A New Profile [9]

Published Jul 5, 2023, 7:01 AM

We recruit a former FBI profiler to create a new profile of the Freeway Phantom. And we look at the systemic issues that led to the Phantom's success.

You're listening to The Freeway Phanom, a production of iHeartRadio, Tenderfoot TV, and Black bar Mitzvah. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, Black bar Mitzvah, or their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter that may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.

He wanted to show off, and this is something that he will do in his real life all the time because of his.

Poor self image.

He feels the need to prove his greatness and whether that's in his vocabulary that he uses or in the quote conquests that he makes, he wants to prove how much of a man he is. And this letter, especially when he has used these multi syllabic words to show off and he gets one of them wrong.

So I think I should just launch into the profile.

Yeah, let's do it.

The homicide detectives termed the cases the Little Girl cases.

This child was laying on the side of the road.

I wouldn't go no way. I would call up my house.

Those first five murders should have been a huge warning bell for the police.

We just want to know what happened.

This person must have saw that they were thinking that maybe it's just one person, and he says, they need to know.

This is me.

I thought that they would catch him.

I thought it was just a.

Matter of time.

I'm Celeste Headley and this is Freeway Phantom. In the last episode, we talked about the original, outdated psychological profile for the Freeway Phantom, and we revealed that we commissioned a new profile from the former FBI Special Agent Jim Clemente. So now we'll jump right into Jim Clemente's new profile of the Freeway Phantom, and that starts with a little bit of scene setting.

So the first thing that we have to understand is the victim availability factor was higher back then.

In the seventies.

You didn't have the Internet, which gave people access immediately to everything that happens around the country every day twenty four seven, three sixty five. So generally smaller communities were they felt insulated. If nothing happened in your community, then you weren't really concerned about certain.

Things like child abductions.

The fact is that in the United States of America, approximately one hundred and sixty to two hundred times a year a child is abducted by a non family member for a long period of time, one hundred and sixty times to two hundred times a year. Now you match that against Nick Mick's reports of missing kids over eight hundred thousand a year, but only one sixty to two hundred of them are actually non familiar long term abductions.

So what does that tell you. It's a very rare event.

But with the Internet, you now know about every single one of them, well at least every one of them that is a blond haired, blue eyed, white girl.

But you hear about many.

Of them that occur much more than you would have before. So people started locking their doors more often, restricting the freedoms of their kids, not letting them just ride their bikes down the street alone or walk to the store alone. And so that is a very important thing. This guy, although he was able to abduct six seven girls, they.

Were much more available to him.

So this is not a criminal sophistication level that is extremely high. It is more a product of the times. So that's the first part of the profile. He chooses victims of opportunity, but they must meet his.

Physical and gender requirements.

And so I think that they're all black, they're all female, they're all petite, they're all alone, and they're all on foot. So there are certainly offenders who will follow a woman in a car down a secluded route and bump into the car pull them over as a fake cop. There are people who are sophisticated enough to do that.

He is not.

He's looking for children, he's not looking to go into their home and risk their family members. He's very cost All these things are going to be evinced in his actual life.

When you say sophisticated, is that the same as intelligence. Are we talking about someone who's of lower intelligence.

No, criminal sophistication is based on experience committing these kinds of crimes. Generally, in these offenses we see precursor crimes that lead up to the abduction, like peeping or breaking into a house, stealing somebody's underwear, you know, doing things like that.

But in this case, I do not believe he broke into anybody's house.

I believe he doesn't have the guts to do it or the physical skills to do it. And that could be because he's overly heavy, or it could be because he's.

Just not confident.

I believe that he's likely short himself, although he has very powerful hands, probably due to the kind of work he does.

I believe he's not scary.

He's able to get close enough to these victims to not scare.

Them away before he can control them.

So I believe he controls them with a knife or a gun, and he very quickly binds them and or throws them in a trunk of a car. Speaking of that, I think he either has a van, a panel van, which is much more common in the seventies, or a station wagon like one of those green, metallic woody station wagons, where he can open the back, toss them in and close it and they're not going to be seen by anybody. So he fits into the community. He's a blackmail or mixed race, and everyone sees right through him. He's invisible to the neighborhood because he is just one of the guys. He probably doesn't come off as being gruff or an asshole. He probably comes off as being meek, but he does try to show off any opportunity he gets.

