kind of like watch them and see what they
would want him to maybe point to. He would get
clues from them. It's kind of like a false confession
in that, Okay, I want to confess to a crime
that I didn't commit, how do I get the information
about it? And so, you know, those guys, they really
didn't fit. They're victims were all adult women. These were
(08:21):
not adult women, I mean totally different. And also the
fact that this guy really didn't have any information, and in.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
Fact, there were no charges brought against any members of
the Green Vega Gang for the Freeway phantom murders. There
was reportedly a grand jury hearing, but the evidence was
insufficient to reach a conviction. Willma Harper wrote about this
in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Fandom.
Speaker 10 (08:47):
Sources close to the investigation who asked for anonymity independently
told The Star that the probe was closed after a
disagreement in the US Attorney Earl Silbert's office about how
to proceed. One source said the dispute involved two opposing groups,
one wanted to submit free a phantom evidence to the
(09:07):
grand jury and the other that argued that the evidence
was insufficient to go before.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
The grand jury.
Speaker 10 (09:14):
On August third, nineteen eighty, the Washington Posts published an
article that summarized what occurred after the grand jury made
a decision on the Green Vega rape suspects, saying, quote,
law enforcement officials involved with the cases believed that four
men involved in hundreds of brutal rapes in the city
from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy three were implicated
(09:38):
in the child murders, but the men were not convicted.
It is difficult for the families to come to grips
with the fact that eight or nine years later the
deaths have not been solved.
Speaker 6 (09:51):
As this article mentions, many investigators still believed the Green
Vegas were responsible for the Freeway phantom murders. Here's Blaine Pardowick.
Speaker 8 (10:02):
Despite the fact that they never filed charges against the
Green Vega guys, there's this prevailing attitude that even exists
today in Washington, DC that well, we know who did it.
It was the Green Vega guys, we just couldn't prove it.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Blaine recalls that Jim Trenam even struggled with this decades
later when he tried.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
To reopen the case in two thousand and six. There
was a lot of pressure of why are you doing this.
We already know who did it. It was the Green Vega guys,
and he was like, no, Green Mega guys. They recanted,
all of them recanted their confessions, and the confessions never
held water. They just didn't hold against the physical evidence,
and that was a huge distraction.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
Retired MPD homicide detective Romaine Jenkins agrees.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
A lot of time was wasted, especially when they got
to the Green Vega guys.
Speaker 7 (10:54):
That really was a waste of time.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
Romayne says, even before she was assigned to the case,
she was paying attention to the suspects, and she found
it strange that the investigators at the time were so convinced.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
What piqued my curiosity because I knew many of the investigators,
and especially the lead investigators on the cases, and I
asked them, well, how you make it out with the case?
What is going on?
Speaker 7 (11:20):
You know that?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And that's when they started talking about the Green Vega guys.
And one day I was sitting in sex squad. Like
I said, I like to read everything, and I came
across this this document which was about almost the size
of a telephone book, and it was on the investigation
of the freeway phantom cases. And I started reading it,
(11:41):
and the more I read, the angrier I got, because
it showed that the Green Vega cases were a hoax.
When it came to the freeway cases, they had nothing
to do with each other.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
And I mean, now, why do you say that?
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Because the police, multiple times officials said that the reason
they thought this could be realists because one of them
had information that no one else had. So what you're
laughing already. Why did you think this is a red herring?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Because they you know what, the FBI went back and
they reinterviewed a lot of these suspects, the people involved,
and they admitted that it was a hoax. The witnesses
said that, hey, they planned this thing because some of
the guys. One of the guys wanted immunity from prosecution.
Now I'm not saying they're not rapists, because they should
(12:29):
have been in jail, under the jail probably, but they
didn't do these cases. Okay, they did not do these cases.
And this is in plain black and white.
Speaker 6 (12:41):
While writer Blaine Pardo agreed with Romayne, he was still
curious about the Green Vegas suspects, particularly the informant, who
we now know was named Morris J. Warren. Blaine tells
us he communicated with Warren via letters from prison.
Speaker 8 (12:57):
His curse finance was kind of rambling. I took the
approach when I wrote him of I know what your
involvement in these cases are. I just need to hear
it from you. And he thought I was implying he
was involved in the cases, so he vehemently denied it.
A lot of religious texts woven into it, which I
always find interesting how convicts find Jesus and God when
(13:21):
they get to prison, and you know, he was like, no, no, no,
you're on the wrong track. Didn't have anything to do
with me, wasn't me, didn't do it, and he really
wanted us to come visit him, which we were unable
to do. The authorities wouldn't put us on the list
for him. And he admits, I never had anything to
do with this. You know, I did it on a
(13:43):
spite and revenge. He came right out and said it,
and yeah, I believe it. They were trying to cut
deals for themselves and once they realized, oh my god,
we're going to be brought up on murder charges, multiple
murder charges, I think at that point they said forget it.
Were not were not the guys that did best, and
they knew it.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
The reality is the Green Vega Gang was a major distraction,
one that potentially had significant repercussions on the freeway phantom investigation.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Unfortunately, when you get a huge task force put together
of all these officers and investigators and they're focused on this,
that's time that the real killer wasn't being investigated. And unfortunately,
there were very few people that bucked the system at
the time, So there's this weird twisted thought of we already.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Know who did it to most of the people we
talked to. That tunnel vision is just one more reason
why this case was never solved. However, the same year
the Green Vegas were investigated, another suspect cropped up, actually
a pair of suspects. To police officers, there were six
(15:18):
confirmed victims in the Freeway Phantom case, Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson,
Brenda Crockett, Nenemotia Yates, Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams. However,
early on in the case, there was another suspected victim,
and her name was Angela Barnes. On July twelfth, nineteen
seventy one, just a few days after Darlinia Johnson went missing,
(15:41):
Angela Barnes also disappeared. She was walking home from a
friend's house when she was kidnapped. The next day, her
body was found in Waldorf, Maryland. Her cause of death
was a gunshot wound to her head, and her murder
was initially attributed to the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 8 (15:58):
Young girl same profile is one of the victims. So
by the time you get to the second and third
Freeway Phantom victims, the real Freeway Fanom victims. Her name
gets thrown in with those victims.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
Here's writer Blaine Pardo.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Again, it made no sense and it definitely muddied the
investigation because, of course the other officers in the Metropolitan
Police didn't know that she wasn't connected, So they're wondering,
did the Freeway Fantom now have an mo where he
used a gun, ligature, strangulation, etc. To kill his victims.
(16:36):
The gun didn't make sense, you know, from an investigative perspective,
it totally did, because a gun would be a great
way to force young victims into a car. You pull
up alongside them, window down, you aim the gun to
get in the car. It makes total sense from a
control perspective, and it could be that the Freeway Fantom
did use a gun to get his victims into the vehicle.
(17:00):
It made very little sense though, when you look at
in the context of all the other victims, you only
have one that was stabbed. Clearly that was someone who
resisted him and was stabbed. The rest were all strangled,
and while there were evidence of fighting or resisting, it
was all more manual than anything else. There wasn't the
(17:21):
use of a weapon like that. The only other weapon
that the Freeway Phantom used was a knife, and it
was only on one victim.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Willma Harper wrote about the curious case of Angela Barnes
in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 10 (17:38):
One view was that Angela was not a Freeway Phantom victim.
