The Texarkana Phantom Killer

“In 1946 a man killed five people today he still lurks the streets of Texarkana”. Texas has had its fair share of famous criminals and murders happen in the state. Famous criminals like Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, famous murders like that of President John F. Kennedy. In the year of 1946 the small town of Texarkana on the border of Texas and Arkansas would be plagued by a series of attacks and serial murders carried out by a masked man the local newspapers would dub, the phantom killer. The killers attacks would last between February thru May of 1946 and would leave 5 people dead and 3 others wounded. This case is one of the earliest examples of serial murder in the United States before the public even knew what a serial killer was. The case is also one of the earliest examples of cooperation between multiple law enforcement agencies, the Bowie County sheriffs department in Texarkana Texas, the Miller County sheriffs department in Texarkana Arkansas and the Texas Rangers. Even with all these law enforcement agencies and a excessive manhunt the killer was never caught leading to the question still plaguing researchers today, who was the phantom killer? And why was he never caught?

In his book The Phantom Killer Unlocking The Mystery Of The Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of A Town in Terror author and historian James Presley attempts to unlock the mystery of the Phantom Killer. Presley has a personal interest in the case because his uncle Bill Presley was the sheriff of Bowie County Texarkana during the period of the phantom killers attacks giving the reader first hand accounts of this terrifying killers reign of terror.

The first attack by the killer occurred on February 22, 1946. The victims were young couple Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey. The couple met for a double date with Hollis’s younger brother Bob and his date Virginia Lorraine Fairchild. The two couples went out for dinner and a show at the local Texarkana movie theater, the two couples would say their goodbyes to each other around a quarter after 10. Hollis and Larey did not know what horror awaited them on the ride home. On the surface this sounds like a normal evening in a normal small town in the American south. Lyn Blackmon of the Texarkana Gazette once described the town of Texarkana as a normal nice town in the following quote. “ In good weather, families in nice residential sections sat on their front porches after supper, sipping iced tea. They swung on porch swings rocked in rockers and spoke to neighbors walking home from a movie…