A hooded man who had attacked eight people was later dubbed the “Phantom Killer” by the Texarkana Gazette. The true-life killer was never identified or apprehended.
A thorough investigation was conducted, suspects were named and interviewed, but no one was ever arrested. The most popular theory among many in law enforcement and journalism was that the killer was a local car thief named Youell Swinney.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a 1976 horror film based on the infamous murders committed by the still unnamed Phantom Killer (also called the Phantom Killer or Phantom Slayer).
Though it purported to be based on the true story of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, many people dispute its accuracy. It remains a minor cult classic. To date, the identity of the Phantom Killer remains unknown. While theoretically still open, it is considered a cold case.
Although authorities and townspeople believed Swinney was the killer, no one ever proved it. An author named James Presley wrote a book about the crime titled The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Story of a Town in Terror.
The Zodiac Killer
blockbuster "Zodiac" the Zodiac Killer is perhaps the most infamous unsolved serial killer case in the United States.
Swinney died in a Dallas nursing home in 1994. Two of the lead investigators in the case, Max Tackett and Tillman Johnson, believed for the remainder of their lives that Swinney was guilty of the murders. A 2014 book, The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders by Dr.
The first attempted victims were Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larrey, a young couple parked on the side of the road just outside of town on the night of February 22, 1946.
Ronald Gene Simmons Sr.
(July 15, 1940 – June 25, 1990) was an American mass murderer and spree killer who killed 16 people over a week-long period in Arkansas in 1987 and wounded several others.
Texarkana is in the southwest corner of Arkansas at the junction of Interstate 30 and U.S. 59, 67, 71, and 82. Its two separate municipalities—Texarkana, Arkansas, and Texarkana, Texas—sometimes function as one city. The name is a composite of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana (though Louisiana is thirty miles away).
The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a 1976 American thriller horror film directed and produced by Charles B. Pierce, and written by Earl E. Smith. The film is loosely based on the 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders, crimes attributed to an unidentified serial killer known as the Phantom Killer.
The Texarkana Moonlight Murders, a term coined by the contemporary press, was a series of four unsolved serial murders and related violent crimes committed in and around the Texarkana region of Arkansas and Texas in the late winter and spring of 1946.
She is shot down by arrows while trying to escape. While immobile, she is confronted by two Phantom Killers. One is revealed to be Deputy Foster and the other is Corey Holland, Jami Lerner's "dead" boyfriend who faked his death.
Ellie Gould was violently murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years. Her mother wants killers who use excessive violence or strangle their victims to face a minimum of 25 years.
Theories spread wildly about the Phantom Killer's identity. The killer's targeting of couples and lack of other identifiable motives, such as burglary or revenge, led many in the area to believe that the killer was some sort of "sex maniac". Nearly 400 people were arrested in connection with the killings.
Although the murders are set in Arkansas in the movie, most actually occurred in Bowie County, which is located just outside of Texarkana. Eight people were attacked between February 22 and May 3 of 1946, and the film was released 30 years later.
1: Pedro Alonso Lopez. In 2002, Pedro Alonso Lopez received 14 years in prison in Ecuador for killing mostly young girls. He claimed to have killed over 300 people. The "Monster of the Andes" just might be the world's most prolific serial killer.
Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer who murdered 10 people. Kemper murdered a 15-year-old girl, as well as his own mother and her best friend, from May 1972 to April 1973. This was after Kemper's parole for murdering his paternal grandparents at 15 years old.
Kenneth McDuff, nicknamed the Broomstick Killer, terrorized north Texas for almost two decades. McDuff's murder spree started in August 1968 when he and his friend Roy Dale Green killed Robert Brand, 17, his girlfriend Edna Sullivan, 16, and his cousin Mark Dunman, 15.
Never officially solved, the case has joined the ranks of legendary murder mysteries. "The Town That Dreaded Sundown," a 1976 movie directed by Texarkana independent filmmaker Charles B. Pierce, was loosely based on the case and became a cult hit.
NEW BOSTON, Texas: A Texarkana pastor was sentenced Thursday to five life sentences plus 220 years for 16 counts of child sexual abuse. Logan Wesley III, 56, was found guilty by a jury in Bowie County of five counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and sentenced to life on each count.
First attack
The first reported attack of the Phantom killer occurred at around 11:55 p.m. on February 22, 1946. Jimmy Hollis, 25, and his girlfriend, Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, parked on a secluded road which was known as a lover's lane after having seen a movie together.
In his school years, Pierce underwent an IQ test that determined he had an IQ of 70. In 1948, he dropped out of school after the 9th grade and took a job as a road worker for the Department of Transport and Road Facilities. After a year he quit and enlisted in the Army.