Next, Clemente talked about the kind of work the killer likely did, which would also explain how he got around the neighborhood.

He either trolls via his work.

For example, he could be a tow truck driver or a traveling repair person, someone who picks up junk or hauls away trash for people, something that gives him the opportunity to drive any place at any hour of the day or night, or he has just has the freedom to do that. He works for himself and he doesn't have to clock in anywhere in particular. Also, if he's in a living relationship, it could be with a parent, or it could be with a paramore. However, he definitely does not have to answer to another person in terms of where he is at what hour, because he's been able to do this at any hour at any time.

He grew up in a very religious family, one.

That would have condemned the thoughts and desires that he knew. By the time he hit puberty, he knew that he was sexually attracted to children.

He knew that this was wrong.

He may have acted on it and been scolded and punished extremely.

By his mother.

This would have gone on throughout his entire childhood that he would have been very severely physically punished and also demeaned, and the demeaning part was probably even more damaging than the physical punishment. He has a foot or shoe fetish, and that's why he keeps the shoes as souvenirs. And there's a difference between souvenirs and trophies. Souvenirs is something that he keeps privately to himself to remind himself and encourage the fantasies that he will have as he's reliving these experiences these offenses.

Trophies are something that you show off.

For example, trophy might be a necklace that you take from a victim and give to somebody in your life so you can see it every day.

It's much more insidious.

So, as I said before, I believe that most likely through his work he's developed very strong hands, powerful hands and arms, and this is something that he probably deliberately did as a line of work because he's small and he feels powerless and he wants to feel more powerful. He feels like he doesn't measure up, and that again was something that was drilled into him as a kid, and especially if they found out about his deviant sexual behavior and desires. So he feels very diminished. He's get an extremely poor sense of self. He knew since he was a child that these dirty, evil thoughts were wrong and that he was not normal, and he's fixated on petite probably just pubescent children. This may have been the first sexual experience that he.

Had was with a girl of that age.

Whether he was that age or older, I don't know, but probably either a younger relative or somebody that he had access to through the family was the first person that he molested. And he may have gotten caught, and that's why when he started this particular killing series, he actually killed his victims because he didn't want to ever get caught again.

Would he have been able to stop for any reason other than being caught or something else happening, Would he've had the come out of control.

He would have needed to stop, absolutely, because every single one of them can stop. And the proof of that is that they don't do it in front of everybody else.

They hide it.

They do it only when they can get away with it, and that is the ultimate control. They know that it's wrong, they know that it's illegally, they know they will get arrested and maybe spend the rest of their life in jail or get the death penalty, and they avoid it by operating only when they can get away with it. That's all the proof I need that they're in control. The people who are criminally insane don't realize that what they're doing is wrong, so they don't make any attempt to hide it.

And so this guy is.

Not like that, not at all.

So one particular victim really stands out to me, and that's Brenda Woodard. And she was eighteen years old, so she was the oldest victim that we know of, and yet she was very petite as well and fit all of the other desirability factors. He probably didn't know that she was eighteen. She probably looked younger to him. That may mean that he had to follow her at a great distance, or that he didn't have much time to make a decision with respect to her.

But this offense really affected him.

As I said earlier, she was stabbed repeatedly, but when her body was placed, a coat was placed over a chest where where she was stabbed, and that's an aspect of undoing.

So he lost his cool. He was enraged by her behavior.

She didn't follow the script he had in his mind, and therefore he punished her for that, but he felt bad about it, and that's the reason why I believe he was brought up in a very religious family, a very strict religious family that basically chastised him and said he was going to be punished for his sins, and so that was an outward manifestation of this enforced remorse basically for what he did. The extent to which Brenda fought back really bothered him and it undermined his confidence for quite a while, and that's why he didn't operate for so long. He may have also been walking around with physical manifestations of that, scratches on his face, bruised eyes, whatever. It is something that made him feel like he was ultimately vulnerable because of what she did. So post defense behavior, I would say after each of the murders, he hunkered down and sort of repented outwardly, but inwardly, what he was doing was he was reliving the fantasy of what he done over and over again, probably trying to correct the things that went wrong. And this is one of the things that drives them to do it over and over again because it never goes exactly as they fantasize, and they want to do it right, and they want it to be right so they can have this amazing.

Fulfilled fantasy.