She was the only one of the girls that had
been shot. Based on the fact that the bullet that
killed Angela had ricocheted, it was the opinion of Detective
Simpson that Angela's death had been accidental.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Police would eventually determine that Angela wasn't connected. Sometime during
the Freeway Phantom investigation, her name was removed from the
victim list, But years later, in nineteen seventy four, someone
was arrested for the murder of Angela Barnes.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
It was actually they found out a police officer who
killed her, and it was a real creepy circumstance. He
and his partner abducted her, got her in the car,
performed sexual acts with her, and inadvertently shot her in
the car. And the way they caught them was one
(18:35):
of the police officer's wife was involved with cleaning up
the car, and they had kind of played it off
that it had nothing to do with them killing anyone.
That was the blood from one of their suspects that
they brought in. But she was like, it's all over
the front seat, which didn't make sense. And after a
while she slowly pieced it together and actually reached out
(18:57):
to law enforcement and they got a full.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
The two police officers were named Edward Sullivan and Tommy Simmons.
They were both convicted and sent to prison for barnes murder,
but an investigators said they were not responsible for the
other six Freeway phantom murders. Still, the murder of Angela
Barnes brought up some troubling implications. Many families in the
area started to believe that a police officer could very
(19:24):
well have been responsible for the freeway phantom murders. You
may remember that when we talked with Evander Spinks, older
sister of Carol Spinks, she revealed her biggest.
Speaker 11 (19:34):
Suspect it probably was the police, was somebody at work
with the police. That's the only thing really made sense
to me. I think it got covered up. As an adult,
I see it differently than when I was a kid.
Plus as a kid, I didn't know a lot of
stuff that had happened, how the police was handling things
(19:57):
because we weren't privy to that.
Speaker 8 (20:01):
There was definitely a feeling and what it really contributed to,
I think was, and you read the interviews with the
families at the time, they really then begin to suspect
the police department or someone in the police department was involved,
because the minute you get one young girl who's killed
by police, you start wondering, while are other cops out
(20:22):
there killing young girls? And is that what's really feeding this?
And it really added to what I would call the
extreme distrust the family started developing towards the police department.
And it was, by the way, completely earned. You know,
when you've got something like that happening in a community
like that, you're not going to shake that. And there's
(20:45):
no amount of goodwill you can put out that's going
to change people's perceptions of that. And I don't blame
the families at all. I would still be kind of
wondering were the police involved.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
When I spoke with Carolyn Spinks, the twin sister of
Carol Spinks, she revealed some haunting thoughts about who she
believed killed her sister. Have you had thoughts about who
you think was responsible?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yes, I mean who do you think might.
Speaker 12 (21:13):
Have done it?
Speaker 4 (21:15):
I thought that it was a white man in a
police car. Why because this may sound crazy to you all,
but because one day I was at the store where
my mom was, because my mother was the last person
to see her alive. And right there at the store
(21:36):
where my mom was, it used to be a phone
booth right there. So one day, this was years later,
I was at that phone booth and a vision came
over me. I don't know where it came from, but
it was a white police but he was in a
police car. But I don't know if he was a
police where he was just like one. And he was
(21:58):
in a police car, and he heard my mother tell
her that she was going to get her when she
get home, because he told her not to come out
of the house and she was walking home and he
followed her. This is in your vision, yes, And then
the day of my sister funeral, afterwards, we went to
(22:20):
my aunt house and we was outside and I looked
across the street and there was a police officer but
he had that helmet thing with a big glass black
thing across his face. And he was in that motorcycle
thing that looked like where one could ride aside it
that's made with the thing on the side. And he
(22:42):
was just staring at me. But he was across the
street way across from my aunt house. But I could
see him looking at me. And I got scanned and
ran in the house. And I tell my mother that
police keep looking at me.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
What did she say when they came out?
Speaker 4 (22:57):
He was gone, do you feel.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Like you trust police?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
No?
Speaker 6 (23:03):
I mean, have you ever or it's just since that
time when your sister was murdered? Was that the end
of your trust for law enforcement?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I never had any get into it law enforcement, you know,
at that time, so I didn't know. But as I
got older, I was like, no, I don't trust them
because you know some police deduced they do underhanded, you know,
unhanded stuff, and I guess you can't trust them. I
don't trust no man.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Author Wilma Harper wrote about this theory as well.
Speaker 10 (23:39):
Questions continued to be asked but not answered, like why
no one ever saw the girls picked up? Was the
killer someone so utterly trustworthy like a policeman that a
bystander would take no notice. Was he someone they knew?
Did the killer know the freeways, the neighborhood, and what
(23:59):
were the chances that he lived among them? A person
of normal appearances stalking and killing adolescent girls.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
We asked Blaine Pardo if he thought a police officer
could feasibly pull off these murders.
Speaker 8 (24:16):
There's a feeling that the police department is either involved
simply because these girls are so easily pulled off the
streets and a policeman pulling up and a police car
could do that. You know, he could say get in
the car. So many of these are in broad daylight
and the streets are so busy. To me, that's the
one thing that this whoever this killer was, had a
(24:39):
technique for securing these young women in his vehicle. We
need to know what that is. Because he did it
on streets where everybody knew everybody where, people were out
and these girls simply vanish. So how he did it
without raising attention? A policeman could easily do that.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Despite this, Blaine ultimately doesn't think the freeway fandom is
a police officer.
Speaker 8 (25:06):
I don't get that vibe, especially with the leaving of
a note. A police officer is going to go, look,
I'm not going to do anything at all to leave evidence,
even evidence where I've got the victim writing out a note,
why taught police? If you're in the police department, they're
(25:26):
not going to do that. And that note still sticks
with me. That's someone who's literally flipping the finger off
at the police department. You know, he's saying, catch me
if you can, and I'll confess the others when you do.
If this was a police officer, I just can't picture
him being diabolical enough to go I'll throw the scent
off by pretending I'm a craze killer. And it's something
(25:49):
that's very rare among serial killers to actually communicate to
the authorities. They just don't do that. There's too much
risk involved, and I think even in that time, I
don't think a police officer would do it.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
But the tragedy of Angela Barnes proved that not everything
was as it seemed. Her inclusion in the Freeway Phantom
case skewed perceptions of what was possible, and she wasn't
the only one. As it turns out, there was yet
another unofficial Freeway Phantom victim, and her case is even
more terrifying. Angela Barnes wasn't the only unconfirmed victim of
(26:49):
the Freeway Phantom. In November of nineteen seventy two, just
two months after the last confirmed victim, Diane Williams, was killed,
police found the body of eighteen year old Terrace Bryant.
To many investigators, Tara Bryant is considered the seventh victim
of the Freeway Phantom, but she was ultimately ruled out
for a number of reasons which we'll get into. Still,
(27:11):
we and others believe the similarities are too striking to ignore.
Tara was a young mother with a one year old
son at home on Sunday, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two,
just three days after enjoying a Thanksgiving with her family.
Tara's mother dropped her off at Leland Memorial Hospital for
a medical appointment. She was wearing a shiny red jacket
(27:34):
over a striped red, white and black dress, along with
white knee high socks and brown loafers. Her mother gave
her bus fare so she could ride the bus home
after her appointment. According to a relative, Tara called home
just after five pm and spoke to her brother Terence.
She checked in on her son and said she decided
to use her bus fair to purchase Duncan doughnuts and
(27:55):
was walking home instead. They said goodbye, and unfortunately that
was the last time that anyone heard from Tara. When
Tara didn't return home, her mother contacted the Prince George's
County Police Department, but according to the relative that we
spoke to, law enforcement didn't respond very swiftly. Since Tara
was an adult. The police told her mother there was
(28:17):
nothing they could do. At the time, Tara's family knew
that something was wrong. They believed she would not run
away and would definitely not leave her young son behind.
