Freeway Phantom - A New Profile
Episode Date: July 5, 2023We recruit a former FBI profiler to create a new profile of the Freeway Phantom. And we look at the systemic issues that led to the Phantom's success.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informatio...n.
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The True Crime Podcast, Sacred Scandal, returns for a second season to investigate a led sexual abuse at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church.
Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle who is now behind bars.
I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised.
It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the Apostle. Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts.
911 what's your emergency?
It's a nightmare we could never have imagined.
An Achiller?
Who is still on the loose?
In the 1980s we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members.
We weren't safe anywhere.
Would we be next?
It was getting harder and harder to live in Mompine.
Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
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Freeway Phantom is available each week on Wednesdays to hear each episode add free and one week
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He wanted to show off. And this is something that he will do in his real life all the time.
Because of his poor self-image, he feels the need to prove his greatness.
And whether that's in his vocabulary that he uses or in the quote, conquest that he makes, he wants to prove how much of a man he is.
And this letter, especially when he has used these multi-slavic words to show off
and he gets one of them wrong.
So I think I should just launch into the profile.
Yeah, let's do it.
The homicide detectives termed the cases the little girl cases.
This child was laying on the side of the road.
I wouldn't go, no way. I wouldn't come out of house. Those first five murders should have been a huge warning bell of the road. Ah, but you go, no way. I will come, I'll help you.
Those first five murders should have been a huge warning
bell for the police.
We just want to know what happened.
This person must have saw that they
were thinking that maybe it's just one person.
And he says, uh, they need to know.
This is me.
I thought they'd take with Ketchum.
I thought it was just a matter of time.
I'm Celeste Headley. and this is Freeway Phantom.
On the last episode, we talked about the original outdated
psychological profile for the Freeway Phantom.
And we revealed that we commissioned a new profile
from the former FBI special agent Jim Clemente. So now we'll jump right into Jim Clemente a new profile from the former FBI Special Agent Jim Clemente.
So now we'll jump right into Jim Clemente's new profile
of the Freeway Phantom, and that starts
with a little bit of scene setting.
So the first thing that we have to understand is
the victim availability factor was higher back then in the 70s.
You didn't have the internet which gave people access
immediately to everything that happens around the country every day 24, 7, 365. So generally,
smaller communities were, they felt insulated, if nothing happened in your community then you
weren't really concerned about certain things like child abductions.
The fact is that in the United States of America, approximately 160 to 200 times a year, a child is abducted Nick Mix reports of missing kids over 800,000 a year,
but only 160 to 200 of them are actually non-familiar long-term abductions.
So what does that tell you? It's a very rare event.
But with the internet, you now know about every single one of them.
Well, at least every one of them
that is a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl.
But you hear about many of them that occur much more
than you would have before.
So people started locking their doors more often,
restricting the freedoms of their kids,
not letting them just ride their bikes down the street alone
or walk to the store alone.
And so, that is a very important thing.
This guy, although he was able to abduct six, seven girls,
they were much more available to him.
So this is not a criminal sophistication level that is
extremely high. It is more a product of the times. So that's the first part of the profile.
He chooses victims of opportunity, but they must meet his physical and gender requirements.
And so I think that they're all black, they're all female, they're all petite,
they're all alone, and they're all on foot. So there are certainly offenders who will
follow a woman in a car down a secluded route and and bump into the car, pull them over
as a fake cop. There are people who are sophisticated enough to do that. He is not. He's looking for children. He's not looking to go into their home and
risk their family members. He's very cautious. All these things are going to be evinced in
his actual life.
When you say sophisticated, is that the same as intelligence? Are we talking about someone
who's of lower intelligence? Are we talking about someone who's of lower intelligence? No, criminal sophistication is based on experience, committing these kinds of crimes.
Generally in these offenses, we see precursor crimes that lead up to the
abduction, like peeping or breaking into a house, stealing somebody's
underwear, you know, doing things like that.
But in this case, I do not believe he broke into anybody's house.
I believe he doesn't have the guts to do it
or the physical skills to do it.
And that could be because he's overly heavy
or it could be because he's just not confident.
I believe that he's likely short
himself, although he has very powerful hands, probably due to the kind of work he does.
But I believe he's not scary. He's able to get close enough to these victims to not scare them
away before he can control them. So I believe he controls them with a knife or a gun
and he very quickly binds them and or throws them in a trunk of a car. Speaking of that, I think he
either has a van, a panel van, which is much more common in the 70s, or a station wagon, like one of
those green metallic woody station wagons, where he can open the back, toss them in and close
it, and they're not going to be seen by anybody.
So he fits into the community.
He's a black male or mixed race, and everyone sees right through him. He's invisible to the neighborhood because he is
just one of the guys. He probably doesn't come off as being gruff or an asshole. He probably comes off
as being meek, but he does try to show off any opportunity he gets. Next, Clemente talked about the kind of work the killer likely did, which would also
explain how he got around the neighborhood.