This guy has a rich inner fantasy life, and I think that led him to read a lot and engage in fantasy type behavior. Today's version of that would be playing certain fantasy games, but back in the seventies that wasn't really there. But he may have engaged in that kind of behavior on the side for his hobby.

He likes to show off how smart he is.

Is probably annoys the hell out of anybody that he knows or people that he comes in contact with. His fantasies are all about young girls, and he may have from time to time slipped up and let somebody know like, oh, isn't she hot or something like that, making comments. Wants to feel powerful and having this power over these girls makes him feel powerful.

When I heard this, it reminded me of Brenda Crockett, the ten year old who the Freeway Phantom allowed to call home a few times. I asked Clemente if he thought that was one of the killers displays of power.

Yeah, well, this is one of the things the mother was out looking for. I think that he saw the mother, and he wanted to make sure that she didn't see him. That's why he had her tell her mother, I'm in a house with a white man in Virginia. That tells me they were not in Virginia, and he was not a white man, and so he expected that if the mother had seen him with her.

She would have said, but who was that black man.

I saw you with?

But she didn't say that, right, So I think that was a test to see and that's why he had her call back twice.

Next, Jim Clemente talked about the killer's likely living situation.

He has a private house or garage or shed where he keeps these girls where he has total privacy and control. It's in the Beltway area, but it's not in Virginia. He excluded that by using Virginia in that call. So somewhere in Maryland or DC he grew up there or works in that area. And I believe that in nineteen seventy one he was probably mid twenties to mid thirties. I believe this was the beginning of his offending career, and I think something significant happened right after this that could have been he moved went into the military, was arrested, but some significant event happened which changed his offending behavior stopped it at this point, at least in this area. And that could also have been that he got married, he got into a relationship, that he found someone who empowered him and that he was not.

Afraid to be with.

But it could also have been somebody who completely dominates and controls him, like his mother did. But that's the only two types of relationships that I believe he would have been in.

What about the washing.

He seems to have washed at least some of them, if not all of them.

Yeah, well, part of that could be he washed the feet because he has a foot fetish, so for him, interacting with their feet is a sexual behavior. It's also possible that that's a level of forensic sophistication. So yes, there were green fibers found on several of the bodies. That shows a lack of forensic sophistication in that area. But he may have washed any evidence of sexual contact with these girls. Clearly, they were able to determine that they were raped in most of the cases, so he wasn't able to undo that, but he did at least make an effort and I think that it's either part of his ritual. So there's MO aspects to every crime. Those are modus operandi, the action's necessary to commit to crime and escape undetected.

But there's also ritual aspects.

And although MO is learned and that you get better and better over time, that's where you developed criminal sophistication. I'm not saying that he isn't criminally sophisticated. I'm saying that his criminal sophistication level does not rise to the level that will give him the ability to break into somebody's protected home and take them from their own environment. That is a criminal sophistication level that is much higher than someone who takes someone who's on foot on.

The street, so he has a car, they don't have a car.

The problem with taking somebody who has a car on foot, you know when they get out of their car, is that you leave the car there, so everybody knows where they were taken from, and the window of opportunity can be seriously limited by that. So he's taking people who are on foot who you know won't be expected back home immediately, right, so there's more of a time delay. The alarm doesn't go off right away, gives them a chance to get.

Away to his secure location.

That's what I meant by saying he wasn't as criminally sophisticated as somebody who would do in home abductions. So he could have a history, and his history would have been sexually victimizing children, one in his family or somehow that he got access to in his teens or early twenties, because that is what was available to him.

But eventually he figure.

Out a way to get out and hunt, and he probably hunted a little bit away from where he lived and then took them to this place that is secure, then dumped them a little ways away from where he lived or where he did this because he didn't want to point people in the direction of where he lived.

But I know in one case.

The victim was left right by where her mother takes the bus every day. Her shoes were placed very neatly by the side of her body. That's a ritualistic kind of behavior, and so that could mean that there's some kind of connection between them. I don't know, but it's a very risky thing to do too.

You said that his behavior would have always been towards young girls, and you said pretty clearly that that that's what motivates him. So this is probably not someone who would have changed the opposite.

This is not.

Somebody who raped twenty five year olds at one point and then for this period of time preyed on young girls.

Absolutely, no, that's not who it is.

Yeah, if he can successfully break into homes and rape twenty five year olds or get them while they're on the street, no he's not doing that.

No, his sexual fantasies are about children.