That night, the Bryant family conducted their own search. Tara's
one and a half mile walk from the hospital took
her south on Rhode Island Avenue, so her family retraced
(28:38):
her steps. One relative recalled seeing a suspicious man walking
alongside the road in a dark long coat, but there
was no sign of Tara. Two agonizing days later, on
November twenty eighth, at nine a m. Tara's body was
found floating in shallow water in the Anacostia River, one
mile downstream from where she was less When police discovered
(29:02):
her one of her shoes was missing.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Police did an investigation along the banks and they found
just two hundred yards from her house the other shoe,
So she was very close to being at home when
she was attacked and apparently killed.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Here's writer Blaine Pardo.
Speaker 8 (29:23):
Again, what we don't know is was she killed there
or taken somewhere and dumped back there. And that's the
tricky part with this, and having driven the area, you
could almost see both scenarios playing out. But it certainly
you've got a strangulation, You've got a body being dumped,
(29:45):
you know, along that borderline with Washington, d C. And
the surrounding communities. You know, this one was a little different.
She was dumped in water, you know, in a river,
but it's also further out from any of the the
other Freeway phantom victims, so it would make her the
final victim of all this.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
According to the FBI, Tara's autopsy report determined that her
cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation. Her neck
bone was intact and there was no damage to the
cartilage around her neck. The autopsy couldn't determine if the
strangulation was manual or ligature. The examination also couldn't determine
if Tara was sexually assaulted, but noted there was no
(30:28):
evidence of injury to her vagina or presence of seamen,
but since Tara had been in the water for several days,
it's possible that evidence may have washed away. The FBI
analysis stated that sexual assault was probable since TERA's panties
were located at the site where the assault most likely occurred,
and the teddy that Tara had on under her dress
was unsnapped between her legs. Officially, sexual motivation for her
(30:52):
murder was not ruled out, and there were no defensive
wounds on her body. A wash Rington Post News article
entitled quote police seeking help in slaying of girl was
published following the discovery of Tara's body. The article included
a photo of Tara and urged the public to contact
the Homicide Division with tips. An excerpt of the article.
Speaker 12 (31:16):
Stated Prince George's County Police today appealed for help from
anyone who might have seen Tara and Bryan eighteen near
home in North Brentwood on Sunday before she was slain.
Police say they believed the girl met her assailing as
she walked south on Rhode Island Avenue between the five
thousand block and Hyattsville and her home at forty five
twenty two on Rhode Island Avenue in North Bredwood between
(31:37):
five thirty and six thirty pm on Sunday.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
In November of nineteen seventy three, a year after Tara
was killed, a letter was published in The Washington Evening Star,
written by Tara's brother, Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 13 (31:52):
In loving memory of my sister who passed away one
year ago today, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two, as
flowers rest upon your May the Lord be with you
through the day. It seems like yesterday when you passed away.
We think about you every day, your loving brother, Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Sadly, the investigation into Terror's murder never bore much fruit.
Here's blame Pardo again.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
There were no charges ever filed against anybody for this,
so it's still considered a cold case. I requested copies
of the case file and was told no, it's still
an open investigation, which after nineteen seventy two, I'm curious
what actual investigating they're doing, But you guys know how
that goes. It was very fascinating for me because to me,
(32:40):
I wonder was this the last of the Freeway Fantom's
true victims. She fits the profile in so many ways.
There was nothing in the police reports about her being
sexually assaulted that I've been able to find, which might
be the telling clue in all of this. But for
the FBI to consider her on the Freeway Phantom victims
(33:01):
is probably good enough for me at this point in time.
Speaker 6 (33:05):
The question of whether Tara Bryant was in fact the
seventh victim of the Freeway Phantom is a hotly contested
issue in this case. When we spoke with MPD Detective
Romayne Jenkins, she fully believed that Tara was killed by
the Freeway Phantom. So why was she not included among
the Freeway Phantom victims?
Speaker 7 (33:26):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Some people did, because I see where there were submissions
made to the FBI to examine fiber evidence and so forth,
and they included her case with it. Some did, some didn't.
I can't tell you why. I guess mainly because she
was the only victim found in the water.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
Why are you so sure that she is the seventh victim?
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Because on the periphery it's the same.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
You have an eighteen year old petitue, young black female.
She's dropped off at the hospital by her mother. Her
mother says, I'll come back and pick you up. A
few hours later, she calls home and says, tell my mother,
don't pick me up. I'm going to catch the bus home.
She's walking on US one Rhode Island Avenue, which is
(34:15):
heavily traveled. People see her walking towards her house. She's
headed home and she doesn't make it. And that's the
same thing with these victims. Also the fact that she's
in the water. Her underpants have been removed. There was
no sign of forced vaginal entry, so they couldn't say
that she had been raped. But she's in the water,
(34:37):
so any fiber evidence or anything is gone. And like
I said, she's headed home and she's only like forty
yards from her house is where she's attacked.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
And the same thing with these girls.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
They are snatched in their neighborhoods and they're depositive back
in their neighborhood so to speak.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
You know, we were able to contact a relative of
Tara Bryant. They believe she was not a victim of
the freeway fandom. According to the relative. The Bryant family
shared this information with law enforcement, even telling them who
killed Tara. They believed it was one of Tara's former boyfriends.
(35:16):
The relative we spoke to said the ex boyfriend bore
visible scratches and marks the day following her disappearance. We
asked Blaine Pardo about this and if he thought it
could possibly be the ex boyfriend.
Speaker 8 (35:29):
You know, I don't know what the motivation would be
and if they think the boyfriend did it, then charge
him with that. To me, it just doesn't make sense.
There had to be something that was an impetus for this,
And how would the boyfriend know that she'd be walking
home from the hospital, you know, in the early evening hours.
You know, if the boyfriend was going to intercept her,
(35:52):
how would he know where she is. Her mother didn't
even know she was walking home. Her mother gave her
a dollar to ride the bus home. So the concept
that he was driving by, saw her and decided now's
the time I'm going to kill her just doesn't make sense.
I'm not saying that there weren't terrible relations between her
and her boyfriend. I just don't see what the connection is.
(36:14):
And if the family believes he did it by all means,
then the police should be investigating him in charging with
the crat.
Speaker 6 (36:22):
According to the relative we spoke to, the unnamed ex
boyfriend was never investigated. The relative says this forced the
family to live in the same community with the person
they believed to be Tara's killer. According to the relative,
that individual went to prison for other violent crimes and
is now deceased. We reached out to Prince George's County
(36:42):
for comment on Tara's case and to date have not
heard back. Blaine Pardo says the investigation of Tara Bryant
speaks to a bigger issue within the Prince George's County
Homicide department, and he compares it to another case that
occurred almost a decade after the Freeway Phantom murders.
Speaker 8 (37:04):
There were a whole number of murders that took place
in the nineteen eighties as well, called the suitland Slaves.
A number of bodies found right across the DC line
in a park, all women sexually assaulted, strangled, etc. And
dumped in this very small area. It was clearly a
dumping ground for a serial killer. The suitland Slaves. They
(37:26):
tried to attribute to somebody else, but they never charged
him for the crimes. But he was arrested for kidnapping
a young woman in the district, so they said, well,
he must have been the one that did all of these.
There was absolutely nothing that I ever saw that connected
him to these victims. But the Suitland slangs all remain
open at this time, and Prince George's County will not
(37:49):
release anything on a cold case at all, nor will
their public relations people even pick up the phone and
call you back. That's really weird. Even the Metropolitan Police
Department actually communicates with me openly still to this day
on the freeway phantom stuff, which I expected the Washington
d c. Police to be a lot more rigid than
(38:11):
anybody else. But Prince George's County won't even return phone calls.
