Even the discarding of the saxophone, which at first he’d considered pawning, showed his organized side dominating his impulse to profit from the crime. A pawned saxophone would have tied him to the murders. It didn’t take him long to realize that and to dispose of the evidence. At that point his sense of self-survival had burst forth.
Peggy’s statements fail to reveal an immediate triggering event for the two double murders in March and April. There need not have been one close to the crimes. His tattoo, revenge, documented an emotion long festering. If he was intent on killing surrogates to satisfy his deep-seated anger, he would not have required an unsettling experience on that particular night. Seeing couples apparently happy would have been enough to set him off. He would ensure that they suffered. It was as if they were flaunting their relationship, and it was all he needed to get even. It was a strange, but effective, means of revenge, with his innocent victims unarmed in the dark with his gun upon them.
Some of Swinney’s short stories written in prison also touch upon shattered relationships and further support what Dr. Frazier concluded about the motivation of the gunman.
A mountain of evidence, everything but eyewitness testimony, points to Swinney’s guilt in the Starks case.
The triggering event in the Starks case was Swinney’s blowup with Peggy’s sister on the afternoon of May 3, a few hours before Virgil Starks died. The Swinney couple, not yet married, left after a volatile argument over Swinney not paying for their board. (He also didn’t pay his rent to Jim Mays, which led to his downfall.) Swinney was in a foul mood. Peggy stated that he left for Texarkana. He would have passed the Starks home.
She claimed to have been in the hotel at Delight while Swinney drove to Texarkana. She wasn’t, nor was he. The couple operating the hotel remembered the two had arrived after midnight, several hours after the murder.
This indicated that they were together that night, but not where they claimed to be. She stated that Swinney had gone to Texarkana. She must have gone with him. From other evidence, they must have been at the Starks home, she waiting for him in the parked car. Cigarette butts near the parking space indicated that more than one person was there.
Though ownership of the flashlight left behind at the Starks home could not be traced, two pieces of evidence linked Swinney to the scene: the shirt with the laundry mark STARK and shoes found among Swinney’s possessions.
The shirt would have fit Starks but not Swinney. Swinney was known to steal clothing. Contents of the shirt pocket matched materials found in Virgil Starks’s shop. The laundry mark was close enough to starks to leave little doubt whose shirt it had been. Katie Starks’s initial identification of the shirt as being Virgil’s lent further credence to his having owned it, even though she subsequently said she wasn’t sure. It was understandable that she decided she could not be absolutely certain that the shirt belonged to Virgil. A man’s life hung upon her testimony. Upon reflection she cited the mending, which she at first had identified, was that which any wife would have done. Most of all, she realized her testimony could send a man to the electric chair. It was an awesome responsibility.
The shoes found among Swinney’s possessions had been washed and put away wet, which distorted their size and shape. A reasonable explanation is that the shoes had made the tracks crossing the plowed field, sinking into the soft, wet soil. Going into the house, the shoes may also have picked up blood from the floor, either Virgil’s or Katie’s blood, or both. In either instance, a skilled criminal—which Swinney was—would recognize the need to remove any trace of evidence linking him to the scene. The obvious solution would be to wash any suspicious taint from the shoes. This could have been done in a stream between the death house and Delight, an area with a number of creeks, or at any other source of water.
Peggy’s statements indicated how Swinney disposed of incriminating evidence. He washed blood off his clothing and shoes. His once-wet shoes, which might have been worn the night of the Starks case or on another attack night, fit into her observations. At the Starks farm it was virtually impossible to match a specific shoe or boot with the muddy impressions left. The killer’s shoes, as a certainty, were muddy, possibly bloody, and needed to be washed off—as Swinney did his shoes.
A .22 caliber weapon killed Virgil Starks and critically wounded Katie. Many officers assumed it was a rifle because of the accuracy. The bullets were so battered that no conclusion could be drawn as to whether they had come from a pistol or a rifle. Today, improved ballistics science might establish which type of weapon fired the bullets.