He either trolls via his work, for example, he could be a tow truck driver or a traveling
repair person, someone who picks up junk or calls away trash for people.
Something that gives him the opportunity to drive any place at any hour of the day or
night, or he has just has the freedom to do that.
He works for himself and he doesn't have to clock in anywhere in particular.
Also if he's in a living relationship it could be with a parent or it could be with
a power more. However, he definitely does not have to answer to another person in terms
of where he is at what hour, because he's been able to do this at any hour at any time.
He grew up in a very religious family, one that that would have condemned the thoughts
and desires that he knew. By the time he hit puberty, he knew that he was sexually attracted
to children. He knew that this was wrong. He may have acted on it and been scolded and
punished extremely by his mother,
this would have gone on throughout his entire childhood,
that he would have been very severely physically punished
and also demeaned.
And the demeaning part was probably even more
damaging than the physical punishment.
He has a foot or shoe fetish, and that's why he keeps the shoes as souvenirs.
And there's a difference between souvenirs and trophies.
Souvenirs is something that he keeps privately to himself, to remind himself and encourage
the fantasies that he will have as he's reliving these experiences, these offenses.
Trophies are something that you show off. For example, trophy might be a necklace
that you take from a victim and give to somebody in your life so you can see it
every day. It's much more insidious. So as I said before, I believe that most
likely through his work, he's developed very strong
hands, powerful hands and arms, and this is something that he probably deliberately did
as a line of work because he's small and he feels powerless and he wants to feel more
powerful.
He feels like he doesn't measure up.
And that, again, was something that was drilled into him as a kid, and especially if they found out
about his deviant sexual behavior and desires. So he feels very diminished,
because he's got an extremely poor sense of self. He knew since he was a child
that these dirty evil thoughts were wrong
and that he was not normal.
And he's fixated on petite,
probably just pubescent children.
This may have been the first sexual experience that he had
was with a girl of that age, whether he was that age or older, I don't know, but probably either a younger relative or somebody that he had access to through the family was the first person that he molested. it and he may have gotten caught and that's why when he started this particular killing series,
he actually killed his victims because he didn't want to ever get caught again.
Would he have been able to stop for any reason other than being caught or something else
happening?
Would he have had the command of control he would have needed to stop?
Absolutely because every single one of them can stop and the proof of control he would have needed to stop? Absolutely, because every single one of them can stop.
And the proof of that is that they don't do it
in front of everybody else.
They hide it.
They do it only when they can get away with it.
And that is the ultimate control.
They know that it's wrong.
They know that it's illegal.
They know they will get arrested
and maybe spend the rest of their life in jail
or get the death penalty and they avoid it by operating only when they can get away with it.
That's all the proof I need that they're in control. The people who are criminally insane don't
realize that what they're doing is wrong so they don't make any attempt to hide it and so this guy is not like that, not at all.
So one particular victim really stands out to me and that's Brenda Woodard and she was 18 years old
so she was the oldest victim that we know of and yet she was very petite as well and fit all the other ziability factors. He probably didn't know that she was 18.
She probably looked younger to him. That may mean that he had to follow her at a
great distance or that he didn't have much time to make a decision with respect
to her, but this offense really affected him, as I said earlier. She was stabbed repeatedly,
but when her body was placed, a coat was placed over a chest where she was stabbed, and
that's an aspect of undoing. So he lost his cool. He was enraged by her behavior. She
didn't follow the script he had in his mind and therefore he punished her for
that, but he felt bad about it. And that's the reason why I believe he was brought up in a very
religious family, a very strict religious family that basically chastised him and said he was going
to be punished for his sins. And so that was an outward manifestation of this enforced remorse
basically for what he did. The extent to which Brenda fought back really bothered
him and it undermined his confidence for quite a while. And that's why he didn't
operate for so long. He may have also been walking around with physical manifestations of that.
Scratches on his face, bruised eyes, whatever it is. Something that made him feel like he
was ultimately vulnerable because of what she did.
So post-defense behavior, I would say, after each of the murders, he hunkered down and sort of repented outwardly,
but inwardly what he was doing was he was reliving the fantasy of what he had done over and over again,
probably trying to correct the things that went wrong. And this is one of the things that drives
them to do it over and over again because it never goes exactly as they fantasize and they want to do it right and they want it to be right so they can have
this amazing fulfilled fantasy. This guy has a rich inner fantasy life and I think that led him
to read a lot and engage in fantasy type behavior. Today's version of that would be playing certain fantasy games,
but back in the 70s, that wasn't really there, but he may have engaged in that kind of behavior
on the side for his hobby. He likes to show off how smart he is, is probably a noise to hell out
of anybody that he knows or people that he comes to contact with. His fantasies are all about young girls, and he may have from time to time,
slipped up and let somebody know,
like, oh, isn't she hot?
Or something like that, making comments.
He wants to feel powerful,
and having this power over these girls
makes him feel powerful.
When I heard this, it reminded me of Brenda Crockett,
the 10-year-old who the freeway
phantom allowed to call home a few times.
I asked Clemente if he thought that was one of the killer's displays of power.
Yeah, well, this is one of the things the mother was out looking for.
I think that he saw the mother and he wanted to make sure that she didn't see him.
That's why he had her tell her mother,
I'm in a house with a white man in Virginia.
That tells me they were not in Virginia
and he was not a white man.
And so he expected that if the mother had seen him with her,
she would have said, but who was that black man I saw you with?
But she didn't say that, right? So I think that was a test to see, and that's why he had her call back
twice.
Next, Jim Clemente talked about the killers' likely living situation.
He has a private house or garage or shed where he keeps these girls where he has total privacy and control.
It's in the beltway area, but it's not in Virginia.
He excluded that by using Virginia in that call.
So somewhere in Maryland or D.C.
He grew up there or works in that area.
And I believe that in 1971, he was probably mid-20s to mid-30s.
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, went into the military,
was arrested, but some significant event happened,
which changed his offending behavior,
stopped it at this point, at least in this area.
And that could also have been that he got married.
He got into a relationship that he found someone
who empowered him and that he was not afraid to be with, but it could also have been
somebody who completely dominates and controls him like his mother did. But that's the only
two types of relationships that I believe he would have been in.
What about the washing? He seems to have washed at least some of them, if not all of them?
Yeah, well part of that could be he washed the feed because he has a foot fetish. So for him,
interacting with their feet is a sexual behavior. It's also possible that that's a level of forensic
sophistication. So yes, there were green fibers found on several of the bodies.
That shows a lack of forensics sophistication in that area,
but he may have washed off any evidence of sexual contact with these girls.
Clearly, they were able to determine that they were raped in most of the cases.
So, he wasn't able to undo that,
but he did at least make an effort.
And I think that it's either part of his ritual.
So there's M.O. aspects to every crime.
Those are modesty operandi, the actions necessary
to commit the crime and escape undetected.
But there's also ritual aspects.
And although M.O. is learned, and that's you get better
and better over time, that's where you
develop criminal sophistication.
I'm not saying that he isn't criminally sophisticated.
I'm saying that his criminal sophistication level does not
rise to the level that will give him the ability
to break into somebody's protected home
and take them from their own environment.
That is a criminal sophistication level that is much higher than someone who takes someone
who's on foot on the street.
So he has a car, they don't have a car.
The problem with taking somebody who has a car on foot, you know, when they get out of
their car, is that you leave the car there. So everybody knows where they were taken from.
And the window of opportunity can be seriously limited by that.
So he's taking people who are on foot,
who, you know, won't be expected back home immediately, right?
So there's more of a time delay.
The alarm doesn't go off right away, gives him a chance
to get away to his secure location. That's what I meant by saying he wasn't as criminally sophisticated as somebody who would
do in-home abductions.
So he could have a history, and his history would have been sexually victimizing children. It won in his family or somehow that he got
access to in his teens or early 20s because that is what was available to him.
But eventually he figured out a way to get out and hunt and he probably
hunted a little bit away from where he lived,
and then took them to this place that is secure,
then dumped them a little ways away from where he lived
or where he did this because he didn't want to point people
in the direction of where he lived.
But I know in one case, the victim was left right by
where her mother takes the bus every day.
Their shoes were placed very neatly by the side of her body.
That's a ritualistic kind of behavior.
And so that could mean that there's some kind of connection
between them, I don't know.
But it's a very risky thing to do, too.
You said that his behavior would have always been towards young girls.
And you said pretty clearly that that's what motivates him.
So this is probably not someone who would have changed the opposite.
This is not somebody who raped 25-year-olds at one point,
and then for this period of time prayed
on young girls.
Absolutely not.
No, that's not who it is.
Yeah.
If he can successfully break into homes and rape 25 year olds or get them weather on
the street, no, he's not doing that.
No.
His sexual fantasies are about children.
That concludes Jim Clemente's profile of the Freway Phantom.
And there's a lot to break down here.
So we asked someone else to sit down with us and provide their thoughts on this new profile. The World The World The World
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World The World The World The World The World The World The World with Christ on Earth. It wasn't even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray.
It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of.
For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community that
began in Mexico and then grew across the United States.
Until one day.
A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers call him the Apostle.
Their leader was arrested and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder,
and corruption.
This is just a business and their product are people.
They want to know that they will kill you.
Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radioard Radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get
your podcasts.
911, what's your emergency?
You shot her!
Oh my God!
It's a nightmare we could never have imagined.
And a killer who is still on the loose.
My small town rocked by murder.
There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss.
In the 1980s we're in
high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another,
after another, for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere. We're teenagers
terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids?