They don't want to talk about it. And sometimes I
get the feeling that police officers get in their mind
who they think did it, and in their mind the
cases are closed, even though nobody was ever brought to
trial for it.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
Blaine says both Tara's murder and the Suitland slings add
to a larger picture of how investigations are handled depending
on who the victim is, or what the victim looks like.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
You're talking the nineteen seventies and in the Suitland cases
the nineteen eighties, early eighties. You know, there tends to
be this approach that I've seen with large scale police departments,
so that if they can't get an immediate hey we
figured out who did it, got the evidence, let's put
them to trial. If it goes, they let them stay cold.
(39:02):
They don't focus on them, et cetera. And some of
that's budgetary now, you know, the focus is very much
on how much money are you spending and things along
those lines. And I think cold cases are just as important.
There's still victims' families, there's still somebody who's dead. It
doesn't matter that it took place fifty years ago or
forty years ago or ten years ago. They need the
(39:25):
same level and attention. They probably need more because they
haven't been completely resolved yet.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
Like Terra's case and the Suitland slangs, the rest of
the Freeway Phantom murders went unsolved. With the Green Viga
gang ruled out as well as Robert Askins, the case
went dark until it was picked up again by Romaine
Jenkins in the nineteen.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
Eighties, I was transferred.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
I guess after ten years, I ended up being transferred
over to the US Attorney's office, and there I supervised
seven former homicide detectives because they had a new division
command and he didn't like any of these old investigations,
so he put them under the career criminal unit and
they made me the supervisor.
Speaker 7 (40:14):
I said, oh good, now.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
I can get into my freeway phantom cases. So I
had at my disposal, I had seven senior hormicide detectives
and they said, Sorge, we're gonna work on this case,
but we're not going to do Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
I said, don't worry about Jack the Ripper. We're gonna
work on these and we did it.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Now that the FBI's criminal profiling unit was more advanced,
the first thing Romayne wanted to do was create an
official profile of the potential killer. What did you think
of the FBI profile that they did back then?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
They did The first one they did was mine was
for me, and I thought they did a pretty good
job considering the circumstances, you know.
Speaker 6 (40:59):
You mean, considering how little we all knew.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
About it, right, But they did come up with some
things that had to be keyed in on they felt
that this person was in the military. Well, at that time,
you had all these military people coming back from Vietnam
who were in hospitals here and installations here, so you
had a lot of that going on. But that was
really interesting. And the reason why I thought it was
so interesting was because when I showed the note to
(41:24):
the FBI, they said, this is military.
Speaker 7 (41:27):
This person was in the military.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
I showed the same note to the investigator at Naval
Investigated Service. He said, oh, whoever wrote this note? This military?
I had two different brains saying the same thing. You
know that this person was in the military.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
In February of twenty twenty two, a new profile of
the killer was made and that idea came up once again.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
I believe this was the beginning of his offending career,
and I think something significant happened right after this that
could have been he moved, was arrested, went into the military.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
Next time on Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
This is exactly who we wanted, and he was willing
to take a great risk to get her.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
A black officer came to say, look, Sargeant, be careful,
the white offices will get you and said I don't
know what they planning, but they plotted something. He said,
I was in the locker room and I got bits
and pieces of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
He actually went out and knocked on the doors of
the detectives who actually worked on the case originally. It
turns out that a lot of the missing files had
been taken home by the original case detectives.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
He's obviously loving the moniker. This is why we tell
media outlets to not nickname offenders. What it does is
it gives other people who are like minded the idea
that they can become famous too.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV
and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is CELESE.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Hilly.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and CELESE.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Hilly.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick
and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers
on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on
behalf of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and
(43:39):
Aaron Bergman, with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright.
Artwork by Mister Soul two one six, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set Special Thanks to a team at
Uta Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group, Tenderfoot
TV and iHeartMedia, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah, have
increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and
(44:02):
conviction of the person or persons responsible for their Freeway
phantom murders. The previous reward of up to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department
has been matched. A new total reward of up to
three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered. If you
have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the
Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero two seven
(44:26):
two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information, please
visit Freeway dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from Ihar
Radio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
You're listen to the Freeway Phanom, a production of iHeartRadio,
Tenderfoot TV, and Black Bar METSVAH. 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 iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, Black Bar, MITZVAH, or
their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may
(00:24):
not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
There was a series of rapes of adult women, of
kidnappings and 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 knights, and they would drive a green Vega around
and they would kidnap women off the street, look at
(00:53):
bus stops and things like that, take them to someplace,
rape them, sodomize them, and then let them go. Well,
some of the rapes were pretty brutal, and when they
finally got captured, one of them started making noise and saying, well,
I know who the Freeway Phantom is and he starts
naming people within the group and starts talking about how
(01:15):
he knew about the different murders and stuff like that.
We call him Joel House snitches or informists. He's desperate
because if he can give up information that that increases
this chance of getting a deal and getting out from
under this. We're desperate because you know, of course we
want to solve this case. Joe House's informants are really
good as suckering us as detectives because we want to
(01:39):
believe and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl case.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
This child was laying on the side of the road.
I wouldn't go no way. I would call out my house.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Those first five murders should have been a huge warning
bell for the police.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
We just want to know what happened.
Speaker 7 (02:05):
This person must have saw that.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
They were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and
he says, oh, they need to know this is me.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I thought that they would catch him.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I thought it was just.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
A matter of time.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
I'm Celeste Hedley and this is Freeway Phantom. In nineteen
seventy four, two years after the last confirmed Freeway Phantom murder,
investigators turned their attention to the Green Vega Gang, also
known as the Green Vega Rapists. This group of five
(02:39):
or six men were known to drive a green Chevy
Vega around the DC Maryland area. They were collectively responsible
for numerous rapes and abductions that occurred near the Washington Beltway,
but through somewhat strange circumstances, they became prime suspects in
the Freeway Phantom case. It started when a few of
the Green Vega members had been arrested and put on
(03:00):
trial for a case involving two gang rapes.
Speaker 8 (03:04):
And when they were brought into court, the lawyer made
the comment of well, they weren't even looking for the
Green Bega guys, they were looking for the freeway fanom Well,
the investigators for a freeway fan said, well, maybe these
guys are the same guys.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
This is writer Blaine Pardo, As he says, an offhanded
mention of the Freeway Phantom case during this trial sparked
the idea that the two cases were connected.
Speaker 8 (03:31):
And they opened a multi jurisdictional task force that involved
the FBI, the Park Police, Washington DC Metropolitan Police, Maryland
State Police, the Prince George's County Police, etc. They all
began to crawl into this, and unfortunately, these Green Vega
guys saw this as a bargaining chip. In other words,
(03:53):
if we flip on our fellows and say they did
the Freeway phantom murders, maybe I'll get a lighter sentence
or get some benefits on the side of doing this.
So several of the members flipped.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
The Green Vega Gang members were individually interviewed by the
Metropolitan Police Department at Lorton Prison between nineteen seventy four
and nineteen seventy five. One of the members provided a
statement implicating another member. His testimony substantiated the investigator's belief
that the Green Vega Gang was responsible for the Freeway
phantom murders, and that's because the informant provided signature details
(04:31):
of the crimes that were not released to the public.
Police took the informant to sites where he said the
victims were abducted, assaulted, murdered and disposed of, and he
provided a concrete alibi ruling himself out as a suspect.
