Hollis was hospitalized for several days to recover from multiple skull fractures. Larey was hospitalized overnight for a minor head wound. "Bill" Presley and three other officers arrived at the scene of the attack, but the assailant had already left. Within thirty minutes, Bowie County Sheriff W. H. Meanwhile, Hollis had regained consciousness and alerted a passing motorist who also called the police. After the assault, Larey fled on foot, running a half-mile (800 m) to a nearby house she woke the residents of the house and phoned the police. When she said that he had told her to do so, he called her a liar before knocking her down and sexually assaulting her with the barrel of his gun. Larey spotted an old car parked off the road but found it empty, and was again confronted by the attacker, who asked her why she was running. Initially, she tried to flee toward a ditch, but the assailant ordered her to run up the road. The assailant ordered her to stand, and when she did, told her to run. Thinking the assailant wanted to rob them, Larey showed him Hollis's wallet to prove he had no money, after which she was struck with a blunt object. Larey later told investigators that the noise was so loud she had initially thought Hollis had been shot, but it was his skull fracturing. Hollis told him he had the wrong person, to which the man responded: "I don't want to kill you, fellow, so do what I say." īoth Hollis and Larey were ordered out the driver-side door, and the man ordered Hollis to "take off goddamn britches." After he complied, the man struck him in the head twice with a pistol. Around ten minutes later, a man wearing a white cloth mask–which resembled a pillowcase with eye holes cut out–appeared at Hollis's driver-side door, and shone a flashlight in the window. The area was approximately 300 feet (91 m) from the last row of city homes, where present-day Central Mall is located. on Friday, February 22, 1946, Jimmy Hollis, age 25, and his girlfriend, Mary Jeanne Larey, age 19, parked on a secluded road known as a lovers' lane after having seen a movie together. Investigators speculated that the attacks were the work of an unidentified serial killer.įebruary 22: First attack Jimmy HollisĪt around 11:45 p.m. The attacks took place at intervals of three to four weeks. All four attacks targeted male-female pairs in isolated locations, on weekend nights. The Texarkana Moonlight Murders involve four violent attacks which occurred over ten weeks from February to May 1946 in and around Texarkana, twin cities at the border of Miller County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas, United States. This film is the basis for much of the subsequent myth and folklore around the murders. The events inspired many works, including the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The book The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders (2014) concludes that Swinney is the culprit. Two of the lead investigators believed him to be guilty of the murders. Swinney was convicted on other charges and sentenced to a long term as a habitual car thief and forger. After Swinney's wife refused to testify against him, prosecutors decided against pursuing murder charges. The prime suspect in the case was Youell Swinney, a career petty criminal who was linked to the murders primarily by statements from his wife plus additional circumstantial evidence. In the course of investigations, there have been shifting opinions by officials over whether the first and fourth attacks were committed by the same perpetrator. Investigations were conducted at the city, county, state and federal level. Some youths attempted to bait and ambush the killer. Stores sold out of guns, ammunition, locks, and many other protective devices. Residents armed themselves and, at dusk, locked themselves indoors while police patrolled streets and neighborhoods. The murders were reported nationally and internationally by several publications, and caused a state of panic in Texarkana throughout the summer. The first three attacks were at lovers' lanes or quiet stretches of road on the Texas side the fourth attack occurred at an isolated farmhouse in Arkansas. The attacks occurred at night on weekends between February 22 and May 3, targeting male-female pairs. This hypothetical perpetrator is credited with attacking eight people, of whom five died, in a ten-week period. They were attributed to an alleged unidentified serial killer known as the Phantom of Texarkana or simply the Phantom Killer or Phantom Slayer. 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 and around the Texarkana region of Arkansas and Texas in the late winter and spring of 1946.
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