And why? In that moment, I saw rage.
And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever?
I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again,
but I'd be careful. Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy.
Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jim Clemente's profile is striking for a number of reasons.
It suggests the killer was a local person, someone with limited resources and a lower level
of sophistication than previously believed.
It also suggests they were primarily motivated by fetishes, in turn, demonstrating a level
of psychopathy before unconsidered.
We wanted to analyze Clemente's profile with a professional investigator, so we decided
to run all of this by Detective Jim Trainham.
We showed him Clemente's new profile
and here were his thoughts.
One of the things that he said that really made sense to me
is the fact that he believes that this person fantasized
about this, especially with the first victim and planned it.
And that's why he was able to keep her as long as he did because he had everything set up and ready to go.
What I'm wondering is, is how many false starts he may have had before that with other children.
And one thing that I did want to bring, if he considered this, is that he was talking
about the time between the abduction and the body was found. But we know that with the
first victim, she was abducted, kept somewhere because when
she was found, the medical examiner was able to say she had
been there only like two or three days. And so she was alive
for several days before that. But with the other victims, we
don't really know exactly when they were killed. So it may have
been a much shorter time period. He may have abducted them, killed them, and then dumped them. They were found sometime later.
But what's interesting is, is that does that mean that he singled out this first victim?
And did he know her? And with the other victims, like the second victim, we always kind of theorized
that since they were from the same neighborhood
Disappeared the same way that he may have known her too, but the other ones
Were they actually ones that he he identified beforehand because I got the impression that that's what Jim was saying
I may be wrong that he identified his victims beforehand and then you know planned it and then abducted them and
beforehand and then planned it and then abducted them. And is it that or were they just, was he driving around
and having victims of opportunity that kind of fit
the type of person that he was looking for?
Somebody who was small, somebody who was vulnerable,
somebody who was isolated for a short period of time
so that he could go up and make his play?
That would be one question. I don't remember
seeing anything in any of the investigative reports about them trying to find out, especially
at first, how many other times had girls been approached by strangers or someone they
knew. So that was my first observation. Were each of these victims identified beforehand,
or was it just the first one,
and the rest were part of this hunting pattern,
and you just happened to cross them
at the right date and right time?
Trainham also says he found Clemente's analysis
of the time period to be very interesting as well.
You know, this was a time period
where people did hitchhike. I mean, back in 1971, I was a child, you know, this was a time period where people did hitchhike.
I mean, back in 1971, I was hitchhiking, you know, I was in high school, and that's how we got around.
And children were, you know, out on the street, and they were much more
freer, I think.
And less fearful than we are these days.
And I think that a lot of child sex abusers, like he was talking about, very easily could,
in some cases, have lured them into the car without any kind of threat of violence,
and then used a knife to keep them under control, that sort of thing.
We asked Traynham what he thought about some of the geographical analysis.
If you go and look at all the other reduction sites, I mean all of them are pretty much on
the side of an open road and traffic wasn't as heavy then as it is now.
And you can drive up and stop your car there and you really wouldn't look suspicious and
it doesn't take that long just to haul something out.
If you have a clear area, but let's say that you haul the body out, lay it down, and suddenly a police car comes up behind you.
What is your story?
I was driving down the road,
and I saw something over here,
so I pulled over to check on it.
But when he dropped off, Brenda would've.
He had to get off the interstate, go around this,
you know, much narrower exit.
Stop where there was no place to stop.
There was no place to pull off. He had to be out in the road in order to put her
body where he put it. So I think he had a much higher chance of being spotted as
being seen as somebody doing something suspicious. And so, you know, why he chose
that spot always puzzled me.
I've heard this.
I've never been able to really find any documentation
in my memory about how her mother actually worked
at the hospital right next to where the body was found
and all of that.
Could it be because he had some kind of exchange
with her or knew that her mother worked
at the hospital there?
Trainham says he's also curious
about the type of sexual assaults
that the killer committed.
There was evidence that they were strangled,
not only manually, but with a ligature as well,
but with Brenda, she was strangled
with a ligature, it's stabbed.
Like Jim said, she'd written the letter,
and she knew that the ship was up,
and she'd been trying to protect herself, because she'd written the letter and she knew that the ship was up and she'd
been trying to protect herself because she'd already been sexually assaulted, her clothes
have been put back on and when she was stabbed her clothes were inside out, her shirt was
inside out and the knife holes in the shirt matched up to the knife entries there.
I was wondering if he was possibly as part of his control in sexual fantasy, strangling them
during sex and letting them pass out and come to.
I mean because he was probably not killed by strangulation, she was killed by knife
entries, so I'm thinking that the strangulation came first.
I think that the most logical or the theory that fits those facts is that the clothes were removed, she was sexually assaulted,
she was redressed, like the other victims, and then maybe during the writing out the notes,
something happened, and that's when she was stabbed.