This informant asked to remain anonymous. Then information that a
Green Vega member at Lorton Prison had provided a break
(04:52):
in the case was leaked to the media by a
political candidate in Maryland.
Speaker 8 (04:57):
It literally consumed the case for months.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
One of the investigators looking into the Green Vega Gang
was former FBI Special Agent Barry Culvert.
Speaker 9 (05:09):
The thing that came to our attention with the Green
Vega cases, it was a gang that were going around
abducting young women and raping them. That might be the
way to solve it. That there was something in common
with our Freeway Phantom cases in these Vega rape cases.
I think Lou Richardson, he was one that continued from
(05:30):
the Freeway Phantom cases to that case. He thought that
might be the same people that our girls were killed
by the Vega rape people.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
Lou Richardson was one of Colvert's partners on the Freeway
Phantom case, but Colvert says he had his doubts during
the investigation. He says most of the eyewitness accounts placing
the Green Vega Gang near the murder sites were unreliable.
Speaker 9 (05:54):
People described cars in the damnedest ways, and what they
think was the Green Vega may have been a Chevy
Chevelle or something. They just don't always get it. Right,
unless you get a guy or a woman. We've had
a couple of women. Man, they knew their cars. If
they said it with a Green Vega, probably sixty nine
because they had a spoiler up here and this kind
(06:16):
of hoodcap. Don't count on that me in your car.
If it was green and small and tudor go with that,
that's what you probably had.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
As investigators looked deeper into the Green Vega gang, things
only got weirder. Here's blein Pardo again.
Speaker 8 (06:34):
Remarkably what stug me was as they were going through
these cases, they started realizing the confessions didn't match the
physical evidence. No way could they they describe and they
didn't know about the green rayon fibers, but none of
them could describe that. We took the victims to the
same place each time. They always sat in the same
(06:56):
vehicle in the same place. There's no consistency with this end.
They described the deaths of these girls very differently. It
doesn't match physical evidence to the point where they described
one of the ten year old victim as being dressed provocatively,
you know, and sexy, and no, she was dressed like
a ten year old girl, you know, and just the
(07:17):
stuff just didn't match up. But unfortunately the police were
under such pressure to close these cases. When we talked
with Jim Trenum, he brought that up.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
Detective Jim Trainum, who you heard at the very top
of the episode, never believed the Green Vegas could be responsible.
He says, the informant was a complete fraud.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So what happened was they took him to some of
the crime scenes and things like that, and he was
pointing out stuff and all. And later as all of
this unfolded, it turns out and he admitted, and other
people admitted that he was just playing these these detectives.
He would kind of gather bits and pieces of information
from them. If they took them to a crime he
(08:00):
would kind of like watch them and see what they
would want him to maybe point to. He would get
clues from them. It's kind of like a false confession
in that, Okay, I want to confess to a crime
that I didn't commit, how do I get the information
about it? And so, you know, those guys, they really
didn't fit. They're victims were all adult women. These were
(08:21):
not adult women, I mean totally different. And also the
fact that this guy really didn't have any information, and in.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
Fact, there were no charges brought against any members of
the Green Vega Gang for the Freeway phantom murders. There
was reportedly a grand jury hearing, but the evidence was
insufficient to reach a conviction. Willma Harper wrote about this
in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Fandom.
Speaker 10 (08:47):
Sources close to the investigation who asked for anonymity independently
told The Star that the probe was closed after a
disagreement in the US Attorney Earl Silbert's office about how
to proceed. One source said the dispute involved two opposing groups,
one wanted to submit free a phantom evidence to the
(09:07):
grand jury and the other that argued that the evidence
was insufficient to go before.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
The grand jury.
Speaker 10 (09:14):
On August third, nineteen eighty, the Washington Posts published an
article that summarized what occurred after the grand jury made
a decision on the Green Vega rape suspects, saying, quote,
law enforcement officials involved with the cases believed that four
men involved in hundreds of brutal rapes in the city
from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy three were implicated
(09:38):
in the child murders, but the men were not convicted.
It is difficult for the families to come to grips
with the fact that eight or nine years later the
deaths have not been solved.
Speaker 6 (09:51):
As this article mentions, many investigators still believed the Green
Vegas were responsible for the Freeway phantom murders. Here's Blaine Pardowick.
Speaker 8 (10:02):
Despite the fact that they never filed charges against the
Green Vega guys, there's this prevailing attitude that even exists
today in Washington, DC that well, we know who did it.
It was the Green Vega guys, we just couldn't prove it.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Blaine recalls that Jim Trenam even struggled with this decades
later when he tried.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
To reopen the case in two thousand and six. There
was a lot of pressure of why are you doing this.
We already know who did it. It was the Green Vega guys,
and he was like, no, Green Mega guys. They recanted,
all of them recanted their confessions, and the confessions never
held water. They just didn't hold against the physical evidence,
and that was a huge distraction.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
Retired MPD homicide detective Romaine Jenkins agrees.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
A lot of time was wasted, especially when they got
to the Green Vega guys.
Speaker 7 (10:54):
That really was a waste of time.
Speaker 6 (10:57):
Romayne says, even before she was assigned to the case,
she was paying attention to the suspects, and she found
it strange that the investigators at the time were so convinced.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
What piqued my curiosity because I knew many of the investigators,
and especially the lead investigators on the cases, and I
asked them, well, how you make it out with the case?
What is going on?
Speaker 7 (11:20):
You know that?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And that's when they started talking about the Green Vega guys.
And one day I was sitting in sex squad. Like
I said, I like to read everything, and I came
across this this document which was about almost the size
of a telephone book, and it was on the investigation
of the freeway phantom cases. And I started reading it,
(11:41):
and the more I read, the angrier I got, because
it showed that the Green Vega cases were a hoax.
When it came to the freeway cases, they had nothing
to do with each other.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
And I mean, now, why do you say that?
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Because the police, multiple times officials said that the reason
they thought this could be realists because one of them
had information that no one else had. So what you're
laughing already. Why did you think this is a red herring?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Because they you know what, the FBI went back and
they reinterviewed a lot of these suspects, the people involved,
and they admitted that it was a hoax. The witnesses
said that, hey, they planned this thing because some of
the guys. One of the guys wanted immunity from prosecution.
Now I'm not saying they're not rapists, because they should
(12:29):
have been in jail, under the jail probably, but they
didn't do these cases. Okay, they did not do these cases.
And this is in plain black and white.
Speaker 6 (12:41):
While writer Blaine Pardo agreed with Romayne, he was still
curious about the Green Vegas suspects, particularly the informant, who
we now know was named Morris J. Warren. Blaine tells
us he communicated with Warren via letters from prison.
Speaker 8 (12:57):
His curse finance was kind of rambling. I took the
approach when I wrote him of I know what your
involvement in these cases are. I just need to hear
it from you. And he thought I was implying he
was involved in the cases, so he vehemently denied it.
A lot of religious texts woven into it, which I
always find interesting how convicts find Jesus and God when
(13:21):
they get to prison, and you know, he was like, no, no, no,
you're on the wrong track. Didn't have anything to do
with me, wasn't me, didn't do it, and he really
wanted us to come visit him, which we were unable
to do. The authorities wouldn't put us on the list
for him. And he admits, I never had anything to
do with this. You know, I did it on a
(13:43):
spite and revenge. He came right out and said it,
and yeah, I believe it. They were trying to cut
deals for themselves and once they realized, oh my god,
we're going to be brought up on murder charges, multiple
murder charges, I think at that point they said forget it.
