The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror Read Online Free Page A
Hooks Courts, a short distance from the gate to the defense plant. Mary Jeanne enrolled at Hooks High School.
Mary Jeanne, a lovely dark-eyed brunette with a fraction of Indian blood, met Roland L. “Stretch” Larey, eighteen, in Texarkana andmarried him in the Miller County Courthouse, on the Arkansas side, in 1943. His father, local attorney Clyde Larey, signed as security on the marriage license bond, required by Arkansas law. Mary Jeanne listed her birthday as January 11, 1925, which made her, for the record, eighteen and old enough to marry without parental permission.
Actually, she was sixteen; she’d bumped her age up by two years.
The marriage was brief. Larey went into the Navy. By time he returned from the war, the marriage had deteriorated. Larey left for college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, eighty miles from Texarkana. She remained in Hooks, living with her parents; by the end of 1945 their separation was permanent.
An uncontested divorce suited both parties. Larey filed; Mary Jeanne waived her appearance in court. They had no children and no community property. She signed the waiver in January 1946, two days before her true nineteenth birthday—in Harlingen, Texas, where she was visiting a friend in the service as the wartime airfield there was shutting down.
After she returned to Hooks, she met Jimmy Hollis, recovering from his own unhappy marriage.
CHAPTER 2
CONFLICTING PERCEPTIONS
T he vicious beatings disrupted what had promised to be a routine, though hardly boring, Friday night for Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley.
Since taking office slightly more than a year before, William Hardy Presley, a personable fifty-year-old widower who had served in France during World War I, had grown used to unexpected disturbances of sleep and schedule. He lived in the little town of Nash, a few miles west of Texarkana. His household consisted of his aged mother in her eighties and his teenaged daughter. Presley’s wife and older daughter had died from injuries after a drunken driver had intentionally crashed into the Presley vehicle in 1936; only Presley and his younger daughter had survived.
Unlike the stereotypical tall Texas sheriff, ruddy-faced, usually mild-mannered Presley stood slightly under average height. Though he packed a pistol, he usually kept it on the car seat beside him, not on his hip. He dressed immaculately in a neat business suit and felt hat instead of theten-gallon version popularized by brawny sheriffs in the movies. Even without a gun at his side, he wasn’t an easy man to confront. Growing up in rough-and-tumble rural Bowie County, he’d had his share of fistfights. As sheriff, however, he’d drawn his gun only once, to tame a husky, crazed drunk.
He hadn’t called it a day yet when the call came late that Friday night. He had just a few deputies for the entire county, so he sped to the scene himself. Although the attack had occurred in the county’s jurisdiction, outside the Texarkana city limits, three city policemen had also answered the call. With a small staff to cover a large county, Presley granted special deputy commissions to city policemen. This enabled them to respond beyond their usual range, particularly in emergencies such as this one.
The sheriff and the policemen checked out what little was known of the Friday night attack, then scoured the area in search of the assailant. Tracking what they believed to be the route of the gunman’s automobile, they traced him to the house to which Mrs. Larey had fled. This suggested that she had narrowly escaped him a second time. From there they followed the tracks eastward to Summerhill Road, another graveled branch north of the city. They found Hollis’s trousers about a hundred yards from the scene of the attack.
The culprit had made a clean getaway. Presley and the policemen drove downtown to interview the victims. Both were still at the hospital, where Hollis would remain for weeks.
Hollis was barely conscious and in
Mary Jeanne, a lovely dark-eyed brunette with a fraction of Indian blood, met Roland L. “Stretch” Larey, eighteen, in Texarkana andmarried him in the Miller County Courthouse, on the Arkansas side, in 1943. His father, local attorney Clyde Larey, signed as security on the marriage license bond, required by Arkansas law. Mary Jeanne listed her birthday as January 11, 1925, which made her, for the record, eighteen and old enough to marry without parental permission.
Actually, she was sixteen; she’d bumped her age up by two years.
The marriage was brief. Larey went into the Navy. By time he returned from the war, the marriage had deteriorated. Larey left for college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, eighty miles from Texarkana. She remained in Hooks, living with her parents; by the end of 1945 their separation was permanent.
An uncontested divorce suited both parties. Larey filed; Mary Jeanne waived her appearance in court. They had no children and no community property. She signed the waiver in January 1946, two days before her true nineteenth birthday—in Harlingen, Texas, where she was visiting a friend in the service as the wartime airfield there was shutting down.
After she returned to Hooks, she met Jimmy Hollis, recovering from his own unhappy marriage.
CHAPTER 2
CONFLICTING PERCEPTIONS
T he vicious beatings disrupted what had promised to be a routine, though hardly boring, Friday night for Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley.
Since taking office slightly more than a year before, William Hardy Presley, a personable fifty-year-old widower who had served in France during World War I, had grown used to unexpected disturbances of sleep and schedule. He lived in the little town of Nash, a few miles west of Texarkana. His household consisted of his aged mother in her eighties and his teenaged daughter. Presley’s wife and older daughter had died from injuries after a drunken driver had intentionally crashed into the Presley vehicle in 1936; only Presley and his younger daughter had survived.
Unlike the stereotypical tall Texas sheriff, ruddy-faced, usually mild-mannered Presley stood slightly under average height. Though he packed a pistol, he usually kept it on the car seat beside him, not on his hip. He dressed immaculately in a neat business suit and felt hat instead of theten-gallon version popularized by brawny sheriffs in the movies. Even without a gun at his side, he wasn’t an easy man to confront. Growing up in rough-and-tumble rural Bowie County, he’d had his share of fistfights. As sheriff, however, he’d drawn his gun only once, to tame a husky, crazed drunk.
He hadn’t called it a day yet when the call came late that Friday night. He had just a few deputies for the entire county, so he sped to the scene himself. Although the attack had occurred in the county’s jurisdiction, outside the Texarkana city limits, three city policemen had also answered the call. With a small staff to cover a large county, Presley granted special deputy commissions to city policemen. This enabled them to respond beyond their usual range, particularly in emergencies such as this one.
The sheriff and the policemen checked out what little was known of the Friday night attack, then scoured the area in search of the assailant. Tracking what they believed to be the route of the gunman’s automobile, they traced him to the house to which Mrs. Larey had fled. This suggested that she had narrowly escaped him a second time. From there they followed the tracks eastward to Summerhill Road, another graveled branch north of the city. They found Hollis’s trousers about a hundred yards from the scene of the attack.
The culprit had made a clean getaway. Presley and the policemen drove downtown to interview the victims. Both were still at the hospital, where Hollis would remain for weeks.
Hollis was barely conscious and in
Readers choose
Ivan Southall
R. N. Morris
Sweet and Special Books
Karen Kay
Demelza Watts
Emily Barr
C.L. Scholey
Hugh Howey
Ralph McInerny