TEXARKANA MOONLIGHT MURDERS

Mother will not have to worry about me making my grades, and Daddy will not have to put out more money on me, which would do no more good than it did in high school. Peggy Swinney  confessed to her husband's actions, revealing very detailed information, including some information officers already knew and some they did not. Police found a khaki work shirt in the suspect's room with a laundry mark of the word "S-T-A-R-K", which was read under a black light.
Wells, who had played Mary Ann on the television show Gilligan’s Island, portrayed one of the victims, and Andrew Prine played a sheriff’s deputy. In an interview, Prine stated that he wrote the last part of the movie himself because the script did not yet have an ending. After his fifth murder and attack on Katie, the Phantom Killer cooled down his attacks. Investigators were not able to piece together and unveil the identity of the Killer as he committed the crimes intelligently.

I never saw the original film and I feel like I missed a lot of things because of that. I was expecting a slasher film based on all the indicators I got from the posters and reviews but this film is more of crime film than it is a slasher film. This movies takes itself way too seriously considering it is a just a masked man going around and killing everyone. That was what made Friday the 13th films watchable because even though they weren't really offering anything new they were still fun. This film gets too dramatic and although I like the villain the rest of the characters are forgettable and so in the movie as a whole.
Police launched a citywide investigation, along with the Texas and Arkansas city police, Miller and Cass County sheriffs’ departments, and the FBI. They interviewed dozens of witnesses, including customers and employees of Club Dallas, a bar near the crime scene. By the end of March, police had posted a $500 reward for information that would lead them to the true crime documentary killer. For the span of ten weeks, the Phantom Killer committed the attacks and murders without being caught. An investigating officer stated that the killer was a shrewd criminal who concealed his identity and had intelligently planned his work. Dr. Anthony also described him as a  cunning planner, clever, intelligent, shrewd, and very dangerous individual.

On Saturday, May 11, a teletype machine arrived from Austin, Texas in the afternoon and was installed in the Bowie County Sheriff's office. Gonzaullas explained that the machine would aid in the investigation by allowing them to be connected with other law enforcement offices in Texas. Sheriff Presley and Sheriff Davis suggested raising a reward fund of $2,500 for information that would help them catch the killer of Virgil Starks. They mentioned that if the slayer of Mr. Starks was the same killer responsible for the other murders, then the Starks reward would be combined with the other rewards making it a sum of $10,000.
Friends were warned not to go visiting without calling first for fear of being shot for an intruder. Forensic examinations of the bodies revealed they had both put up a struggle, and Booker had been sexually assaulted “in the same manner” as Moore. This detail was never released to the public in the developing stages of these cases. When they recounted their attack to the police, there were a few inconsistencies between their stories. Hollis, who admitted he didn’t see the man very clearly, thought he was probably white, or maybe a light-skinned black man. Mary, who had been much closer to the attacker, said he was black.

John Holman, chairman of the reward fund, asked people to send their donations in check form made out to either Texarkana National Bank or the State National Bank. He said that the reward monies will be kept in deposit slips and that  it would make it easier to return the money back to the donators, if ever needed. Immediately after reports of the slaying spread, blockades were put up several miles northeast and southwest on Highway 67 East. In the house, investigators found a trail of blood with scattered teeth.
As investigators began to lose interest in the Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jean Larry story, no one was taken into custody for questioning, and investigators never named any suspects. The police became suspicious of both of them due to the contradiction in their statements. They began to suspect that the couple might have known their attacker and thought he might have feigned confusion in an attempt to protect them.
Angel Maturino Resendiz used the railroad system to enter the United States and travel the country finding work and killing people who lived close to the railroad tracks. He is tied to 9 murders, but it is believed he is responsible for up to 21. The weird attack on Mary Jeanne Larey and Jimmy Hollis had reached the papers, but it was downplayed as a freak incident. Many people in town figured the perpetrator had been a transient passing through; a police search had uncovered no culprit; and it was assumed the hooded mystery man was long gone on a boxcar to other climes.

On the night of his attack, he was at the movies on a double date with his brother, Bob, who was also an insurance agent. After the movie, he dropped his brother and his brother's date off. While he was taking his girlfriend home, they stopped on a lateral street off of Richmond Road, where the attack occurred. Hollis suffered three skull fractures and was hospitalized for several days at Texarkana Hospital , which stood at West Fifth and Pine Street, and no longer exists.
At the time, the police did not link them together, but now it is believed that there was a serial killer on the loose in Fort Worth. 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 the Texarkana region of the United States in early 1946. They were attributed to an alleged unidentified perpetrator known as the Phantom of Texarkana, the Phantom Killer, or the Phantom Slayer. This hypothetical suspect is credited with attacking eight people, five of them fatally, in a ten-week period. According to the Texarkana Gazette, people there have grown so fond of the movie that it has become a tradition to show The Town That Dreaded Sundown each year around Halloween.

Given all the evidence that I have seen, I find the evidence that H. B. Tennison was telling the truth to be entirely plausible. His death created almost as much of a sensation as did the slayings. The Texas department of public safety made the check after H.
His death yesterday created almost as much of a sensation  as did the slayings. "Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would too". "Why did take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too." Friends and neighbors "find it difficult" to believe H. B. Tennison was the "phantom killer," Editor J. Q. Mahaffy of the Texarkana Gazette-Neks, [sic Gazette-News] said Friday night.

Three weeks after the murders of Griffin and Moore, 15-year-old saxophonist Betty Jo Booker was getting a ride home from her longtime friend, Paul Martin, who was 16. She had been playing with her band at the local VFW, and the gig had gone long into the early morning hours of April 14. Martin and Booker had begun dating after a long friendship, dating back to kindergarten. When Booker got into Martin’s car, it was the last time either of them would be seen alive.