Were not were not the guys that did best, and
they knew it.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
The reality is the Green Vega Gang was a major distraction,
one that potentially had significant repercussions on the freeway phantom investigation.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Unfortunately, when you get a huge task force put together
of all these officers and investigators and they're focused on this,
that's time that the real killer wasn't being investigated. And unfortunately,
there were very few people that bucked the system at
the time, So there's this weird twisted thought of we already.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
Know who did it to most of the people we
talked to. That tunnel vision is just one more reason
why this case was never solved. However, the same year
the Green Vegas were investigated, another suspect cropped up, actually
a pair of suspects. To police officers, there were six
(15:18):
confirmed victims in the Freeway Phantom case, Carol Spinks, Darlinia Johnson,
Brenda Crockett, Nenemotia Yates, Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams. However,
early on in the case, there was another suspected victim,
and her name was Angela Barnes. On July twelfth, nineteen
seventy one, just a few days after Darlinia Johnson went missing,
(15:41):
Angela Barnes also disappeared. She was walking home from a
friend's house when she was kidnapped. The next day, her
body was found in Waldorf, Maryland. Her cause of death
was a gunshot wound to her head, and her murder
was initially attributed to the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 8 (15:58):
Young girl same profile is one of the victims. So
by the time you get to the second and third
Freeway Phantom victims, the real Freeway Fanom victims. Her name
gets thrown in with those victims.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
Here's writer Blaine Pardo.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Again, it made no sense and it definitely muddied the
investigation because, of course the other officers in the Metropolitan
Police didn't know that she wasn't connected, So they're wondering,
did the Freeway Fantom now have an mo where he
used a gun, ligature, strangulation, etc. To kill his victims.
(16:36):
The gun didn't make sense, you know, from an investigative perspective,
it totally did, because a gun would be a great
way to force young victims into a car. You pull
up alongside them, window down, you aim the gun to
get in the car. It makes total sense from a
control perspective, and it could be that the Freeway Fantom
did use a gun to get his victims into the vehicle.
(17:00):
It made very little sense though, when you look at
in the context of all the other victims, you only
have one that was stabbed. Clearly that was someone who
resisted him and was stabbed. The rest were all strangled,
and while there were evidence of fighting or resisting, it
was all more manual than anything else. There wasn't the
(17:21):
use of a weapon like that. The only other weapon
that the Freeway Phantom used was a knife, and it
was only on one victim.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
Willma Harper wrote about the curious case of Angela Barnes
in her book The Mystery of the Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 10 (17:38):
One view was that Angela was not a Freeway Phantom victim.
She was the only one of the girls that had
been shot. Based on the fact that the bullet that
killed Angela had ricocheted, it was the opinion of Detective
Simpson that Angela's death had been accidental.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Police would eventually determine that Angela wasn't connected. Sometime during
the Freeway Phantom investigation, her name was removed from the
victim list, But years later, in nineteen seventy four, someone
was arrested for the murder of Angela Barnes.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
It was actually they found out a police officer who
killed her, and it was a real creepy circumstance. He
and his partner abducted her, got her in the car,
performed sexual acts with her, and inadvertently shot her in
the car. And the way they caught them was one
(18:35):
of the police officer's wife was involved with cleaning up
the car, and they had kind of played it off
that it had nothing to do with them killing anyone.
That was the blood from one of their suspects that
they brought in. But she was like, it's all over
the front seat, which didn't make sense. And after a
while she slowly pieced it together and actually reached out
(18:57):
to law enforcement and they got a full.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
The two police officers were named Edward Sullivan and Tommy Simmons.
They were both convicted and sent to prison for barnes murder,
but an investigators said they were not responsible for the
other six Freeway phantom murders. Still, the murder of Angela
Barnes brought up some troubling implications. Many families in the
area started to believe that a police officer could very
(19:24):
well have been responsible for the freeway phantom murders. You
may remember that when we talked with Evander Spinks, older
sister of Carol Spinks, she revealed her biggest.
Speaker 11 (19:34):
Suspect it probably was the police, was somebody at work
with the police. That's the only thing really made sense
to me. I think it got covered up. As an adult,
I see it differently than when I was a kid.
Plus as a kid, I didn't know a lot of
stuff that had happened, how the police was handling things
(19:57):
because we weren't privy to that.
Speaker 8 (20:01):
There was definitely a feeling and what it really contributed to,
I think was, and you read the interviews with the
families at the time, they really then begin to suspect
the police department or someone in the police department was involved,
because the minute you get one young girl who's killed
by police, you start wondering, while are other cops out
(20:22):
there killing young girls? And is that what's really feeding this?
And it really added to what I would call the
extreme distrust the family started developing towards the police department.
And it was, by the way, completely earned. You know,
when you've got something like that happening in a community
like that, you're not going to shake that. And there's
(20:45):
no amount of goodwill you can put out that's going
to change people's perceptions of that. And I don't blame
the families at all. I would still be kind of
wondering were the police involved.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
When I spoke with Carolyn Spinks, the twin sister of
Carol Spinks, she revealed some haunting thoughts about who she
believed killed her sister. Have you had thoughts about who
you think was responsible?
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yes, I mean who do you think might.
Speaker 12 (21:13):
Have done it?
Speaker 4 (21:15):
I thought that it was a white man in a
police car. Why because this may sound crazy to you all,
but because one day I was at the store where
my mom was, because my mother was the last person
to see her alive. And right there at the store
(21:36):
where my mom was, it used to be a phone
booth right there. So one day, this was years later,
I was at that phone booth and a vision came
over me. I don't know where it came from, but
it was a white police but he was in a
police car. But I don't know if he was a
police where he was just like one. And he was
(21:58):
in a police car, and he heard my mother tell
her that she was going to get her when she
get home, because he told her not to come out
of the house and she was walking home and he
followed her. This is in your vision, yes, And then
the day of my sister funeral, afterwards, we went to
(22:20):
my aunt house and we was outside and I looked
across the street and there was a police officer but
he had that helmet thing with a big glass black
thing across his face. And he was in that motorcycle
thing that looked like where one could ride aside it
that's made with the thing on the side. And he
(22:42):
was just staring at me. But he was across the
street way across from my aunt house. But I could
see him looking at me. And I got scanned and
ran in the house. And I tell my mother that
police keep looking at me.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
What did she say when they came out?
Speaker 4 (22:57):
He was gone, do you feel.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
Like you trust police?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
No?
Speaker 6 (23:03):
I mean, have you ever or it's just since that
time when your sister was murdered? Was that the end
of your trust for law enforcement?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I never had any get into it law enforcement, you know,
at that time, so I didn't know. But as I
got older, I was like, no, I don't trust them
because you know some police deduced they do underhanded, you know,
unhanded stuff, and I guess you can't trust them. I
don't trust no man.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
Author Wilma Harper wrote about this theory as well.
Speaker 10 (23:39):
Questions continued to be asked but not answered, like why
no one ever saw the girls picked up? Was the
killer someone so utterly trustworthy like a policeman that a
bystander would take no notice. Was he someone they knew?
Did the killer know the freeways, the neighborhood, and what
(23:59):
were the chances that he lived among them? A person
of normal appearances stalking and killing adolescent girls.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
We asked Blaine Pardo if he thought a police officer
could feasibly pull off these murders.
