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

The Freeway Phantom Murders PT 2

March 4, 2026·1 hr·5 clips

Investigators find a handwritten note from the killer taunting, 'I will admit the others when you catch me, if you can!'

Paul Holes opens by recapping the case: an offender targeting young Black girls aged 10 to 16 in the Washington DC and Maryland area, abducting them from routine foot errands near convenience stores and grocery stores, holding them briefly, strangling them, and dumping their bodies in locations near major roads in what Holes characterizes as a dump-and-run approach suggesting risk management rather than a desire to conceal the victims. Victim timelines are reviewed, noting Nino Yates was found an hour and a half after disappearing and had been dry when it was raining, suggesting she was killed indoors. The hosts discuss how the killer had been making phone calls to families and allowing at least one victim to call home, behaviors that suggest a desire for notoriety in addition to the murders themselves. Brenda Denise Woodard, eighteen years old, was last seen at a bus transfer stop after attending night classes at Cardozo High School and going to Ben’s Chili Bowl with a classmate. Her body was found near Route 202 in Maryland with her wig abandoned thirty yards away in a median, suggesting the killer tossed it from the car window while driving away. The crime scene is distinctive: she was fully clothed but her clothes were in disarray, she had a broken neck alongside four stab wounds likely from a left-handed attacker, and a handwritten note in her coat pocket read tantamount to my insensitivity to people especially women, adding he would admit to the others when caught. Holes connects this note to the Zodiac killer who had been active in California the same year, suggesting the Freeway Phantom was aware of and inspired by that case’s public notoriety. The hosts note the green synthetic fibers found on multiple victims as a consistent physical evidence thread linking the cases.

As heard by us

A careful episode about when fiber evidence starts to matter.

This episode is at its best when it treats fiber evidence as useful but limited. It draws a clear line between blue cotton fibers, which can be too common to carry much weight on their own, and synthetic fibers that may become more meaningful when the type, cross-sectional…

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Why you'd press play

You want the quiet forensic detail that can turn a synthetic fiber into a possible link.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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