Did Doodie Do It

Did Doodie Do It? -- Phantom Killer Suspect H. B. "Doodie" Tennison

www.diddoodiedoit.com

After the culmination of the reported findings of the 1948 investigation of H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, Colonel Homer Garrison, (Chief of the Texas Rangers and Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety) said of H. B. Tennison: "....he has not been completely eliminated as a suspect." Since the time that Homer Garrison made this comment, no additional evidence has increased the doubt that H. B. Tennison was telling the truth. Rather, additional evidence and analysis unknown to authorities in 1948 suggest an increased probability that H. B. Tennison was being truthful in his confession of murders.

Despite the false and misleading things that have been publisihed about H. B. "Doodie" Tennison by James Presley (first in 1971 in the Texarkana Gazette, and then later in Presley's 2014 book), as of 2016, the New York Daily News became the first major newspaper since 1949 to start to set the record straight with regard to H. B. "Doodie" Tennison in an article that was published on Sunday, March 6, 2016. This article by Mara Bovsun correctly pointed out that H. B. "Doodie" Tennison remains one of the "strongest" candidates for having been the Phantom Killer. Bovsun also acknnowledged that, in 2014, "....Texarkana hosted a forum, bringing together scholars and forensic experts, to ponder a question that will never be conclusively answered."

True Crime Garage -- 2015 Podcast which Discusses H. B. "Doodie" Tennison

Phantom Killer Suspect H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, Profiling, 1940s Media, & Interrogation - Slides Presented by John Tennison, MD, on November 8, 2014

Phantom Killer Suspect H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, Profiling, 1940s Media, & Interrogation - Video of presentation by John Tennison, MD, on November 8, 2014

Book Review by John Tennison, MD, of book: "The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story of a Town in Terror" by James Presley. Presley's book has glaring omissions, obvious fabrications, suspicious claims, is misleading, and is poorly documented.

Pictured above is H. B. "Doodie" Tennison holding a .22 rifle while on an outing with his father, sister, and first cousin. Although it cannot be seen in the image above, an empty box of Remington .22 cartridges is at his feet. Behind H. B. Tennison is a still frame of the sack-head murderous villain in the dream sequence by Salvador Dali in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound. During high school H. B. Tennison was an avid movie-goer and an usher at the Paramount Theatre in Texarkana. Hitchcock's Spellbound (released December 28, 1945) played at the Paramount Theatre by no later than March 24, 1946. However, by the time the so-called "Phantom" attacks began on February 22, 1946 in Texarkana, Spellbound had already established itself as a highly-popular and critically-acclaimed movie. Spellbound garnered six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The couple who were attacked the night of February 22, 1946 had gone to see a movie on a double date at the Paramount Theatre in Texarkana earlier that night. The couple survived the attack, and claimed that they were attacked by a man who wore a bag over his head. Although some horror-movie fan websites erroneously assert that Charles Pierce's "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" was the first movie to feature a "sack-head" villain, it appears likely that Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound was the first sound movie to feature a murderous villain who wore a sack-head mask. Moreover, like the villain in Spellbound, H. B. Tennison committed suicide. It is plausible that H. B. Tennison was influenced by Spellbound. (Although it was from the silent era, D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" from 1915 might be the first movie to feature characters who kill while wearing relatively-plain white hoods. However, these characters, who were KKK clansmen, were not unequivocally presented by Griffith as villains. "The Invisible Man" from 1933 also deserves mention, as his bandaged head suggests a bag or sack mask. However, the highly-psychopathic Invisible Man did his killing when his bandages were off.)

Introduction

It is unfortunate that my first cousin, once-removed, H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, might have been a serial killer. Yet, there is an obvious public interest in wanting to appropriately weigh evidence for any suspects in any of the 1946 Texarkana-area killings. As a forensic psychiatrist and first cousin, once-removed to H. B. Tennison, I believe I am in a unique position to assist in the presentation of helpful information about H. B. Tennison and to offer a better analysis of evidence related to H. B. Tennison than has occurred in past publicized accounts.

Articles about H. B. Tennison from numerous newspapers have been transcribed. However, given the confusion that can result from trying to first make sense of the newspaper articles, I would first like to clearly introduce readers to the known writings that H. B. Tennison left behind. This introductory section, titled "An Analysis and Nomenclature for Writings by H. B. Tennison" will be helpful to read before reading the newspaper transcriptions from 1948.

An Analysis and Nomenclature for Writings by H. B. Tennison

When trying to determine such characteristics as the content, chronology, and location of writings by Doodie, a reading of 1948 newspaper articles can be confusing and misleading. Therefore it is desirable to better clarify the characteristics of Doodie's writings found by authorities, including the content of the writings; when Doodie wrote them; when the writings where found; and the location writings were found. It is also desirable to establish a nomenclature by which reference can be made to specific writings during discussion and analysis of such writings.

It makes sense to refer to some of the writings as "notes." However, it does not make sense to refer to such things as the found name tags and the "Do Not Disturb" sign as "notes." For this reason, I will use the more general term "writings" when referring to the complete set of all of Doodie's writings found after Doodie's death.

There are instances in which the Texarkana Gazette contradicts claims made by the Northwest Arkansas Times with regard to characteristics of Doodie's notes. In instances where such contradictions occur, my analysis has usually assumed the Northwest Arkansas Times to be more accurate.

There were multiple writings found in Doodie's room. The 1948 Newspaper articles made reference to more than 12 distinct writings or notes. The newspaper articles emphasized three notes in particular. Thus, these three notes will be called "The Big 3." Since the newspaper articles didn't clarify or publish any of Doodie's pencil rough drafts, the pencil rough drafts are lumped into a single nomenclature category: "the 'Rough Drafts'" (category #12 below). I also include a 13th Category, "Other" notes, as the Texarkana Gazette makes reference to what might have been notes not accounted for by the first 12 categories.

In my analysis below, I will use the term "Lock box" interchangeably with "Strong Box" and "Strongbox."

Below are the contents; an analysis; and a recommended nomenclature for the writings of Doodie. Content of notes appears in red.

1. The "Final Word" note -- (one of the "Big Three") -- This was the most saliently-presented note found at the scene of Doodie's suicide. Although all notes mentioned by the newspapers appear to have been found on November 5th, 1948, Doodie set up his suicide scene in such a way as to make the "Final Word" note the most saliently-presented and easily-accessible note discoverable by whomever found Doodie's body. The "Final Word" note was saliently-presented in a brown folder with a formal title of "My Final Word" and was dedicated "To All My Friends." The brown folder was found on Doodie's dresser. It is almost certainly the case that the "Final Word" note was the first note to be read by the authorities who arrived at the scene of Doodie's suicide. It appears that Doodie intended the "Final Word" note to be for public consumption. It does not appear that Doodie intended the "Final Word" note to be a denial or contradiction of The "Confession" note (found in a strongbox which was also on the dresser). Thus, despite what newspapers have stated, it is misleading to call the "Final Word" note a "denial" or "contradiction" note. Despite the "Final Word" note being the note that was almost certainly found and read first, misleading and erroneous statements published by the Texarkana Gazette give the impression to readers that the "Confession" note was found first. For example, the Texarkana Gazette erroneously describes the "Confession" note as "The note, discovered by the authorities in the strongbox, the first apparently of a number since found and being studied by the police...."

The "Final Word" note was typewritten, but was signed "H. B." in pen at the bottom of the note. Thus, it appears that the "Final Word" note was signed on or after October 30, 1948, which appears to be the earliest date on which Doodie had possession of the only pen found in his room with which he could have signed his name. The typewritten body of the note was likely typed on or after October 30, 1948 as well, but could have been typed before the acquisition of the pen. The "Final Word" note

Here is the content of the typewritten "Final Word" note:

Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life.

As I think about it, it is none of these things. They are not the reason for this incident, there’s a much larger point to it all…Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all of the family can get down to their own lives. Mother will not have to worry about me making my grades, and daddy will not have to put out any more money on me which probably would do no more good than it did in high school. No one will have to worry about me, keep having to push me through the things that would be best for me.

No, Mother and Daddy are not to blame, it is just me. If I had done what they told [sic me] to do this would have never happened. Studying instead of playing around, going out with the people in my age group instead of staying home and dreaming.

I wanted to go into the business, that is why I worked in the factory and traveled on the road. I liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but when I came to the University of Arkansas I could not to get the right feeling, I got lazy and cut classes when I felt like it. I never had any excuse for my absences, I just played around. I never even cracked book at home at night, had more fun by myself drawing. In class I did not take notes, oh I did take a few, just enough to make the instructor thing [sic think] I was working, the few I did take did not do any good for I could not read them. When my check came in from daddy I went to town and bought things I had no use for, just got them for the purpose of having fun and to play with. I did not eat the right type of food, I spent many dollars for candy which I ate in a day. Sometimes I would not even eat a meal for whole day, not because I did not have the money, for I had rather have something to play with.

One day I went to three shows all different, and it was a school day too. Another time I went to a show at the Ozark three times in three nights to see the same show, just a waste of money I know but I had to think and when I think about a subject like this I have to be relaxed. Now that I have thought it over through and through, this is the only way I can find that will suit me and my family. I hope that you will see it my way, it is really the best way out for me.

I don’t want to hurt anybody more than possible. It is my wish that you will remember me as a friend and a son as the years go past.

Well, the moment is near, I will take the door which says exit in a few minutes. I only want to wish you all the success in the world and much happiness.

To mother I just want to say that you are the best mother a fellow ever had, and I would not want anything to hurt you as much as I have in the past years.

To daddy I want to say thanks for everything you have done for me, and I am sorry about the way things turned out.

Well, I guess I will leave you here. Wish I could stay for a little while longer, but I can not [sic cannot] as I told you before.

Don’t cry for me, just remember me.

Much love to you all.

[signed in pen] H. B.

2. The "Confession" note -- (one of the "Big Three") --This note was found "at the bottom of a number of letters and papers" in Doodie's strongbox. It appears that Doodie did not intend the "Confession" note to be for public consumption. That is, it appears unlikely that Doodie anticipated that the authorities would bust open his strong box. Rather, it appears that Doodie assumed his personal effects (including the "Riddle" note and B. B. Pen) would be turned over to his family, who would be the ones to open the strongbox and discover the "Confession" note. The discovery of the "Confession" note by the authorities and the publication of the contents of the "Confession" note created considerable stress for the Tennison family for which Doodie probably did not intend. That is, Doodie's intention was probably to make a private confession to his family, for which Doodie did not anticipate would have been shared publicly.

Since the "Confession" note mentions the View-Master, and since the View-Master was purchased no earlier than October 30, 1948, it seems that the "Confession" note was written as early as October 30, 1948, but no later than November 4, 1948, which is the day on which Doodie took his life.

Here is the content of the "Confession" note:

To Whom It May Concern:

This is my last word to you fine people, and you are fine.

I want to thank you for all the trouble that you have gone to, to send me to college and to bring me up, you have really been wonderful.

My thanks to Ella Lee for letting me stay with her during my college career, and to Belva Jo for putting up with me the way she did, she had to I know, but I fell in love with her about a week ago, if she was older I would have asked her to marry me, but that would be impossible.

Why did I take my own life? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and killed Mr. Starks and tried to get Mrs. Starks. You wouldn’t have guessed it, I did it when Mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places.

When I am found, which has already been done, please give this typewriter to Craig, and tell him that I hope that his child is a boy, it will (help) him in his work. Everything can go wherever you think it will do best except for the View-Master which will go to Belva Jo.

Please take my bankroll and give it to Daddy, I think it should go to him, and tell him I don’t want the car now.

Well, goodbye everybody. See you sometime, if I make the grade which will be hard for me to make.

[signed] H. B. Tennison

[Newspapers do not make clear whether the signature on the "Confession" note was typed or by pen. However, since Doodie had the pen at the time he wrote this note, and since he signed the "Final Word" note by pen, it seems likely that the signature on the "Confession" note was also by pen.]

3. The "Instructions" note -- (one of the "Big Three") --This note was described as being found among Doodie's "personal effects" "in the room." It was likely found in a location other than on his dresser. It was typewritten and Doodie used a rubber stamp with his name and address several times at the bottom of the note. Because this note cites a date of death of October 30, the "Instructions" note appears to have been written no later than October 30, 1948. It was likely written before October 30, as Doodie appears likely to have been out purchasing the B. B. Pen, the View-Master, and the View-Master Mexico reel as early as October 30, 1948. In making reference to his date of birth (Feb. 12) and a date of death (Oct. 30), Doodie appears to be trying to convey the combination of the lock box (AKA strongbox) that he had previously purchased. It appears likely that the original purpose of purchasing the lockbox was to establish a relatively more secure location where Doodie could place his confession of murders. However, it also appears that Doodie makes reference to an "envelope" containing gifts or for which the contents would designate gifts to family members. Since the newspapers did not indicate that the "Instructions" note was found on the dresser, it appears likely that Doodie had put aside, and possibly abandoned the "Instructions" note, as he appears ultimately to have placed the numbers to the combination of his lock box inside his B. B. Pen, rather than rely on the "Instructions" note to communicate the combination of the lock box. The idea that the "Instructions" note was abandoned seems to be consistent with the fact that name tags were found that were seemingly not attached to gifts. Moreover, Doodie apparently abandoned a plan to commit suicide on October 30, 1948, thus after October 30, 1948, the claim of the "Instructions" note that "Oct 30" was the date of his death became invalid. Consequently, if Doodie's lock box had a programmable combination, he might have re-programmed the combination to reflect date of death of November 4 or November 5, 1948.

Here is the content of the typewritten "Instructions" note:

This is just a last word to all of you. I want all of you to have a little gift from me, lets say a going away present from me. These things are yours to keep if you want them, of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I would like very much if you did, even if it doesn’t do you any good. Before I tell you where the list of things are, you must follow these instructions to the letter.

1. Call my relatives and tell them what has happened.

2. Get Craig, Joyce, J. D., Martha, and mother here in the house.

3. I am to have a simple funeral, not a flower is to be on the whole set, not a flower. I am to be put in a simple wooden box, and buried in the country, not a cemetery, about five miles from the University of Arkansas in any direction.

4. Distory [sic] all of my possessions without even looking at them, they are not to be looked at at all, burned in the back yard of 617 North College.

After you have followed these directions, try and solve this rittle, [sic] in it you will find the envelope where you will receive gifts up to $40.00 some less and some over:

February 12 is the date of my birth.

October 30 is the date of my death.

With the right combination you can’t miss.

That’s it, figure it out for yourselves. Bye now, and take care of yourselves.

[This note was signed several times across the bottom of the page with a rubber stamp containing the following information:]

H. B. Tennison

617 North College

Fayetteville, Ark.

4. The "Riddle" note -- The "Riddle" note was handwritten in pen on a small piece of paper, which was found on the dresser beside the brown folder containing the "Final Word" note. It appears that Doodie abandoned the riddle in the "Instructions" note, perhaps because he decided that the riddle in the “Instructions” note made it too obvious as to the numbers of the combination of his lock box. The "Riddle" note appears to have been written to replace the original riddle contained in the abandoned "Instructions" note. Since the "Riddle" note was written in Pen, it appears to have been written as early as October 30, 1948, but no later than November 4, 1948. The wording of the "Riddle" note appears to have been inspired by 1948 advertisements for B. B. Pens, which mention that a B. B. pen "rolls on dry." The pens came in several colors, and the models without clips would easily roll across a smooth surface. These considerations suggest the inspiration for the sentence in the "Riddle" note which reads, “It rolls on color and it is dry and sound.”

The "Riddle" note is referred to in some media accounts as a "poem."

Here is the content of the "Riddle" note:

In a tube a paper is found.

It rolls on color and it is dry and sound.

The head removes the tail will turn,

And inside is the sheet you yern. [sic]

Two bees mean a lot when they are together.

These clues should lead you to it.

5. The "Combination" note -- This note was simply the numbers to the combination of the lock box. The "Combination" note was found scrolled up inside the B.B. Pen, which was on Doodie's dresser. On November 8, 1948, The Northwest Arkansas Times stated: "The numbers which form the combination to the box were found Saturday afternoon inside a fountain pen...." However, on on November 6, 1948, the Texarkana Gazette had stated that the "Riddle" note "....was found in a Beebe fountain pen which in turn was inside a locked box in the room." Although the the Texarkana Gazette appears to be erroneous in its claim that the "Riddle" note was found "in" the pen; and in its claim that the pen was found "inside" the lock box, the fact that Texarkana Gazette makes reference to anything found in the pen on November 6th, 1948 means that whatever was in the pen was found before the publication of the November 6th, 1948 edition of the Texarkana Gazette. Thus, whatever was found in the pen appears to have been found on November 5th, 1948. Therefore, the Northwest Arkansas Times appears to be erroneous in stating that the "Combination" note was found on "Saturday," (November 6, 1948). The exact contents of the "Combination" note are not clear, but if Doodie used dates of birth and death; and if his lock box used a 4-part rotary-dial combination; and if he was able to program the combination to his lock box, the "Combination" note might have had content such as:

2-12-11-4

On the other hand, if the combination box used three rotary wheels in which each wheel specified a single digit; and for which each wheel was programmable, the "Combination" note might have read:

1-1-4

6. The "Epitaph" -- The Texarkana Gazette states, "Tennison even wrote his own epitaph, oddly enough dating his death on October 2." Thus, it appears that the "Epitaph" note was written no later than October 2, 1948. Therefore, it appears that Doodie was considering suicide at least as early as October 2, 1948.

Here is the content of the "Epitaph" note:

Here lies H. B. Tennison, Born Feb. 12, 1930, Died Oct. 2, 1948. He committed suicide for the happiness of his family. May he rest in peace. Amen.

7. The "Sign" -- The "Sign" was found "in the room." It is not clear when the "Sign" was written.

Here is the content of the “Sign”:

Do not disturb, death in the making.

8. "Headline 1" -- "Headline 1" was found "in the room" "among his effects." The Northwest Arkansas Times states: "Among his effects were found two pieces of paper on which he had written an epitaph for his tombstone, and also newspaper headlines to go over the story telling of his suicide."

Here is the content of "Headline 1"

UA Student Found Dead

9. "Headline 2" -- "Headline 2" was found "in the room." "Headline 2" was found "in the room" "among his effects." The Northwest Arkansas Times states: "Among his effects were found two pieces of paper on which he had written an epitaph for his tombstone, and also newspaper headlines to go over the story telling of his suicide."

Here is the content of "Headline 2"

UA Student Commits Suicide

10. The "Name Tags" -- These name tags appear to have been created by Doodie as part of a plan to label gifts that he had intended to leave behind to his relatives. However, it appears that Doodie abandoned his plan to use the name tags, as the tags were found unattached to any particular objects. The Texarkana Gazette states "Tags with various names were found in the room indicating he had not prepared and hidden any gifts." The newspapers do not specify how many name tags were found or whose names were on the name tags, but it is likely the case that Doodie had constructed name tags for at least the people named in the "Instructions" note, which included:

Doodie's brother, Craig; Craig's wife, Joyce; Doodie's brother, J. D., Jr.; J. D. Jr's wife, Martha; and Doodie's mother, Jimmie Tennison (Mother).

11. The "Pen Return" note -- Although this note is never quoted directly by the newspapers, The Northwest Arkansas Times states "In one note he left, the youth asked that the pen he got from the newsstand be returned to Mrs. Smith." Also, the Northwest Arkansas Times States, "....a fountain pen, which he requested in another note be returned to a local store, where he said it belonged."

12. The "Rough Drafts" -- These pencil drafts to which the Northwest Arkansas Times made reference were possibly of only "The Confession" note. However, there might have been pencil drafts of other notes as well. None of the contents of the pencil rough drafts were published by the newspapers.

13. "Other" notes -- According to the Texarkana Gazette, "The sheriff said other handwritten and typewritten notes were found and in the room." It is not clear whether this sentence refers to notes that are already accounted for by one of the first 12 nomenclature Categories, or whether this sentence refers to additional notes that were note published and that do not fall into one of the first 12 categories.

Further Thoughts on The "Final Word" Note

I am concerned by false and/or misleading things about H. B. "Doodie" Tennison that were published in 1948 and that have been re-published as recently as 2013 by the Texarkana Gazette. For example, the record is very clear that Doodie strongly implied that he committed "two double murders" and he also explicitly confessed to murdering 3 specifically-named persons and having tried to murder another specifically-named person in the Texarkana area in 1946. Specifically, before committing suicide, Doodie wrote:

“Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question, well, When you committed two double murders you would to. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the City park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and try to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn’t have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places…”

The "Final Word" note, which begins "Please disregard...." has been presented in various media accounts in such as way as to cause readers to falsely conclude that it was found after the "Confession" note. Yet, the "Final Word" note was actually the most saliently-presented note of all the notes that Doodie left, and was almost certainly the first note to be found and scrutinized by authorities on November 5, 1948. Rather than being hidden at the bottom of a stack of papers in a lock box, the "Final Word" note was saliently-presented in a brown folder with a formal title of "My Final Word." This brown folder was on Doodie's dresser. Despite claims in newspapers to the contrary, it appears that Doodie did not intend the "Final Word" note to be a contradiction of the factual claims in his "Confession" note. It also appears that Doodie did not intend his "Confession" note to be found by the authorities, who busted open his lock box.

The full sentence at the beginning of the "Final Word" note was:

“Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life. As I think about it, it is none of these things.”