A document not included in Owen’s studies suggested that some officers considered the Starks murder weapon to be a .22 caliber automatic pistol, rather than rifle. In January 1949, Captain Gonzaullas wrote, referring to the Starks case, that the shootings were “committed with a .22 caliber Colt’s Woodmaster Automatic pistol, or some foreign type of automatic of the same dimensions and characteristics.” Max Tackett in a 1971 interview also believed the murder weapon was an automatic pistol. Testimony from Waynoka, Oklahoma, proved that Swinney had owned, and sold, a .22 pistol.
Witnesses, aside from Peggy, confirmed Swinney had owned a .22 automatic pistol, as well as a .32 automatic pistol. He had sold them in western Oklahoma following the murders. These fit the calibers of all the shootings.
Thus, he’d owned pistols like those in the murders, with the strong probability that they were the ones that took five lives.
In addition, at the Starks home the killer broke into the house like an experienced burglar, which Swinney was, having served reformatory time for burglary as a youth. In one of Peggy’s statements about the Martin-Booker slayings she told of Swinney’s taking a gate off its hinges, another sign of a skilled intruder. A novice would have taken more time to get into the Starks house, might have botched it.
Though the Starks case may have begun as an opportunity to steal from the shop, it also showed the work of an organized offender—most of the time. He went prepared, with gun and flashlight. The work shirt in Starks’s shop would have caught his eye. When he saw the light through the window and Virgil Starks’s head a few feet away, he’d found a tempting way to exact revenge—through a surrogate. He was armed, ready to kill, or he would not have taken a gun. It may be interpreted as a way to strike back at Peggy’s sister and her husband, who had kicked Youell and Peggy out of the house. He took revenge at another house, belonging to strangers. Starks was shot twice in the back of the head, just as Richard Griffin had been. The killer knew the surest way to deliver death.
The Starks case was linked, then, by physical evidence to Swinney—the once-wet, dried-out shoes, the stolen shirt—and circumstances: witnesses that Swinney went to Texarkana that night, passing the crime scene, that he owned a pistol matching the death weapon, the two-shot bursts, and that he had no alibi to account for his presence anywhere else. The couple at the Delight hotel shredded his claimed alibi, and Peggy’s along with his.
Most telling was his heated argument with Peggy’s sister over money owed her for their board. Many serial killings are preceded by a triggering event. Swinney’s encounter that Friday afternoon was a trigger that stirred his anger and led to Virgil Starks’s murder—a twisted form of revenge that led to the shooting of surrogates.
The flashlight abandoned at the Starks home also is a reminder that the February attacker carried a flashlight, possibly the same one. It is not known if Swinney used a flashlight in the Texas double murders.
Of particular interest, outside the evidence of the beatings and the murders themselves, is the incident in the Texas prison in which Swinney was caught in a sexual act with another male inmate. Though one female murder victim was raped, sex was not the main motive. The prison encounter may have been strictly a homosexual act, which might explain the relative absence of rape in the killings, or more likely it may have been an expression of violent dominance with sex a secondary meaning. Swinney’s relatives believed, based on his post-release beha
vior with a young boy in Marshall and Dallas, Texas, that he was homosexual or at least bisexual. Whether they believed it earlier in his life is uncertain. He cohabited with a woman in Texarkana in the 1930s or 1940s—before Peggy—and was said to be “married” to her. A search of Miller County marriage licenses failed to turn up one with his name on it; apparently the earlier liaison had no legal basis. His later marriage to Peggy in Shreveport, of course, is solidly documented.
Added to this is the belief held by some in Marshall during Swinney’s brief sojourn in the free world—and noted in a FBI report—that he was homosexual and kept a young boy. Even so, he may not have been an actual homosexual but was merely exerting dominance over another, weaker individual as he once did with Peggy, and this time the person he felt he could manipulate and control at the right level was a boy. Chances are, sexuality wasn’t a factor. He got his kicks through violence, especially killing, and control.
