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MAN GIVES SELF UPTexarkana Police Chief Doubts 'Phantom Killer'Suspect GuiltyTEXARKANA, Ark. Police Chief Max Tackett said today he doesn’t believe a man identified as Robert Hartin Chandler of | Stamps, Ark., is the “phantom killer of Texarkana.”Tackett said Chandler is being held in Miller County jail, and police are still investigating his i story. But the chief added the story ■ appears unreal to him.Detective Capt. Wayne Bateman said at Shreveport last night a man who identified himself as the “phantom killer of Texarkana’’ yesterday surrendered to police because “my conscience was bothering me.”Bateman identified the man as ! Robert Martin Chandler, 36, of Stamps, Ark.The man’s arms, Bateman said, were scarred from the finger tips to the shoulders. Chandler told officers he had punished himself for the crim.es by burning his arms with cigarettes, Bateman explained.Bateman said the crimes which ! Chandler said he committed in-| volved the brutal beating of one | j couple, and the killing of five other j persons. Another person, shot after • her husband had been killed, re-!:covered.For weeks after a second double 11 slaying in Texarkana blacked,out and called a voluntary curfew which kept everyone off the streets at night.No charges were filed.Texas Rangers have been working on the case continuously.Miller County, Ark., DeputySheriff Tillman Johnson left Texarkana as soon as they were informed of the man's “confession.”Bateman said the suspect was a “weird-looking’* giant weighing about 225 pounds and more than six feet tall.The man said he committed the crimes while he was a soldier at Barksdale Field in Shreveport. Hei is married and has a daughter,j 15, by a previous marriage.Bateman said the man told him that he killed the first couple on i a road leading into Texas.“All I got out of that w'as a lousy 27 bucks,” he said. He denied having raped the girl but said, “I messed with her a little bit. 1 didn’t hurt her much.”He told Bateman, he killed a younger couple later and that he mutilated the body of the girl “pretty badly.’* He said that he attended the funeral of the younger girl and went to her house.He said he knew’ the girl’s mother’s first name.He said that he also killed a man ou Highway 67 aiul that hetried to kill the man’s wife ant “I shot her In the mouth but sha got away.”“She deserved to get the Medal of Honor for getting away. I chased her a quarter of a mile and tried my best to get her. I shot her with a .410 over-and-under gun.The Phantom struck in three-' week intervals, the first attack being in February and resulted .in,| severe Injury to a young insurance j man and his girl companion. The Phantom brutally beat the couple but both of them recovered.The first killing was on March 24. The bodies of Richard Griffin, 29, and Miss Polly Ann Moore, 17, were found in a car. Both had been shot with a .32 caliber gun.Three weeks later on April 3, the bodies of Betty Jo Booker, 15, and her escort Paul Martin, 17, were found, shot to death. The bodies were found a mile apart.. They, too, were shot with, a .32 caliber I gun identical to the weapon that killed the other couple.Miss Booker’s body was mutilated.The last killing attributed to Phantom was that of Virgil Starks. He was shot in his home on Highway 67 and his wife was shot in the mouth but she recovered.
Newspaper Details
Big Spring Weekly Herald
Big Spring, Texas, US
Fri, Jul 23, 1954
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 19 May 2024
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