Buried Bones - a historical true crime podcast with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes · Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

The Freeway Phantom Murders PT 1

·1 hr 13 min·4 clips

Carol Denise Spinks was held for days, strangled, and repeatedly sodomized before her body was found.

1. Buried Bones covers the Freeway Phantom murders in Washington, D.C., beginning in 1971 and stretching into 1972. 2. Kate Winkler Dawson is a journalist who has spent 25 years writing about true crime, and Paul Holes is a retired cold case investigator who brings forensic analysis to the case. 3. The episode asks how a series of child and teen killings in Congress Heights and along I-295 fit together. 4. Kate sets the scene with anti-war marches, May Day protests, and about 12,000 arrests in Washington, D.C. 5. The hosts note that Patricia Cornwell was working with a medical examiner in Virginia during the same period and later wrote about forensic work in fiction. 6. Kate opens the investigation with the May 1 discovery of 13-year-old Carol Denise Spinks behind St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital. 7. An 11-year-old boy finds Carol’s body, rolls her over, and waves down patrol officers on Interstate 295. 8. Detective Sergeant John Moriarty sees injuries to Carol’s face, neck, and chest, plus a bloody nose and a split lower lip. 9. The medical examiner rules her death asphyxiation and says the crescent-shaped neck marks are consistent with manual strangulation. 10. The autopsy also finds scratches on her hands, blood under her fingernails, hairs from a Black individual, citrus fruit in her stomach contents, and green synthetic fibers. 11. Kate identifies Carol as a typical seventh grader who liked hula hooping, double jump, and jacks. 12. Carol was last seen on April 25 at a 7-Eleven about half a mile from her Congress Heights home. 13. Her mother, Allentine Spinks, reported her missing that night after Carol did not come home. 14. Paul says the era treated many missing children as runaways quickly, but he also points out that a 13-year-old walking alone in 1971 was not unusual. 15. The next victim is 16-year-old Darlenea Denise Johnson, who also lived in Congress Heights and was found near the same stretch of I-295. 16. Darlenea left home on July 8 to go to the Oxon Hill Recreational Center and never made it to work. 17. Her mother, Helen McNeil, reported her missing on July 9, and the body was found 11 days after she disappeared. 18. Helen later received heavy-breathing phone calls that said, “I killed your daughter,” and Dorothy Wheeler received threats after organizing street meetings about Metropolitan Police failures in Black neighborhoods. 19. The episode is investigative and forensic, with Kate pressing the timeline and Paul explaining victimology, strangulation, and offender behavior. 20. Listeners interested in historical true crime, cold cases, and forensic profiling will get the most from it, while people avoiding child-abduction cases may skip it.

As heard by us

A methodical pass that turns ordinary routes into the shape of the case.

The episode treats the case as an ordinary pattern of movement: a neighborhood, a missing teen, a last-seen route, then another disappearance that begins to bring the shape into focus.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When a shocking public murder turns into a forgotten New York City mystery.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Buried Bones - a historical true crime podcast with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes