The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror Read Online Free Page B

critical condition, hovering between life and death, his skull fractured in three places. There was no hope of talking with him. Mrs. Larey was being treated in the emergency room when the officers arrived. She had deep cuts on her head. The doctor used eight stitches to close the wounds. She was in a state of severe emotional distress. She just wanted to go home.
    Presley and his deputy Frank Riley gently questioned her at the hospital. What, exactly, had happened?
    In a semi-hysterical condition, her mind jumped about. She worried about Hollis. Was he going to survive? She did the best she could to describe the experience.
    The stranger had driven up and ordered them out of the car, she said. He told Hollis to remove his trousers, after which he bludgeoned Hollis in the head with a heavy blunt object. Then he turned to her.
    Who was he? What did he look like? Did you know him? Did Hollis know him? Had she ever seen him before? What kind of gun did he have?
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I never saw or heard him before. I’d never forget that voice, how mean it was. He had on a white mask. It had cut-out places for his eyes and mouth.”
    She felt certain he was a Negro, of light complexion. This was based partially on her interpretation of the way he talked.
    Clearly she was not in the best frame of mind to be interrogated. The sheriff drove her home to East Hooks Courts, still in a mild state of shock. He’d question her again when she regained her equilibrium.
    Hollis, in a coma, was in no position to corroborate, refute, or add to what she said. The impression from her statement left the focus on a black man with a sadistic streak who had tried to rob them—and wore a mask. The mask became a sensational part of the front-page story in the
Daily News
, the following afternoon with an eight-column headline.
MASKED MAN BEATS TEXARKANIAN AND GIRL
    The report named Hollis as a victim, identifying him as an insurance man and noting his residence, while identifying Mrs. Larey only as his “19-year-old girl companion.” The newspaper didn’t use her name until later. On Sunday morning the
Gazette
ran a one-column page-one report that essentially rehashed the afternoon newspaper’s story. The story didn’t fade for days.
    Upon reflection and further questioning, officers grew uncertain about the accuracy of her description, vague though it was. Considering the locale of the attack and the type of crime, it didn’t fit the pattern of a black criminal, as attackers such as these tend to “hunt” within their own ethnic groups. They considered part of her statement open to question, or at least incomplete. And the mask: the more officers thought about it, the more they wondered. The main reason for wearing a mask would be to hide his features so he wouldn’t be identified. In the dark that seemed unlikely. Darkness would have shielded a black man even more. So whyhad he worn a mask? And a white mask, no less? Did he believe they were someone else? Did mistaken identity explain the beatings? And how, in the dark, was she even able to see a mask? One deputy raised the possibility that she, and perhaps Hollis, actually knew the man and out of fear
claimed
he had worn a mask, an effort to prevent retaliation.
    As the days wore on, this possibility gained strength. Both victims were married, the sheriff learned, but not to each other. She explained she was estranged from her husband and that, as far as she knew, he was in college in Arkansas. They were in process of obtaining a divorce by mutual agreement. Was the attacker a boyfriend? Absolutely not!
    The next day, officers interviewed her again. She could only reiterate what she had told them previously. Her husband’s alibi, readily checked, held firm. So the jilted-lover hunch was now off the table.
    The nightmarish experience dominated her days and nights. In her dreams she saw the blurred image of a vicious man almost every time she fell asleep.
    She insisted,