Episode 196: The Texarkana Moonlight Murders

Hello This is survived with Sophie and LexiWe started telling our survived story (in college) and we are moving on to being you guys moreThrough many different topicsThe Texarkana Moonlight Murders— a name given by newspapers of the day—were a string of four weekend-night attacks on young couples in the Texarkana area between February 22 and May 3, 1946. Believed to be the work of a single unknown assailant nicknamed the Phantom of Texarkana (or Phantom Killer/Slayer), these crimes left eight people targeted and five dead over ten weeks. The first three assaults happened at lovers’ lanes or lonely stretches of road in Texas; the fourth struck a remote farmhouse in Arkansas. National and international press coverage triggered widespread panic: residents armed themselves, bolted doors at dusk, enforced curfews, and emptied stores of guns, ammunition, locks, and window‐guard hardware. Local, county, state and federal agencies—including the Bowie County sheriff’ s office, Texarkana police, Texas Rangers, Arkansas State Police, the Texas DPS and the FBI—collaborated on the hunt.