That concludes Jim Clemente's profile of the Freeway phantom, and there's a lot to break down here, so we asked someone else to sit down with us and provide their thoughts on this new profile. Jim Clementi's profile is striking for a number of reasons. It suggests the killer was a local person, someone with limited resources and a lower level of sophistication than previously believed. It also suggests they were primarily motivated by fetishes, in turn demonstrating a level of psychopathy before unconsidered. We wanted to analyze Clemente's profile with a professional investigator, so we decided to run all of this by Detective Jim Trainam. We showed him Clemente's new profile, and here were his thoughts.

One of the things that he said that really made sense to me is the fact that he believes that this person fantasized about this, especially with the first victim, and planned it, and that's why he was able to keep her as long as he did, because he had everything set up and ready to go. What I'm wondering is is how many false starts he may have had before that with other children. And one thing that I did want to bring up, I don't look if you consider this is he was talking about the time between the abduction and the body was found. But we know that with the first victim, she was abducted kept somewhere because when she was found, the medical examiner was able to say she had been there only like two or three days, and so she was alive for several days before then. But with the other victims, we don't really know exactly when they were killed, so it may have been a much shorter time period. He may have abducted them, killed them, and then dumped them.

They were found some time later. But what's interesting is is that does that mean that he singled out this first victim and did he know her, And with the other victims, like the second victim, we always kind of theorized that says they were from the same neighborhood, disappeared the same way that he may have known her too. But the other ones, were they actually ones that he identified before forehand? Because I got the impression that that's what Jim was saying. I may be wrong that he identified his victims beforehand and then planned it and then abducted them. And is it that or were they just was he driving around and having victims of opportunity that kind of fit the type of person that he was looking for, somebody who was small, somebody who was vulnerable, somebody who was isolated for a short period of time so that he could go up and make his play. That would be one question. I don't remember seeing anything in any of the investigative reports about them trying to find out, especially at first, how many other times had girls been approached by strangers or someone they knew. So that was my first observation, where each of these victims identified beforehand, or was it just the first one and the rest were part of his hunting pattern and you just happened to cross them at the right date and the right time.

Trainum also says he found Clemente's analysis of the time period to be very interesting as well.

You know, this was a time period where people did hitchhike. I mean, back in nineteen seventy one, I was hitchhiking, you know, I was in high school, and that's how we got around. And children were out on the street, and they were much more freer, I think, and less fearful than we are these days. And I think that a lot of child sex abeziers like he was talking about very easily could in some cases have lured them into the car without any kind of threat of violence, and then used a knife to keep them under control of that sort of thing.

We asked train Um what he thought about some of the geographical analysis.

If you go and look at all the other abduction sites, I mean, all of them are pretty much on the side of an open road, and traffic wasn't as heavy then as it is now, and you could drive up and stop your car there and you really wouldn't look suspicious. And it doesn't take that long just to haul something out if you have a clear area. But let's say that you haul the body out, laid it down and suddenly a police car comes up behind you. What is your story. I was driving down the road and I saw something over here, so I pulled over to check on it. But when he dropped off Brenda Woodard, he had to get off the interstate go around this you know, much narrower exit stop where there was no place to stop. There was no place to pull off. He had to be out in the road in order to put her body where he put it. So I think he had a much higher chance of being spotted as being seen as somebody doing something suspicious, and so you know why he chose that spot always puzzled me. I've heard this. I've never been able to really find any documentation in my memory about how her mother actually worked at the hospital right next to where the body was found and all of that. Could it be because he had some kind of exchange with her and knew that her mother worked at the hospital there.

Trenham says he's also curious about the type of sexual assaults that the killer committed.

There was evidence that they were strangled not only manually, but with the ligature as well. But with Brenda, she was strangled with the literature. It stabbed, Like Jim said, you probably she had written the letter and she knew that, you know, the shit was up, and she'd try to protect herself because she had already been sexually assaulted, her clothes and put back on, and when she was stabbed, her clothes were inside out, her shirt was inside out, and the knife holes in the shirt matched up to the knife entries there. I was wondering if he was possibly, as part of his control and sexual fantasy, strangling them during sex and letting them pass out and come to I mean, because Brenda was probably not killed by strangulation of a knife injuries, So I'm thinking that the strangulation came first. I think that the most logical or the theory that fits those facts is that the clothes were removed, she was sexually assaulted, she was redressed like the other victims, and then maybe during the writing out of the notes something happened and that's what she stabbed. I thought the point about the first one having the most planning is really the most interesting thing myself, because even with the third victim, Crockett, I mean, he had to have had a place to take her to make that phone call. I really was wondering, you know, if he knew the mother, or if the mother actually saw him at some point. That's always been a question in my mind. Would he have aborted, would he have tried to cover up what he was doing, maybe by bringing her back and saying that he found her.

