The SHOCKING case that baffled detectives - The Moonlight Murders

But the man instead hit her over the head with a blunt object . When she scrambled toward a ditch, he told her to change course and run toward the road. The attacker caught up to her and, strangely, asked her why she was running. When she answered, “Because you told me to,” he called her a liar and knocked her down. He then sexually assaulted her with the gun before letting her run away again. Johnson starred as a fictional version of the Texas ranger who investigated the crimes.
A fifteen-year-old girl was lying under the cover of a tree. Like the other victims, she was still fully clothed, but her body appeared to have been manipulated in some way. For her coat was buttoned up to her chin, and her right hand was resting in the pocket of her overcoat. Betty Jo’s body was found two miles from Paul Martin’s body.

Max Tackett, 33, was an Arkansas State Police officer involved in the murder of Virgil Starks. He was one of the first two officers to respond to the crime scene. Officer Tackett recognized that a car had been stolen from the area on each of the nights the Phantom Killer hit. One of these cars was stolen the night Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore were killed and later found in a parking lot months later. The murders of Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker revealed to the world that a serial killer was plaguing Texas.
On the first anniversary of the slaying of Miss Booker, a young girl friend killed herself. And more than two years after the attacks a University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana killed himself with poison after leaving a note saying he was responsible for three of the "phantom" killings. Texarkana officers gave little credence Police investigations to his statement. Sheriffs who investigated the cases, however, doubted that he was the killer or that the deaths of Miss Booker and Martin, slain on a lonely road, were connected with that of Starks. The latter was shot by rifle fire in his farm home, and his wife was wounded, three weeks after the Booker-Martin shooting.

The screams from victims are both unrelenting and unnerving. Then there's the heavy breathing from the hooded killer, which are the only sounds he makes and about as chilling as the screams. By November 1948, authorities no longer considered the Starks’ murder connected with the other double murders and another person was eventually arrested and convicted.
He was described as a stocky 24-year-old, weighing 187 pounds , with brown hair and blue eyes. He had stolen a car in Mount Ida, Arkansas, and attempted to buy ammunition in several eastern Oklahoma towns. The police kept searching for the POW, but it was said that he had "vanished into thin air." Police arrested him but Gonzaullas stated that several parts of the man's story had little basis in fact. Baumann said that he'd been discharged from the AAF for being a psychoneurotic, and he had previously confessed to killing three people in Texarkana in a period of three days . Victim and survivor Hollis said, "I know he's crazy. The crazy things he said made me feel that his mind was warped."

In 1946, someone started killing teenagers around the city of Texarkana, a border town split between Texas and Arkansas. The killings were random, and the killer was never identified, despite a huge investigation that involved local law enforcement from two states, the Texas Rangers, and the FBI. The assailant would eventually be given the name the Phantom Killer.
The bodies were then tied in plastic sheets and thrown in one of three mass graves Corll had carved out for his victims. In a final, cruel trick, before killing them, he'd make the boys write letters to their parents explaining their absence, which caused police to assume the victims had simply run away.  The police's main suspect in the murders, Charles Albright, was a taxidermist and just the type of person who'd know how to perfectly remove an eye. He was eventually caught by police after allegedly attempting to murder a fourth victim who narrowly escaped. Many people believe that Albright was wrongly convicted, but he's still serving time in a Lubbock, Texas psychiatric unit. Still, some of the most brutal crimes in the history of the United States happen to have occurred in Texas.
Corey is repeatedly stabbed in the back, but Jami manages to escape to tell the tale. Never having seen the 1976 film of the same name, I can not attest to the originality or compare it to the 2014 film. Aguirre-Sacasa and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon are very honest about and  respect the tale's history and, in doing so, find the perfect balance in their film successfully.

There was evidence that several rough drafts had been made before the version was typed out. D. Tennison, of Memphis, told officers that he and the youth had traveled together during the summer and that his son appeared rational. But, he said, he must have been ill when he wrote the notes in a peculiar, pseudo-poetic, rhythm.
Mary spoke to the police that night about the attack and the masked man who terrorized them at gunpoint. She reported that he was wearing a white bag on his head which had holes for eyes and mouth. Through the holes he had a partial view of the man’s face and described him as a negro. At the time, the police saw the attack as a personal vendetta.

I learned more about serial killers—in general and this one in particular—and their psychology than I’d ever dreamed of knowing. Presley seemed less sure of the precise location of the final murder scene, in rural Arkansas. “I’m pretty sure that’s where Max and Charley spotted that old parked car,” Presley said, pointing toward a clump of woods where an automobile later thought to have been the murderer’s was parked the night of the attack. Had the lawmen not been racing to drop off expense reports at headquarters, they might have checked out the suspicious car, since this stretch of road was a known moonshine drop-off point. “They always regretted not stopping to investigate,” he said.
We want every man and woman in these two counties to recall the dates of these murders and also to recall whether or not any person close to them was missing or out of pocket during those nights. Persons who have such information and have been withholding it when they know they should report it are leaving themselves open to possible charges of complicity in event the slayer is captured. Make no mistake about the fact that the slayer will be captured because we will not give up this hunt until he has been captured or killed. All information received will be treated confidentially.

About young lust and young love, and the unseen forces that keep them at bay. Jimmy Hollis, 24, and his date, Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, were driving home from a double-date at the movies when they decided to stop at a local lovers’ lane. In 1946, a killer targeted teenagers in the border town of Texarkana. With little help from police, the kids decided to fight back. N 1946, the mysterious Phantom Killer who had terrorized the town of Texarkana for months disappeared just as quickly as he'd appeared.