Despite newspaper and other media claims to the contrary, the opening sentence of the "Final Word" note does not recant or deny any of the confessions of murder in the "Confession" note. Rather, the "Final Word" note simply instructs readers to "disregard" other messages with regard to reasons Doodie gave for taking his own life. That is, Doodie does not say in the "Final Word" note that "all other messages" he wrote were false. Moreover, since the "Final Word" note and the "Confession" note were not dated, local authorities in Fayetteville were competent enough to acknowledge that knowing the chronological order that the notes were written could be informative, in that, if the "Final Word" note above was written before the "Confession" note, such a chronological order would be still another reason the "Final Word" note was not intended to be a denial or recanting of the confession of having committed murders as described in the "Confession" note. Despite these considerations, the Texarkana Gazette presented a narrative in such a way as to make it seem unequivocally the case that the "Final Word" note had somehow "cancelled" or negated factual claims made in the "Confession" note. Moreover, the Texarkana Gazette mislead some readers into believing that the "Final Word" note was found after the "Confession" note. In contrast, authorities in Fayetteville do not appear to have adopted the unwarranted interpretation promoted by the Texarkana Gazette. Yet, local authorities in Texarkana seemed all too willing, despite sufficient evidence, to get behind the presumptuous interpretation that the "Final Word" note above was a "denial" note. In 1948, the Texarkana Gazette printed the following headline:

"Note Canceling Murder Admission Found"

Just recently (Monday, November 4, 2013), in the "This Week in History" column, the Texarkana Gazette made the false claim that H. B. "Doodie" Tennson had

"...left behind a message denying he was the Phantom Killer."

Of course, Doodie never made any such denial. I believe that the November 4, 2013 article was an honest attempt to summarize what had been printed by the Texarkana Gazzette in 1948. Still, a paraphrase of one false statement yields another false statement. I hope the Texarkana Gazette will set the record straight on this matter some day, and acknowledge that unwarranted interpretive leaps have been made with regard to the meaning of what Doodie wrote.

It is also important to point out that Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider (in Fayetteville, Arkansas) had as much opportunity as anyone to consider the chronological order in which H. B. Tennison wrote his notes. Sheriff Crider is one high-profile authority who believed that the Confession note had been written AFTER the "Final Word" note.

Sheriff Crider's conclusion about the order Doodie's notes were written contradicts the spin of many of the newspapers which made the unwarranted conclusion that Doodie wrote the "disregard" note [AKA "Final Word" note] to contradict or deny his confession of murders made in the confession note.

Sheriff Crider's position on this question is documented in the Hope Star newspaper on Wednesday, November 10, 1948:

"Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider who originally investigated the suicide said, however, he still is not satisfied as to the reasons for some of Tennison's statements in the notes.

'He seemed to imply in one note that he had told someone before that he 'was at the park that night' when Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin were killed' the sheriff said.

Crider declared, however, that he had never had "much faith" in the notes. But he said he was satisfied that the note Tennison wrote in which he claimed he was responsible for the three murders was the last one written before his death. Another note in which Tennison asked finders to disregard all others was written previously, Crider contended.

The sheriff said the fountain pen used in the note containing the admissions had been purchased only a few days before the message was dated."

"Why All The Riddles?"

The various newspaper accounts from 1948 can easily suggest to many readers that Doodie left behind multiple riddles. Indeed, I have been asked by one curious person, "Why All the Riddles?"

In fact, it appears that, before he took his life, Doodie intended to evoke the use of only a single riddle in the form of the "Riddle" note, which he expected to be solved by his family.

The only other riddle that Doodie appears to have left behind was the one in the "Instructions" note. However, Doodie appears to have abandoned the riddle in the "Instructions" note and superseded it with the single, hand-written "Riddle" note, which he appears to have written with the B. B. pen between October 30, 1948 and November 4, 1948.

It appears that Doodie was not trying to "play games" or unnecessarily add insult to injury by making people solve riddles after his dead body was found. Rather, since Doodie would have expected his body to be found by the people who lived at or owned (Mr. or Mrs. McGee) the house where he lived in Fayetteville, AR, Doodie appears to have used the "Riddle" note for a very specific and understandable function. That is, Doodie seems to have wanted to obscure his "Confession" note so that only his family would find it after they were given Doodie's personal effects. Doodie seems to have been motivated to obscure the "Confession" note only as much as necessary to allow for the outcome of his family being the ones to find the "Confession" note. It appears that Doodie believed the use of the strongbox and "Riddle" note would serve the purpose of preventing non-family members or the general public from seeing his "Confession" note.

Contradictory Accounts of What Was In the Pen

There were at least three contradictory accounts in newspapers regarding what note was found in Doodie's B. B. pen.

For example, based source material from the United Press (UP) news agency, The Mason City Globe-Gazette, Sat. 6, 1948, page 1, reported:

"The 'confession' was found on paper rolled and hidden in a casing of a ball-point fountain pen"

In contrast, the Texarkana Gazette gave a confusing account which suggested that the "Riddle" note had been found inside the pen. Specifically, on November 6, 1948, the Texarkana Gazette reported:

"The sheriff said that a bizarre note, found in a folder such as is used to contain college thesis, actually led to the alleged confession. The note read:

'The opening to my box will be found in the following few lines.

'In a tube of paper is found, rolls on colors and it is dry and sound

'The head removes, the tail will turn, and inside is the sheet you yearn.

'Two bees mean a lot when they are together. These clues should lead you to it.

The note was found in a Beebe fountain pen which in turn was inside a locked box in the room."

The last sentence above beginning with "The note was found...." suggests that reference is being made to the "Riddle" note being found within the pen. However, it is possible that the writers of this article intended "The note...." to refer to "it," the last word in the last sentence of the "Riddle" note. If so, that would mean that the Texarkana Gazette, consistent with the UP source material, was trying to say that the "Confession" note was found in the B. B. Pen.

In contrast to both the Mason City Globe-Gazette and the Texarkana Gazette, on Monday, November 8, 1948, the Northwest Arkansas Times reported:

"The numbers which form the combination to the box were found Saturday afternoon inside a fountain pen, which he requested in another note be returned to a local store, where he said it belonged."

Although it appears that whatever was found in the pen was found on Friday, November 5, 1948, rather than Saturday, November 6, 1948 (see explanation in section "5. The 'Combination' note" above.), it does appear that the Northwest Arkansas Times is most likely to be correct about the "Combination" note having been what was found within the pen. If so, it does not make sense that the pen was found inside the strongbox because Doodie would have wanted the pen to be outside the lockbox so that the combination found in the pen would lead to the unlocking and opening of the strongbox.

Lastly, the "Riddle" note itself says that the "opening to my box" (suggestive of a combination) is to be found "in the following few lines" of the "Riddle" note. The "Riddle" note does not indicate that anything other than the "opening to my box" would be found in the pen, thus it does not appear that Doodie was in any way trying to suggest that the "Confession" note was in the pen or that a second riddle was in the pen.

Why Was Poison "stuck to" or "on" the Cap of the B. B. Pen?

Although newspaper accounts described Doodie as having used mercury cyanide tablets that came in a box, it is likely the case that the labeling of that box was similar to the labeling of this bottle of mercury cyanide tablets.

On Saturday, November 6, 1948, The Northwest Arkansas Times reported:

"A small quantity of the poison was found stuck to the end of a fountain pen, which he had referred to in several of his notes. A box which had contained the poison tablets was found in a waste basket."

On Monday, November 8, 1948, The Northwest Arkansas Times reported:

"The fountain pen, on which he had stuck a small quantity of poison of the same kind which he used to end his life, was a B. and B. fountain pen."

On Saturday, November 6, 1948, The Texarkana Gazette reported:

"The sheriff said poison was found on the cap of the pen."

Why was a small quantity of mercury cyanide on the cap of the B. B. pen? Given the fact that the mercury cyanide had been purchased in the form of tablets, it seems likely that Doodie used his B. B. pen as a pestle to crush and grind the tablets to make them more easily dissolvable in liquid (presumably water). Using the pen as a pestle would have left a residue on the end of the pen used to crush and grind the tablets.

Although mercury cyanide is very toxic and can be absorbed through the skin, it seems unlikely that Doodie was trying to intentionally poison whomever found the pen, else it seems that Doodie would have arranged for much more than "a small quantity" of mercury cyanide "on the cap of pen" or elsewhere.

A Very Brief Introduction to the Flawed Investigation of Doodie

With regard to the fingerprint testing that was performed, fingerprints from Doodie were compared against fingerprints that appear to have been unlikely to have been those of the Phantom in the first place. Moreover, the ballistics testing that was performed was irrelevant, as it was performed on cartridge shells (not slugs) from bullets from guns that still existed in 1948, and which had been located in Memphis, TN, not Texarkana. Thus, despite what the newspapers say, ballistics testing was performed on cartridge shells (not slugs) of bullets fired from rifles that were not easily "available" to Doodie. Moreover, Doodie clearly stated in his note:

"For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places…”

I will expand greatly on this section in the future.

A Probabilistic Analysis of Familiarity with and Proximity to Victims

The above analysis demonstrates that, as compared to what could be considered an average, randomly-selected person in Texarkana in 1946, Doodie seems likely to have had a greater-than-average opportunity to have been familiar with or to have been proximal to at least one, if not both individuals in each of the four couples who were attacked.

Colonel Homer Garrison (Chief of the Texas Rangers and Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety)

After the culmination of the reported findings of the 1948 investigation of Doodie, Colonel Homer Garrison said of Doodie: "....he has not been completely eliminated as a suspect." Since the time that Homer Garrison made this comment, no additional evidence has increased the doubt that Doodie was telling the truth. Rather, additional evidence and analysis unknown to authorities in 1948 suggest an increased probability that Doodie was being truthful in his confession of murders. As of February 1, 2014, Homer Garrison remains the highest-ranking law enforcement official to have made public commentary on any of the suspects in the 1946 Texarkana-area attacks.

Newspaper Transcriptions from 1948

Below are transcriptions of articles about Doodie from 1948 from five different newspapers:

1. Northwest Arkansas Times (NWAT)

2. Texarkana Gazette (TG)

3. Texarkana Daily News (TDN)

4. Associated Press News Agency (AP) -- Many newspapers throughout the United States relied upon the AP newswire for their articles on Doodie. The newswire of the AP included some information that was not present in the Texarkana or Fayetteville newspapers. For example, the fact that Doodie's strong box was opened by force by the Fayetteville authorities is not mentioned in the Texarkana or Fayetteville newspapers, but rather, this information comes from the AP newswire. A sample article derived from the AP newswire and published in The San Bernardino County Sun, Saturday, November 6, 1948, page 3, has been transcribed.

5. United Press News Agency (UP) -- Many newspapers throughout the United States relied upon the UP newswire for their articles on Doodie. Like the AP newswire, the UP newswire also included some information that was not present in the Texarkana or Fayetteville newspapers. For example, descriptions of Doodie in which he was said to be a "moody college freshman" and descriptions from his friends that Doodie had an "inferiority complex" came from the UP newswire, but such descriptions were not present in the Fayetteville or Texarkana newspapers. A sample article derived from the UP newswire and published in The Mason City Globe-Gazette, Saturday, November 6, 1948, page 1, has been transcribed.

I encourage people to read all five newspapers' accounts. It is my impression that the TG articles, TDN articles, and local Texarkana authorities (such as Sheriffs Davis and Presley) exert considerable energy trying to convince the public that Doodie did not do what he claimed to do. In contrast, the NWAT articles, Fayetteville authorities (such as Sheriff Crider), and Homer Garrison (Chief of the Texas Rangers and Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety) appear to maintain more open mindedness to the possibility that Doodie was telling the truth. Moreover, in calling Doodie "moody," the UP newswire stands in contrast with the account from Doodie's sister in which she said she did not remember Doodie being "moody."

Northwest Arkansas Times Transcriptions

Northwest Arkansas Times, Page 1, Saturday, November 6, 1948:

Death Case Investigated

Suicide Says He Was Killer At Texarkana

H. B. Tennison Swallows Fatal Dose of Poison

Police were making an effort today to determine if a University of Arkansas freshman, H. B. Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, whose body was found in his room at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry McGee, 617 North College, yesterday afternoon, could have been the phantom killer who terrorized the Texarkana, Texas-Arkansas area in 1946. In a note found at the bottom of a number of letters and papers in a strong box in his room, he said:

This was one of a number of notes found about his room. One of them was prepared in the form of a college theme, place in a brown folder headed: “My Final Word,” and dedicated to “To All My Friends,” in which he bid his mother and father goodby [sic], and told of his unhappiness.

The youth’s body was found by Mrs. McGee when she started to clean up the room yesterday afternoon. [Friday afternoon, November 5, 1948]. Coroner Edmond Watson said the boy had died the night before as the result of taking poison, which he purchased at a local drug store on November 3, saying he wanted it to kill rats.

An analysis of the stomach contents, made today by R. A. Schroeder, instructor in chemistry at the University, showed he had swallowed cyanide of mercury, the coroner reported. A small quantity of the poison was found stuck to the end of a fountain pen, which he had referred to in several of his notes. A box which had contained the poison tablets was found in a waste basket.

Cut Classes

Young Tennison had not been attending classes at the University for the past two weeks, University authorities reported. Some of his grades for the first four weeks of school were said to be satisfactory, other unsatisfactory, but officials said it was too early to tell if he would have made grades to keep him in school. In a note he spoke of cutting classes, and eating candy instead of food he needed, and of attending picture shows – “One day I went to three shows, all different, and it was a school day, too.” -- instead of studying. He told of “never cracking a book at night,” and of getting “lazy and cutting classes.”

He indicated in several of the notes found by investigators that he took his own life so that his father, J. D. Tennison of Memphis, Tenn., and his mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison of Texarkana, would not have to worry about him.

His mother, who was visiting in Parson, Kan., arrived here last night [the night of Friday, November 5, 1948] and continued on Texarkana about midnight, the Nelson-Savage Funeral Home reported. She called on Sheriff Bruce Crider who is leading the inquiry. A brother Craig Tennison, of Memphis, also called at the funeral home last night but went on to Texarkana, it was reported.

Victim Shot To Death

The Associated Press recalled that the first of the victims attributed to the “phantom” in the Texarkana area were Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, found shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana, March 24, 1946.

On April 14, two high school students, Paul Martin, 17, and Betty Jo Booker, were found shot fatally, near the same spot.

On May 3, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home in Miller County, Ark., near Texarkana. Mrs. Starks, who was wounded seriously, said the gunman fired through a window. Authorities ran down every meager clew [sic clue] without success.

No reference was made in the note to the death of Griffin and Miss Moore or the non-fatal attack a masked man made on a couple near Texarkana in February, 1946.

Folks in Tennison’s home town said they found it difficult to believe that the quiet, slender, six-

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SUICIDE SAYS –

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

foot-three son of an old Texarkana family actually committed the crimes. His death yesterday created almost as much of a sensation, as did the slayings.

Officers On Way

J. Q. Mehaffy, editor of the Texarkana Gazette, told the TIMES by long distance telephone today that a groupd of Texas and Arkansas officers left there this morning for Fayetteville. They included Sheriff W. E. Davis of Texarkana, Ark., Sheriff Bill Presley of Texarkana, Texas, State Trooper Max Tackett of the Arkansas State Police, and Texas State Ranger Stewart Stanley. It was believed that they might aid in determining whether Tennison was the slayer.

Local officers investigating included in addition to Sheriff Crider and Coroner Watson, Chief of Police Pearl Watts, State Troopers Eugene Scudder and D. J. Bodenhamer, and Prosecuting Attorney Ted P. Coxsey.

Survivors are his mother and father, two brothers, J. D., Jr., of Memphis, and Craig of West Memphis; a sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniels, [sic Daniel] Texarkana; his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Cora L. Green, Parsons, Kan.

Funeral service was to be held this afternoon in Texarkana. The Nelson-Savage Funeral Home took the body to Texarkana.

Northwest Arkansas Times, Page 1, Monday, November 8, 1948:

Locker Used By Tennison Is Sought

Investigation Is Continued By Officials

Series of Notes Confusing; Disregard Others, One Says

Coroner Edmond Watson and other officials this afternoon were investigating to see if H. B. Tennison, freshman student at the University, who was found dead Friday in his room by his landlady, Mrs. Harry McGee, had a locker at the University. A number of keys were found on the body, and it was believed one of them would fit the lock of a University locker where he kept his R.O.T.C. uniform and other equipment at times. Officers wanted to take a look at the contents if such a locker turned up.

Three of several notes left in his room by Tennison, had authorities guessing.

In one of them he said: “Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they aare [sic are] only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life. As I think about it, it is none of these things.”

A second he started by writing: “This is just a last word to all of you.” A third began: “This is my last word to you fine people, and you are fine.”

Investigators would like to know which note was written first, for in one of them he wrote: “Why did I take my own life you be asking that question, well, When you committed two double murders you would to. Yes I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night and kill Mr. Stark [sic Starks], and try to get Mrs. Stark…” [sic Starks]

The murders he wrote of were committed during the time Texarkana was plagued by the work of the “phantom killer,” never apprehended back in 1946. The “confession” was found at the bottom of a pile of letters and personal papers locked in a strong box, in the form of a riddle, on his dresser. The numbers which form the combination to the box were found Saturday afternoon inside a fountain pen, which he requested in another note be returned to a local store, where he said it belonged.

The Associated Press reported that Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall of Miller County said in Texarkana that James Freeman, 16, told him he recalled spending the evening of May3, 1946, with Tennison at the latter’s home, listening to the radio. This was the night Virgil Starks was shot to death.

Note is Found

The note found in a brown folder on the dresser of the University freshman’s room, said:

“Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life.”

As I think about it, it is none of these things. They are not the reason for this incident, there’s a much larger point to it all.. Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all of the family can get down to their own lives. Mother will not have to worry about me making my grades, and daddy will not have to put out any more money on me which probably would do no more good than it did in high school. No one will have to worry about me, keep having to push me through the things that would be best for me.

After much thought, I decided to take this way out. It took more thought than anyone can think possible. It started about a week ago, when I began to think of a way to get out of this. Running away would not do any good, the police would find me where ever I went and would bring me back to it all. No, Mother and Daddy are not to blame, it is just me. If I had done what they told [sic me] to do this would have never happened. Studying instead of playing

CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO

around, going out with the people in my age group instead of staying home and dreaming.

I don’t want to hurt anybody more than possible. It is my wish that you will remember me as a friend and a son as the years go past.

Well, the moment is near, I will take the door which says exit in a few minutes. I only want to wish you all the success in the world and much happiness.

To mother I just want to say that you are the best mother a fellow ever had, and I would not want anything to hurt you as much as I have in the past years.

To daddy I want to say thanks for everything you have done for me, and I am sorry about the way things turned out.

Well, I guess I will leave you here. Wish I could stay for a little while longer, but I can not [sic cannot] as I told you before.

Don’t cry for me, just remember me.

Much love to you all.

This was signed in pen “H. B.”

Another Message Revealed

In another note found in the room, the youth had typed: “This is just a last word to all of you. I want all of you to have a little gift from me, lets say a going away present from me. These things are yours to keep if you want them, of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I would like very much if you did, even if it doesn’t do you any good. Before I tell you where the list of things are, you must follow these instructions to the letter.

1. Call of my relatives (cq) and tell them what has happened.

2. Get Craig, Joyce, J. D., Martha, and mother here in the house.

4. Distory [sic] all of my possessions without even looking at them, they are not to be looked at at all, burned in the back yard of 617 North College.

After you have followed these directions, try and solve this rittle, [sic] in it you will find the envelope where you will receive gifts up to $40.00 some less and some over:

February 12 is the date of my birth.

October 30 is the date of my death.

With the right combination you can’t miss.

That’s it, figure it out for yourselves. Bye now, and take care of yourselves.

This one was signed by a rubber stamp several times across the bottom of the page –

H. B. Tennison

617 North College

Fayetteville, Ark.

The riddle which gave a clue to the combination of the strong box read:

“In a tube a paper is found.”

“It rolls on color and it is dry and sound.”

“The head removes the tail will turn,

“And inside is the sheet you yern. [sic]

“Two bees mean a lot when they are together.

“These clues should lead you to it.”

The fountain pen, on which he had stuck a small quantity of poison of the same kind which he used to end his life, was a B. and B. fountain pen.

Among his effects were found two pieces of paper on which he had written an epitaph for his tombstone, and also newspaper headlines to go over the story telling of his suicide.

Northwest Arkansas Times, Page 1, Tuesday, November 9, 1948:

Note With “Clue” Left By Tennison Believed Written Last Week

Officers Seek to Find Dates For Messages

Store Proprietors Recall Sales Made To Texarkana Boy

Sheriff Bruce Crider, seeking to determine when H. B. Tennison, University freshman who took his own life last Friday in his room at a local residence, wrote certain notes, said today that a “clue” to opening a strong box left by the student was written sometime last week. The “clue,” in the form of a riddle, was written in ink on a small piece of paper and was found on the dresser in his room beside a note headed “My Final Word.”

Investigation showed that young Tennison acquired the pen sometime last week from the Top Spot news stand, where Mrs. John I. Smith, the proprietor, said he spend a good deal of time last week. She said she recalled showing the pen to the youth, and that it is the only pen missing from a card hanging on the wall. It was the only ball point pen found in the youth’s possessions, the sheriff said, indicating that the note was written with this pen. Since he only acquired it last week, the note apparently was written sometime during the period from last Monday to Friday, Sheriff Crider declared.

Officers are trying to fix the date of one of three final messages left by Tennison before he took poison and ended his life. In each of the three he said “this is my last word,” and in one of them he said to “disregard all other messages.” He left one note implicating himself with a series of murders in Texarkana in 1946 which were attributed to a “phantom killer.”

In the note in which Tennison said he had committed two double murders, he referred to a View-Master which he owned. Mrs. Smith said yesterday she remembers selling a View-Master and some film for it to young Tennison, and placed the date of sale either October 30 or November 1. She said that he came in on several different days and spent several hours in the shop talking and reading magazines. He bought seven candy bars at one time, and three at another, she recalled. He wrote in one of his messages of eating a quantity of candy rather than regular meals.

