The Phantom Killer: Texarkana’s Moonlight Murders of 1946

The terror in Texarkana began on the night of February 22, 1946, when Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey left a movie theater and parked in an isolated area. Their date took a horrifying turn when a man wearing a white mask with eye holes approached their car, flashing a light at them. He threatened them with a gun, forcing them out of the vehicle.

The masked man brutally attacked Hollis, hitting him so hard with the gun that his skull was fractured. He then turned his attention to Larey, telling her to run. As she fled, he chased her down, hitting her before sexually assaulting her with the barrel of his gun. Larey managed to escape on foot, but the mysterious attacker vanished into the night.

Roughly a month later, on March 24, the second attack occurred. The bodies of Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore were found with fatal gunshot wounds to the back of the head. The double murder spread fear throughout Texarkana, but the terror was far from over.

In the early hours of April 14, another attack struck the town. Paul Martin picked up Betty Jo Booker after a musical performance, but both were found dead later in different locations. Martin had been shot four times, while Booker had been shot twice. Investigators quickly realized that the weapon used was the same .32-caliber pistol from the earlier double homicide.

A month later, the killer struck again. Virgil Starks, a farmer in Miller County, was shot twice in the back of the head while reading a newspaper at home, killing him instantly. 

With each murder, panic swept through Texarkana. Despite police efforts, the so-called Phantom Killer disappeared without a trace. Over 400 suspects were arrested during the investigation, but the killer’s identity remains a mystery to this day.