I thought the point about the first one having the most planning is really the most interesting thing
myself because even with the third victim, Crockett, I mean he had to have had a place to take her
to make that phone call. I really wonder, you know, if he knew the mother or if the mother actually
saw him at some point, that that's always been a question in my mind. Would he have a board? Would he have tried to you know cover up what he was doing? Maybe by bringing her back
and saying that he found her? I don't know. Honestly I think that if she had
said Yamamaka saw you or in some way provided that information that you know
she might be alive because he would have felt that he could not carry through
without further risk to himself. And lastly, train him had a lot to say about the new
profiles take on the handwritten note, which included the moniker, Freway Phantom.
Yeah, the name was coined by I believe a reporter for WTOP at the time, Pat Collins.
by I believe every porter for WTOP at the time, Pat Collins. But one thing that was proposed at one point was that he was pissed off because the police
were at that point were still saying, oh no, there's no serial killer, no comment, they
were really downplaying it.
And so we had always kind of thought that he's now proud of himself.
He wants to show the world that, you know, this is my handy work, and I'm smarter than the cops are.
And so he's actually bragging about that.
But the fact that bringing it to his health on him,
we always felt that that was the reason
for that 10-month delay between victims right there.
My take on all of this is that the profile suggests
the killer could have stopped killing,
but his tendencies to wanna show off his skill
or ability would have remained the same.
He would have followed the freeway phantom cases
and basked in that moniker,
enjoying that he outsmarted law enforcement.
But that overconfidence made him vulnerable
because anyone near him
could witness his behavior and his enjoyment of the coverage, and then report him to the
police. That's still possible, even today. But if the killer was less sophisticated than
we initially thought, then why was it so difficult to capture him? As we've talked about
on this podcast, the answer is complicated,
but it ultimately boils down to a blend
of primitive investigative technology,
racism and apathy in the police force,
a lack of willingness in the community to come forward,
and pure luck on behalf of the killer.
The thing is, many of those issues remain true today.
According to DC Witness, that's a nonprofit that collects
and analyzes violent crime data in the nation's capital,
the homicide rate is consistently rising here,
and the closure rate is dropping.
In 2022, only 42% of homicide cases were closed.
Nationwide, black girls and women
are at a significantly higher risk
of being the victims of violent crime.
And a 2020 DC witness study showed
that the rate of homicide among black girls and women
rose 33% that year in comparison to 15%
among their white counterparts.
So why, why are black girls still at risk?
And why aren't these cases getting solved?
A lot of variables play into closure rate.
And it's not always just a racial thing.
And sometimes it is a racial thing.
It would be irresponsible of me to say
that the closure rate is solely dependent on color.
I will say that there are variables.
We live and die.
Some people buy the street code.
Some people out there.
They know who murdered this person.
They know who committed this arm robbery, but they won't come forward. He was not even so much that he liked sex. He wanted something to pray.
It's the largest cult in the world that no one has ever heard of.
For three generations, the Luz del Mundo had an incredible control on his community
that began in Mexico and then grew across the United States, until one day.
A day of reckoning for the man whose millions of followers call him the Apostle.
Their leader was arrested, and survivors began to speak out about the sexual abuse, the murder, and corruption.
This is just a business, and their product are people.
They want to know that they will kill you.
Listen to all episodes now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts.
911, what's your emergency?
You shot her! Oh my God!
It's a nightmare we could never have imagined.
And a killer who is still on the loose.
My small town rocked by murder.
There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss.
In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members.
One after another, after another for a decade.
We weren't safe anywhere.
We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes.
Would we be next?
Who is killing all the kids?
And why?
In that moment, I saw rage.
And why do some want the town secrets to stay dead
and buried forever?
I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again,
but I'd be careful.
Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy.
Listen to the Murder Years on the I Heart Radio app Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I could just tell you, you know, the summative variables and some of the reasons why is lack of resistance within the communities to crime.
Robbery, there's a millisecond away from a homicide whenever you draw a fire on.
And those same people who are committing these homicides will snatch your baby out your room and it should be a missing person. All of this is all in the same vein and that's why it's so important to bring closure to the
community. It's so important to solve these cases and the whole folks accountable.
This is Henderson Long, CEO of DC's Missing Voice.
Henderson is dedicated to building trust between DC's Black community and the police, with
the goal of bettering the homicide's solve rate.
He also played a key role in helping us in the early stages of our freeway phantom investigation.
I augment the Metropolitan Police Department in the private sector to assist with trace
investigations to locate missing persons.
And some of the similar work that needs to be done in the community, I do a lot of that
work in terms of outreach in terms of investigating cases, in terms of whatever these detectives
may need. We promote cases.
We develop a big platform when we stay in close contact.
What the lead detectives and stuff is so important.
Henderson says this type of work is personally very significant to him.