In one note he left, the youth asked that the pen he got from the newsstand be returned to Mrs. Smith.

Seeks Book on Poisons

Julien Dupuis at Blair’s Stationers recalls waiting on the youth several times within the past two or three weeks. He said the boy had purchased films for a View-Master – a film viewing device – as long as two weeks ago, indicating he might have such a device then. However, only one View-Master was found by officers in his room, and in one of his notes he spoke of “the View-Master.”

The lock box found in his room was purchased about two weeks ago from Blair’s, Dupuis said. Sometimes Tennison would drop into the store both in the morning and afternoon of the same day, it was reported. He ordered a box to hold the View-Master and reels about October 28 or 29, Dupuis remembered. It arrived this last Saturday, after the boy had been found dead.

Two or three weeks ago he asked about a book on poisons, but was told the store had nothing of that kind, Dupuis declared.

Efforts yesterday to locate a locker used by Tennison at the University were unsuccessful. The University had no record of the student having such a locker, it was learned.

Missed Many Classes

Tennison’s University Teachers,

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OFFICERS SEEK –

CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

Interviewed today by the TIMES, agreed that the student had not participated in class discussions. “Quiet” was the way three of five teachers described him. His behavior was not viewed as unusual, they declared. One teacher said she thought he was timid, and another said he had believed that Tennison was “getting accustomed to his new environment, since he was a freshman.”

Irregular class attendance was noted by all the teachers. Tennison attended only his English class regularly up to the time of the four weeks examination. In other courses he skipped many of the class periods. Two teachers said he attended only one of every three classes each week after about the first three or four weeks of school. After the four weeks exams, Tennison went to classes only once or twice, the teachers said.

In three of five courses he failed the four weeks exams. He did not take the examination in a fourth course. In the other course, his grade was C minus.

Tests Made Of Bullets

The Associated Press reported that a ballistics expert in Little Rock said today the bullet which killed one victim of the Texarkana “phantom killer” could not have been fired from two guns to which Tennison had access. Lt. Alan Templeton, Arkansas state Police ballistics expert, said he had compared test bullets fired from two .22 caliber rifles owned by Tennison’s brothers with the bullet which killed Virgil Starks at his rural home near Texarkana two years ago.

Templeton said the bullet fired at Starks could not have been fired by the two guns owned by the Tennisons. He said there was not way to compare the battered slugs but that the cartridge cases were “nothing alike.”

The officer said, the AP reported, that he had received the test bullets from the Memphis Police Department, which had obtained them from one of the brothers, J. D. Tennison of Memphis. He and Craig Tennison were said to be owners of the rifles.

In the note in which H. B. Tennison said he killed the Texarkana residents, he wrote:

“For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places.”

Northwest Arkansas Times, Page 1, Wednesday, November 10, 1948:

Sheriffs Clear Tennison In One Case

Doubt Connection With Deaths In Texarkana

Two Texarkana sheriffs indicated today that they doubt H. B. Tennison, 18, University student who took his life her Friday, was the “phantom slayer” of Texarkana. But Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that while the dead University Student’s fingerprints do not match those presumably left by the killer, he has not been completely eliminated as a suspect.

In Texarkana, Sheriffs W. E. Davis of Miller County, Ark. and Bill Presley of Bowie County, Texas, told the Associated Press that they believed Tennison was “ill and despondent” when he left the suicide notes. They declared Tennison “had never been a suspect” in any of the five slayings during 1946.

“All guns to which he might have had access do not match any of the bullets known to have been used (by the phantom)”

The two sheriffs also said that a statement by James Freeman, 16, of Texarkana, “eliminates all possible connection (Tennison might have had) with one case.”

Freeman has told Texarkana officials that he recalls being with young Tennison the night Virgil Starks – one of the phantom’s victims – was slain and his wife wounded.

At Texarkana police refused to say whether or not the case is considered closed. Arkansas State Police have issued no statement.

Sheriff Crider said this afternoon that his office has reached no conclusion, and that the case is still under investigation here. Persons with whom Tennison may have talked [on the] last evening of his life are being sought for interrogation.

Sheriff Crider said today that J. D. Tennison of Memphis, father of the dead youth, told him this morning by telephone that he plans to be in Fayetteville Friday [November 12, 1948] to discuss the case.

Texarkana Gazette Transcriptions

Texarkana Gazette, November 6, 1948 (Page 1)

Phantom Murders Revived in Suicide

H. B. Tennison Ends Life After Making Confession

H. B. “Doodie” Tennison, 18-year-old Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, ended his life in a Fayetteville room Friday and left a note saying he was the Phantom Killer who terrorized Texarkana in 1946.

Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider said the dead youth was discovered in his bed at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry McGee.

Coroner Edmund Watson issued a statement attributing Tennison’s death to poison. He said laboratory tests will be made.

Ted Wylie (spelling?) of the Northwest Arkansas Times said the Sheriff learned that the boy had purchased cyanide of mercury on Nov. 3 saying he wanted use it as rat poison.

The youth linked himself to the slaying of Betty Jo Booker, Paul Martin, and Virgil Starks, and the wounding of Mrs. Starks early in 1946 by leaving a note in a strong-box “confessing” to the crimes.

Sheriff Crider said in addition several other notes supposedly written by the youth were found in his room. Some of the notes were more than 500 words long.

The sheriff said that a bizarre note, found in a folder such as is used to contain college thesis, actually led to the alleged confession. The note read:

“The opening to my box will be found in the following few lines.

“In a tube of paper is found, rolls on colors and it is dry and sound

“The head removes, the tail will turn, and inside is the sheet you yearn.

“Two bees mean a lot when they are together. These clues should lead you to it.

The note was found in a Beebe fountain pen which in turn was inside a locked box in the room. The sheriff said poison was found on the cap of the pen.

Texarkana officers meanwhile withheld comment on the alleged confession of Tennison that he was the killer sought throughout the nation for the deaths here.

Sheriff W. E. Davis and Sheriff Bill Presley, working together, said they were surprised by the new development and were awaiting further information.

The sheriffs said the youth was never a suspect in the killings in which hundreds were grilled, but added without elaboration that a detailed investigation will be made into all aspects of the case.

Meanwhile Max Tackett, Arkansas State Police investigator, closely connected with the probes into the unsolved killings here, left El Dorado for Fayetteville to investigate.

Texas Ranger Stewart Stanley, who also worked with local officers, arrived here from Clarksville to stand by on the orders from M. T. (Lone Wolf) Gonzaullas, Ranger officer who led the manhunt for the phantom.

The general reaction of the officers contacted seemed to reflect doubt that the youth was the killer. The officers however are awaiting answers to a number of questions.

Fingerprints were removed from the body by Arkansas State Police.

Officers here said they requested the prints to see if any match can be made on still unclassified prints taken at the scenes of the murders in Texarkana, Texas.

In was learned that authorities here no longer consider the Starks case and that of the teen-agers, Martin and Booker, linked together.

Thus the note left by the youth was not at this time being given much weight, although official comment is not available.

There was no reference in Tennison’s note to the death of Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard Griffin, 29, who were killed on a side road near Texarkana, Texas on March 24, 1946.

The note, discovered by the authorities in the strongbox, the first apparently of a number since found and being studied by the police, read as follows:

“To Whom It May Concern:

This is my last word to you fine people, and you are fine.

I want to thank you for all the trouble that you have gone to, to send me to college and to bring me up, you have really been wonderful.

Please take my bankroll and give it to Daddy, I think it should go to

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Phantom Murders Revived

(Continued from Page One)

him, and tell him I don’t want the car now.

Well, goodbye everybody. See you sometime, if I make the grade which will be hard for me to make.”

The note was signed “H. B. Tennison.”

“Ella Lee” is Mrs. McGee, at whose house the boy roomed. “Belva Jo,” according to the Northwest Arkansas Times at Fayetteville, is the 12-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. McGee. “Craig” is the dead youth’s older brother.

Police said the youth had made several rough drafts of his note in pencil and then completed typewritten copies.

In subsequent notes found by officers the youth had gone as far as the dash off sample newspaper headlines reporting his death.

One of these, according to Editor Wylie, read: “UA Student Found Dead” another, “UA Student Commits Suicide.”

Tennison even wrote his own epitaph, oddly enough dating his death on October 2.

It read: “Here lies H. B. Tennison, Born Feb. 12, 1930, Died Oct. 2, 1948. He committed suicide for the happiness of his family. May he rest in peace. Amen.”

Another note found among the effects was quoted as saying:

“Call my relatives and tell them what happened . . . “

“I am to have a simple funeral, not a flower is to be on the set, not a flower. I am to be put in a simple wooden box, and be Burried (buried) in the country, not a cemetery, about five miles from the University of Arkansas in any direction

He also requested his possessions be destroyed without anyone seeing them and asked “they be burned in the backyard of 617 North College,” apparently the address of the McGees.

A contradictory note about the date of his death was later unearthed. This one read: “Feb. 12 the day of my birth. Oct. 30 the day of my death, with the right combination you can’t miss.”

The note Wylie said, promised $40 to anyone who solved it.

Officers in Fayetteville notified the youth’s father, J. D. Tennison, now in Memphis, and the youth’s mother, visiting at the time in Parsons, Kans.

Sheriff Crider said the mother was enroute to Fayetteville and was expected by early Saturday.

The suicide note left by Tennison revived over the nation the Phantom killings that first shocked then shook the twin cities.

Newspapers over the nation again concentrated their attention on this city and wire services began humming the details of the death.

The attacks and murder occurred at ominous three-week periods, and long before the third attack Texarkana was a city living in fear.

The man hunt for the phantom has been called the most extensive in the history of the Southwest.

Citizens went armed and locked their doors, leaving lights on at night. Liquor stores voluntarily closed their doors early. Few persons were found on the streets after dark. And strangely, petty crime stopped, for citizens were alert and apprehension might have meant death.

The first assault on Feb. 22 was not a murder and some officers do not believe that the phantom was involved. Mrs. Mary Jean (spelling?) Larey, 19, said a masked man carrying a gun approached the car in which she and Jimmy Hollis were parked.

She said the man beat and stomped her companion and “abused me terribly.” She said she begged him to kill her.

After the assailant had fled, she managed to stumble to a nearby house and spread the alarm. Hollis, in the meantime, had regained consciousness and had gone for help.

The first assault and murder occurred on March 24.

Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard Griffin, 29, were killed on a side road near here. It was not far from where Mrs. Larey’s experience took place.

But exactly what happened (to?) Miss Moore and Griffin was not known, except that Griffin was brutally beaten and killed, and Miss Moore assaulted and killed. Their bodies were found the following morning, in their car.

Three weeks later it happened again. This time the victims were two popular teen-agers – Betty Joe Booker and Paul Martin, 15, and 17, respectively.

The same thing occurred here – the same pattern of beating and death for the man, assault and finally death for the girl. The young couple had attended a dance, they had parked and then an unknown man had attacked and killed them. Their bodies were also found the following morning, some distance apart. And again, the site was in the approximate locality as the others.

Three weeks after the April attack the phantom struck again. This time it was not a couple parked in a car on a dark roadside. It occurred at a farm house, a near white six-room bungalow near Texarkana.

The victim was Virgil Starks, who was shot to death. His wife was wounded. The mysterious killer fled.

Texarkana Gazette, November 6, 1948 (Page 1)

Friends of Tennison Family Find It Hard To Believe Confession

Friends and neighbors of Mrs. Jimmie Tennison who knew the tall, gangling son she called “Doodie” were stunned Friday night at his suicide and found it difficult to believe that the youth had anything to do with Texarkana’s Phantom murders of 1946.

He was a boy who seemed to grow up almost overnight, being 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing about 130 pounds.

Although he was extremely shy around strangers, his sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel, said that she could not remember him as having been a moody person but, on the contrary, he had a rather sunny disposition.

She said that before he finished high school he came to see her quite frequently and often stayed with her children while she and her husband went to the movies. He did not have many boy or girl companions, although he played the trombone in the Texarkana, Ark. high school band. He had a fondness for comic books and was an eager listener to radio plays and was particularly fond of quiz programs.

At one time he worked as a part-time usher in one of the Texarkana theaters.

He was only an average student and did not appear to be too interested in his school work.

Following his graduation from high school last June, he travelled for this father’s Memphis firm, Tennison Bros. Inc., manufacturers of sheet metal products.

His sister said that to her knowledge he had never owned a gun other than an air gun which he had when he was a little boy. She said she did not believe he knew how to operate a gun. She could not say whether he knew how to drive an automobile two years ago.

Clark Brown, step-father of Betty Jo Booker, one of the victims of Texarkana’s Phantom killer, said Friday night that he and Mrs. Brown do not believe that their daughter and the Tennison boy were friends.

“We feel sure he wasn’t one of her friends,” they said. “We didn’t know him and we contacted two or three of her friends and they said they scarcely knew him.”

Betty Jo would have been 18 year old now. She attended Texarkana, Ark., and Texarkana, Texas high schools and played in the Arkansas high band a part of the time the Tennison boy did, her father said.

In Memphis, the boy’s father expressed amazement that his son might have committed the murders or that he had committed suicide.

He said his son traveled with him during the summer and that the boy appeared to be rational in every respect.

When told that the boy had written notes in poetic rhythm, he said as far as he knew, his son had never tried to write poetry.

Mr. Tennison said he believed the boy was ill at the time and not responsible for the text of the notes. He said, however, that as far as he knew, the boy was in good condition. He could not recall where his son was at the time of the Phantom killings.

Texarkana Gazette, November 7, 1948 (Page 1)

Tennison Case Officers To Arrive Here Today To Check Fingerprints

(Under this Headline are two separate sub-headlines, each with its own article.)

Phantom Victim’s Mother Visits Mrs. Tennison

Declares She Feels Youth Had Nothing To Do With Daughter’s Death

By Mary Powell Of the Gazette Staff

Mrs. Clark Brown, mother of the Phantom’s victim, Betty Jo Booker, called on Mrs. Jimmie Tennison Saturday afternoon to offer her sympathy and to assure her that she felt that young H. B. Tennison had nothing to do with the death of her daughter.

The two Texarkana mothers, both of whom have lost a child in violent tragic death, met in Mrs. Tennison bedroom. Mrs. O. J. Buchanek, sister of Mrs. Tennison, was present when the two women met and said that Mrs. Tennison was extremely grateful to Mrs. Brown for coming to see her.

Mrs. Tennison was quoted as saying, “I know it has been hard for Mr. and Mrs. Brown to come to see me at this time and I deeply appreciate their kindness. Their visit and comforting words have meant much to me.”

Mrs. Buchanek, whom Mrs. Tennison was visiting in Parsons, Kan. When she was informed of the tragic death of her youngest son, said that Mrs. Brown told her that she had great sympathy for Mrs. Tennison and her family.

Mrs. Buchanek said that Mrs. Brown agreed with the family’s conclusion that the suicide notes left by young Tennison, in which he professed he was the Phantom murderer, were the product of a distraught mind.

Mrs. Brown told Mrs. Buchanek that she knew H. B. Tennison and that he and her daughter had played in the Arkansas high school band together. She said that she knew that Betty Jo did not go with H. B. and he did not intimate that he would like to go with her. “I believe he was too fine a boy to have committed such a crime,” Mrs. Brown said.

Mrs. Buchanek said Mrs. Brown told her that she knew exactly what Mrs. Tennison was going through. “Since I have felt tragedy such as this, I know how she feels and I want to offer her my deepest sympathy.”

The older brothers of Tennison said Saturday that his murder “confession” and subsequent suicide were “fantastic things” induced by reading too many comic books.

J. D. Tennison, Jr., the oldest brother, said “I don’t see how anybody who knew H. B. could believe he could have committed these murders he refers to in his notes. He just wasn’t’ the type.”

Craig Tennison, the other brother, said he taught H. B. how to drive an automobile in the summer of 1947 while both were at Parsons, Ka. He recalled the youth showed little interest in learning and the lessons consumed some time.

When asked about his brother’s knowledge of weapons, J. D. said “Doodie” (H. B.) showed no interest in guns or hunting. “I doubt whether he knew how to load a gun,” he said.

Both brothers were in Memphis when informed of the death of their brother.

Craig brought Mrs. Tennison to Texarkana from Fayetteville.

Private funeral services, attended by the family and close friends of the family, were held at 4 p. m. Saturday in the family home, 602 Hickory. The Rev. Gerald Miller officiated and burial was in Hillcrest cemetery.

Pallbearers were Ed Berry, Jr., James Freeman, Don Wood, E. B. Mathis, J. Q. Mahaffey, and Bruce Cullom.

Texarkana Gazette, (This second article was also on Page 1 of Texarkana Gazette, November 7, 1948)

Youth’s Claim Of Being Phantom Murderer Probed

Special investigators conducting a detailed inquiry to determine whether 18-year-old H. B. Tennison really was the Phantom murderer of Texarkana were expected to arrive in Texarkana from Fayetteville, Ark. early Sunday morning with a set of the young man’s fingerprints.

It is expected that officers will immediately check fingerprints taken by Fayetteville police with sets of fingerprints taken at the murder scenes.

Miller County Sheriff W. E. Davis, Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley, Arkansas State Police Investigator, Max Tackett, and Texas Ranger Stewart Stanley, who have spent 31 months attempting to apprehend the mysterious slayer of five Texarkana residents, were in Fayetteville all day Saturday checking young Tennison’s claim that he was the murderer.

A reporter fro the Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville newspaper, said late Saturday afternoon that the special investigators were on their way back to Texarkana. He said that they told him the fingerprints had not been checked to date, as the prints taken at the murder scene were on file in Texarkana.

It was in a suicide farewell note left by Tennison, University of Arkansas Student, that he claimed to be the Phantom murderer. Tennison was found dead in his room at a private residence in Fayetteville Friday. A coroner’s verdict said he had committed suicide by poison.

In one of several notes written by the youth, a member of a prominent Texarkana family, he said he killed himself because he was the mysterious slayer. He specifically listed three of the five persons slain in the series of murders -- Betty Jo Booker, Paul Martin, and Virgil Starks. Two others, Polly Ann Moore, and Richard Griffin, were not mentioned.

Officers said they planned to “check all the angles” of the confession.

The Fayetteville reporter quoted police Saturday as saying they had reached no conclusions concerning Tennison’s confession.

Texarkana Gazette, November 8, 1948 (Page 1)

Note Canceling Murder Admission Found

Second Message By H. B. Tennison Revealed by Sheriff

The riddle of the notes left behind by H. B. “Doodie” Tennison when he took his life Friday in Fayetteville deepened Sunday [November 7, 1948] when Sheriff Bruce Crider revealed the youth left behind a message denying he was implicated in the Texarkana phantom murders of 1946.

Meanwhile, in Texarkana, James Freeman, 16, of 406 Hickory, a close friend of the Tennison youth, came forward and made a statement in which he said he was with Tennison in the latter’s home the night Virgil Starks was fatally shot.

Tennison left behind a signed note in his Fayetteville room Friday saying he killed three of the five persons whose murders are attributed to the phantom killer.

The Associated Press reported that Fayetteville authorities were studying the notes left behind by the youth before he swallowed poison in his room.

The sheriff said he had no idea in which order the notes were written since all were undated and either were written in longhand or were typewritten.

The note revealed by the sheriff Sunday stated:

“Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life.

“As I think about it, it is none of these things. They are not the reasons for this incident there’s a much later point to it all. Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all the family can get down to their own lives.

“Mother will not have to worry about me making my grades, and daddy will not have to put out more money on me, which would do no more good than it did in high school.

“No one will have to worry about me, keep having to push me through the things which would be best for me.”

The note also said: “Running away would not do any good, the police would find me wherever I went and would bring me back to it all.” The AP quote the sheriff as saying the note also told of inattention to classwork and contained personal messages to his parents.

In the Texarkana development, Freeman made the statement to Robert E. Hall, deputy prosecutor, after hearing, he said, that Tennison had “confessed” to the fatal shooting of Starks at Starks’ home on May 3.

Freeman told the Texarkana Gazette that he and the Tennison youth were together playing cards or checkers between 7 p. m. and midnight. He said to the best of his recollection they heard of the murder over the radio or someone came in and told them about the killing.

Sheriffs W. E. Davis and Bill Presley are also awaiting word from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington and from Austin, Texas, where Tennison’s fingerprints are being compared with still unclassified prints found on an automobile involved in the phantom slaying.

Sheriff Davis said word is expected within the next 48 hours from this angle.

Both sheriffs said in view of the developments they would continue to check every phase and detail before making any formal statements.

The officers said photostatic copies of all the notes written by Tennison were being made and would be sent here for further study.

The sheriffs said outside of the notes very little could be found in the Fayetteville room where the youth stayed while attending the university.

Tennison’s shyness with people cut down his circle of friends and the few persons he talked to throw little light on his actions while there, they said.

The sheriffs said Mr. and Mrs. Harry McGee, at whose home the youth boarded, said he was very polite and thoughtful and his actions above reproach.

The officers said in one instance the youth mentioned the Texarkana slayings but no more than in a conversation about his home town.

The sheriffs said they examined the notes left behind by the youth and in general they were messages directed to his parents or apparently thoughts he jotted down for himself.

In Fayetteville, Sheriff Crider said officers also found a note stating “this is just a last word to all of you.” It gave certain directions and contained a riddle which it said would tell where to find gifts.

Tags with various names were found in the room indicating he had not prepared and hidden any gifts.

The sheriff said other handwritten and typewritten notes were found and in the room there was a printed sign reading: “Do not disturb, death in the making.” And two suggested newspaper headlines announcing his death.