My own encounter with Swinney, briefly by telephone, revealed a pattern of evasion, not uncommon for an ex-convict. He never said he hadn’t killed anyone. Instead, he said he “wadn’t even here then,” something that was not true at all. He concentrated, with officers as well, on unsubstantiated alibis rather than proving he didn’t kill. He also didn’t claim he was illegally convicted for the charge of automobile theft. Instead he sought to profit from writing a book about being unjustly imprisoned as the Phantom. The case was crucial to his story. He hadn’t been charged with those crimes. Jurors in 1947 hadn’t known of any connection. By thrusting himself forward as a victim, with the Phantom highlighted, he would link his name forever to the notorious deeds without suffering the consequences. He was indulging in fantasy, with a grandiose view of himself. Swinney seemed to yearn for recognition by associating his name with the crime wave, perhaps even reaching the status of Jesse James, glamorized by Hollywood and a hero to Swinney.
If Swinney believed he’d been falsely imprisoned, more logically he would have filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas and Bowie County. He never took that approach. It seems not to have entered his mind. He would have had great difficulty sustaining his contention, or finding a lawyer to handle it. He no doubt recognized its futility.
Swinney came close to identifying himself as the Phantom years before he dubbed himself as The Man They Said Was the Phantom. Jones Floyd, a U.S. marshal who later served as sheriff, then county judge, of Howard County, Arkansas, told newspaperman Louis Graves that Swinney sent word back to Texarkana that he was ready to admit he’d done the murders, then changed his mind. Like other lawmen, Floyd was convinced that the convict Swinney was the serial killer.
Graves’s report of Jones’s comments is hearsay, of course, but meshes with other, stronger evidence. At Swinney’s arrest, he came close to admitting his guilt when he blurted out, “Do you think they’ll give me the chair for this?” As a psychiatrist had noted, sociopaths exhibit no sign of anxiety except when apprehended, and then they become very anxious. This described Swinney to a T. Once he realized his captors didn’t know what he knew, he regained his composure and refused to cooperate or further incriminate himself.
Mark Bledsoe, a Texarkana probation officer who maintained a keen interest in the case in the 1990s, acquired material revealing that Swinney had boasted of his exploits to others. Bledsoe talked with men who had interviewed Swinney’s cellmates over the years.
“He gave the cellmates vivid tales of what had gone on,” Bledsoe told the Texarkana Gazette in 1996. “But when the Rangers went to interview him, he would not [confess]. There were those that had been his cellmates that had the same stories and details that were not in the newspapers. I think he felt like he was bulletproof, he was omnipotent. No one was going to get him.”
Bledsoe also interviewed Swinney in 1992 in a Dallas nursing home, videotaping the session in hopes of gaining a confession. Results were disappointing. By then, Swinney had suffered a stroke and he revealed little. Swinney grew angry when Bledsoe asked about the murders, claiming, “I got off for that and I was cleared.” Yet he had not been tried or found not guilty of murder and was never “cleared.”
Why would Swinney even consider admitting to such high-profile murders? A probability is that he was proud of his “accomplishments” and wanted recognition for his “brilliance.” An impulsive gesture would have soon paled upon realizing the consequences. No judge or jury would have been impressed by his dubious claim to fame. At an earlier time, resigned to his life sentence, he may have reasoned that so long as he could negotiate himself out of the electric chair, he wouldn’t be any worse off, while gaining recognition as the Phantom. The moniker, Phantom, was an appealing label. It gave him status.
Despite the passage of decades, key physical evidence may still exist. The .32 automatic that killed four persons and the .22 automatic that killed Virgil Starks could be in the possession of innocent individuals who have no inkling of their importance, especially if the guns were handed down from an older person—who also would have no knowledge of the events. Unless either gun was tossed into a lake or river, it probably was sold or traded or given to someone unaware of its history. A surviving relative or friend of the man who bought or traded for one of the guns might still own it.