Speaker 8 (24:16):
There's a feeling that the police department is either involved
simply because these girls are so easily pulled off the
streets and a policeman pulling up and a police car
could do that. You know, he could say get in
the car. So many of these are in broad daylight
and the streets are so busy. To me, that's the
one thing that this whoever this killer was, had a
(24:39):
technique for securing these young women in his vehicle. We
need to know what that is. Because he did it
on streets where everybody knew everybody where, people were out
and these girls simply vanish. So how he did it
without raising attention? A policeman could easily do that.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Despite this, Blaine ultimately doesn't think the freeway fandom is
a police officer.
Speaker 8 (25:06):
I don't get that vibe, especially with the leaving of
a note. A police officer is going to go, look,
I'm not going to do anything at all to leave evidence,
even evidence where I've got the victim writing out a note,
why taught police? If you're in the police department, they're
(25:26):
not going to do that. And that note still sticks
with me. That's someone who's literally flipping the finger off
at the police department. You know, he's saying, catch me
if you can, and I'll confess the others when you do.
If this was a police officer, I just can't picture
him being diabolical enough to go I'll throw the scent
off by pretending I'm a craze killer. And it's something
(25:49):
that's very rare among serial killers to actually communicate to
the authorities. They just don't do that. There's too much
risk involved, and I think even in that time, I
don't think a police officer would do it.
Speaker 6 (26:03):
But the tragedy of Angela Barnes proved that not everything
was as it seemed. Her inclusion in the Freeway Phantom
case skewed perceptions of what was possible, and she wasn't
the only one. As it turns out, there was yet
another unofficial Freeway Phantom victim, and her case is even
more terrifying. Angela Barnes wasn't the only unconfirmed victim of
(26:49):
the Freeway Phantom. In November of nineteen seventy two, just
two months after the last confirmed victim, Diane Williams, was killed,
police found the body of eighteen year old Terrace Bryant.
To many investigators, Tara Bryant is considered the seventh victim
of the Freeway Phantom, but she was ultimately ruled out
for a number of reasons which we'll get into. Still,
(27:11):
we and others believe the similarities are too striking to ignore.
Tara was a young mother with a one year old
son at home on Sunday, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two,
just three days after enjoying a Thanksgiving with her family.
Tara's mother dropped her off at Leland Memorial Hospital for
a medical appointment. She was wearing a shiny red jacket
(27:34):
over a striped red, white and black dress, along with
white knee high socks and brown loafers. Her mother gave
her bus fare so she could ride the bus home
after her appointment. According to a relative, Tara called home
just after five pm and spoke to her brother Terence.
She checked in on her son and said she decided
to use her bus fair to purchase Duncan doughnuts and
(27:55):
was walking home instead. They said goodbye, and unfortunately that
was the last time that anyone heard from Tara. When
Tara didn't return home, her mother contacted the Prince George's
County Police Department, but according to the relative that we
spoke to, law enforcement didn't respond very swiftly. Since Tara
was an adult. The police told her mother there was
(28:17):
nothing they could do. At the time, Tara's family knew
that something was wrong. They believed she would not run
away and would definitely not leave her young son behind.
That night, the Bryant family conducted their own search. Tara's
one and a half mile walk from the hospital took
her south on Rhode Island Avenue, so her family retraced
(28:38):
her steps. One relative recalled seeing a suspicious man walking
alongside the road in a dark long coat, but there
was no sign of Tara. Two agonizing days later, on
November twenty eighth, at nine a m. Tara's body was
found floating in shallow water in the Anacostia River, one
mile downstream from where she was less When police discovered
(29:02):
her one of her shoes was missing.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Police did an investigation along the banks and they found
just two hundred yards from her house the other shoe,
So she was very close to being at home when
she was attacked and apparently killed.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Here's writer Blaine Pardo.
Speaker 8 (29:23):
Again, what we don't know is was she killed there
or taken somewhere and dumped back there. And that's the
tricky part with this, and having driven the area, you
could almost see both scenarios playing out. But it certainly
you've got a strangulation, You've got a body being dumped,
(29:45):
you know, along that borderline with Washington, d C. And
the surrounding communities. You know, this one was a little different.
She was dumped in water, you know, in a river,
but it's also further out from any of the the
other Freeway phantom victims, so it would make her the
final victim of all this.
Speaker 6 (30:05):
According to the FBI, Tara's autopsy report determined that her
cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation. Her neck
bone was intact and there was no damage to the
cartilage around her neck. The autopsy couldn't determine if the
strangulation was manual or ligature. The examination also couldn't determine
if Tara was sexually assaulted, but noted there was no
(30:28):
evidence of injury to her vagina or presence of seamen,
but since Tara had been in the water for several days,
it's possible that evidence may have washed away. The FBI
analysis stated that sexual assault was probable since TERA's panties
were located at the site where the assault most likely occurred,
and the teddy that Tara had on under her dress
was unsnapped between her legs. Officially, sexual motivation for her
(30:52):
murder was not ruled out, and there were no defensive
wounds on her body. A wash Rington Post News article
entitled quote police seeking help in slaying of girl was
published following the discovery of Tara's body. The article included
a photo of Tara and urged the public to contact
the Homicide Division with tips. An excerpt of the article.
Speaker 12 (31:16):
Stated Prince George's County Police today appealed for help from
anyone who might have seen Tara and Bryan eighteen near
home in North Brentwood on Sunday before she was slain.
Police say they believed the girl met her assailing as
she walked south on Rhode Island Avenue between the five
thousand block and Hyattsville and her home at forty five
twenty two on Rhode Island Avenue in North Bredwood between
(31:37):
five thirty and six thirty pm on Sunday.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
In November of nineteen seventy three, a year after Tara
was killed, a letter was published in The Washington Evening Star,
written by Tara's brother, Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 13 (31:52):
In loving memory of my sister who passed away one
year ago today, November twenty sixth, nineteen seventy two, as
flowers rest upon your May the Lord be with you
through the day. It seems like yesterday when you passed away.
We think about you every day, your loving brother, Terrence Bryant.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
Sadly, the investigation into Terror's murder never bore much fruit.
Here's blame Pardo again.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
There were no charges ever filed against anybody for this,
so it's still considered a cold case. I requested copies
of the case file and was told no, it's still
an open investigation, which after nineteen seventy two, I'm curious
what actual investigating they're doing, But you guys know how
that goes. It was very fascinating for me because to me,
(32:40):
I wonder was this the last of the Freeway Fantom's
true victims. She fits the profile in so many ways.
There was nothing in the police reports about her being
sexually assaulted that I've been able to find, which might
be the telling clue in all of this. But for
the FBI to consider her on the Freeway Phantom victims
(33:01):
is probably good enough for me at this point in time.
Speaker 6 (33:05):
The question of whether Tara Bryant was in fact the
seventh victim of the Freeway Phantom is a hotly contested
issue in this case. When we spoke with MPD Detective
Romayne Jenkins, she fully believed that Tara was killed by
the Freeway Phantom. So why was she not included among
the Freeway Phantom victims?
Speaker 7 (33:26):
I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Some people did, because I see where there were submissions
made to the FBI to examine fiber evidence and so forth,
and they included her case with it. Some did, some didn't.
I can't tell you why. I guess mainly because she
was the only victim found in the water.
Speaker 6 (33:46):
Why are you so sure that she is the seventh victim?
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Because on the periphery it's the same.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
You have an eighteen year old petitue, young black female.
She's dropped off at the hospital by her mother. Her
mother says, I'll come back and pick you up. A
few hours later, she calls home and says, tell my mother,
don't pick me up. I'm going to catch the bus home.