Another note again bearing on his reasons for taking his life disclosed:

“After much thought, I decided to take this way out. It took more thought than anyone could think possible. It started about a week ago, when I began to think of a way to get out of this. Running away would not do any good, the police would find me wherever I went and would bring me back to it all. No, Mother and Daddy are not to blame, it is just me. If I had done what they told to do this would have never happened. Studying instead of playing around, going out with people in my age group instead of staying home and dreaming.

“I wanted to go into the business, that is why I worked in the factory and traveled on the road. I liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but when I came to the University of Arkansas I could not seem to get the right feeling, I got lazy and cut classes when I felt like it. I never had any excuse for my absences I just played around. I never even cracked a book at home at night, had more fun by myself drawing. In class I did not take notes, oh, I did take a few, just enough to make the instructor think I was working, the few I did take did not do any good for I could not read them. When my check came in from Daddy I went to town and bought things I had no use for, just got them for the purpose of having fun and to play with. I did not eat the right type of food, I spent many dollars for candy which I ate in a day. Sometimes I would not even eat a meal for a whole day, not because I did not have the money, for I had rather have something to play with.

“One day I went to three shows all different, and it was a school day too. Another time I went to a show at the Ozark three times in three nights to see the same show, just a waste of money, I know, but I had to think and when I think about a subject like this I had to be relaxed. Now that I have thought it over through and through, this is the only way I can find that will suit me and my family. I hope that you will see it my way, it is really the best way out for me.

“I don’t went [sic] to hurt anybody more than possible. It is my wish that you will remember me as a friend and as a son as the years go past.

“Well, the moment is near. I will take the door which says exit in a few minutes. I only want to wish you all the success in the world and much happiness.

“To Mother I just want to say that you are the best mother a fellow ever had, and I would not want anything to hurt you as much as I have in past years.

“To Daddy, I want to say thanks for everything you have done for me, and I am sorry about the way things turned out.

“Well, I guess I will leave you

(Continued on Page Eight)

[Page 8, Texarkana Gazette, Monday, November 8, 1948]

Second Note By Youth Found

(Continued from Page One)

here. Wish I could stay for a little while longer, but I cannot as I told you before.

“Don’t cry for me. Just remember me.

“Much love to you all, (signed in ink) “H. B.”

Contents of the note found in the strongbox, the “confession”, already has been made public.

“This is just a last word to all of you. I want all of you to have a little gift from me. Let’s say a going away present from me. These things are yours to keep if you want them, of course, you don’t have to if it doesn’t do you any good. Before I tell you where the list of things are, you must follow these instructions to the letter.

“1. Call my relatives and tell them what has happened.

“2. Get Craig, Joyce, J. D., Martha, and Mother here in the house.

“3. I am to have a simple funeral. not a flower is to be on the whole set, not a flower. I am to be put in a simple wooden box and buried in the country, not a cemetery, about five miles from the University of Arkansas in any direction.

“4. Distroy [sic] all of my possessions without even looking at them, they are not to be looked at all, burned in the back yard of 617 North College.

“After you have followed these directions, try and solve this rittle, [sic] in it you will find the evelopes [sic] where you will receive gifts up to $40.00 some less and some over,

“Feb 12 is the day of my birth.

“Oct. 30 is the day of my death.

“With the right combination you can’t miss.

“That’s it. figure it out for yourself. Bye now, take care of yourselves.

(signed with a rubber stamp) H. B. Tennison, 617 North College, Fayetteville, Ark.”

Tennison was buried Saturday in Hillcrest cemetery here following private funeral services at this home attended by members of his family and close friends.

Earlier his brothers, J. D. Tennison, Jr., and Craig Tennison, stated that the murder confession and subsequent suicide were “fantastic things” induced by reading too many comic books.

Their statements that the youth did not know guns and did not care for weapons was borne out by Freeman, who in his statement noted that Tennison did not care for hunting or shooting.

Craig added that he taught his brother how to drive a car in the summer of 1947, little more than one year following the Phantom slayings here, while both were at Parsons, Kans.

Texarkana Gazette, Tuesday, November 9, 1948 (Page 1)

Tennison Print Results Not Due Until Wednesday

Considerable Time Needed for Fingerprint Analysis, Sheriff Declares

Officers Work on Contradicting Notes

Photostatic Copies of Messages to Be Sent to Texarkana

Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley said Monday night that he felt fairly certain word on the result of fingerprint comparisons of H. B. Tennison and unclassified prints taken at the scene of one of the Phantom murders of 1946 would not arrive Texarkana before Wednesday.

Presley said that it often took considerable time for fingerprints experts to make a positive analysis of fingerprints, especially on a case of great importance. He said he believed he would receive a wire from Austin, Texas, if the prints are found to compare positively. Otherwise the report might not arrive in Texarkana before Wednesday or Thursday he said.

Meantime officers continued working to untangle the conflicting suicide statements left by young Tennison, Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas who ended his life Friday in Fayetteville.

The 18-year-old youth left notes of contradicting statements. In one note he claimed he was the “Phantom slayer,” but later developments disclosed he also left a message which read: “Please disregard all other messages I have written.”

Miller County Sheriff W. E. Davis said Monday night that he had not yet received photostatic copies of the various notes which were found in Tennison’s private room at Fayetteville. He said copies of the notes are to be sent to Texarkana by Sheriff Bruce Crider of Fayetteville.

Sheriff Crider said his office had about exhausted all possibilities from the Fayetteville angle and therefore nothing was anticipated from that source at this time.

Sheriff Davis and Sheriff Presley said Monday night they had nothing new to report on the case.

One of Three Last Notes Written After October 30

Fayetteville, Nov. 8 – H. B. Tennison apparently wrote one of his three final messages after Oct. 30, a Fayettevile news stand operator indicated today.

The 18-year-old Texarkana, Ark., University of Arkansas freshman, who ended his life with poison here last Friday, left one note implicating himself in three slaying at Texarkana attributed to a 1946 “phantom killer,” and another saying “please disregard all other messages.”

There was no date or other indication as to the order in which the notes were written, Sheriff Bruce Crider said. However, the note admitting the three slayings also mentioned a “Viewmaster,” a film viewing device.

Mrs. John I. Smith, local news stand operator, said today Tennison had purchased a Viewmaster and film on Mexico from her either Oct 30 or Nov. 1.

Sheriff Crider said only one Viewmaster was found among Tennison’s possessions and that some film on Mexico was found in his strongbox, which also contained the note admitting the slayings.

However, Julien DuPuis, manager of a stationery store, said the boy had been buying Viewmaster film from him for about two weeks.

Sheriff Crider also said that the riddle Tennison left, directing attention to his strongbox, was written with a ball point pen obtained from Mrs. Smith’s newsstand Oct. 30 or Nov. 1.

Another of Tennison’s final messages, a lengthy typewritten statement which began “please disregard all other messages,” mentioned various activities. Officers are attempting to check on those activities, seeking an indication as to when that note was written.

DuPuis also said Tennison purchased the lockbox from him two weeks ago and two or three weeks ago had inquired about a book on poison, which the store did not have.

Meanwhile, Texarkana officers continued checking there on Tennison’s movements on the nights when Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, were slain in their parked car, and Virgil Starks killed by a shot fired through a window of his rural home.

Texarkana Gazette, Wednesday, November 10, 1948 (Page 1)

Tennison Prints Fail to Match Those Found at Murder Scene

Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley said Tuesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Texas State Police notified him that fingerprints found at one of the Phantom murder scenes of two years ago do not match those taken from the body of H. B. “Doodie” Tennison.

This was followed by a statement from Sheriff Presley and Miller County Sheriff W. E. Davis in which they said they believed Tennison was “ill and despondent” when he wrote a suicide note implicating himself in three of the five slaying attributed to the Texarkana Phantom.

The sheriffs said Tennison “had never been a suspect in the Texarkana slayings.”

The youth, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana was found dead in Fayetteville last Friday.

One of the three final messages found in his possession said Tennison had killed three of the five persons whose unsolved deaths had been attributed to the Texarkana “phantom.”

The youth, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana, was found dead in Fayetteville last Friday.

One of the three final messages found in his possession said Tennison had killed three of the five persons whose unsolved deaths had been attributed to the Texarkana “phantom.”

Two other notes were found, one of them saying all other messages but it should be disregarded. Officers at Fayetteville are trying to determine which of the notes was written last.

The prepared statements from the officers here said Tennison’s fingerprints do not match any of the prints presumably left by the “phantom” when he struck down his victims.

“All guns to which he (Tennison) might have had access do not match any of the bullets known to be used by the phantom,” the officers’ statement declared.

“The statement of James Freeman (16-year-old Texarkana youth and boyhood friend of Tennison) eliminates all possible connection (Tennison might have had) with one case,” the two sheriffs said. Virgil Starks was killed May 3, 1946 by a shot fired into his rural home near Texarkana. Freeman told authorities he was with Tennison at the latter’s home on the night that Starks was killed.

In the “confession note” Tennison said he shot Starks.

At Austin, Tex., Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas department of public safety, said that fingerprints that might have been those of the “phantom” do not match those of suicide victim.

However, Garrison said this does not completely eliminate Tennison as a suspect.

Sheriffs Davis and Presley said they had conducted a detailed investigation of all statements left by the University of Arkansas student, and:

“We are x x x of the opinion that the statements left by him were made at a time when the boy was in an ill and despondent condition.”

Meanwhile at Little Rock, Ark., Lt. Alan Templeton, Arkansas state police ballistics expert, said the bullet which killed Starks could not have been fired from two .22 calibre rifles belonging to Tennison’s brothers and to which the youth had access.

Templeton said cartridge cases of test bullets fired from the Tennison rifles were “nothing like” the case of a bullet found at Starks’ home.

Texarkana Daily News Transcriptions

Texarkana Daily News, Saturday, November 6, 1948, Front Page

Probe Begins to Determine If Suicide Notes Truth or Hoax

H. B. Tennison, UA Student, ‘Confesses’ Phantom Murders

Was H. B. “Doodie” Tennison, Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, really the Phantom Killer, or was his suicide note a bizarre hoax? That is the question police were working on Saturday in Fayetteville.

The tall, gangling 18-year-old youth found dead of poison in his room Friday left a note admitting he killed three of the five persons whose deaths were attributed to the Phantom killer in Texarkana early in 1946.

Tennison’s older brothers said here Saturday that his murder “confession” and subsequent suicide were “fantastic things” induced, they believed, by too much reading of comic books.

J. D. Tennison, Jr., the oldest brother, said, “I don’t see how anybody who knew H. B. could believe he could have committed these murders he refers to in his note. He just wasn’t the type.”

Craig Tennison, the other brother, said he taught H. B. how to drive a car in the summer of 1947 while both were at Parsons, Kans. He recalled the youth showed little interest in learning and the lessons consumed some time.

J. D. , when asked about his brother’s knowledge of weapons, said “Doodie” showed no interest in guns or hunting. “I doubt whether he (H. B.) knew how to load a gun,” he said.

Both brothers were at Memphis when informed of the death of their brother.

Craig brought Mrs. Tennison to Texarkana from Fayetteville and she is now at the family home. She is not available to newsmen.

The youth’s body was scheduled to arrive here from Fayetteville at 3 p. m. Saturday.

Private funeral services were to be held at 4 p. m. in the family home with the Rev. Gerald Miller officiating.

Burial was to be in Hillcrest cemetery.

Pallbearers will be Ed Berry, Jr., James Freeman, Don Wood, E. B. Mathis, J. Q. Mahaffey, and Bruce Cullom.

Hoping to learn the answer, Sheriffs W. E. Davis and Bill Presley, accompanied by Max Tackett, Arkansas state police investigator, and Stewart Stanley, Texas ranger, are now in Fayetteville.

The only statement issued by the two sheriffs was that they planned to go into every aspect of the case before releasing any definite commitment.

The youth’s body is being held in Fayetteville and an autopsy is to be performed at the University of Arkansas some time Saturday.

The Tennisons are a prominent family in Texarkana and the news of the circumstances surrounding the youth’s death has created almost as big a sensation as did the slayingshere little more than two and one-half years ago.

Officers in Fayetteville have been checking on the youth’s background in that community. Sheriff Bruce Crider said that Tennison had been absent from his classes for the past two weeks and university officials unsuccessfully tried to contact him several times.

Tennison was found dead in his room in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harry McGee. Death was attributed to cyanide of mercury poison which Sheriff Crider said a druggist sold the youth for use as rat poison.

In searching the youth’s room, officers found a poem which led officers to a “confession” locked in a strongbox. The sheriff said the note in part read:

“Why did I take my life? You may be asking that question.

“Well when you committed two double murders you would too.

“Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn’t have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it.

“For the guns, I disasimbled (disassembled) them and discarded them in different places.”

Police said other notes, one outlining the arrangements for his funderal and burial and one suggesting a newspaper headline about his death, also were found.

No reference in the note was made to the death of Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard Griffin, 29, both shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana on March 24, 1946.

Neither was anything found in the note concerning the brutal beating of a couple in a car near the city in February, 1946.

The notes are being studied by police for further clues that might unravel the question of hoax or fact.

In Texarkana, numbers of persons who knew the youth found it hard to believe he committed the notorious Phantom slayings which he confessed to in the notes.

Six feet and three inches tall and weighing about 130 pounds, the youth was one who seemed to grow almost overnight. Although extremely shy around strangers, he was possess of a rather sunny disposition, according to his sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel of Texarkana. She said she could not remember him as having been a moody person.

Mrs. Daniel said her brother visited her home frequently before he finished high school, and often stayed with her children while she and her husband went to the movies. He did not have many boy or girl companions, although he played the trombone in the Texarkana, Ark. high school band.

He had a fondness for comic books and was an avid listener to radio plays, being particularly fond of quiz programs.

At one time he was a part-time usher in one of the Texarkana theaters.

Only an average student, he did not appear to be too interested in his school studies.

After his graduation from high school last June, he travelled for his father’s Memphis firm.

Mrs. Daniel said that to he knowledge her brother had never owned a gun other than an air gun which he had when he was a little boy. She did not believe he knew how to use a gun, she said. She could not say whether he knew how to drive an automobile two years ago.

In Memphis, the youth father expressed amazement that his son might have committed the Phantom murders or that he had taken his own life.

He said the boy had traveled with him during the summer and that he appeared to be rational in every respect. When told that his son had written notes in poetic rhythm, he said that to his knowledge his son had never tried to write poetry.

The father said he believed the boy was ill at the time and not responsible for the text of the notes. However, he said that as far as he knew, the boy was in good condition.

He could not recall where his son was at the time of the Phantom murders.

Clark Brown, step-father of Betty Jo Booker, one of the Phantom’s victims, said Friday night that he and Mrs. Brown do not believe their daughter and the Tennison boy were friends.

“We feel sure he wasn’t one of her friends,” they said. “We didn’t know him and we contacted two or three of her friends and they said they scarcely knew him.”

Betty Jo who would have been 18 years old now, attended Texarkana, Ark., and Texarkana, Texas, high schools, and played in the Arkansas high band a part of the time the Tennison boy did, her father said.

Texarkana Daily News, Monday, November 8, 1948, Front Page

Officers Study Conflicting Notes Left by Tennison

Sheriff W. E. Davis said Monday his department was working to untangle the conflicting final statements left behind by H. B. “Doodie” Tennison, Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, who ended his life Friday at Fayetteville.

The 18-year-old youth left behind a note blaming himself for three of the Texarkana “Phantom” slaying and later developments disclosed he also left another message which read: “Please disregard all other messages I have written.”

The Miller county sheriff said he was awaiting word on the result of fingerprint comparisons. Latent prints were taken from Tennison’s body and are being checked against still unclassified prints found on an automobile involved in one of the “phantom” killings of 1946.

Sunday, both Sheriff Davis and Sheriff Bill Presley of Bowie county said the prints were sent to Austin, Texas, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory in Washington.

A reliable source here also stated that probably a check will be made with Winnsboro, La., authorities concerning a night-time killer Winsboro residents feared was the Phantom Killer of Texarkana.

The United Press said some of the residents are claiming the unknown killer who shot and killed Mr. and Mrs. San Paola last week is the killer who terrorized the twin cities in 1946.

Sheriff Hiram Waller said the killings had some similarity with those at Texarkana. The killer used a .22 rifle and fired through a window to kill his victims.

Another new development in the events that followed the death of Tennison was a statement made by James Freeman, 16, of 406 Hickory, who said he was with Tennison in the latter’s home the night of the fatal shooting of Virgil Starks on May 3, 1946.

The Tennison youth in his alleged “confession” wrote he was responsible for the shooting of Starks and murders of Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin.

Freeman told Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall that he spent the evening with Tennison that night. He said he recalled the night because they heard of the Starks killing over the radio or someone came in and told them about it.

In Fayetteville, Sheriff Bruce Crider said he also was waiting on word from Texarkana authorities concerning the fingerprint angle.

Crider said his office had about exhausted all possibilities from the Fayetteville angle and therefore nothing was anticipated from that source at this time.

Sheriff Crider revealed Sunday that Tennison had left behind another note in his room stating that he wanted the other notes disregarded.

The note said: “Please disregard all other messages . . . they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my life.”

“As I think about it, it is none of these things. They are not the reasons for this incident, there’s a much better point to it all. Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all the family can get down to their own lives.”

This and other notes, some dealing with personal messages to his family, others with burial requests, suggestions for newspaper headlines, and some riddles concerning gifts were also found.

Photostatic copies of these notes are now being made and will be forwarded to Texarkana by Sheriff Crider.

Texarkana Daily News, Tuesday, November 9, 1948, Front Page

Rifles Available To Tennison Not Used in Slaying

Little Rock, Nov. 9 – (AP? [looks like AP]) – A ballistics expert said today the bullet which killed one victim of the so-called Texarkana “phantom slayer” could not have been fired from two guns to which H. B. (Doodie) Tennison had access.

Tennison, 18-year-old Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, died after taking poison at Fayetteville last week and left several notes, one implicating himself in three of the five slaying attributed to a “phantom.”

Lt. Alan Templeton, Arkansas State Police ballistics expert, said he had compared test bullets fired from two .22 calibre rifles owned by Doodie Tennison’s brothers with the bullet which killed Virgil Starks at his rural home near Texarkana two years ago.

Templeton said the bullet fired at Starks could not possibly have been fired by the two guns owned by the Tennisons. He said there was no way to compare the battered slubs but that the carridge cases were “nothing alike.”

The officer said he had received the test bullets from the Memphis police department, which had obtained them from one of the brothers, J. D. Tennison, Jr., of Memphis. He and Craig Tennison were said to be owners of the rifles.

Texarkana authorities Tuesday were still waiting for laboratory reports on comparisons of fingerprints taken from the body of H. B. Tennison and those removed from a car at the scene of one of the Phantom murders in 1946.

Monday night Sheriff Bill Presley of Bowie county said he expected the arrival of laboratory reports within the next 36 hours.

He said the experts in Austin, Texas, where the prints are being compared, would probably take considerable time in view of the importance of the case. Prints are also reported in Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratories in Washington for added confirmation.

In Fayetteville, the Associated Press reported that officers there were busily checking the activities of Tennison in an effort to fix the date of one of the three final messages left by the youth before he ended his life.

A strong possibility has since arisen that the notes were the actions of an unhappy youth who enjoyed comic books and crime stories instead of attending to freshman studies at the University of Arkansas.

Sheriff Bruce Crider said one of the notes is believed to have been written after Oct. 30. This statement was made following a report by a newsstand operator that a ball pen was sold to the youth around that date.

Sheriff Crider said one of the notes was written with a ball pen purchased from Mrs. John I. Smith on October 30 or November 1, a few days before Tennison’s death.

The sheriff also reported that Mrs. Smith told him the youth purchased a “View Master” – a film viewing device and a film on Mexico at the same time.

A “View Master” was found, along with the film, among Tennison’s possessions.

On the other hand, Julian DuPuis, another stationary store manager, told the sheriff that the boy had been buying film for the device for about two weeks.

DuPuis also said that Tennison purchased the lockbox about two weeks ago and had made inquiries about a book on poison which the store did not have.

Texarkana Daily News, Wednesday, November 10, 1948

Tennison Prints Fail to Match Those of Phantom

          Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley said Tuesday that Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Texas State Police otified him that fingerprints found at one of the Phantom murder scenes here two years ago do not match those taken from th body of H. B. "Doodie" Tennison.

          This was followed by a statement from Sheriff Presley and Miller County Sheriff W. E. Dvis in which they said they believed Tennison was "ill and despondent" when he wrote a suicide note implicating himslf in three of the five slayings attributed to the Texarkana Phantom.

         The sheriffs said Tennison "had never been a suspect in the Texarkana slayings."

         The prepared statements from the officers here said Tennison's fingerprints do not match any of the prints presumably left by the "phantom" when he struck down his victims, and that all guns to which Tennison had access do not match the one from which the phantom's bullets came.

          At Austin, Texas, Colonel Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that fingerprints that match those of the phantom do not match those of the suicide victim. However he sand [sic said], this does not completely eliminate Tennison as a suspect.

AP and UP Transcriptions

AP - The San Bernardino County Sun, Saturday, November 6, 1948, page 3

COLLEGE STUDENT KILLS SELF, ADMITS MURDERS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 5 (AP) --

A University of Arkansas freshman ended his life here today and later a note was found in his room in which he said he committed two "double murders" at Texarkana in 1946. A 'wave of unsolved slayings in the Texarkana area--there were five in all--were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county said the student was H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 17, a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strongbox in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke up the strongbox by force. The note was inside.

