Some leads were easily proven not to be viable, while others required substantial investigation. Approximately six hours later, a police officer discovered her body, which had been stabbed multiple times and strangled, in a grassy area near Prince George's County Hospital, along an access ramp to Route 202 from the BaltimoreWashington Parkway. On May 16th, he took them to the areas where Brenda Woodard, a homicide victim, had allegedly been kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Shortly after leaving the store, another kid from the neighborhood saw her walking back home, with a bag of groceries in her hands. The service, which comes 25 years to the month after Diane Williams's slaying, will be held at 2 p.m. at the Howard University School of Divinity. [6] Eleven days later, her body was located only 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where Spinks had been found[4] even though police had been notified of the location of the corpse nearly a week earlier by an anonymous caller who had details only her killer could have known. Well, I'm him.". All of this created a lot of animosity towards the local police department - the MPDC - who hired almost exclusively white officers. He died in April of 2010, at the ripe old age of 91, outliving his 1938 murder victim by close to a century. A reward exists for information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of people or persons responsible, totaling $150,000 as of this year. Free-way Phantom!" Askins also seemed to match the criteria that investigators had established the Freeway Phantom would have: he was a middle-aged black man that lived in the neighborhood, had a proclivity for targeting similar victims, and harbored a violent grudge against women. As it was with all of the other murdered girls, she simply did her best to stay in-the-loop, and watched the investigation unfold from afar. With current evidence and any information of the case from when it happened, no leads produced sufficient evidence for prosecution. [5] About two hours later (around 9:20 pm) the Crocketts' phone rang and was answered by her 7-year-old sister, who had waited at home while her family searched the neighborhood. Twenty of those appearances were included on a DVD titled Muppets Magic from the Ed Sullivan Show in 2003. The investigation was conducted by a law enforcement task force that included Detectives from the MPDC Homicide and Sex Squads, investigators from Prince George's County and Montgomery County, Maryland, Maryland State Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Now, on the other side of town, another child found themselves walking along the side of the road as evening approached. The inmate who provided the information said he was not involved in the homicide, and provided an alibi which was found to be verifiable. Two years after Diane Williams's slaying, her aunt, Wilma Harper, started the Freeway Phantom Organization, a support group for the slain girls' families and other homicide survivors. They noted that both calls seemed to insist upon the kidnapper being a white man, who had taken Brenda to Virginia. An autopsy of the victim's body showed that she had been sexually assaulted before her death; in a grisly detail, police also learned that she had been sodomized. One of the known acquaintances of the Green Vega's was interviewed by police. Police investigators initially linked a total of seven slayings, including that of Barnes, to the same killer. Nothing seemed to link him to the six victims, and a comparison of the green fibers that had been found on 5 of the 6 victims' clothing didn't match anything that Askins owned. [5], Authorities quickly concluded that Crockett likely called her home at the behest of the killer, who fed her inaccurate information in order to buy the necessary time to perpetrate the crime, and to hamper the investigation. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. View the profiles of people named Edward Sullivan. However, authorities would note that her feet seemed to be incredibly clean for someone that had been walking outside, become an odd footnote in the case-file. 7 The Alphabet Killer Photo Credit: calafellvalo / Flickr Like the case of Dr. Allenteen spotted her defiant 13-year old daughter, and let her know that her punishment would be waiting for her at home. Because the body of Diane Williams - the sixth and final victim - had been found near the D.C.-Maryland border, Maryland State Police had initially handled the investigation. Winona. In her teenage years, as a result of her sister and best friend's tragic death, she ended up turning to drugs as an escape - a rabbit hole she would struggle to escape over several years of her life. Three of the victims had been sexually assaulted, including one that was sodomized. Unfortunately, this began a really frustrating period of time, in which the Maryland State Police held the item in a backlog, but were unable to test it in a timely manner. Warren was taken out of prison to specific locations, and began pointing out where victims had been abducted, killed, assaulted, and then disposed of. Common practice at the time was that case files at MPDC Detective Divisions were retained in files maintained by the detectives assigned to the case. At least, this is what the victim had claimed, and was reported in the Afro American at the time. Barnes's slaying, originally thought to be linked to the Freeway Phantom killings, was later solved when two former police officers, Edward L. Sellman and Tommie B. Simmons, were convicted of. One of the cases