Texarkana Moonlight Murders
1946 unsolved serial murders in the United States
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 the Texarkana region of the United States in early 1946. They were attributed to an alleged unidentified perpetrator known as the Phantom of Texarkana, the Phantom Killer, or the Phantom Slayer. This hypothetical suspect is credited with attacking eight people, five of them fatally, in a ten-week period.
The attacks occurred at night on weekends between February 22 and May 3, targeting couples. The first three attacks occurred at lovers' lanes or quiet stretches of road in Texas; the fourth attack occurred at an isolated farmhouse in Arkansas. The murders were reported nationally and internationally by several publications, and caused a state of panic in Texarkana throughout the summer. Residents armed themselves and, at dusk, locked themselves indoors while police patrolled the streets and neighborhoods. Stores sold out of guns, ammunition, locks, and many other protective devices. Investigations into the murders were conducted at the city, county, state, and federal level.
The prime suspect in the case, career criminal Youell Swinney, was linked to the murders primarily by statements from his wife plus additional circumstantial evidence.
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This entry incorporates text from “Texarkana Moonlight Murders” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.