I'm an eight-time homicide loser and my aunt was missing and found murdered. She was missing for 20 years
and through the technology of DNA match, we found out about her whereabouts and it was confirmed.
My partner, John Andrews, one of the guys I've worked with over here in the missing persons
unit who does cold cases, got the family to submit their DNA and trust the police and we put it
in the database. We compared it against a set of bones and there it is, you know, I mean after 20
years, her body had been recovered a year later, but by us being uneducated, by it being some fear
within our family about putting up your, we were just talking about DNA.
I give you my DNA, jam me up on that. Maybe at home, the side, I committed last year or maybe
I was, I mean, people were just apprehensive about DNA. Social security numbers, no.
Henderson says one of the biggest issues in cases like the Freeway Phantom or any of
the other dozen cases he works on is that many of DC's black communities simply don't
trust law enforcement.
When a murder occurs, it's usually likely that someone in the neighborhood knows something
but they won't tell the cops.
Henderson's goal is to act as a neutral ambassador and hopefully convince those witnesses to come forward.
How do you convince?
Because I mean, you probably are aware that trust in police
is at an all-time level.
So how do you convince people to work with the police?
You get out in the community.
We may set up and feed people hot dogs one day
and just hand out resources and educate them. Get out in the community. We may set up and feed people hot dogs one day
and just hand out resources and educate them.
Let them know we, we hear for you.
When they see me with the commander,
I have creates in the street as being just on this person.
You can have a kilo of cocaine.
I'm not here for the kilo.
I'm here for the missing person.
So if you want your block to run,
you need to tell me, help with this missing. This is some of the things how you persuade, because it's
a language within the street and you have to kind of know the language, kind of
know the area you in. You know, before you go to a neighborhood and you start
jibber jabbing, you do a static drive through, you look at the neighborhood, you
call one of the people up, the guys from the neighborhood and you ask him what's popping. Can you walk with me?
They see you with him. These are ways you do it in a safe manner.
There's a lot of different ways to acquire information to
computer databases to face-to-face interviews. You have the DNA,
the forensic technology, all these things are at your disposal.
You know, you have business associates, you may go interview them.
Credit card information, you have videos available that you can use.
Somebody may call me and say, we saw a little girl over in Southeast.
I get with the detective and go and pull the video and there she is.
So now we got her scheduled.
We know she kind of coming in at a certain time.
So these are all investigated like how you work.
You understand the person's where they like to go.
What are they frequent?
What time of day do they go there, you know?
Having that good physical description,
you'd be surprised how many families don't have an up-to-date photo.
Even while they're carrying their camera with them all the time?
No, what I mean, like, let's say if you had a child
and a lot of kids nowadays, they too cool to take pictures.
So you might have an old picture
and I'm just gonna say this kind of like in some of the inner-city communities.
We don't really take a lot of pictures,
so I get a picture that's old,
but my point is, having a good physical description,
having a good photo, having fingerprints on file.
These are tools, these are all investigative tools.
Having their medical data, knowing about it,
like some people may be on medication and they wander off.
So having all these things on file,
having a community to understand this is in your custody,
meaning you can have a child ID kit in your custody
with all this stuff in it.
The National Center of Missing Spook Kids,
they send me a thousand child ID kits
and I get out in the community
and we try to get into the schools.
Oh, yeah, I have a completed one with my son's fingerprints sitting in my safe at home.
Yeah, and the medical data when someone goes missing, especially a child is chaos.
You can't, you don't know how to put your left shoe on from the right.
You're somethings you think you will remember. You won't remember because if you got it in the
kit, you just have to get it.
That's the full physical description.
These are things that important.
It's interesting because on one side,
you're talking about things like forensic and CCTV,
which they didn't have in the 1970s
when the freeway phantom was praying on children.
On the other side, you're talking about stuff
like talking to community members and getting people to speak with you that absolutely was available back in the
1970s. But when I look at the photos, the crime scene photos, I'm looking at photos of about
25 white dudes in a black community investigating a black girl's death. And I have to ask wonder to myself,
how successful were these white cops in 1971 at getting the community
your shaking your head already?
Well, you know, he was elusive.
He was something to deal with.
This was a monster guy.
The way I occurred is some
suspicion about some type of maybe law enforcement training or some kind of
military training to understand how to dispose of the bodies and how to mess
with their head police because he was all he was doing some damage and he was
getting away. He didn't leave very much.
And at the time, as you spoke about, they didn't have what they have now.
I'm just fortunate to have talked to the older detectives who taught me about how to shake the
bushes and just how to move in the street. You have to know how to move in the street.
You have to know how to what areas to go in and what areas you cannot go in. They don't care who you are.
No police working with no police. Bus you open. You got to know. Or if you know somebody that
knows them and they got some kids, you can go on and able, and this is how,
mainly how I work.
I always have, if I'm going into a really rough neighborhood,
I'm always unarmed.
I'm always unarmed.
I don't carry a pistol.
I don't.
