Cold Cases · Spotify Studios

The Freeway Phantom

·47 min·3 clips

Romaine Jenkins opens the file and finds that the hairs, green fibers, and original case files are gone.

1. Cold Cases covers the Freeway Phantom murders in Washington, D.C., with later scenes in Maryland and a final look at the case in 1987. 2. Carter Roy hosts the episode, Romaine Jenkins matters as the first woman to become a D.C. homicide detective, and the FBI later reopens the evidence. 3. The episode asks how a string of child and teen murders stayed unsolved while police, families, and investigators lost key evidence. 4. Carol Spinks disappears on April 25, 1971, after leaving for a 7-Eleven run and is found dead near St. Elizabeth’s Hospital six days later. 5. The autopsy on Carol Spinks shows rape, strangulation, cuts, and undigested citrus fruit in her stomach. 6. Metro Police initially dismiss Allentine Spinks’s missing report, and the family organizes its own search. 7. Darlenia Johnson is found on July 19, 1971, near I-295, and her body is so decomposed that fingerprint analysis is needed. 8. Brenda Crockett calls home twice on July 27, 1971, says a white man took her, and says she is being held in Virginia. 9. Brenda Crockett is later found dead along Route 50 in Cheverly, Maryland, after rape and strangulation. 10. Nina Moshe Yates disappears after a Safeway trip on October 1, 1971, and is found two hours later on Pennsylvania Avenue in Maryland. 11. Brenda Woodard is found on November 16, 1971, beside the Baltimore-Washington Parkway with a note signed “Freeway Phantom” in her coat. 12. Handwriting analysis shows the note in Brenda Woodard’s coat was written by Brenda Woodard, not the killer. 13. The FBI later finds hairs in three victims’ underwear and concludes the source was probably a black man. 14. Five of the six victims have identical green synthetic fibers on their clothing, which investigators think may have come from a car interior. 15. The episode says the killer likely knew at least some victims, because several attacks involve phone calls, captivity, or access that feels personal. 16. The Freeway Phantom goes silent for months, then returns on September 5, 1972, when Diane Williams is found strangled near I-295. 17. The tone is investigative and chronological, with Carter Roy moving from crime-scene detail to later forensic and archival work. 18. The format mixes police reconstruction, family accounts, FBI analysis, and documentary sourcing from People Magazine Investigates. 19. Listeners interested in Washington, D.C. cold cases and forensic history would likely follow this. 20. Listeners wanting a light or spoiler-free crime story should probably skip this.

As heard by us

A sober cold case episode that follows the evidence carefully without pretending it can settle the case.

Romaine Jenkins revisits the Freeway Phantom Murders case more than 15 years later, and the story opens on an ugly fact: the evidence is gone. What follows is careful, procedural work through a case that kept slipping past the city, the families, and the police.

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Why you'd press play

You want a cold case built around destroyed evidence and careful police digging.

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