She's walking on US one Rhode Island Avenue, which is
(34:15):
heavily traveled. People see her walking towards her house. She's
headed home and she doesn't make it. And that's the
same thing with these victims. Also the fact that she's
in the water. Her underpants have been removed. There was
no sign of forced vaginal entry, so they couldn't say
that she had been raped. But she's in the water,
(34:37):
so any fiber evidence or anything is gone. And like
I said, she's headed home and she's only like forty
yards from her house is where she's attacked.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
And the same thing with these girls.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
They are snatched in their neighborhoods and they're depositive back
in their neighborhood so to speak.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
You know, we were able to contact a relative of
Tara Bryant. They believe she was not a victim of
the freeway fandom. According to the relative. The Bryant family
shared this information with law enforcement, even telling them who
killed Tara. They believed it was one of Tara's former boyfriends.
(35:16):
The relative we spoke to said the ex boyfriend bore
visible scratches and marks the day following her disappearance. We
asked Blaine Pardo about this and if he thought it
could possibly be the ex boyfriend.
Speaker 8 (35:29):
You know, I don't know what the motivation would be
and if they think the boyfriend did it, then charge
him with that. To me, it just doesn't make sense.
There had to be something that was an impetus for this,
And how would the boyfriend know that she'd be walking
home from the hospital, you know, in the early evening hours.
You know, if the boyfriend was going to intercept her,
(35:52):
how would he know where she is. Her mother didn't
even know she was walking home. Her mother gave her
a dollar to ride the bus home. So the concept
that he was driving by, saw her and decided now's
the time I'm going to kill her just doesn't make sense.
I'm not saying that there weren't terrible relations between her
and her boyfriend. I just don't see what the connection is.
(36:14):
And if the family believes he did it by all means,
then the police should be investigating him in charging with
the crat.
Speaker 6 (36:22):
According to the relative we spoke to, the unnamed ex
boyfriend was never investigated. The relative says this forced the
family to live in the same community with the person
they believed to be Tara's killer. According to the relative,
that individual went to prison for other violent crimes and
is now deceased. We reached out to Prince George's County
(36:42):
for comment on Tara's case and to date have not
heard back. Blaine Pardo says the investigation of Tara Bryant
speaks to a bigger issue within the Prince George's County
Homicide department, and he compares it to another case that
occurred almost a decade after the Freeway Phantom murders.
Speaker 8 (37:04):
There were a whole number of murders that took place
in the nineteen eighties as well, called the suitland Slaves.
A number of bodies found right across the DC line
in a park, all women sexually assaulted, strangled, etc. And
dumped in this very small area. It was clearly a
dumping ground for a serial killer. The suitland Slaves. They
(37:26):
tried to attribute to somebody else, but they never charged
him for the crimes. But he was arrested for kidnapping
a young woman in the district, so they said, well,
he must have been the one that did all of these.
There was absolutely nothing that I ever saw that connected
him to these victims. But the Suitland slangs all remain
open at this time, and Prince George's County will not
(37:49):
release anything on a cold case at all, nor will
their public relations people even pick up the phone and
call you back. That's really weird. Even the Metropolitan Police
Department actually communicates with me openly still to this day
on the freeway phantom stuff, which I expected the Washington
d c. Police to be a lot more rigid than
(38:11):
anybody else. But Prince George's County won't even return phone calls.
They don't want to talk about it. And sometimes I
get the feeling that police officers get in their mind
who they think did it, and in their mind the
cases are closed, even though nobody was ever brought to
trial for it.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
Blaine says both Tara's murder and the Suitland slings add
to a larger picture of how investigations are handled depending
on who the victim is, or what the victim looks like.
Speaker 8 (38:40):
You're talking the nineteen seventies and in the Suitland cases
the nineteen eighties, early eighties. You know, there tends to
be this approach that I've seen with large scale police departments,
so that if they can't get an immediate hey we
figured out who did it, got the evidence, let's put
them to trial. If it goes, they let them stay cold.
(39:02):
They don't focus on them, et cetera. And some of
that's budgetary now, you know, the focus is very much
on how much money are you spending and things along
those lines. And I think cold cases are just as important.
There's still victims' families, there's still somebody who's dead. It
doesn't matter that it took place fifty years ago or
forty years ago or ten years ago. They need the
(39:25):
same level and attention. They probably need more because they
haven't been completely resolved yet.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
Like Terra's case and the Suitland slangs, the rest of
the Freeway Phantom murders went unsolved. With the Green Viga
gang ruled out as well as Robert Askins, the case
went dark until it was picked up again by Romaine
Jenkins in the nineteen.
Speaker 7 (39:50):
Eighties, I was transferred.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
I guess after ten years, I ended up being transferred
over to the US Attorney's office, and there I supervised
seven former homicide detectives because they had a new division
command and he didn't like any of these old investigations,
so he put them under the career criminal unit and
they made me the supervisor.
Speaker 7 (40:14):
I said, oh good, now.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
I can get into my freeway phantom cases. So I
had at my disposal, I had seven senior hormicide detectives
and they said, Sorge, we're gonna work on this case,
but we're not going to do Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 7 (40:30):
I said, don't worry about Jack the Ripper. We're gonna
work on these and we did it.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Now that the FBI's criminal profiling unit was more advanced,
the first thing Romayne wanted to do was create an
official profile of the potential killer. What did you think
of the FBI profile that they did back then?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
They did The first one they did was mine was
for me, and I thought they did a pretty good
job considering the circumstances, you know.
Speaker 6 (40:59):
You mean, considering how little we all knew.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
About it, right, But they did come up with some
things that had to be keyed in on they felt
that this person was in the military. Well, at that time,
you had all these military people coming back from Vietnam
who were in hospitals here and installations here, so you
had a lot of that going on. But that was
really interesting. And the reason why I thought it was
so interesting was because when I showed the note to
(41:24):
the FBI, they said, this is military.
Speaker 7 (41:27):
This person was in the military.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
I showed the same note to the investigator at Naval
Investigated Service. He said, oh, whoever wrote this note? This military?
I had two different brains saying the same thing. You
know that this person was in the military.
Speaker 6 (41:46):
In February of twenty twenty two, a new profile of
the killer was made and that idea came up once again.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
I believe this was the beginning of his offending career,
and I think something significant happened right after this that
could have been he moved, was arrested, went into the military.
Speaker 6 (42:13):
Next time on Freeway Phantom.
Speaker 5 (42:16):
This is exactly who we wanted, and he was willing
to take a great risk to get her.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
A black officer came to say, look, Sargeant, be careful,
the white offices will get you and said I don't
know what they planning, but they plotted something. He said,
I was in the locker room and I got bits
and pieces of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
He actually went out and knocked on the doors of
the detectives who actually worked on the case originally. It
turns out that a lot of the missing files had
been taken home by the original case detectives.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
He's obviously loving the moniker. This is why we tell
media outlets to not nickname offenders. What it does is
it gives other people who are like minded the idea
that they can become famous too.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Freeway Fantom is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV
and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our host is CELESE.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Hilly.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and CELESE.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Hilly.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick
and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers
on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on
behalf of Black Bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and
(43:39):
Aaron Bergman, with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright.
Artwork by Mister Soul two one six, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set Special Thanks to a team at
Uta Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group, Tenderfoot
TV and iHeartMedia, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah, have
increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and
(44:02):
conviction of the person or persons responsible for their Freeway
phantom murders. The previous reward of up to one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department
has been matched. A new total reward of up to
three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered. If you
have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the
Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero two seven
(44:26):
two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information, please
visit Freeway dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from Ihar
Radio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
Host
Celeste Headlee
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