Why not?
Because I got my patrol units,
and I have people that's not far away, gonna speed down.
I got a sergeant that's really available, you know,
and I go in there and I go in there
on the strength of credibility,
on the strength of knowing somebody,
because that's what take care.
The gun is not, somebody get the drop on me.
I can have a gun all I want,
and I still can lose my life to get the drop.
You got to have that credibility.
You have to have those relationships.
On a recent trip to DC, my producer Jamie and I did a ride alone with Henderson, following him on his usual route through the neighborhood as he checked in with folks throughout the region.
And he brings up a recent case that we'll talk about later.
What we're going to do is we're going to go to an area
where two month old Coyon Jones, who was a missing person
in Washington, DC, went missing his cases, remains have not
been recovered.
So he's still a missing person.
The mom had confessed on public television
that she threw the baby in the dumpster.
She actually confessed right in front of me.
We just want to go to the neighborhood and be going to talk a little bit in general about
just some general things about the case and how unfortunate the case was and just get a visual of the atmosphere with a mother lived there, you know, the environment.
Because that plays a part in, you know, why these cases are occurring, the missing persons
they've been in the first place is the conditions, the living conditions and all that stuff, plays in.
So we're just gonna ride there,
and you guys can take a look.
This is every day what you're gonna see, every single day.
Sun up the sun down,
this is what's going on in the community.
And it's perpetuating our most severe cases.
Yeah, it's right up the street.
So when you were locked, like if you were to walk over there
and get out flyers, what would you say?
What would I say to them?
I would just tell them that, you know, the child is missing
and the child is missing in this area.
You know, I'm her uncle.
You know, can you help me?
This is that, you know, I know her mom and we all try to look for her
Laws a blood some people recognize me by face and they automatically start talking to me about it
And some people don't you know, but you you know, I know the area. I know this area pretty well
I frequent this area so I really don't stick stand out
To any of them they see me before most of them.
If they see me coming, they already know what I'm coming for.
So I usually just give them the spiel.
I mean, I just tell them, if I don't know them,
I tell them anything to get them to possibly help.
Or tell me something.
There's no standard script.
You say whatever you feel in your heart at the time.
You know, most people are almost sympathetic
when it's your niece or a family member.
Then if you tell them you were an investigator,
you're working with the police or whatever.
You're using this shut down on you.
So I usually give them some story, you know.
I give them a little story, a lot.
Be honest with you Jamie, you would. I give them a little story a lot.
Be honest with you Jamie, you would do better on investigating than I would.
What is that?
Because I'm from one year woman. If you're good looking,
you're not really kind of threatening them.
They don't say anything to try to have a conversation with you.
That's like if you got your interview in somebody and it's a male. Sometimes you do better interview in
them than another another male interviewer. So sometimes when you get out and
you're dealing with men, you can you know you can charm a little bit. You can
that's the easier things you can use when you are you be one and what do you say.
Sometimes your persona and your your overall things you can use when you are, you be wondering what do you say. Sometimes you're persona and you're overall
how they perceive you when you first walk up,
you know, what you say really don't matter.
You could just tell them you're looking
for the missing person, you're a family member.
But all these things weigh in.
When you're trying to persuade people,
you're trying to get people to give you information.
That's the whole business of investigative work.
You just gathering all the pertinent information.
That's all.
You're trying to get something that you don't already have.
And that's information.
So whatever you can use, you use it.
You know?
Look at all.
On our ride along, Henderson mentioned the missing person's case of two-month-old Coyon
Jones.
Coyon was reported missing by his mother in May of 2021.
DC police were investigating his case when Henderson spoke to his mother, LaDonia Boggs.
LaDonia confessed to Henderson and CBS9 News that she rolled over on Coyon and he stopped
breathing.
She said she discarded
him in a trash dumpster. Sadly, Coyons' remains were never found, but Henderson is determined
to find out the truth and find Coyons' remains.
Unfortunately, Henderson admits there wasn't a trace investigator like him in the 1970s
during the Freeway
Phantom case.
The level of trust between officers and community was likely lower than, with no middleman
present to mitigate.
Had that been different?
Maybe the Freeway Phantom cases would have been solved.
The silver lining here is that things have the potential to be better today.
With the rise of social media, we saw increased attention on the issue in 2016 when the hashtag
DC Missing Girls went viral.
When the Washington DC Police Department tried to raise awareness about missing children
and teenagers by posting their images on social media, the campaign backfired, sparking some national outrage and fears of an epidemic
of missing children of color.
As we mentioned in episode one, the initial Twitter post claimed young black girls were going
missing at an alarming rate in DC, and that post spread like wildfire.
It was retweeted by a whole host of celebrities and high-profile figures. But then it came
to light that the numbers were highly inflated and so the post was somewhat misleading.
I wanted to talk about what happened with the viral hashtag of DC Missing Girls and how they
could get it so wrong. What did you think about that? I knew the truth.