often pointed to as an example of this very behavior is the disappearance of Sheila and Katherine Lyon - two sisters that disappeared from the Washington D.C./Maryland region in 1975. Nenomoshia Yates had been sent by her family to a Safeway grocery store, which was just down the street from their apartment - literally less than a block away. I will Admit the others Remember, the note from Brenda Woodard's coat pocket had read: "This is tantamount to insensititivity [sic] to people especially women. ", "(Wanted Poster) Up to $150,000 Reward 'Freeway Phantom' Murders", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Freeway_Phantom&oldid=1139343201, CS1 Chinese (Taiwan)-language sources (zh-tw), Wikipedia articles needing rewrite from February 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 14 February 2023, at 17:04. edward sullivan and tommie simmonsmark anthony ontario. She was found wearing the clothing she had disappeared in, but her shoes had been removed. This has yet to be verified. Investigators analyzed the notes handwriting to determine that Brenda herself wrote the message, and the writing showed no signs of distress. Note: The note left in Woodward's pocket claimed that the Phantom killed additional victims. The inmate who provided the information said he was not involved in the homicide, and provided an alibi which was found to be verifiable. Trainum believes that the killed lived in Congress Heights, just south of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and had likely begun branching once he started to fear being seen or recognized. Post author: Post published: January 24, 2023 Post category: what channel is nbc on directv in arizona Post comments: ae funeral services shawnee ok ae funeral services shawnee ok A couple of beat cops would be sent out to investigate the scene, but made very little attempt to locate the body. [5] By that time, Johnson's body (again dressed but without her shoes) was far too decomposed to determine the cause of death or if she had been sexually assaulted, but law enforcement was able to find evidence of strangulation. In addition, Darlenia Johnson - just like Carol Spinks - had been found in the clothes she was wearing when she went missing, but was missing her shoes. [23] Logical investigation and intimate knowledge of the modus operandi of the Green Vega Gang brought them to the forefront. They would be called back later on, but by that time, the case had grown stagnant. They believe that the Freeway Phantom was a young black man in his 20's or 30's, and agree with the FBI profile. She began walking down the street, towards the 7-Eleven. Quitman. The Green Vega Gang members were individually interviewed by MPDC Homicide Detectives Fickling, Irving, and Richardson, at Lorton Prison in Virginia, where the gang members were serving sentences in conjunction with the successful prosecutions of those crimes in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. "Whoever did it has gotten away. Another exception of the modus operandi was the body of 14-year-old Angela Denise Barnes; her bullet-riddled body was found on an abandoned Maryland road in 1971. The name was coined by reporters at the now-defunct tabloid, the Daily News, who noted that all of the victims had been disposed of alongside major roads and freeways. This leads us to the events of October 1st, 1971. They didn't want to let their lives be forever ruined because of the actions of one mad killer, and joined together to combat that. Authorities could never conclusively link Edward and Tommie with the other killings and mark them as the Phantom Freeway killer. Like whoever had been carrying them had disappeared into thin air. A police department spokesman said the cases have been assigned to the cold case squad, which will review the files periodically and investigate any new leads actively. Perhaps he was a Vietnam veteran suffering with some untreated PTSD, or perhaps he was someone with a vicious grudge against law enforcement. The first of which was from Leon Williams, the father of Diane Williams - the sixth and final murder victim of the Freeway Phantom. Investigators hypothesized that the killer left her shoes because her name was inscribed on the pair. That signature information was correct. Speaking to the Post, Williams stated: "If it was a white girl, the police would have found the person. Valerie, Carol's 24-year old sister that lived across the hall in the apartment building, asked the kids if any of them would walk down to a nearby store for her. It is unknown where this piece of evidence now stands. The Freeway Phantom has been described as a loner motivated by rage that was focused on overall society. But he began working his way backwards, hoping to recreated the investigation that had long since remained inactive. At the time, they assumed it had come from her boyfriend - whom she had visited just before going missing - even though the boyfriend insisted they didn't have any kind of sexual activity that night. Brenda Denise Woodard, whose body still had the shoes worn. Remember when I told you that police had initially found semen on Diane Williams' clothing, and ruled it out as her boyfriend's? [4] Examination revealed she had been both physically and sexually assaulted and strangled, was dressed but missing her shoes, and had only been killed a few days previously. Through the 1960's and 1970's, more than 70% of the region's population was African American, who had had to endure an entire lifetime of racial tension and struggles. 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