I don't know.

Honestly, I think that if she had said, you know, mama saw you, or in some way provided that information that you know, she might be alive, because he would have felt that he could not carry through without further risk to himself.

And lastly, Trainam had a lot to say about the new profiles take on the handwritten note, which included the Moniker Freeway phantom.

Yeah, the name was coined by I believe a reporter for WTP at the time, Pat Collins. But one thing that was proposed at one point was that he was pissed off because the police were at that point we're still saying, oh no, there's no serial killer, no comment. They were really downplaying it. And so yeah, we had always kind of thought that he's now proud of himself. He wants to show the world that you know, this is my handiwork, and I'm smarter than the cops are. And so he's actually bragging about that. But the fact that Brenda wentz South arum. We always felt that that was the reason for that ten months delay between victims right there.

My take on all of this is that the profile suggests the killer could have stopped killing, but his tendencies to want to show off his skill or ability would have remained the same. He would have followed the freeway phantom cases and basked in that moniker, enjoying that he outsmarted law enforcement. But that over confidence made him vulnerable because anyone near him could witness his behavior and his enjoyment of the coverage and then report him to the police. That's still possible even today. But if the killer was less sophisticated than we initially thought, then why was it so difficult to capture him? As we've talked about on this podcast, The answer is complicated, but it ultimately boils down to a blend of primitive investigative technology, racism and apathy in the police force, a lack of willingness in the community to come forward, and pure luck on behalf of the killer. The thing is, many of those issues remain true today. According to DC Witness. That's a nonprofit that collects and analyzes violent crime data in the nation's capital. The homicide rate is consistently rising here and the closure rate is dropping. In twenty twenty two, only forty two percent of homicide cases were closed nationwide. Black girls and women are at a significantly higher risk of being the victims of violent crime, and a twenty twenty DC Witness study showed that the rate of homicide among black girls and women rose thirty three percent that year in comparison to fifteen percent among their white counterparts. So why why are black girls still at risk and why aren't these cases getting solved?

A lot of variables playing into closure rate. It's not always just a racial thing, and sometimes it is a racial thing. It would be irresponsible of me to say that the closure rate is solely dependent on color. I will say that they're variables.

We live and die. Some people by the street code.

Some people out there they know who murdered this person, they know who committed this.

Armed robbery, but they won't come forward. I could just tell you, you.

Know, there's some of the variables and some of the reasons why there's lack of resistance within the communities to crime.

Robbery.

There's a millisecond away from a homicide whenever you draw a fire on and those same people who are committing these homicides will snatch your baby out your living room and should be a missing person. All of this is all in the same vein, and that's why it's so important.

To bring closure to the community.

It's so important to solve these cases and the whole folks accountable.

This is Henderson long, CEO of DC's Missing Voice. Henderson is dedicated to building trust between DC's black community and the police with the goal of bettering the homicide solve rate. He also played a key role in helping us in the early stages of our Freeway Phantom investigation.

I augment the Metropolitan Police Department in the private sector to assist with trace investigations, to locate missing persons and some of the similar work that needs.

To be done in the community.

I do a lot of that work in terms of outreach, in terms of investigating cases, in terms of whatever these detectives may need.

We promote cases.

We developed a big platform when we stay in close contact with the lead detectives and stuff is so important.

Henderson says, this type of work is personally very significant to him.

I'm an eight time homicide loser and my aunt was missing and found murder. She was missing for twenty years, and through the technology a DNA match, we found out about her whereabouts and it was confirmed. My partner, John Andrews, one of the guys I've worked with over the Missing Persons unit who does cold cases, got the family to submit their DNA and trust the police, and we put it in the database. We compare it against the set of bones and there it is. You know, I mean after twenty years. Her body had been recovered a year later, but by us being uneducated, by it being some fear within our family about putting up your group was just talking about DNA giving my DNA jam me up on that. Maybe that homicide I committed last year, or maybe I mean people just apprehensive.