I knew that they were advertising it on Twitter.
Every case was getting advertised.
So you saw a heavy volume of kids that you didn't see before.
There was an spike, but they were advertising it.
Every case got advertised.
At one point, the watch commander had discretion
to decide which ones went out on their Twitter feed.
Now every missing person regardless of race, creed, color, gender, you know, whatever you are,
all that, you're gonna get a missing person's report that go out on Twitter from MPD. And so they saw all of this and somebody took and
hashtagged that 14 girls were going missing. Maxwell saw it.
Shania Lathan saw it. L-L-QJ, he sent it out. You know, once they tweeted out,
man, it's the law. And it really wasn't 14 girls that went missing.
And a part of our education is getting the community
to understand the criteria for the ambulance,
because there was some concern of why has an ambulance?
We know in black kids don't get the ambulance,
well there's a criteria.
And that's strictly for in case of some form of abduction
they use the ambulance.
It was a good thing overall.
Why do you say that?
Because all of the media
attention we got now MPD developed a website which is strictly for missing
person. I know you saw it where you can go in and you can get information. It's
not real time but it's much better than it was. Every missing person gets
their information sent out and you eliminate the question
of race.
Because now everybody is getting a press release to every media outlet.
In many ways that increased visibility was a good thing.
Despite what the hashtag got wrong, it highlighted a very real issue that had gone ignored for far too long.
But even now, six years later, cases of missing and murdered black girls still get less media attention than the cases involving their white counterparts.
And the closure rate has had little to no improvement.
And so we have to ask, have things actually gotten better since the 1970s.
When we talked to Henderson about the freeway phantom case, he said many of these same issues
from back then can be found in cases today.
Henderson brought up one case with very different circumstances, but which serves as an example
of how black girls today are as at risk of victimization as they were in 1970.
Well, you know, Galicia Roy, that's the case.
It's at you.
You know, I probably take my last breath
still working in some form of fashion.
If it's not training somebody else or another young person,
but these cases, I never stop working into this clothes.
And if I die, I'm a layout of this all here, we're
documenting. This is a part of DC history. This is national
history. If you open up religious case, and you look, first
of all, the headline is a eight year old child, and next to
it, you got murder to her legacy. You got deception.
People pointing finger, nobody's saying nothing. Then you got suicide and then you got some drug abuse.
You got the foster care system. You got to, you got a whole bunch of stuff and at the end,
when you got all that, all these dynamics, that's what you get. You get something that you have to scratch your head and say,
did that really happen? Did she just vanish?
Next time on Freeway Phantom.
We were very alarmed, but we were very determined to find
a relish.
This is the age regression photo of relish a relish a relish
a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish
a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish
a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a rel relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a rel rel relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish a relish 600,000 people reported missing in the United States and close to 40% of persons of color.
And I've always been trying to figure out a way to get the hurt off of me.
After all these years, I don't know if it's important anymore.
I just know that if you do wrong, wrong will come back on you.
If I can bring resolution to these cases, I will do it.
I'm going to try my best to do it.
Fruet Phanum is a production of I Heart Radio,
Tinderfoot TV, and Black Bar Mitzvah.
Our host is Celeste Hiddley.
The show is written by Trevor Young,
Jamie Arbright, and Celeste Hiddly.
Executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio
include Matt Fredrick and Alex Williams
with supervising producer Trevor Young.
Executive producers on behalf of Tinderfoot TV
include Donald Arbright and Payne Lindsay
with producers Jamie Arbright and Tracy Kaplan.
Executive producers on behalf of Black Bar Mitzfa
include myself Jay Ellis and
Aaron Bergman with producer Sidney Fooves. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright,
artwork by Mr. Soul 216, original music by makeup and vanity set, special
thanks to a team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group.
Tinder for TV and I Heart Media as as well as Black Barmatsova,
have increased the reward for information
leading to the arrest and conviction
of the person or persons responsible
for their freeway phantom murders.
The previous reward of up to $150,000 offered
by the Metropolitan Police Department has been matched.
A new total reward of up to $300,000
is now being offered.
If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, A new total reward of up to $300,000 is now being offered.
If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the Metropolitan
Police Department at area code 202-727-9099.
For more information, please visit freeway-fanon.com.
For more podcasts from our radio and Tinder for TV, visit the IHR radio app, Apple Podcast,
or ever listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks for listening.
The True Crime Podcast, Sacred Scandal,
returns for a second season to investigate a led sexual abuse
at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church.
Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor
stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle who is now behind
bars.
I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised.
It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the apostle.
Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHORP Radio App Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
podcasts.
911, what's your emergency?
It's a nightmare we could never have imagined.
And a killer who is still on the loose.
In the 1980s, we were in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members.
We weren't safe anywhere.
Would we be next?
It was getting harder and harder to live in Mound Pine.
Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.