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and killed Mr. Starks and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

Miss Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in a state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, in a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

UP - The Mason City Globe-Gazette, Saturday, November 6, 1948, page 1

Claims He Was Phantom Killer

Police Study Suicide Note Left By Youth

Fayetteville, Ark., (U.P.) --

A moody college freshman claimed in suicide notes to have been the phantom killer who terrorized his home town, but police Saturday launched an investigation with doubt.

H. B. Tennison, 17, of Texarkana, Ark., was found dead in his rooming house here, where he attended the University of Arkansas. In the room with his body--he apparently used poison--were found notes telling that he killed himself because he was the Texarkana "phantom."

Five persons were mysteriously killed in the border city in the spring of 1946, and Tennison's notes said he was responsible for 3 of the slayings. He listed the victims as Betty Jo Booker, 15; Paul Martin, 17, and Virgil Starks, 36.

Sheriffs who investigated the cases, however, doubted that he was the killer or that the deaths of Miss Booker and Martin, slain on a lonely road, were connected with that of Starks. The latter was shot by rifle fire in his farm home, 3 weeks after the Booker-Martin shooting.

The "confession" was found on paper rolled and hidden in a casing of a ball-point fountain pen. Officers found it through another note in a folder.

The 6 foot tall youth, who weighed only 130 pounds, was said by friends to have an inferiority complex which investigators thought may have been aggravated by his going away from home to college.

Transcriptions of 45 Additional Newspaper Articles

In addition to the 17 articles above, I have transcribed 45 additional articles that mention or make reference to H. B. "Doodie" Tennison. The total of 62 articles span a period of years from 1948 to 1956. 61 of the articles are from throughout the United States; the remaining article is from Canada.

Most of these articles were published in the six days immediately following the discovery of H. B. Tennison's body. These six days were Saturday, November 6, 1948 through Thursday, November 11, 1948.

I do not know of any newspaper articles that made reference to H. B. Tennison in the 1960s. However, in 1971, author James Presley began publishing false statements about H. B. Tennison in the Texarkana Gazette, when Presley wrote:

"In November, 1948, a University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana committed suicide and left a confession that he was the Phantom Murderer. But subsequent checking proved definitely that he couldn't have been."

The Abilene Reporter-News (Abilene, Texas)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Student Is Found Dead; Note Says He's 'KILLER'

'HARD TO BELIEVE'

Report Stirs Town

TEXARKANA, NOV. 5. (AP) -- Texarkana was stirred Friday night by the report that a University of Arkansas student at Fayetteville left a suicide note in which he said he was the "phantom killer."

The note was left by H. B. Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, Ark., where a series of horrors more than two years ago left five perons dead.

Friends and neighbors "find it difficult" to believe H. B. Tennison was the "phantom killer," Editor J. Q. Mahaffy [sic Mahaffey] of the Texarkana Gazette-Neks, [sic Gazette-News] said Friday night.

Mahaffy, [sic Mahaffey] who was acquainted with Tennison, member of an old Texarkana family, said the youth was shy and more or less an introvert.

He quote Tennison's sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel as saying the boy was an almost constant reader of comic books and ar ardent follower of radio detective programs.

She also said the youth -- widely known as "Doodie," his mother's pet name for him -- had "seemed to grow up almost overnight, was six feet, four inches tall and weighed 130 pounds."

Mahaffy [sic Mahaffey] reported Mrs. Daniel said her brother had never owned a firearm and knew nothing about them, and she was almost certain he did not know how to drive a car two years ago -- when the "phantom killer" struck.

Young Tennison, the youngest of four children, was a trombone player in the high school band. His sister said he made "average grades."

Before going to college, he worked as a part-time usher in a local theater.

After the murders apprehension haunted every home in the state-line city. With five brutl murders unsolved, the question of everyone's lips was: "Who will be next?"

Women were afraid to stay at home at night, and many went to hotels. Bellhops advised travelers to bolt their hotel doors. Men carried arms. Crude burglar alarms were fashioned. Lightts burned on porches all night long. The city was near hysteria for a while.

"This city is living in an atmosphere of fear," Ranger Capt. Gonzaullas said.

But by then the pattern was formed: The man was believed to be a sex maniac, a sadist. All slayings followed a more or less routine form. In each of the double shootings a man and a woman were targets. In at least tow of the cases the man was known to have been shot first. And all victims were shot in the head.

"The man who shot those shots was calculating," said Sheriff W. E. Davis of Miller, Ark., at the time.

The locale was similar. Miss Moore and Griffin, a war veteran and war plant worker, were found in the rear seat of a car parked off Highway 67, one mile outside Texarkana's western city limits. Miss Booker and Martin were found a mile apart, on lonely roads near Spring Lake Park, north of here. In the same area, their car was found. And the Starks' home is located on Highway 67, ten miles northeast of Texarkana.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[seperate article, also on page 1]

Arkansas Freshman's Note Admits Texarkana Slayings

[uses "DOODLE"]

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 5. (AP) -- H. B. (Doodle) [sic (Doodie)] Tennison, 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman was found dead in his room here Friday, with a suicide note describing himself as the notorious Texarkana "phantom killer."

Five persons were killed near Texarkana from March 24 to early May, 1946. Two young couples were waylaid on country roads and a man was killed in his farm homse by an assailant who also shot and wounded his wife as she fled to a neighbor's home.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington County said the student was a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how open a strong box in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke up the strongbox by force. The note was inside.

ADMITS SLAYINGS

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that ight, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Starks) and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

["Starks" is spelled correctly here, so maybe Doodie did spell it correctly.]

Mis Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm house, and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

Authorities withheld comment on whether the shocking series of deaths had at long last been solved.

Max Tackett, Arkansas state highway patrolman who worked on the "phantom" case hurried from El Dorado, Ark., to Fayetteville, to investigate. Tennison's mother broke up a visit in Parsons, Kas., to come here.

The youth's parents were divorced. His father, J. D. Tennison, has remarried and resides in Memphis, Tenn., where he is an executive with the Tennison Bros. Inc.

University authorities said the youth had been cutting classes for about two weeks but that he was not failing his work.

CITY OF FEAR

The attacks and murders occurred at ominous three-week periods, and long before the third attack Texarkana was a city living in fear.

The manhunt for the phantom has been called the most extensive in the history of the Southwest.

Citizens went armed and locked their homes, leaving lights on at night. Liquor stores voluntarily closed their doors early. Few persons were found on streets after dark. And strangely, petty crime dropped, for citizens were alert and apphrension might have meant death.

Abilene Reporter-News (Abilene, Texas)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[page 1 -- but there are two different verions of page 1 -- one uses the incorrect spelling of "Doodle," while the other uses the correct spellinf of "Doodie." I'm not sure why there are two versions. It might have been Evening and Morning Editions. If so, then it appears that the evening edition got the spelling wrong.]

Authorities Silent About 'Killer' Note

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 6. (AP) -- Authorities maintained official silence Saturday in their investigation of the suicide of a University of Arkansas freshman who left a note implicating himself in Texarkana's "phantom" killings two years ago.

Arkansas and Texas officers were to check the fingerprints of the student, H. B. (Doodie) [spelled "Doodle" in the incorrect version] Tennison, 18, Texarkana, Ark., with prints they had that might have been left by the mysterious slayer.

In addition, they faced the task of trying to trace Tennison's movements since early in 1946, when the "phantom" shot and killed five persons and wounded another within a 6-week period.

Police here took fingerprints of Tennison before Coroner Edmond Watson released the body to the family. It was sent to Texarkana and private funeral services were arranged for 4 p.m. (CST) Saturday at the home of his mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison.

Coroner Watson said Tennison swallowed poison in his room Friday and left a number of notes and from a strongbox in the youth's room, "confessed" slaying two high school students and a farmer and attempting to kill the farmer's wife.

These three deaths and two others had been attributed to the "phantom" who kept the Texarkana communicty in a state of "nerves" for weeks.

The notes gave no motive for the acts.

In Texarkana, the brothers of Tennison, J. B. [sic J. D.] Tennison, Jr., and Craig Tennison Tennison, both of Memphis, Tenn., described their brother's "confession" as "fantastic." They expressed belief it all developed from reading too many comic magazines," but added they were ready to cooperate fully with authorities in getting the matter solved.

Abilene Reporter-News Evening (Abilene, Texas)

Sunday, November 9, 1948 - [Evening Edition, not morning edition from the same day]

[page 1]

Texarkana Youth's Guns Don't Match Phantom Killer's

LITTLE ROCK. Nov. 9. (AP) -- A ballistics expert said today the bullet which killed one victim of the so-called Texarkana "phantom slayer" could n ot have been fired from two guns to which H. B. (Doodie) Tennison had access.

Tennison, 18-year-old Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, died after taking poison at Fayetteville last week and left several notes, one implicating himself in three of the five slayings attributed to a "phantom."

Lt. Alan Templeton, Arkansas state poice ballistics expert, said he had compared test bullets fired from two .22 calibre rifles owned by Doodie Tennison's brothers with the bullet which killed Virgil Starks at his rural home near Texarkana two years ago.

Abilene Reporter-News (Abilene, Texas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[page 1]

Sheriffs Rule Out Student As 'Phantom'

TEXARKANA, Ark. Nov. 9. (AP) -- Authorities of this Texas - Arkansas city said here Tuesday night they believed H. B. (Doodie) Tennison was "ill and despondent" when he left a suicide notice implicating himself as the "Phantom killer."

In a joint statement issue by sheriffs W. E. Davis of Miller County, Ark., and Bill Presley of Bowie County, Tex., the two officers said Tennison "had never been a suspect" in a slaying here.

The youth, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, was found dead in Fayetteville last Friday.

One of the three final messages found in his possesson said Tennison had killed three of the five persons whose unsolved deaths had been attributed to the Texarkana "phantom."

Two other notes were found, one of them saying all previous messages should be disregarded. Officers at Fayetteville are trying to determine which of the notes was written last.

The prepared statements from the officers here said Tennison's fingerprints do not match any of the prints presumably left by the "phantom" when he struck down his victims.

"All guns to which he (Tennison) might have access do not match any of the bullets known to be used by the phantom," the officers' statement declared.

"The statement of James Freemn (16-year-old Texarkana youth and boyhood friend of Tennison) eliminates all possible connection (Tennison might have had) with one case," the two sheriffs said.

Abilene Reporter-News (Abilene, Texas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[page 7]

[UP]

'NOT PHANTOM'

Fingerprints Don't Match

AUSTIN, Nov. 10. (UP) -- Fingerprints of a University of Arkansas student who committed suicide last week failed to tally today with those found at the scenes of Texarkana's "phantom slayings."

The Texas Department of Public Safety made the check after H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, left several notes before taking his own life at Fayetteville, Ark.

One of the notes implicated the writer in the numerous Texarkana murders attributed to the "phantom killer."

However, officers said they would continue their investigation of Tennison's whereabouts on the nights of the slayings but expressed doubt that their probing would reveal any connection between the youth and the phantom killer.

The Ada Weekly News (Ada, Oklahoma)

Thursday, November 11, 1948

[Page 8]

Student Wasn't Phantom Killer

TEXARKANA, Ark., Nov. 9 -- (AP) -- Developments indicated today that H. B. Tennison, University of Arkansas student who enjoyed comic magazines and crime stories, may not have been a "phantom" killer.

Instead, it appeared possible that his suicide note implicating himself with a wave of mysterous, unsolved slaying in the Texarkana, Ark-Tex., area in 1946, may have been a bizarre action of an unhappy young man.

The tall, slend, reserved 18-year-old student from Texarkana, Ark., took poison at Fayetteville, Ark., Friday after spending a week -- by his own statements -- in meditation in movies and his own room. During that time, he said, he existed mostly on candy bars.

One of the developments came from Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall of Miller county. He announced here that James Freeman, 16, told him that he spent the evening of May 3, 1946, with Tennison in the latter's home listening to the radio. This was the night Virgil Starks was shot to death by an unknown assailant.

Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[Page 1]

Student Kills Self, Claiming He's Phantom

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 5 (AP) -- H. B. Tennison, 18-year-old Universty of Arkansas freshman was found dead in his room here today, with a suicide note describing himself as the notorious Texarkana "Phantom Killer." Five persons were killed near Texarkana from March 24 to early May, 1946. Two young couples were waylaid on country roads and a man was killed in his farm ome by an assailant who also shot and wounded his wife as she fled to a neighbor's home.

Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider said Tennison, of Texarkana, Ark., ended his life by taking poison and left a suicide note reading:

"Why did take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too."

The note did not mention the "Phantom Killer" as the slayer of five at Texarkana. However, Sheriff Crider said, it did state:

"Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night."

They were the second couple killed by the "phantom" slayer.

Sheriff Crider said Tennison's mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison, of Texarkana, was visiting her sister in Parsons, Kan., when informed of the death of her son. He said Mrs. Tennison was on her way to Fayetteville.

The sheriff identified Tennison's father as J. D. Tennison of Tennison Brothers, Incorporated of Memphis, Tenn.

University authorities said the youth had been cutting classes for about two weeks but that he was not failing his work.

The fantastic series of crimes attributed to the Texarkana Phantom began on a dark night in February -- Feb. 22, 1946.

Before the siege of horror ended, five persons had been killed. They were Polly Ann Moore, 17 years old, and Richard Griffin, 29, on March 29; Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, on April 14; and Virgil Starks on May 3.

The attacks and murders occurred at ominous three-week periods, and long before the third attack Texarkana was a city living in fear.

The manhunt for the Phantom has been called the most extensive in the history ofthe Southwest.

Citizens went armed and locked their homes, leaving lights on at night. Liquor stores voluntarily closed their doors early. Few persons were found on streets after dark. And strangely, petty crime dropped, for citizens were alert and apprehension might have meant death.

Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[This was perhaps the first Phantom Killer Retrospective since 1946. This retrospective was seemingly prompted by H. B. Tennison's suicide.]

[Page 10]

Texarkana Was Town of Terror When the Phantom Roamed

Manhunt Was One of Biggest in Southwest

TEXARKANA, Nov. 5 (AP) -- Texarkana was stirred tonight by the report that a University of Arkansas student at Fayetteville left a suicide note in which he said he was the "Phantom Killer."

The note was left by H. B. Tennison, 17 [sic 18] years old, of Texarkana, Ark., where a series of horror attacks more than two years ago left five persons dead.

The student was found dead in his room in Fayetteville.

The Phantom's victims were Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard, Griffin, 29, on March 29; Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, on April 14, and Virginia [suc Virgil] Starks, on May 3.

A manhunt that followed was described as one of the biggest in the history of the Southwest. Texarkana was on nervous edge. Darkness brought added apprehension.

The first assault on Feb. 22 was not a murder, and some officers do not believe the Phantom was involved. But the 19-year-old victim says she is positive.

If she is right, she was the only assault victim who saw the Phantom to escape with her life and tell the story. What happened to others can be only official reconstruction, or details of a possible confession.

But this is what happened to Mrs. Mary Jeanne Larey, as told to a reporter:

She, Jimmy Hollis and another couple had been to a show. The first couple was driven home first, and then Mrs. Larey and Hollis parked beside a road near her home. It was about mignight.

A masked man carrying a gun approached. He forced Hollis to take off his trousers, then struck him.

"The noise was so loud I thought Jimmy had been shot," she said. "I learned later that the sound was hi skull cracking."

The man knocked her to the ground also, and then told her to run. She did.

" I could hear Jimmy groaning. The man was beathing and stomping him."

She hadn't gone far before the assailant overtook her. He hit her again, knocking her to the ground.

Then Mary Jeanne told a tale of horror. She said the man did not rape her, but that he "abused me terribly." She begged him to kill her.

He left her on the road. She said she thought he meant to get his car, pick her up, and kill her. But something, she said, must have gone wrong.

She managed to stumble a half mile to a house and woke up the owners. They called a sheriff. Hollis, meanwhile had regained consciousness and had gone for help.

Mrs. Larey was treated at a hospital here. Hollis was so badly injured that his doctor ordered him not to return to work for six months.

Mrs. Larey finally left Texarkana, going to Frederick, Okla., to live with an uncle and an aunt.

She said she moved because, even months after the incident, she was afraid and couldn't bear to live any longer near the scene of her experience.

The first assault and murder occurred on March 24.

Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard Griffin, 29, were killed on a side road near here. It was not far from where Mrs. Larey's experience took place.

But exactly what happened to Miss Moore and Griffin is not known, except that Griffin was brutally beaten and killed, and Miss Moore assaulted and killed. Their bodies were found the following morning, in their car.

Local officers, aided by county officials in two counties, began an intensve manhunt. The town was aroused, but not alarmed.

Three weeks later it happened again. This time the victims were two popular teen-agers -- Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin, 15 and 17, respectively.

The same thing happened here -- the same pattern of beating and death for the man, assault and finally death for the girl. The young couple had attended a dance, they had parked and then an unknown man had attcked and killed them. Their bodies were also found the following morning, same distance apart. And again, the site was in the approximate locality as the others.

This second murder case aroused statewide indignation. And Texarkana became alarmed and frightened, as well as angry. A flood of peace officers converged on Texarkana. The case was turned over to the famous "Lone Wolf" of Texas crime detection -- Capt. M. T. Gonzaullas of the Texas Rangers.

Helping him were the Federal Bureau of Investigation, officers from both Arkansas ad Texas, county and city officials from all nearby towns and the state highway patrols of two states.

Literally hundreds of suspects were picked up and questioned. No rumor was too small to trace down. Suspects were investigated in scores of states.

A fleet of radio-equipped highway patrol cars patrolled Texarkana nightly.

Texarkana became a city of sleuths, but officers were forced to warn some of the younger generation they were going too far in trying to catch the Phantom. Highly incensed because two of their teenagers had been killed, some of them planted themselves as decoys to ulre the Phantom into another attack. They parked on dark roads and waited, armed.

Others trailed persons they suspected. One night Special Officer W. A. McAllister saw a young boy acting suspiciously and ordered him to halt. The boy fled. He was caught after a three-mile chase when police shot his tires.

The boy said he had been watching someone who had left a private car and boarded a bus. He said he did not stop because he did not know the pursuing officers were police. Their car was not marked.

Still, residents felt comparatively safe at home.

That is, they felt safe at home until three weeks after the April 14 attack, when, on May 3, the Phantom struck again.

This time it was not a couple parked in a car on a dark roadside. It was a farm home, a neat white six-room bungalow near Texarkana.

Virgil Starks was in the front room listening to a radio. His wife, attired in a nightgown, was in an adjoining bedroom.

"I heard a noise and asked Virgil to turn the radio down a bit," she said. "The next thing I heard sounded like the breaking of glass

"When I reached the doorway, Virgil was standing up. Suddenly, he slumped into the chair ad I saw the blood. I ran over to him and then I ran to the telephone. I rang it twice."

Again the Phantom fired, hitting the woman twice in the face. She crumpled to the floor, still conscious. The killer, concealed behind shrubbery, dropped his flashlight and sprinted to the rear of the residence, bounded up the porch steps and tore at the screen.

Mrs. Starks got to her feet and stumbled to the rear of her home, trailing blood. Blinded by the blood, she lurched through the house and out the front door.

She traveled 150 yards, crossing a highway and railroad tracks to the home of a sister.

Meanwhile, the killer successfully entered the porch and climbed through a window into the kitchen. He followed Mrs. Stark's path, leaving his footprints in her blood.

Her purse and jewelry were on the bed, but he did not disturb them. He halted at Stark's body and examined it. He smeared his hands in the blood on the floor, an officer said.

Then he left.

Apprehension haunted every home in the state-line city. with five brutal murders unsolved, the question on everyone's lips was: "Who will be next?"

Women were afraid to stay at home at night, and many went to hotels. Bellhops advised travelers to bolt their hotel doors. Men carried arms. Crude burglar alarms were fashioned. Lights burned on porches all night long. The city was near hysteria for a while.

"This city is living in an atmosphere of fear," Ranger Capt. Gonzaullas said.

But by then the pattern formed: The man was believed to be a sex maniac, a sadist. All slaying followed a more or less definite form. In each of the double shootings a man and a woman were targets. In at least two of the cases the man was known to have been shot first. And all victims were shot in the head.

"The man who shot those shots was calculating," said Sheriff W. E. Davis of Miller County, Ark., at the time.

The locale was similar. Miss Moore and Griffin, a war veteran and war plant worker, were found in the rear seat of a car parked off Highway 67, one mile outside Texarkana's western city limits. Miss Booker and Martin were found a mile apart, on lonely roads near Spring Lake Park, north of here. In the same area, their car was found. And the Starks' home is located on Highway 67, 10 miles northeast of Texarkana.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[different article also on page 1]

Hard To Believe Tennison Is Him

[This article demonstrates that J. Q. Mahaffey was engaged in public relations with the Associated Press, probably as a result of Mahaffey's being close friends with Doodie's mother.]

TEXARKANA, Ark., Nov. 5 (AP) -- Friends and neighbors "find it difficult" to believe J. B. [sic H. B.] Tennison was the "Phantom Killer." Editor J. Q. Mahaffey of the Texarkana News-Times, [sic Gazette] said tonight.

Tennison, 18 years old, a university of Arkansas freshman, committed suicide in Fayetteville today. He left a suicide not [sic note] in which he admitted slayings here which had been attributed to a "Phantom Killer."

Mahaffy, [sic Mahaffey] who was acquainted with Tennison, member of an old Texarkana family, said the youth was shy and more or less an introvert.

He quoted Tennison's sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel as saying the boy was a almost constant reader of comic books and an ardent follower of radio detective programs.

She also said the youth -- widely known as "Doodie," his mother's pet name for him -- had "seemed to grow up almost overnight, was six feet, fourch inches tall and weighed 130 pounds."