About DNA social security numbers. No.

Henderson says one of the biggest issues in cases like the Freeway phantom or any of the other dozen cases he works on is that many of DC's black communities simply don't trust law enforcement. When a murder occurs, it's usually likely that someone in the neighborhood knows something, but they won't tell the cops. Henderson's goal is to act as a neutral ambassador and hopefully convince those witnesses to come forward. How do you convince because I mean you probably are aware that trust in polices at an all time lovel So how do you convince people to.

Work with the police.

You get out in the community.

We may set up and feed people hot dogs one day and just hand out resources and educate them, let them.

Know we were here for you. When they see me with the commander.

I have creds in the street as being just an honest person. You can have a keilo or cocaine. I'm not here for the kilo. I'm here for the missing person. So if you want your block to run, you need to tell them you help with this missing This is some of the things how you persuade because it's a language within the street and you have to kind of know the language, kind of know the area you in. You know, before you go to a neighborhood and you start jibber jabbing, you do a static drive too.

You look at the neighborhood, you call one.

Of the people up, the guys from the neighborhood, and you ask him what's popping? Can you walk with me? They see you with him. These are ways you do it in a safe manner. It's a lot of different ways to acquire information through computer databases to face to face interviews. You have the DNA, the forensic technology. All these things are at your disposal. You know, you have business associates you may go interview, you have credit card information, you have video surveillance you can use. Somebody may call me and say we saw a little girl over in southeast. I'll get with the detective and he'll go and pull the video and there she is. So now we got her schedule. We know she kind of coming here at a certain time. So these are all investigated.

Like how you work.

You understand the person's where they like to go, where do they frequent, what.

Time of day do they go there? You know, having that good physical description.

If you'd be surprised how many families don't have an up to date photo.

Even while they're carrying their phone their camera with them all the time, you know what I mean.

Like let's say if you had a child, and a lot of kids now they're too cool to take pictures, so you might have an old picture and I'm just gonna say this kind of like in some of the inner city communities, we don't really take a lot of pictures, so I.

Get a picture that's old.

But my point is having a good physical description, having a good photo, having fingerprints on file. These are tools. These are all investigative tools. Having their medical data, knowing about it, like some people may be on medication and they wander off. So having all these things on file, having a community to understand this is in your custody, meaning you can have a child ID kit in your custody with all this stuff in it. The National Center Missing Spool Kids, they send me a thousand child out the kids and I.

Get out in the community and we try to get into the schools.

I have a completed one of my son's fingerprints sitting in my sav at home.

Yeah, and the medical data.

When someone goes missing, this actually a child is chaos. You don't know how to put your left shoe on from the right. Use some things you think you will remember, you won't remember. But if you got it in the kid, you just hand them a kid that's their full physical description.

These are things important.

It's interesting because on one side you're talking about things like forensic and CCTV, which they didn't have in the nineteen seventies when the freeway phantom was preying on children. On the other side, you're talking about stuff like talking to community members and getting people to speak with you. That absolutely was available back in the nineteen seventies. But when I look at the photos, the crime scene photos, I'm looking at photos of about twenty five white dudes in a black community investigating a black girl's death, and I have to ask wonder to myself how successful were these white cops in nineteen seventy one at getting the community. You're shaking your head already.

Well, you know, he was elusive, he was something to deal with.

This was some monster guy.

The way the curate is some suspicion about some type of maybe law enforcement training or some kind of military training to understand how to dispose of the bodies and how to mess with their head the police because he was, oh, he was doing some damage and he was getting away.

He was he didn't leave very much.

And at the time, as you spoke about, they didn't have But what they have now. I'm just fortunate to have talked to the older detectives who taught me about how to shake the bushes and just how to move in the street. You have to know how to move in the street. You have to know how to what areas to go in and what areas.

You cannot go in. They don't care who you are.

No police, he's working with no police. Bush you open, you gotta know, or if you know, somebody knows them and they got some cribs, you can go in the neighborhood.

And this is how I mainly how I work. I always have If.

I'm going into a really rough neighborhood, I'm always unarmed.

I'm always unarmed. I don't I don't carry a pistol. I don't.

Why not, Because I got my patrol units, and I have people that's not far away on speed dial.

I got a sergeant that's rarely available, you know.

