The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror by James Presley Page B

Jo was so dear to her that she didn’t know what she’d do if something happened to her. She persisted in asking her husband to make calls.
    “Bessie,” he said, “something unexpected may have happened and she didn’t want to call this late. There is always a first time.”
    Finally he agreed to call Janann Gleason, who was holding the slumber party. Perhaps Betty Jo and Paul had dropped in there; maybe Betty Jo had decided to stay and had forgotten to call. It would have clashed with her past behavior but was a possibility. But no, they hadn’t seen or heard from Betty Jo.
    Bessie Brown’s alarm heightened. Now Clark Brown joined in her concern. Unknown possibilities invaded their imaginations.
    Bessie called Betty Ann Roberts. She was sleeping. Did she know where Betty Jo had gone after the dance? No, she had seen Betty Jo put her saxophone in Paul Martin’s car and saw them leave together. That was the last she’d seen or heard from them. She didn’t know what they’d intended to do next.
    Dawn that Palm Sunday ushered in a wave of troubling uncertainty to Bessie and Clark Brown.
    Tom Moores, a prominent farmer who lived on Moores Lane in the Pleasant Grove community north of town, arose as usual at five o’clock. He turned on the radio and dressed. By five-thirty, he was brushing his hair when he heard an unusual sound for that time of morning. It was a gunshot, definitely a gunshot. He listened carefully, but didn’t hear anything else. One gunshot. He wondered why anyone would be firing a gun for any purpose at that time of day, on a Sunday morning. He didn’tthink any more about it. He got ready to check on his large farm in the Red River bottoms.
    Shortly before six o’clock, Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Weaver and their young son left their home on Summerhill Road north of town, on their way to Prescott, Arkansas, a day trip to visit relatives. As they cut through along North Park Road skirting the park, they saw a form lying at the edge of the unpaved road. It looked like a human body. As Weaver drew closer, their fears were confirmed. It was the body of a boy, lying on his left side, his head and the trunk of his body on the leaves and grass. His feet and legs jutted onto the dirt road. He was wearing a light-colored long-sleeved shirt, with his arms and hands in front of him, crumpled in death.
    Weaver didn’t get out to investigate. He drove two hundred yards to the nearest home and told them what they had found, asking that they notify the sheriff’s office.
    Sheriff Bill Presley and Texas-side Chief of Police Jack N. Runnels, old friends, were together, meeting for breakfast and pre-church coffee, when the call came. They sped out together in Presley’s car. They were the first lawmen to arrive on the scene.
    Carefully they checked the boy’s body, this time protecting the tracks and other possible clues at the scene. They immediately verified that the boy was dead. He could be identified by contents of his wallet: Paul Martin. He had been shot four times. One bullet had entered the back of the neck and emerged through the front of the skull. Another entered through the left shoulder, fired from the back, with the third bullet going into his right hand. The fourth bullet went into his face. Blood was seen on the other side of the road, by a fence, indicating that he might have been shot on one side of the road and crawled across.
    Soon other officers, city and county, arrived and with a systematic search combed the area for clues. Not much to find.
    Martin’s coupe was located abandoned alongside the road parallel to the Kansas City Southern tracks and crossing. The keys were in the ignition. The automobile was about a mile from where his body had been discovered. The car was near the lake and a short walk, across the KCS tracks, to the Spring Lake Park School.
    Presley, careful to avoid tracks, studied bushes and brush around the park. At one point he scrutinized a spot in the parking area flanked