Mahaffy [sic Mahaffey] reported Mrs. Daniel sid her brother had never owned a firearm and knew nothing about them, and she was almost certain he did now know how to drive a car two years ago -- when the "Phantom Killer" struck.

Young Tennison, the youngest of four children, was a trombone player in the high school band. His sister said he made "average grades."

Before going to college, he worked as a part-time usher in a local theater.

Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas)

Monday, November 8, 1948

[Page 1]

Tennison Left 2 Other Notes

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., NOv. 7 (AP) -- Sheriff Bruce Crider disclosed tonight that the University of Arkansas student who implicated himself in Texarkana's "Phantom" slayings in a suicide note, also left two other final messages -- one of which stated: "Please disregard all others." The sheriff said he had no idea in which order the notes were written by H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, 18 years old, Texarkana, Ark., before he swallowed poison in his room here last Friday.

Crider said one note, found on a dresser, was captioned: "My Final Word by H. B. Tennison." A second note, found in a strongbox in the youth's room, started off: "This is my last word to you fine people." A third note, beginning "This is just a last word to all of you," was found later, the sheriff said. [maybe this note really was found later] All notes were typewritten.

The note found on the dresser said in part: "Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my life.

"As I think about it, it is none of these thnigs. They are not the reasons for this incident, there's a much better point to it all. Happiness. Yes, happiness. If I am out of the way, all the family can get down to their own lives."

It was in the note found in the strongbox in which Tennison "confessed" slaying three of the five victims attributed to the "Phantom" in 1946.

The third note, Crider said, contained instructions about burial and a riddle, which Tennison said, would tell where to find "gifts."

In Texarkana, authorities declined to comment on the case, pending word from a laboratory in Austin, Tex., where Tennison's finger prints are being checked with some found on an automobile

(Continued on Page 9)

The Phantom

(Continued From Page 1)

involved in the "Phantom" case.

At Texarkana, Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall of Miller County announced tonight that he had been told that H. B. Tennison was at his home here the night of May 3, 1946, when one of the "Phantom" killings occurred.

Virgil Starks was shot to death and his wife wounded seriously on the night of May 3.

Hall said James Freeman, 16 years old, told him tonight that he was a close friend of Tennison and spent the evening of May 3, 1946, with the youth listening to the radio in Tennison's home.

Hall said Freeman was certain about the date because he related that he recalled hearing a newscast giving an account of the killing of Starks.

Freeman came to him voluntarily, Hall explained, after reading newspaper accounts of Tennison's bizarre suicide.

Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas)

Tuesday, November 9, 1948

[page 6]

Find Out More On Death Notes

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 8 (AP) -- H. B. "Doodie" Tennison apparently wrote one of his three death messages after Oct. 30, a Fayetteville newsstand operator indicated today.

The 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, who ended his life with poison here last Friday, left one note implicating himself in three slayings at Texarkana attributed to a 1946 "Phantom Killer," and another saying "please disregard all other other messages."

There was no date or other indications as to the order in which the notes were written, Sheriff Bruce Crider said. However, the note admitted the three slayings mentioned a "viewmaster," a film viewing device.

Mrs. John I. Smith, news stand operator, said Tennison had purchased a Viewmaster and film on Mexico from her either Oct. 30 or Nov. 1.

Sheriff Crider said only one Viewmaster was found among Tennison's possessions and that some film on Mexico was found in his strongbox, which contained the note admitting the slayings.

However, Julian Dupuis, manager of a stationary store, said the boy had been buying Viewmaster film from him fro about two weeks.

Sheriff Crider said that the riddle Tennison left, directing attention to his strong box, was written with a ball point pen obtained from Mrs. Smith's newsstnd Oct. 30 or Nov. 1.

Another of Tennison's final messages, a lengthy typewritten statement which began "Please disregard all other messages," mentioned various activities. Officers are attempting to check on those activities, seekig an indication as to when that note was written.

Dupuis said Tennison purchased the lockbox from him two weeks ago and two or three weeks ago had inquired about a book on poison, which the store did not have.

Meanwhile, Texarkana officers continued checking there on Tennison's movements on the nights when Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, were slain in their parked car and Virgil Starks was killed by a shot fired through a window of his rural home.

Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[page 1]

Say Tennison Has Not Been Suspect

TEXARKANA, Nov. 9, (AP) -- Authorities of this Texas-Arkansas city said here tonight they believed H. B. "Doodie" Tennison was "ill nd despondent" whn he left a suicide note implicating himself as the "Phantom Killer." In a joint statement issued by Sheriffs W. E. Davis of Miller County, Ark., and Bill Presley of Bowie County, Tex., the two officers said Tennison "had never been a suspect" in a slaying here.

The youth, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, was found dead in Fayetteville last Friday.

On of the three final messages found in his possession said Tennison had killed three of the five persons whos unsolved deaths had been attributed to the Texarkana "Phantom."

Two other notes were found, one of them saying all previous messages should be disregarded. Officers at Fayetteville are trying to determine which of the notes was

(Continued to Page 4)

[page 4]

The Phantom

(Continued From Page 1)

written last.

The prepared statements from the officers here said Tennison's fingerprints do not match any of the prints presumably left by the "Phantom" when he struck down his victims.

"All guns to which he (Tennison) might have access did not match any of the bullets known to be used by the Phantom," the officers' statement declared.

"The statement of James Freeman (16-year-old Texarkana youth and boyhood friend of Tennison) eliminates all possible connection (Tennison might have had) with one case," the two sheriffs said.

Virgil Starks was killed May 3, 1946, by a shot fired into his rural hom near Texarkana. Freeman told authorities we was with Tenniso at the later's home on the night that Starks was killed.

In the "confession note" Tennison said he shot Starks.

At Austin, Tex., Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said fingerprints that might have been those of the "Phantom" do not match those of the suicide victim.

However, Garrison said, this does not completely eliminate Tennison as a suspect.

The Texarkana officers declined to say whether they had closed the investigation.

Amarillo Globe-Times (Amarillo, Texas)

Monday, November 8, 1948

[Page 1]

Alibi for Tennison

TEXARKANA, Ark., Nov. 8 (AP) -- A deputy prosecutor here said he was told last night that the University of Arkansas freshman who left a suicide note blaming himself for three of the Texarkana "phantom" killings was at home the night of one of the crimes.

Earlier, at Fayetteville, Sheriff Bruce Crider disclosed that 18-year-old H. B. Tennison left two other notes. One of them said: "Please disregard all other messages whch I have written x x x"

Crider said he had no idea in which order the notes were written.

Tennison was found dead in his room Fayettevill last Friday. Crider said he swallowed poison.

Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall said 16-year-old James Freeman came to him voluntarily here to related that Tennison was at home the night of May 3, 1946.

On that night, Virgil Starks was shot to death and his wife seriously wounded.

Young Freeman was sure of the date because, Hall said he related, he spent that evening with Tennison and they heard a radio report of Starks' killing.

Sheriff Crider said one note, found on a dresser in Tennison's room begn: "My final word by H. B. Tennison." It was the one in which Tennison wrote:

"Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my life.

"As I think about it, it is none

See PHANTOM Page 2

[page 2]

Phantom...

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1)

of these things. They are not the reasons for this incident, there's a much better point to it all. Happiness, Yes happiness. If I am out of the way, all the family can get down to their own lives."

A second note, found in a strong box in Tennison's room, began:

"This is my last word to you fine people."

It was the one in which Tennison "confessed" the three killings.

The third note, Crider said, started: "This is just a last word to all of you." It contained instructions about burial and a riddle which, Tennison said, would tell where to find "gifts."

All the notes were typewritten.

In Austin, Tennison's fingerprints are being checked with some found on an automobile involved in the "phantom" case.

The Amarillo Globe-Times (Amarillo, Texas)

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 1956

[page 1]

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Riding With the Rangers on a Phantom's Trail...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first story of a series by a veteran police reporter in which he reveals for the first time angles which did not find their way into print at the time of the original publication.)

By TEX KEIRSEY

Globe-Times Staff Writer

"He will not be caught...until after at least one more tragedy."

This bit of wisdom, in the form of prediction, was written May 11, 1946, under a Texarkana dateline.

I was over there asigned [sic assigned] to work with the Texas Rangers and other state, federal and local officers in their frenzied efforts to solve a series of lovers-lane murders that had thrown that city and the surrounding area into a panic of fear.

I was writing about the "Texarkana Phantom," and after riding several days and nights with Ranger Capt. M. T. Ganzaullas, who headed up the investigations, I climbed out on a limb with a series of seven predictions, the mainmost of which was that the Phantom 'will not be caught . . . until after at least one more tragedy."

That was 10 years ago this spring.

Hundreds of persons have been questioned, thousands of clues have been traced out to dead ends, numerous "suspects" have been released, and several persons who have attempted to make confessions to the five murders have been proved phoney.

To this day no charge has been filed.

THE RIDDLE REMAINS

Who was the crazed sex pervert who killed apparently for the sheer thrill of killing? Where is he now? And, why did the killings cease so abruptly, with no definite clues to the identity of the murdering maniac?

If you could answer these questions your name would be emblazoned in headlines across the continent -- even today, 10 years after the orgy of slayings that had a whole city cringing in fear.

A lovers-lane killing just recently at Great Falls, Mont., is a close parallel to the Texarkana case, and reminiscent of the methods employed at the state-line city.

There have been others, too, over the years. But none are ever hooked up directly with the Texarkana cases.

It was Feb. 22, 1946, that an insurance salesman and his girl friend were held up by a masked man on a lonely road outside of Texarkana.

The gunman forced the couple to leave the car and ordered the man to removed his trousers. Then he struck him on the back of the head with a pistol.

The masked man told the girl to start running. Officers say he caught up with her and brutally mistreated her in manners that a sane mind can hardly comprehend or believe.

And, it is this point of conduct on which the would-be confessors fall down . . . They can't describe this one act of brutal mistreatment, because it has never beeen published and it is so horrible that even the most fantastic liar can't imagine it.

In other words, the stories they tell in their "confessions" do not coincide with the known facts.

Both victims of this brutal attack lived to tell the story, which was only prophetic of what was to follow.

CITY BEGS FOR HELP

Just a month later, on March 24, the bodies of Polly Ann Moore, 17, a war plant worker, and Richard L. Griffin, 29, war veteran, were found in the rear seat of their automobile, a mile outside the city limits.

They had been shot through the head with a .38 caliber pistol, and there were evidences of sex violations.

Texarkana was shocked and stunned. People were beginning to realize that a sex-mad killer was on the loose. Enforcement officers began issuing warnings to young people about parking in lonely spots. Parents began holding a tighter rein upon their young girls.

But if Texarkana was stunned by the second in the series of attacks, it was horrified and left begging for help when, on April 14, just three weeks later, the bodies of Betty Jo Boooker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, were found a mile apart on lonely roads near Spring Lake Park, north of the city.

Their car was found in the same area.

A cry for state and federal help went out from the state-line city. Texarkana officers, though doing their best, admittedly would welcome any kind of help from the outside.

Six persons, three couples, had been attacked. Four persons had died. Two, the first two, miraculously escaped death. How long would this bloody orgy continue? When and where would the crazed killer strike next?

It was definitely time for action.

The governor of Texas ordered the famous Capt. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas and his company of Rangers to move into Texarkana and do everything possible to apprehend the slayer and bring him to justice.

DEATH STRIKES AGAIN

Up to this point there had never been any doubt that all the attacks were being committed by the same man. Descriptions tallied. Methods checked. Patterns were identical.

When I got to Texarkana, shortly behind Gonzaullas and his men, I found them head-quartered in the second story of a downtown business building, somewhat off-center from the main retail section. Captain Gonzaullas has seven Rangers with him. The Texas Highway Patrol at Texarkana had been augmented by four extra cars, two men to the car, making eight extra patrolmen. Then, there was the FBI in unannounced numbers. They were unofficially working on the case because of certain apparent interstate angles.

I introduced myself to Gonzaullas and present my credentials, including a letter from a friend of his in Amarillo. He was cordial, but brief.

"You'll ride with me tonight," he said. "Better get a good supper. You'll be needing it before morning." I later learned just how right he was.

Three weeks following the double killing of April 14, the town and surrounding area was to be thrown into another frenzy of fear, this episode resulting in the fifth and final death in the series.

On the night of May 3, an Arkansas farmer, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death as he sat reading in the living room of his farm home, 10 miles northeast of Texarkana.

Starks' attractive wife was seriously wounded by shots that struck her in the face.

All shots had been fired from a .22 caliber rifle or pistol, the assailant shooting through the living room window from the darkness outside.

Horror-stricken, Mrs. Starks fled from the home, pursued by the man who ahd just slain her husband.

Running through briars, nettles and bushes, she succeeded in escaping her assailant, arriving at the home of a neighbor several hundred yards away.

With this latest murder, the bloody trail of death had crossed for the first time from the Texas side into Arkansas.

Although officers closely questioned Mrs. Starks and all relatives, friends and neighbors, not one single clue as to the identity of the slayer of Starks was ever produced.

Although many Texarkanans attributed all five of the slayings to a single killer, officers who worked on all the cases can find little to connect the slayings on the Texas side with the murder of Starks in Arkansas, except the fact that the latter followed so closely after the others.

The patter was different, the setting was different, the method was different, and even a different type of weapon was used. It is still my belief that there was no connection, although there is a slight possibility that there might be.

By this time, everyone working on the case was surely aware that we were looking for a man who was cunning, cold-blooded and merciless. Everything we did was done with that uppermost in our minds.

[These assumptions could be why authorites didn't discover the identity of the Phantom.]

A MARKED MAN

I rode with Gonzaullas at nights, hoping for the break that would wind up the case. Although I got some sleep during the days, I did quite a bit of lone-wolfing myself, frequenting alone the pool halls and places of that caliber, hoping to be able to stumble onto something of value.

But I soon learned that I was a marked man. The natives wouldn't even talk with me. I was a "foreigner." I didn't speak their kind of English. In fact, I can reason now that I, being a stranger, was a likely suspect in their eyes.

Reading back through my notes of May 12, I find this:

"I got in bed this morning at 5:30 after a very full night with Captain Gonzaullas in a radio patrol car which had finger-tip contact with numerous Texas and Arkansas cars on the job of attempting to trap the phantom killer who has thrown this city and surrounding towns into a nervous dither.

"I was amazed as I watched the operation of the elaborate blockade system. Never before had I realized that the Texas Ranger organization was such a highly skilled and thoroughly equipped constabulary."

The blockade system covered pratically all of Bowie County, on the Texas side, but was concentrated within a few miles of Texarkana proper.

The entire area was divided into districts, with cars of the Ranger force and the Texas Highway Patrol assigned to districts.

It seems comical to me now, as I think over part of the plan of operation.

Can you imagine a steel-muscled Ranger necking a show-window dummy in a car on roadside after midnight?

Well, this was a nightly arrangement.

Of course the Rangers were

See HUNT -- Page 3

[page 3]

Hunt for a Phantom

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1)

armed for the worst and hoping it would come.

Gonzaullas would lay out the plans each day for that night, assigning his men by pairs to spots far removed from where they had done their necking the night before.

FEAR RULES CITY

The captain and I would keep circulating on the country roads, keeping in radio contact with headquarters and with certain of the cars. However, those doing the necking as bait for the killer kept their radio receivers turned down, so that no radio message be heard by one outside their car.

The Rangers had a mobile radio transmitter set up on a vacant lot in Texarkana, which kept in constant touch with all cars, and the cars could talk direct to each other.

Most of our activity was in rural areas.

One night I wrote:

"I'm positive the King of England couldnt get through (the blockade) without proper credentials, and he would wind up in the hoosegow if he were not cooperative."

That night we drove and waded in rain and through mud hip-deep to a tall Indian, and we did not see a single parked car, except those occupied by Rangers.
In the town proper and the rural commmunities, porch lights burned at practically every home, and when you saw one that was dark you knew that the family either was away from home or doubling up with the neighbors.

In some cases, Texarkana men whose jobs required raveling would close their homes and leave their families in the better hotels.

Retail business took a slump in most lines, and bank deposits were far below normal. People were scared. About the only lines of business showing an increase was the sale of firearms and ammunition, window shades and light bulbs.

ENTIRE AREA JITTERY

Shortly after the last of the Texarkana killings, a youth was arrested there on a charge of molesting a small girl. Feeling ran so high that the officers wisely spirited him to a jail in a distant city, for fear of mob violence. People were in no humor for foolishness.

The fear that gripped Texarkana was felt also in distant parts of the four-state area.

Near Atoka, Okla., a transient who begged for food at a farm house and was indiscreet in his remarks to the farmer's wife, brought a horde of Rangers and FBI men down upon him from Texarkana. He was able to prove he had no connection with the Texarkana murders.

At Oklahoma City, police launched a sudden search for a man who bought a bus ticket to Texarkana and disappeared wihout using it. The ticket agent told officers that the man had remarked that he wanted to arrive in Texarkana at night.

The man was never found.

At Dania, Fla, police and the FBI checked ballistics for a link between the slaying of a young couple there with the multiple crimes at Texarkana. The guns were not the same.

Screwballs, cranks and publicity seekers throughout the country sought to "confess" the Texarkana series.

But you can go there today and confess to your heart's content, and unless you really are the guilty one your confession would be listed as phoney.

Why? Simply because of you weren't there you cannot possibly give a description of the act that will coincide with the known facts, some of which have never been printed and possibly never will be.

In November, 1948, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman killed himself at Fayetteville, leaving several notes in which he sought to establish himself as the notorious Texarkana phantom.

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would too".

"Another note read: "Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night."

Ballistics experts said the two guns belonging to this youth were not the same guns that killed any of the Texarkana victims, and the young confessor's fingerprints did not match any of those left on the death cars, presumably by the Phantom. Besides, a Texarkana youth who was a friend of the young suicide produced proof that the two were together in Texarkana on the night that Starks was killed at his Arkansas country home.

[This last paragraph has MANY errors.]

ONE KEY QUESTION

Ten years now have passed, and there have been many who sought to confess the Texarkana slayings.

Maybe the right one will come up some day. If he does, I want to ask him only one question. If his answer is correct, he can be put in the electric chair.

Because no one except the victims and the criminal himself (and a small circle of peace officers and one newspaperman) can describe accurately what happened at the outskirts of Texarkana on the night of Feb. 22, 1946.

And I reiterate that the criminal "will not be caught . . . until after at least one more tragedy". This prediction has held up 10 years and I believe it will continue to hold up.

[This last sentence is illogical.]

Simply because the known clues are too few.

Why did the attacks cease so abruptly? Because Bowie County was swarming too thick with officers -- Rangers, Highway Patrolmen, FBI agents, sheriff's deputies and police. The heat was on.

Where is the killer now? Your guess is as good as the next fellow's. Most likely, he is in an asylum, or maybe doing time in a penitentiary somewhere for another kind of crime.

But if he is still alive and free, I have a feeling that sometime, somewhere, he will commit a crime of the exact pattern of the Texarkana slayings and leave a tell-tale mark.

I hope I can work on the case.

The Camden News (Camden, Arkansas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[page 3]

YOUTH VIRTUALLY OUT OF "PHANTOM CASE"

Texarkana, Nov. 10 -- (UP) -- Texas and Arkansas police investigators were disposed today to discount the possible connection of 17-year-old H. B. Tennison with the 1946 phantom murders here.

The body of the University of Arkansas freshman was found in his boarding house room at Fayetteville last Friday dead with a suicide note claiming that he killed three of the five victims.

But Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said yesterday at Austin that Tennison's fingerprints did not match those taken at the scenes of the slayings.

Following this development, Sheriffs Bill Pressley [sic Presley] of Bowie county, Tex., and W. E. Davis of Miller county, Ark., issued a joint statement in which they virtually eliminated Tennison's possible implication in the case.

The Camden News (Camden, Arkansas)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Arkansas Student Leaves Suicide Note Confessing to 'Phantom Murders'

Fayetteville, Nov.6 -- (AP) -- Was a Univerity of Arkansas freshman really Texarkana's notorious "Phantom killer, [sic close "] or was his suicide note merely a bizarre hoax?

Authorities hope to learn the answer today as they continued an investigation on the poison death of H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, Tex.

For two years police of two states have been unable to solve five slayings at the state-line city. All slaying were attributed to a "phantom."

Tennison was found dead in his room here last night. He left a signed note admitting three of the mysterious deaths. No motive was given. Sheriff Bruce Crider said the note found in a strongbox, read in part:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murder [sic murders] you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city partk that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places."

Mrs. Ella Lea [sic Lee?] McGee, the student's landlady, found the body. A poem was on the dress. It contained a riddle which it said if solved, would give the combination to the strongbox. Officers broke the box open and found Tennison's "confession" note.

Police said other messages -- including one suggesting a newspaper headline about his death -- also were found in the room.

Coroner Edmond Watson confirmed Sheriff Crider's finding that the youth took poison.

The "phantom" slayings, all occuring at night within a six-week period, cast a pall of fear over the Texarkana community for weeks.

The first victims attributed to the "phantom" were Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, found shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana, March 24, 1946.

On April 14 two high school students Paul Martin, 17 and Betty Jo Booker, were found shot fatally, near the same spot.

On May 3, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home in Miller County, Ark., near Texarkana. Mrs. Starks, who was wounded seriously, said the gunman fired through a window. Authorities ran down every meager clue without sucess.

No reference was made in the note to the deaths of Griffin and Miss Moore or the non-fatal attack a masked man made on a couple near Texarkana in February, 1946.

Folks in Tennison's home town said they found it difficult to believe that the quiet, slender, six-foot-four son of an old Texarkana family, actually committed the crimes. His death yesterday created almost as much of a sensation as did the slayings.