And and I go in there, and and and I go in there on the strength of credibility, on the strength of knowing somebody, because that's what take care of the gun is not somebody get to drop on me. I can have a gun all I want, and I still could lose my life.

Somebody get the drop.

Well, you gotta have that credibility, you have to have those relationships.

On a recent trip to DC, my producer Jamie and I did a ride along with Henderson, following him on his usual route through the neighborhood as he checked in with folks throughout the region, and he brings up a recent case that we'll talk about later.

What we gonna do is we gra to go to an area where two month old Kayan Jones, who was a missing person in Washington, DC, went missing. His case, his remains have not been recovered, so he's still a missing person. The mom had confessed on public television that she through the baby in the dumpster.

She actually confessed right in front of me. We just gonna go to the neighborhood.

We're gonna talk a little bit in general about just some general things about the case and how unfortunate the case was, and just get a visual of the atmosphere where the mother lived at, you know, the environment, cause.

That plays a part in you know, why these cases are occurring.

The missing person's event in the first place, is the the conditions, the living conditions, and you know, all of that stuff plays in. So we just gonna ride there and you know, you guys can take a look. This is every day what you gonna see every single day, sun up to sundown. This is what's going on in the community, and it's perpetuating our most severe cases.

So yup, it's right up the street.

So when you were.

Walk like, if you were to walk over there and get out flyers, what would you say? What would I say to him?

I would just tell him that, you know, the the child is missing m and the child is missing in this area. You know, I'm her uncle, you know, can you help me this, this, that and the other. You know, I know her mom and we all trying to look for her. Laws. Some people recognize me by face and they automatically start talking to me about it, and some people don't, you know, but you y you know, I know the area. I know this area pretty well. I frequent this area, so I really don't stick stand out to any of them.

They seen me before. Most of 'em.

If they see me coming, they already know what I'm coming for. So I usually, you know, just give 'em a spill.

I mean, I just tell 'em.

If I don't know 'em, I'll tell them anything, you know, to get 'em to possibly help.

Or tell me something. You know, there's no standing script.

You know, you you say whatever you feel in your heart at the time. You know, most people are a little more sympathetic when it's your niece or a family member. Then if you tell them you're an investigator, you working with the police or whatever, usually they.

Shut down on you.

So, uh, I usually give them some story, you know, I give 'em a little story, a lie. Be honest with you, Jamie, you would do better out here investigating than I would.

Why is God?

Because I mean, for one, you're a woman, if you're a good looking d y, you not any kind of threat to them. They don't say anything to try to have a conversation with you. And that's like if you got you your interviewing somebody and it's a male, sometimes you do better interviewing them than another f another male interviewer. So sometimes when you get out and you're dealing with men, you can you know, you can charm 'em a little bit, you can. That's these are things you can use when you are you be wondering what do you say? Sometimes your persona and your your your overall how they perceive you when you first walk up. You know what you say, really don't matter. You you can just tell them you looking for the missing person, you're a family member.

But all these things weigh in.

When you trying to persuade people, You trying to get people to give you information, Cause that's the whole business of investigative work. You just gathering all the pertinent information. That's all you You y'all trying to get something that you don't already have, and that's information. So whatever you can use, you use.

It, you know, you know.

On our ride along, Henderson mentioned the missing person's case of two month old Kaion Jones. Kyon was reported missing by his mother in May of twenty twenty one. DC Police were investigating his case when Henderson spoke to his mother, Ladonia Boggs. Ladonia confessed to Henderson and CBS nine News that she rolled over on Kaion and he stopped breathing. She said she discarded him in a trash dumpster. Sadly, Kayan's remains were never found, but Henderson is determined to find out the truth and find Kayon's remains. Unfortunately, Henderson admits there wasn't a trace investigator like him in the nineteen seventies. During the freeway phantom case, the level of trust between officers and community was likely lower than with no middleman present to mitigate. Had that been different, maybe the freeway phantom cases would have been solved. The silver lining here is that things have the potential to be better today. With the rise of social media. We saw increased attention on the issue in twenty sixteen when the hashtag DC missing Girls went.

Viral when the Washington DC Police Department tried to raise awareness about missing children and teenagers by posting their images on social media. The campaign backfired, sparking some national outrage and fears of an epidemic of missing children of color.

As we mentioned in episode one, the initial Twitter post claimed young black girls were going missing at an alarming rate in DC, and that post spread like wildfire. It was retweeted by a whole host of celebrities and high profile figures. But then it came to light that the numbers were highly inflated and so the post was somewhat misleading.