The pistols that Swinney sold at Waynoka, Oklahoma, would be of crucial importance. A person turning one in to authorities would render a major public service. Do the guns exist? Possibly. So far away from 1946, the most likely vehicle for attracting the present owners’ attention would be through detailed exposure on television. It’s a long shot, but might be productive. (It could also result in thousands of candidate guns being proposed.)
If the victims were innocent surrogates, who were the original targets they represented? There are several possibilities, which may merge or supplant each other at different times. Swinney complained of a stepfather’s mistreatment of him. From other sources we learn his real father, the minister, also treated him shabbily, at least on occasion. At best their behavior toward each other may be described as uneasy. He probably was also dissatisfied with his mother’s role in selecting another husband who was unkind to him. His anger grew as he stewed over perceived slights.
We know at least two events that precipitated his anger—the hot dispute in February over Peggy, a deeply personal relationship issue, and the argument with Peggy’s sister on May 3. Max Tackett reasoned that Swinney, in search of Peggy and his rival in February, had headed to the vicinity of Peggy’s parents’ residence, relatively near the attack site, believing they had gone there. En route—continued Tackett’s scenario—Swinney discovered the parked car, believing he’d caught up with the couple. When he learned he’d made a mistake, instead of backing off he intensified his punishment of the substitute man and woman. If he did wear a mask, as his female victim insisted, it would make sense, to conceal his identity from those whom he at first thought he was attacking.
Flawed relationships frequently shaped his life. Yet a normal person would not have chosen such a bizarre and deadly way to strike back. One may take out spite on the proverbial innocent bystander, but not in such a violent manner. Even though violent language may occur, murder does not become a key to the solution. But for whatever reason, Swinney was not normal. He probably at birth, or early in life, suffered “an accident of genetics,” as Professor Paul Bloom put it. He seems not to have developed a normal conscience. He was classified as a sociopath. He had behind him decades of criminal pursuits and incarcerations, and seemingly never learned from his mistakes, repeatedly offending for more than fifty years. He was a troubled youth, breaking the law at twelve, in a broken family. He reacted differently than did his siblings to these events. Over the years a great rage had built up. Prison time only added to his resentments, especially after his state terms, beginning in a harsh Arkansas system. Sometime in that period he had ordered his tattoos, indicating he’d reached a boiling point, that his deep anger was a pre-existing condition just waiting to explode. Especially the tattoo re
venge, as documented in prison records, established his frame of mind long before the attacks, suggesting the idea had festered in his psyche over time. He had failed repeatedly. As he entered his late twenties, he must have envisioned his situation as desperate, the state Jim Hollis had ascribed to his assailant. The behavior of 1946 was a way to lash out, to get even.
Although it is not evidence, it is interesting that, according to several reports, both Swinney relatives and Peggy’s family believed that he had committed the murders. Their beliefs were based on a variety of observations and behavior. Some of them had offered testimony that backed up their opinions.
Swinney himself may not have been fully aware of his motivation, even as he regularly reviewed his perceived hurts and grudges in the security of his mind. Many “normal” people do the same in their minds. But acting on those thoughts, as he did, constitutes the crime—and disturbs society and endangers its citizens.
The totality of evidence—physical, eyewitness, circumstantial, and psychological—linking Swinney as the perpetrator in all of the crimes is voluminous. Taken as a whole, it zeroes in on him and no one else as the offender. Although Peggy Swinney, Max Tackett, Bill Presley, Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, Elvie Davis, Tillman Johnson, and Katie Starks were all dead by the time this analysis was conducted, the compelling web of evidence left behind fills out a wealth of incrimination: Peggy’s signed statement while connected to a polygraph; .32 caliber bullets from the first two double murders; .22 caliber bullets from the Starks case; statements from a number of persons regarding Swinney’s itinerary and behavior in Arkansas and Oklahoma; and FBI reports, one of which assessed him as a sociopathic personality, plus his prison behavior and lengthy records of felonies.
The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror Page 39
