Forgotten Murders

 

The Freeway Phantom: Shadows on the Anacostia

D.C. in the early seventies was a feeding ground where the powerful thrived and the weak suffered. Six young Black girls—Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson, Brenda Crockett, Nenomoshia Yates, Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams—were found murdered along highways cutting through the city. The media dubbed the killer "The Freeway Phantom."

I stood on the bank of the Anacostia River, watching the slow current drag garbage toward the Potomac. The river divided power from poverty, a boundary as clear as between life and death.

Carol Spinks was first. Thirteen years old. April 25, 1971. Found six days later off Interstate 295. Darlenia Johnson followed. Eleven years old. July 8, 1971. The pattern was emerging—Black, female, young, poor. Police came, asked questions, then disappeared just as quickly when white victims needed attention elsewhere.

A waitress on Benning Road recalled a suspicious car. "Dark. Clean. Too clean for around here. Man inside watching." She'd reported it to police who dismissed her as "unreliable."

The killer was evolving. Brenda Crockett, ten years old, called home after being abducted, saying a white man had picked her up. Her body was found hours later. The call was a taunt, a power move.

The note found on Brenda Woodard was revealing: "This is tantamount to my insensitivity to people especially women. I will admit the others when you catch me if you can!" The language suggested education, or someone trying to sound educated.

The final victim came a month later. Diane Williams. Seventeen years old. December 5, 1971. After her, the killings stopped.

My investigation led me through a city that had tried to forget, through neighborhoods where silence meant survival. I spoke with a former detective named Romaine Jenkins who had cared, pushed, but hit walls too high to climb. "The investigation wasn't just botched," she told me. "It was sabotaged."

The medical examiner's assistant remembered the precision of the killings—the same ligature marks, the same ritual-like pattern. "These weren't crimes of passion. They were executions."

Robert Askins, a security guard who'd worked near where the girls disappeared, emerged as a suspect. Later imprisoned for rape, he died in 2010. His former cellmate recalled Askins talking about the Phantom, claiming he'd "met him" and that the killer was "someone you'd never suspect."

The neighborhood had changed since the seventies. Gentrification creeping in like an invasive species. But the fear remained. The memory. The shadow.

Diane Williams' mother showed me a letter received a year after her daughter's death: "I took your daughter... She was not the first. She was not meant to be the last. But circumstances changed. Remember this: justice is not blind. It sees exactly what it wants to see."

"Circumstances changed." What had stopped the Phantom? I found a note in Detective Jenkins' records about Officer Morris Davis being removed from the task force without explanation. I tracked him down in Virginia.

"I was removed because I asked too many questions," Davis explained. "Specifically, questions about one particular suspect—a fellow officer." Davis had suspected James Mitchell, a Black officer with numerous complaints from women, all buried by the department. "A Black cop killing Black girls in the early seventies? The ramifications would have been explosive."

But something didn't fit. The notes, the taunts—these weren't the actions of someone hiding. They were from someone seeking recognition.

I discovered another possibility: William Green, a former military policeman brought in as a civilian consultant early in the investigation. His name appeared in just two reports before vanishing from the records. Military files revealed complaints from women near bases where he'd been stationed. Investigations that went nowhere. Transfers to new assignments.

Green's last known address led me to an empty apartment in Baltimore. The superintendent mentioned he'd died about a year ago. "He collected newspaper clippings. Had 'em all over his walls. Old stuff. From the seventies mostly. Crime stuff. Murders."

I found Green's storage unit from a key hidden under a loose floorboard in the apartment. Inside was a treasure trove of horror—newspaper clippings of the Phantom murders meticulously arranged in chronological order. Photographs of the victims, taken before their abductions. A journal with detailed entries corresponding to each murder.

And there, in the back corner, a box containing six items: a bracelet belonging to Carol Spinks, Darlenia Johnson's hair ribbon, Brenda Crockett's house key, Nenomoshia Yates' school ID card, the original draft of the note found on Brenda Woodard, and Diane Williams' necklace—trophies kept for fifty years.

The final journal entry read: "They were looking in the wrong direction. Always looking at the shadow when they should have been looking at the light. The perfect cover isn't darkness. It's legitimacy. Being the one they call to help solve the very problem you created."

I delivered everything to Detective Jenkins, now retired but still haunted by the case. We sat in silence, staring at the evidence that had eluded justice for half a century.

"It won't bring them back," she finally said.

"No," I agreed. "But maybe it will let them rest."

The Anacostia still flows, carrying its secrets toward the Potomac. The city has changed, evolved, gentrified. But the shadows remain, reminders of what happens when justice looks away, when the powerful protect their own, when children become statistics rather than souls.

Six girls. Six lives. Six stories that deserved to be told. The Freeway Phantom finally had a name, even if justice had come too late.

I visited the cemetery where Carol Spinks was buried. Left flowers on a grave neglected by all but family. The headstone was simple. Name. Dates. "Beloved Daughter."

In the distance, I could see the highway where her body had been found. The city had built around the trauma, paved over it, forgotten it. But the truth remained, like the river—polluted, neglected, but still flowing. Still demanding to be seen.