Tennison's parents are divorced. His mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison of Texarkana, was visiting a sister in Parsons, Kas. His father, J. D. Tennison is manager of Tennison Bros. Inc., a Memphis, Tenn., steel products plant.

this is the text of Tennison's principal note, as released by Sheriff Crider:

"To whom it may concern:

"This is my last word to you fine people, and you are fine.

"I want to thank you for all the trouble that you have gone to send me to college, and bring me up, you have really been wonderful.

"My thanks to Ella Lea (Mrs. McGee) for letting me stay with her during my college career, and to Belva Jo (she is Mrs. McGee's 12-year-old daughter) for putting up with me the way she did, she had to put up with a lot I know, but I fell in love with her about a week ago, if she was older I would have asked her to marry me, but would be impossible.

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question well, when you committed two double murders you would to [sic too]. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker, and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one say me do it. For the guns, I dissembled them and discarded them in different places.

"When I am found, which has already been done, please give this typewriter to Craig (unidentified) and tell him I hope that his child is a boy. It will aid him in work. Everything can go whereever you think it will do best, except for the view-master which will go to Belva Jo.

"Please take my bankroll and give it to daddy, I think it should go to him, and tell him I don't want the car now.

"Well goodbye everybody, see you sometime, if I make the grade, which will be hard for me to make."

The Camden News (Camden, Arkansas)

Monday, November 8, 1948

[page 5]

New Evidence In Slayings

Texarkana, Nov. 8 -- (AP) -- Two developments indicated today that H. B. Tennison, University of Arkansas student who enjoyed comic magazines and crime stories, may not have been a "phantom" killer.

[comic magazines and crime stories]

Instead, it appeared possible that his suicide note implicating himself with a wave of mysterious, unsolved slayings in the Texarkana, Ark.-Tex., area in 1946, may have been a bizarre action of an unhappy young man.

The tall, slender, reserved 18-year-old student from Texarkana, Ark., took poison at Fayetteville, Ark., Friday after spending a week -- by his own statements -- in meditation in movies and his own room. During that time, he said, he existed mostly on candy bars.

One of the developments came from Deputy Prosecutor Robert E. Hall of Miller county. He announced here that James Freeman, 16, told him that he spent the evening of May 3, 1946, with Tennison in the latter's home listening to the radio. This was the night Virgil Starks was shot to death by an unknown assault.

Tennison's "confession" note said he slew Starks and two high school students -- three of the five victims of the so-called "phantom."

Hall said Freeman fixed the date this way -- he recalled hearing a radio newscast about Stark's death. The prosecutor said Freeman came to him last night after reading newspaper accounts of Tennison's suicide.

[Freeman seemingly did not learn of H. B.'s claims from "newspaper accounts."]

The other development was disclosed by Sheriff Bruce Crider in Fayetteville. He said another note found among Tennison's effects requested: "Please disregard all other messages I have written."

There were three principal notes each typed in a rambling style and worder in the nature of a final message. The sheriff said he didn't know which of the notes acctually was written last.

Crider and officers here awaited a report from an Austin, Tex., laboratory where Tennison's fingerprints are being checked against some found on an automobile in which teen-agers Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin went for their last ride. They were killed the night of April 14, 1946. Another couple was slain three weeks earlier.

Deputy Prosecutor Hill [sic Hall] said Freeman related that he was a close friend of Tennison and that they were in Tennison's home from 7 p. m. until midnight on May 3.

In Fayetteville, Sheriff Crider explained that the "please disregard" note found on a dresser in Tennison's rented room, temorarily was put aside after the more startling message, mentioning "two double murders" was found in a strongbox, also in the room.

The "disregard" note, Crider said, was captioned "My final word by H. B. Tennison, it stated in part:

"Dedicated to all my friends. Please disregard all other messages which I have written, they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life. As I think about it, it is none of these things. They (as possible reference to contents of the strongbox note) are not the reason for this incident, there's a much larger point to it all. Happiness, yes, happiness, If I am out of the way, all the family an [sic can] get down to their own lives x x x"

The sheriff said the youth also related in this note about "spending many dollars for candy which I ate in one day," cutting classes and of seeing the same motion picture three nights in succession while he pondered suicide or running away. Tennison, said too, that "mother and daddy are not to blame, it is just me." (His parents are divorced.)

The third note, beginning "This note, beginning "This is just a last word," told where to find "gift" for members of his family and friends and left instructions about his burial. Tennison asked to be buried in the country near Fayetteville. Instead, his body was brought here, where private funeral services were held Saturday.

Crider said the "confession" note started off -- "This is my last word to you fine people."

The Circleville Herald (Circleville, Ohio)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 2]

'Phantom Slayer' Claimed Suicide

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 6 -- Authorities today checked the story of a University of Arkansas freshman who took his own life and left a farewell note admitting he was the "phantom slayer" of Texarkana.

He is B. H. (Dooty) [sic H. B. (Doodie)] Tennison, 17, of Texarkana.

Police attributed five slayings, including two double "lover's lane" murders to the never-apprehended "phantom slayer" in early 1946.

For months the area surrounding Texarkana on the Texas and Arkansas border was terrorized by the forays of the killer.

Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider said Tennison had taken poison. His body was found slumped on the bed in his room by his landlady.

["slumped on the bed"]

Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

DEAD STUDENT MAY HAVE BEEN PHANTOM KILLER

Fayetteville, Ark., -- (UP) -- An investigation was begun today to determine if H. B. Tennison was the phantom killer who terrorized his home town of Texarkana, Ark., Tex.

Tennison, 17, a moody college freshman, was found dead in his rooming house here, where he attended the University of Arkansas. In the room with his body -- he apparently used poison -- were found notes saying he killed himslef because he was the Texarkana "phantom".

Five persons were mysteriously killed in the border city in the spring of 1946, and Tennison's notes said he was responsible for three of the slaying. [sic slayings] He listed the victims as Betty Jo Brooker [sic Booker], 15; Paul Martin, 17, and Virgil Starks, 36.

However, authorities who investigated the cases doubted he was the killer or that the deaths of Miss Booker and Martin, slain on a lonely road, were connected with that of Starks. The latter was shot by rifle fire in his farm home, and his wife was wounded, three weeks after the Booker-Martin shooting.

The 'confession' was found on a paper rolled and hidden in the casing of a ball-point fountain pen. Officers found it through another note in a folder. There was evidence that severl rough drafts had been made before the final version was typed out.

The youth said the murders were committed "when mother was either out or sleep." His parents were divorced 12 years ago, and he lived with his mother.

The weapons used, the note said, were taken apart and the pieces thrown away "in different places."

The six-foot youth, who weighed only 130 pounds, was said by friends to have an inferiorty [sic inferiority] complex which investigators thought may have been aggravated by his going away from home to college.

Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York)

Monday, November 8, 1948

[page 14]

PHANTOM KILLER KEEPS TOWN ON ALERT

Winnsboro, La., (UP) -- A phantom killer who struck a week ago turn this town of 4,000 into an armed camp where residents sleep frightfully in lighted rooms behind double locked doors.

"Nearly everybody in town's afraid there'll be some more killing." Mack Boyle, night half of the two-man police force, said today. "We've got to get him soon so Winnsboro can settle down."

The phantom killer struck only once -- a double kill -- but all Winnsboro feared that the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Paola before dawn last Monday might be the first of a series. They compared the killings to those in Texarkana, Ark.-Tex., in the spring of 1946.

The town went on the alert as soon as the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Paola were found, each with two bullet holes through the head. Four .22 caliber shells were on the floor of their bedroom, Boyle said.

"I went to the stores last Tuesday to get a Little Lock," he reported, "and they were all sold out. Now they're sold out of ammunition too. Half the people in town keep their lights on all night, and every time they hear something suspicious they call for me."

Sheriff Hiram Waller said the death gun was of the same calibre used in the five Texarkana killings, but he did not definitely identify the cases.

A 17-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, H. B. Tennison, last week took poison and left notes saying he killed three of the "phantom's" victims. Authorities, however, have not yet completed study of the confession and the youth's activities.

Hope Star

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[Page 1]

Possibility That University Freshman Was Really the Phantom Killer Is Questioned

Fayetteville, Nov. 6 -- (AP) -- Was a University of Arkansas freshman really Texarkana's notorious "phantom killer, or was his suicide note merely a bizarre hoax?

Authorities hoped to learn the answer today as they continued an investigation of the poison deth of H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, Ark.

For two years police of two states have been unable to solve five slayings at the sate-line city. All slayings were attributed to a "phantom."

Tennison was found dead in his room here last night. He left a signed note admitting three of the mysterious deaths. No motive was given. Sheriff Bruce Crider said the note, found in a strongbox, read in part:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I ddi [sic did] kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places."

Mrs. Ella Lea McGaee [sic McGee], the student's landlady, found the body. A poem was on the dresser. It contained a riddle which it said if solved, would give the combination to the strongbox. Officers broke the box open and found Tennison's "confession" note.

Police said other messages including one suggesting a newspaper headline about his death -- also were found in the room.

Coroner Edmond Watson confirmed Sheriff Crider's finding that the youth took poison.

The "phantom" slayings, all occurring at night within a six-week period, cast a pall of fear over the Texarkana community for weeks.

The first victims attributed to the "phantom" were Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, found shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana, March, 24, 1946.

On April 14 two high school students Paul Martin, 17 and Betty Jo Booker, were found shot fatally, near the same spot.

On May 3, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home in Miller County, Ark., near Texarkana. Mrs. Starks, who was wounded seriously, said the gunman fired through a window. Authorities ran down every meager clue without success.

No reference ws made in the note to the deaths of Griffin and Miss Moore or the non-fatal attack a masked man made on a couple near Texarkana in February, 1946.

Folks in Tennison's home town said they found it difficult to believe that the quiet, slender, six-foot-four son of an old Texarkana family, actually committed the crimes. His death yesterday created almost as much of a sensation as did the slayings.

Tennison's parents are divorced. His mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison of Texarkana, was visiting a sister in Parsons, Kas. His father, J. D. Tennison is manager of Tennison Bros. Inc., a Memphis, Tenn., steel products plant.

This is the text of Tennison's principal note, as released by Sheriff Crider:

"To whom it may concern:

"This is my last word to you fine people, and you are fine.

"I want to thank you for all the trouble that you have gone to send me to college, and to bring me up, you have really been wonderful.

"My thanks to Ella Lea (Mrs. McGee) for letting me stay with her during my college career, and the Belva Jo (she is Mrs. McGee's 12-year-old daughter) for putting up with me the way she did, she had to put up with a lot I know, but I fell in love with her about a week ago. if she was older I would have asked her to marry me, but that would be impossible.

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker, and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places.

"When I am found, which has already been done, please give this typewriter to Craig (unidentified) and tell him I hope that his child is a boy. It will help him in work. Everything can go wherever you think it will do best, except for the view-master will go to Belva Jo.

"Please take my bankroll and give it to daddy. I think it should go to him, and tell him I don't want the car now.

"Well goodbye everybody. see you sometime, if I make the grade, which will be hard for me to make.

The manhunt for the killer who struck after dark has been called on of the most intensive in the Southwest.

While it went on, Texarkana was a fear-ridden community. The citizenry locked their doors carefully, left lights on at night, stores shut up early at night. few [sic Few] persons went about after dark and some people armed themselves.

The two couples killed were caught parked in quiet roads in the same general vicinity. The bodies of Martin and Miss Booker were some distance apart. All four had been shot and beaten -- and both young women assaulted.

These mysterious killings occurred three weeks apart. Three weeks after the high school students, Martin and Betty Jo died, Starks was slain.

In Texarkana, Tennison's sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel, said her brother was a radio detective story

[Page 2]

Possibility

Continued From Page One

and comic magazine fan. She was sure her brother knew nothing about firearms and said he could not drive a car two years ago. She said "Doodie," (that was Mrs. Tennison's pet name for her son) "seemed to grow up over night." Despite his height, he weighed but 130 pounds.

He was graduated from Texarkana, Ark., high school last spring and played trombone in the band. That was his chief school activity. At the university, where he studied business administration, Tennison was not widely known or active on the campus.

Hope Star

Monday, November 8, 1948

[Page 2]

Reveals Youth Was Not the 'Phantom'

Texarkana, Nov. 8 -- (AP) -- Two developments indicated today that H. B. Tennison, University of Arkansas student who enjoyed comic magazines and crime stories, may not have been a "phantom" killer.

Instead, it appeared possible that his suicide note implicating himself with a wave of mysterous, unsolved slayings in the Texarkana, Ark-Tex., area in 1946, may have been the bizarre action of an unhappy young man.

The tall, slender, reserved 18-year-old student from Texarkana, Ark., took poison at Fayetteville, Ark., Fridy after spending a week -- by his own statements -- in meditation in movies and his own room. During that time, he sid, he existed mostly on candy bars.

One of the developments came from Deputy Prosecutior [sic Prosecutor] Robert E. Hall of Miller county. He announced here that James Freeman, 16, told him that he spent the evening of May 3, 1946, with Tennison in the latter's home listening to the radio. This was the night Virgil Starks ws shot to death by an unknown assault.

Tennison's "confession" note said he slew Starks and two high school students -- three of the five victims of the so-called "phantom."

Hall said Freeman fixed the date this way -- he recalled hearing a radio newscast about Stark's death. The prosecutor said Freeman came to him last night after reading newspaper accounts of Tennison's suicide.

The other development was disclosed by Sheriff Bruce Crider in Fayetteville. He said another note found among Tennison's effects requested: "Please disregard all other messages I have written."

There were three principal notes, eacy [sic each] typed in a rambling style and worded in the nature of a final message. The sheriff said he didn't know which of the notes actually was written last.

Crider and officers here awaited a report from an Austi, Tex., laboratory where Tennison's fingerprints are being checked against some found on an automobile in which teen-agers Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin went for their last ride. They were killed the night of April 14, 1946. Another couple was slain three weeks earlier.

Deputry Prosecutor Hill [sic Hall] said Freeman related that he was a close friend of Tennison and that they were in Tennison's home from 7 p. m. until midnight on May 3.

In Fayetteville, Sheriff Crider explained that the "please disregard" note found on a dresser in Tennison's rented room, temporarily was put aside after the more startling message, mentioning "two double murders" was found in a strongbox, also in the room.

The "disregard" note, Crider said, was captioned "My final word by H. B. Tennison. It stated in part:

"Dedicated to all my friends. Please disregard all other messages which I have written. they are only thoughts which I was thinking about as possible reasons for taking my own life. As I think about it, it is none of these things. They (A possible reference to contents of the strongbox note) are not the reasons for this incident. there's a much larger point to it all. Happiness. yes. happiness. If a am out of the way, all the family can get down to their own lives x x x" [x's seem to have been used here to indicate continuation dots ".....", as this was an excerpt of the note.]

the sheriff said the youth also stated in this note about "spending many dollars for candy which I ate in one day," cutting classes, and of seeing the same motion picture picture three nights in succession while he pondered suicide or running away. Tennison, said too, that "mother and daddy are not to blame, it is just me." (His parents are divorced.)

The third note, beginning "This is just a last word," told where to find "gifts" for members of his family and friends and left instructions abou his burial. Tennison asked to be buried in the country near Fayetteville. Instead, his body was brought here, where private funeral services were held Saturday.

Crider said the "confession" note started off -- "This is my last word to you fine people."

Hope Star

Tuesday, November 9, 1948

[Page 2]

Officers Probe Movements of Student

Little Rock, Nov. 9 -- (AP) -- A ballistics expert said today the bullet which killed one victim of the so-called Texarkana "phantom slayer" could not have been fired from two guns to which H. B. (Doodie" Tennison had access.

Tennison, 18-year-old Texarkana freshman at the University of Arkansas, died after taking poison at Fayetteville last week and left several notes, one implicating himself in three of the five slayings attributed to a "phantom."

Lt. Alan Templeton, Arkansas State Police ballistics expert, said he had compared tests [sic test] bullets fired from two .22 calibre rifles owned by Doodie Tennison's brothers with the bullet which killed Virgil Starks at his rural home near Texarkana two year [sic years] ago.

Templeton said the bullet fired at Stark [sic Starks] could not possible [sic possibly] have been fired by the two guns owned by the Tennisons. He said there was no way to compare the battered slugs but that the cartridge cases were "nothing alike."

The officer said he had received the test bullets from the Memphis police department, which had obtained them from on of the brothers, J. D. Tennison, Jr., of Memphis. He and Craig Tenniso were said to be owners of the rifles.

Meanwhile, at Fayetteville officers were checking activities of Doodie Tennison in an effort to fix the date of one of the three messages he left when he ended his life.

Sheriff Bruce Crider said one of the messages may have been written after Oct. 30. A Fayetteville news stand operator reported that a ball point pen was sold to the university freshman around that date.

Two other notes were found, later, one saying "please disregard all other messages." This note, a lengthy typewritten message, related various activites which officers said they will check to learn when the note was written.

Another note, which directed attention to the youth's strongbox, was written with a pen obtained from the news stand operated by Mrs. John I. Smith Oct. 30 or NOv. 1, Sheriff Crider related.

He also reported that Mrs. Smith told him that Tennison had purchased a "viewmaster" -- a film viewing device -- and film ono Mexico at the same time.

Only one viewmaster was found among Tennison's possession [sic possessions] and a film on Mexico was found in th strongbox along with the note "confessing" to the slaying of two high school students and a farmer.

On the other hand, Julie DuPuis, manager of a stationery store here, told the sheriff that the boy had been buying film for the device for about two weeks.

DuPuis also said Tennison had purchased the lockbox about two weeks ago and had made inquiries about a book on poison which the store did not have.

Meanwhile Texarkana authorities continued their investigation into Tennison's activities on the nights when Betty Joe [sic Jo] Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, were slain in their parked car, and Virgil Starks was killed by a shot fired into his rural home.

Hope Star (Hope, Arkansas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[page 2]

Youth Had Nothing to Do With Murders

Texarkana, Nov. 10 -- (UP) -- Texas and Arkansas police investigaotors were disposed today to discount the ppossible connection of 17-year-old [sic 18] H. B. Tennison with the 1946 phantom murders here.

The body of the University of Arkansas freshman was found in his boarding house room at Fayetteville last Friday long [sic along] with a suicide note claiming that he killed three of the five victims.

But Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said yesterday at Austin that Tennison's fngerprints did not match those taken at the scene of the slayings.

Following this development, Sheriffs Bill Presley of Bowie County, Tex., and . E. Davis of Miller County, Ark., issued a join statemet in which they virtually eliminated Tennison's possible implication in the case.

They said Tennison had never been a suspect before his death.

"Since that time a detailed investigation has been made of all his statements and a study of all notes left by him," the statement said. "His fingerprints do not match any of the unknown prints, and all guns to which [sic he] had had access do ot match with any of the bullets known to have been used."

The sheriffs were referring to ballistics test results revealed by Lieut. Alan Templetonof the Arkansas State Police yesterday. Templeton said it was established that bullets from two .22 riffles owned by two of Tennison's brothers do not match those used in the slaying of Virgil Starks.

The sheriffs also pointed to a statement of Tennison's 16-year-old friend, Charles Freeman [sic James Freeman] of Texarkana, as eliminating all possible connection of the student with Starks' death. Freeman told officers he was with Tennison on the night Starks was killed.

Pressley [sic Presley] and Davis concluded they were of the opinion that the statments left by Tennison "were made at a time when the boy was in ill health and was in a despondent condition."

Washington County Sheriff Bruce Crider who originally investigated the suicide said, however, he still is not satisfied as to the reasons for some of Tennison's statements in the notes.

"He seemed to imply in one note that he had told someone before that he 'was at the park that night' when Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin were killed" the sheriff said.

Crider declared, however, that he had never had "much faith" in the notes. But he said he was satisfied that the note Tennison wrote in which he claimed he was responsible for the three murders was the last one written before his death. Another note in which Tennison asked finders to disregard all others was written previously, Crider contended.

[The point made above is very important because it reveals that Sheriff Crider's conclusion about the order Doodie's notes were written contradicts the spin of many of the newspapers which made the unwarranted conclusion that Doodie wrote the "disregard" note [AKA "Final Word" note] to contradict or deny his confession of murders made in the confession note.]

The sheriff said the fountain pen used in the note containing the admissions had been purchased only a few days before the message was dated.

Hope Star (Hope, Arkansas)

Monday, December 18, 1950

[page 1]

Search Spreads for 'Mad' Sniper; Tactics Similar to the Texarkana Phantom

Texarkana, Dec. 18 -- (AP) -- The murderous assaults on seven persons in Philadelphia within the past six weeks recall still-unsolved Texarkana "phantom slayer" killings, which started nearly five years ago.

No one has suggested that the two series of attacks are connected.

In Philadelphia, a housewife was killed Saturday night by a shot fired from outside the house as she washed dishes. Since Nov. 12 six other persons have been wounded in similar attacks.

In the Texarkana area five persons were shot to death and a sixth wounded in attacks ascribed to the "phantom," apparently a better shot than the Philadelphia assailant whom police described as "undoubtedly a maniac."

First victims in this area were Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard L. Griffin, 29, found shot to death in their parked automobile near Texarkana on March 24, 1946.

On April 14, 1946, the bodies of Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, who had left a Texarkana dance together, were found a mile apart in a rural section. He had been shot four times, she twice.

On May 3, 1946, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death as he sat in his farm home. The assailant, standing outside the house, waited until Stark's attractive wife ran to him and then shot her. Although seriously wounded, Mrs. Starks ran to a neighbor's home. She recovered.

Another killing, a few days after Starks' death, differed in pattern from those inflicted by the "phantom," but officers investigated possibility it too might have been his work. A man was found dead on a railroad track near Texarkana. He had been run over by a train, but investigation showed he had died of a blow on the head before his body was placed on the track.