I wanted to talk about.

What happened with the viral hashtag of DC missing girls and how they could get it so wrong. What did you think about that.

I knew the truth.

I knew that they were advertising it on Twitter. Every case was getting advertised, So you saw a heavy volume of kids.

That you didn't see before.

There wasn't a spike, but they were advertising it. Every case got advertised.

At one point the watch commander.

Had discretion to decide which ones went out on their Twitter feed. Now, every missing person, regardless of race, creed, color, gender, you, whatever you are, all that you're going to get a missing person's report that go out on Twitter from MPD. And so they saw this and somebody took and hashtagged that fourteen girls were going missing. Maxwell saw it, Shanaiah Lathen saw it. El cool j he sent it out once they tweeted out. Now it's the law, and it really wasn't. Fourteen girls and went missing. And a part of our education is getting the community to understand the criteria for the amblert because there was some concern of why has an amblert went on and black kids don't get the ambuler. Where's the criteria and that's strictly for in case of some form of abduction.

They used the amb alert. It was a good thing overall.

Why do you say that because all of the media attention we got now. MPD developed a website which is strictly for missing persons. I know you saw it, where you can go in and you can get information. It's not real time, but it's much better than it was. Every missing person gets their information sent out, and you eliminate the question of race because now everybody is getting a press release to every media outlet.

In many ways, that increased visibility was a good thing. Despite what the hashtag got wrong, it highlighted a very real issue that had gone ignored for far too long. But even now, six years later, cases of missing and murdered black girls still get less media attention than the cases involving their white counterparts, and the closure rate has had little to no improvement, And so we have to ask have things actually gotten better since the nineteen seventies. When we talked to Henderson about the Freeway phantom case, he said many of these same issues from back then can be found in cases today. Henderson brought up one case with very different circumstances, but which serves as an example of how black girls today are as at risk of victimization as they were in nineteen seventy.

Well, you know militia, right, that's the case that its shatsh you. You know, I probably take my last breath still working in some form of fashion, if it's not training somebody else or another young person. But these cases, I'll never stop working until it's closed. And if I die, I'm gonna lay out this is all here we're documenting. This is a part of DC history, this is national history. If you open up Relicia Rudd's case and you look, first of all, the headline is an eight year old child, and next to it you got murder to her legacy, you got deception, people pointing the finger, nobody's saying nothing. Then you got suicide, and then you got some drug abuse, you got the foster care system, got the you got.

A whole bunch of stuff.

And at the end, when you got all that, all these dynamics, that's what you get. You get something that you got to scratch your head and say, did that really happen?

Did she just vanish?

Next time on freeway Phantom.

We were very alarmed, but we were very determined to find Relicia.

This is an age progression photo of what relasia would look like today.

In cases such as that, the response of the very first responding officers of utmost importance.

Each year, there are over six hundred thousand people reported missing in the United States and close to forty percent of persons of coloring.

And I've always been trying to figure out a way to get the hurd off of me.

After all these years, I don't know if it's important anymore.

I just know that if.

You do wrong, wrong would come back on you.

If I can bring resolution to these cases, I will do it.

I'm going to try my best to do it.

Freeway FANOM is a production of iHeart Radio, Tenderfoot TV, and.

Black bar MITZVAH.

Our host is CELESE.

Hiley.

The show is written by Trevor Young, Jamie Albright, and CELESE.

Hiley.

Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio include Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, with producers Jamie Albright and Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of Black bar Mitzvah include myself, Jay Ellis and Aaron Bergman, with producer Sidney Fools. Lead researcher is Jamie Albright. Artwork by Mister Soul two one six, original music by Makeup and Vanity Set Special thanks to a teammate, Uta Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. Tenderfoot TV and iHeartMedia, as well as Black Bar Mitzvah, have increased the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for their Freeway Fanom murders. The previous reward of up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars offered by the Metropolitan Police Department has been matched. A new total reward of up to three hundred thousand dollars is now being offered. If you have any information relating to these unsolved crimes, contact the Metropolitan Police Department at area code two zero two seven two seven nine zero ninety nine. For more information, please visit Freeway Dashfanom dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.

Monster: Freeway Phantom

Between 1971 and 1972, six black girls went missing in the Washington D.C. area. Their bodies were d 
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