These attacks suddenly ceased.

Despite arrests of several suspects in various states and the posting of $11,000 in rewards, the "phantom," described by a Texarkana psychiatrist as a sexual maniac, was never identified.

The case had some strange aftermaths. On the first anniversary of the slaying of Miss Booker, a young girl friend killed herself. And more than two years after the attacks a University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana killed himself with poison after leaving a note saying he was responsible for three of the "phamtom" [sic "Phantom"] killings. Officers gave little credence to his statement.

Lubbuck Morning Avalanche

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Youth Claims He Was 'Phantom' Killer

Officers Study Texarkanan's Suicide note

(By The Associated Press)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Nov. 5. -- A University of Arkansas freshman ended his life here today and later a note ws found in his room in which he said he committed two "double murders" at Texarkana in 1946. A wave of unsolved slayings in the Texarkana area -- there were five in all -- were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county said the student ws H. B. (Dooty) [sic Doodie] Tennison, 18, a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if th puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strong box in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke up the strongbox by force. The note was inside.

Victims Named In Note

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committd two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Starks) and tried to get get Mrs. Starks."

Miss Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "Phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in a state of tension for months.

The were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in th grim series. In May, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

Officers Begin Probe

Authorities withheld comment on whether the shocking series of deaths had at long last been solved.

Max Tackett, Arkansas state highway patrolman who worked on the "phantom" case, hurried from El Dorado, Ark., to Fayetteville, to investigate. Tennison's mother broke up a visit in Par-

See SUICIDE Page 10

[page 10]

Suicide Claims He Was Killer

(Continued From Page One)

sons, [Parsons Kansas] Kas., to come here.

The youth's parents were divorced. His father, J. D. Tennison, has remarried and resides in Memphis, Tenn., where he is an executive with the Tennison Bros. Inc.

University authorities said the youth had been cutting classes for about two weeks but that he was not failing his work.

City Lives In Fear

The fantastic series of crimes attributed to the Texarkana phantom began on a dark night in February -- February 22, 1946.

Before the siege of horror ended, five persons had been killed. They were Miss Moore, and Griffin, on Marsh 29; Miss Booker, and Martin, on April 14; and Starks on May 3.

The attacks and murders occurred at ominous three-week periods, and long before the third attack Texarkana was a city living in fear.

The manhunt for the phantom has been called the most extensive in the history of the southwest.

Citizens went armed and locked their homes, leaving lights on at night. Liquor stores voluntarily closed their doors early. Few persons were found on streets after dark. And strangely, petty crime dropped, for citizens were alert and apprehension might have meant death.

[same page - additional article]

NEIGHBORS FIND STORY DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE

TEXARKANA, Ark., Nov. 5, (AP) -- Friends and neighbors "find it difficult" to believe H. B. Tennison was the "phantom killer," editor J. Q. Mahaffy [sic Mahaffey] of the Texarkana Gazette-News said tonight.

[This article demonstrates that J. Q. Mahaffey was engaged in public relations with the Associated Press, probably as a result of Mahaffey's being close friends with Doodie's mother.]

Tennison, 18, a University of Arkansas freshman, committed suicide in Fayetteville today. He left a suicide note in which he admitted slayings here which had been attributed to a "phantom killer."

Mahaffy, [sic Mahaffey] who was acquainted with Tennison, member of an old Texarkana family, said the youth was shy and more or less an introvert.

Played Trombone

He quoted Tennison's sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel as saying the boy was an almost constant reader of comic books and an ardent follower of radio detective programs.

She also said the youth -- widely known as "Doodie," his mother's pet name for him -- had "seemed to grow up almost overnight, was six feet, four inches tall and weighed 130 pounds."

Mahaffy [sic Mahaffey] reported Mrs. Daniel said her brother had never owned a firearm and knew nothing about them, and she was almost certain he did not know how to drive a car two years ago -- when the "phantom killer" struck.

Young Tennison, the youngest of four children, was a trombone player in the high school band. His sister said he made "average grades."

Before going to college, he worked as a part-time usher in a local theater.

Lubbock-Avalanche-Journal (Lubbock, Texas)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[Page 10, Sec. 1]

Officers Studying 'Phantom' Case

FARETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 6 (AP) -- Authorities maintained official silence today in their investigation of the suicide of a University of Arkansas freshman who left a note implicating himself in Texarkana's "phantom" killings two years ago.

Arkansas and Texas officers were to check the fingerprints of the student, H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, Texarkana, Ark., with prints they had that might have been left by the mysterious slayer.

In addition, they faced the task of trying to trace Tennison's movements sice early in 1946, when the "phantom" shot and killed five persons and wounded another within a six-week period.

Police Take Fingerprints

Police here took fingerprints of Tennison before Coroner Edmond Watson released the body to the family. It was sent to Texarkana and private funerl services were arranged for 4 p. m. (CST) today at the home of his mother, Mrs. Jimmie Tennison.

Coroner Watson said Tennison swallowed poison in his room yesterday and left a number of notes and messages. One of them, taken from a strongbox in the youth's room, "confessed" slaying two high school students and a farmer and attempting to kill the farmer's wife.

These three deaths and two others had been attributed to the "Phantom" who kept the Texarkana community in a state of "nerves" for weeks.

"Confession" Said "Fantastic"

The gave no motive for the acts.

In Texarkana, the brothers of Tennison, J. B. [sic J. D.] Tennison, jr., and Craig Tennison, both of Memphis, Tenn., described their brother's "confession" as "fantastic." They expressed belief it all developed from "reading too many comic magazines," but added they were ready to co-operate fully with authorities in getting the matter solved.

J. B. [sic J. D.] Tennison, jr., told newsmen his brother was unfamiliar with firearms and Craig Tennison said his dead brother couldn't drive a car until he taught him in Parson, Kas., last year.

Mrs. Tennison was visiting in Parsons when notified of her son's death. She hurried here, where she was joined by Craig, and then returned to Texarkana, after conferring briefly with Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county.

[additional article - same page]

TEXAS RANGERS JOIN IN INVESTIGATION OF NOTE

DALLAS, Nov. 6. (AP) -- Ranger Captin M. T. Gonzaullas said here tonight a Ranger is at Fayetteville, Ark., investigating a suicide note left by a University of Arkansas freshman who claimed to be the phantom killer of Texarkana, Tex.

In 1946, five murders were ascribed to a "phantom."

Gonzaullas said he had sent Ranger Stewart Stanley from Clarksville, Tex., to Fayetteville.

Stanley, he said, had been continuously assigned to the phantom killings sice they occurred, two years ago.

The first victims attributed to the phantom were Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, found shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana March 24, 1946. On April 14, the high school students, Paul Martin, 17 and Betty Jo Booker, were found shot fatally, near the same spot. On May 3, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death at his home near Texarkana and his wife was seriously wounded.

Gonzaullas declined to give his views on the authenticity of the claims in the suicide note, but said:

"We want to be really sure on these Texarkana murders. We have had other confessions -- all turned out to be worthless. I wouldn't give a red cent for the wrong man."

Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, Texas)

Tuesday, November 9, 1948

Killings Alarm Louisiana Town

WINNSBORO, La., Nov. 8. (U.P.) -- Winnsboro got through its one-week anniversary night safely, but jittery residents were still fearful today that "phantom" killer would strike again.

The little northeast Louisiana town of 4,000 slept fitfully in lighted rooms behind double-locked doors, with loaded weapons close at hand.

Fear More Killings

"Nearly everybody in town's afraid there'll be some more killing," said Mack Boyle, night half of the two-man poice force. "We've got to get him soon so Winnsboro can settle down."

The phantom killer had struck only once -- a doulbe kill -- but all Winnsboro feared that the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Paola before dawn last Monday night might be the first of a series. They compared the killings to those in Texarkana in the spring of 1946.

The cotton-country county seat went on the alert as soon as the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Paola were found, each with two bullet holes drilled through the head. Four .22 caliber shells were found on th floor of their bedroom, Boyle said.

Five Questioned

Sheriff Hiram Waller said the death gun was of the same calibre as that used in the five Texarkana killings, but he did not definitely link the cases.

A 17-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, H. B. Tennison, last week took poison and left notes saying he killed three of the "phantom's" victims. Authorities, however, have not yet completed study of the confession and the youth's activities.

The Paolas, who operated a small radio repair shop, lived about three blocks from the business district. Police have been unable to find anything in their background which might lead to their being murdered.

Five persons have been questioned in connection with their deaths, but all were freed without being charged.

Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, Texas)

Wednesday, November 10, 1948

[Page 1]

Officers Doubt Suicide Victim Was Texarkana 'Phantom Killer'

TEXARKANA, Ark., Nov. 9. (AP) -- Authorities of this Texas-Arkansas city said here tonight they believed H. B. (Doodie) Tennison was "ill and despondent" when he left a suicide notice implicating himself as the "phantom killer."

In a joint statement issued by Sheriffs W. E. Davis of Miller county, Ark., and Bill Presley of Bowie county, Tex., the two officers said Tennison "had never been a suspect" in a slaying here.

The youth, an 18-year-old University of Arkansas freshman, was found dead in Fayetteville last Friday.

At Austin, Tex., Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said fingerprints that might have been those of the "phantom" do not match those of the suicide victim.

However, Garrison said, this dose not completely eliminate Tennison as a suspect.

The Texarkana officers declined to say whether they had closed the investigation.

Lubbock Avalanch-Journal (Lubbock, Texas)

Sunday, December 18, 1949

[Setion IV, page 11]

ACTIONS AND EVENTS PUT MANY IN HEADLINES

People Of Texas Experienced Sorrow, Happiness In 1940's

by WILBUR MARTIN

Associated Press Staff Writer

The people of Texas paired ingenuity and ambition with disappointment and confusion in the fantastic Forties.

They worked hard and fought hard during the war years; they gambled on new ideas and a new way of life in the years after.

Three-quarters of a million men adn women served in the armed forces. Most came home.

They came home to find the big pay check of war industries a thing of the past and to find, once again, that the individual guided his own destiny.

Texas City Disaster

One event was the Texas City disaster of April 16-17, 1947. Here more than 500 persons were killed or unaccounted for in the series of blasts and fires that ripped the little industrial city's waterfront. More than 3,000 were injured.

A French freighter, the SS Grandcamp, carrying as part of its cargo ammonium nitrate, caught fire. On the morning of April 16, it blew up. From this stemmed other fires and blasts and another ship explosion, that of the SS High Flyer. It, too, carried ammonium nitrate.

Texas City's disaster was part of the fantastic forties. And the people were there because of them. Industry, much of it born of war, stayed in peace.

Texarkana In Fear

There were other events that carried violent death. Traffic accidents killed 1,757 persons in 1940; 1,979 in 1941; 1,316 in 1942; 1,179 in 1943; 1,373 in 1944; 1,517 in 1945; 1,959 in 1946; 1,947 in 1947; 2,059 in 1948.

The Texarkana Phantom made headlines by his action. A sex fiend who struck in the dar, he killed five persons.

Texarkana lived in fear for weeks. Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard Griffin, 29, were parked on a lonely road near Texarkana on March 29, 1946. They were shot to death.

The struck again three weeks later. Betty Joe [sic Jo] Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, were killed under similar circumstances.

[The only name being mentioned in newspapers as suspect ? (is this true) more than a year after H. B.'s suicide and more than 3.5 years after the Phantom Killings stopped was that of H. B. "Doodie" Tennison] -- check to see if this is true.

On May 3, a bullet fired from outsdie the home of Virgil Sparks [sic Starks] killed him. His wife was shot trying to telephone police. But she escaped as the Phantom ripped open a screen door to get into the house.

Phantom Still Unknown

Who was the Texarkana phantom? No one knows. H. B. Tennison, 17, [sic 18] of Texarkana, Ark., left a suicide note in his room at the University of Arkansas on Nov. 5, 1948. He claimed he was the phantom. But there was no proof.

The explosive personality that was W. Lee O-Daniel stumped the state to win a special election to the U. S. Senate to succeed Morris Sheppard who died in 1941. O'Daniel defeated Lyndon B. Johnson by a narrow margin. Later, he defeated James V. Allred for a full term.

Johnson won the Senate post held by O'Daniel when the one-time flour salesman did not choose to fun a second time. In 1948 Johnson defeated Coke R. Stevenson by 87 votes in the second democratic primary. It was the bitterest election in Texas history and from it stemmed charges of fraud and a series of court battles. The U. S. Senate seated Johnson. He is now serving.

Jester Defeated Rainey

Another election brought Beauford Jester the governorship. He defeated Homer Price Rainey, ousted University of Texas president. Earlier this year, shortly after starting his second term of office, Jester died in a pullman berth on a train en route to Houston.

Another man died in Texas this year. He was Walter C. Short, Major General, U. S. Army (retired). He was the commander of Army Forces at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Short retired and was later charged with "dereliction of duty."

After the war, for the first time, he told his story. He told it to a Congressional committee that found his actions before the surprise bombing "errors of judgment and not derelictions of duty."

Short, who came to Dall to end his years, claimed the War Department singled him out as the "scrapegoat of the disaster." [sic scapegoat?]

"My conscience is clear," he said after the hearing. He said he believed history would absolve him from any blame.

Thornton Killers Sought

History touched many Texas because of Pearl Harbor. More than 30 received the medal of honor, the nation's highest award for valor. rolex replica uk And a Farmersville boy, Audie Murphy, became the most decorated soldier of World War II.

But 15,764 Texas died while serving in the army, and 3,023 while serving in other services.

Violence projected many people into prominance. Tribute and honor did the same for many others.

Oil well fire fighter W. A. (Tex) Thornton was found dead in an Amarillo tourist cabin this year. A mysterious couple is still sought.

Arthur Clayton Hester was sentenced to a long prison term for the bludgeon slaying of his guardian, Dr. John Lord, Texas Christian University dean. Testimony at the trial was the most sordid of 1949.

Buster Northern was electrocuted. He was the central figure in a celebrated court ruling that a first charge of murder did not say a woman was stomped to death by his "feet."

Rayburn Honored

Keith Peterson, 21, son of well-to-do parents, shot and killed in Dallas the girl who spurned his love.

"I'm not sorry I killed her," he said. "I'd do it again."

He was adjudged insane.

Honors went to Sam Rayburn of Bonham, elected speaker in Congress during the forties; to Roy Baker of Sherman, named president of the Young Democratic Clubs of America; John Ben Sheppard, Gladewater, president of the National Junior Chamber of Commerce; Burris C. Jackson, Hillsboro, president of the National Postmasters Association; Perry Brown, Beaumon, American Legion National Commander; Will Clayton, Houston under secretary of state; Jess Jones, Houston, secretary of commerce, head of the Reconstruction Finance corporation; Tom Clar, U. S. attorney general and Supreme Court justice; Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, Houston, firt commander of the Women's Army Corps.

There were others, many others.

There were some you remember for their deeds. Like Mrs. Amelia Anthony, who in 1949 founded in West Texas a "Girlstown."

There were some you remember by circumstances. Like Frank Grandstaff, life term prisoner in Tennessee. rolex replica He composed a cantata about "Big Spring" in solitary and in 1949 was given a six-day furlough to hear it played duringthat West Texas' town's centennial.

The people found the Forties fantastic because of prices, weather, shortages, and a thousand and one other events that followed day by day, month by month, year by year.

And now they face the Fifties.

Nebraska State Journal (Licoln, Nebraska)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[Page 7-B]

Student Suicide 'Admits' Murders

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UP).

Law officers here Sunday night reserved judgment on the authenticity of a suicide confession in which a moody college fresman claimed to have been "the phantom killer" -- the marauder which terrorized citizens of Texarkana two years ago.

The authorities said they were pressing their investigation, but would await the arrival of two sheriffs, a Texas ranger and an Arkansas state police trooper before attempting to arrive at a definite conclusion.

The note was left by H. B. Tennison, a 17 [sic 18] year old freshman at the University of Arkansas. His body was found in the rooming house where he lived. The youth's statement said he killed himself because he was the Texarkana "phantom" and responsible for three of the five slayings in the bordertown during the spring of 1946.

The News-Herald, Franklin (Franklin, Pennsylvania)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

Doubt Suicide Note Claim by Freshman Of Being 'Phantom'

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- UP -- A Moody College freshman claimed in suicide note to have been the phantom killer who terrorized his home town, but police today launched an investigation with doubt.

H. B. Tennison, 17, of Texarkana, Ark-Tex., was found dead in his rooming house here, where he attended the University of Arkansas. In the room with his body -- he apparently used poison -- were found notes telling that he killed himself because he was the Texarkana "phanthom." [sic "phantom"]

Five persons were mysteriously killed in the border city in the spring of 1946, and Tennison's notes said he was responsibelf for three of the slayings. He listed the victims as Betty Jo Booker, 15; Paul Martin, 17, and Virgil Starks, 36.

Sheriffs who investigated the cases, however, doubted that he was the killer or that the deaths of Miss Booker and Martin, slain on a lonely road, were connected with that of Starks. The latter was shot by rifle fire in his farm home, and his wife was wounded, three weeks after the Booker-Martin shooting.

The News-Palladium (Benton-Harbor, Michigan)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Youth's Suicide Puzzles Police

Note Describes Killings 4 Persons

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov 6 -- (AP) -- Was a University of Arkansas freshman really Texarkana's notorious "phantom" killer or was his suicide note merely a bizarre hoax?

Authorities hoped to learn the answer today as they continued an investigation of the poison death of H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, Tex.

For two years police of two states have been unable to solve five slayings at the state-line city. All slayings were attributed to a "phantom."

DISCLOSE NOTE

Tennison was found dead in his room here last night. He left a signed note admittng three of the mysterious deaths. No motive was given. Sheriff Bruce Crider said the note found in a strongbox read in part:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it. I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one saw me do it. For the guns, I disassembled them and discarded them in different places."

Mrs. Ella Lea McGee, the student's landlady, found the body. A poem was on the dresser. It contained a riddle which it said, if solved, would give the combination to a strongbox. Officers broke the box open and found Tennison's "confession" note.

Police said other messages, including one suggesting a newspaper headline about his death, also were found in the room.

Coroner Edmond Watson confirmed Sheriff Crider's finding that the youth took poison.

Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville, Arkansas)

Monday, December 18, 1950

[page 1]

Hunt for Crazed Killer Recalls Unsolved Murders By Texarkana's "Phantom Slayer"

Texarkana, Dec. 18 -- (AP) -- The murderous assaults on seven persons in Philadelphia within the past six weeks recall the still-unsolved Texarkana "phantom slayer" killings, which started nearly five years ago.

No one has suggested that the two series of attacks are connected.

In the Texarkana area five persons were shot to death and a sixth wounded in attacks ascribed to the "phantom," apparently a better shot than the Philadelphia assailant whom police described as "undoubtedly a maniac."

First victims in this area were Polly Ann Moore, 17, and Richard L. Griffin, 29, found shot to death in their parked automobile near Texarkana on March 24, 1946.

On April 14, 1946, the bodies of Betty Jo Booker, 15, and Paul Martin, 17, who had left a Texarkana dance together, were found a mile apart in a rural section. He had been shot four times, she twice.

On May 3, 1946, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death as he sat in his farm home. The assailant, standing outside the house, walted [sic waited] until Stark's wife ran to him and then shot her. Although seriously wounded, Mrs. Starks ran to a neighbor's home. She recovered.

Then the attacks suddenly ceased. Despite arrests of several suspects in various states and the posting of $11,000 in rewards, the "phantom," described by a Texarkana psychiatrist as a sexual maniac, was never identified.

The case had some strange aftermaths. On the first anniversary of the slaying of Miss Booker, a young girl friend killed herself. And more than two years after the attacks a University of Arkansas freshman from Texarkana killed himself with poison after leaving a note saying he was responsible for three of the "phantom" killings. Texarkana officers gave little credence to his statement.

The Odessa American (Odessa, Texas)

Monday, November 8, 1948

[page 3]

'Phantom' Claim Of Student Fade

TEXARKANA -- (UP) -- Mor [sic More] doubt of the authenticity of claims by a University of Arkansas student that he was the phantom killer of Texarkana in 1946 were being considered by Texas and Arkansas officers today.

The student, H. B. Tennison of Texarkana, Friday committed suicide by poison at his room in a residence near the University at Fayetteville. In notes he left he claimed he was the phantom killer responsible for the deaths of five persons.

However, James Freeman, 16, of Texarkana, told officers yesterday that he was with Tennison from 7 p.m. until midnight the night Virgil Starks was killed.

He said he remembered the date very well, because news of the shooting spread rapidly through the town.

Earlier yesterday, officers said they uncovered another note in young Tennison's belongings denying that he had anything to do with the killings.

[The last sentence is likely a false statement. None of the notes that we know to have been written by H. B. Tennison deny "that he had anything to do with the killings."]

The Odessa American (Odessa, Texas)

Thursday, November 11, 1948

[page 7]

Phantom Solution Misses Connection

AUSTIN (UP) -- Fingerprints of a University of Arkansas student who committed suicide last week failed to tally today with those found at the scenes of Texarkan's "phantom slayings."

The Texas department of public safety made the check after H. B. (Doodle) [sic Doodie] Tennison, 18, left several notes before taking his own life at Fayetteville, Ark.

One of the notes implicated the writer in the numerous Texarkana murders attributed to the "phantom killer."

However, officers said they would continue their investigation of Tennison's whereabouts on the nights of the slayings but expressed doubt that their probing would reveal any connection between the youth and the phantom killer.

The Post-Register (Idaho Falls, Idaho)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[Page 1]

Suicide Note by College Student Admits Slayings

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 6. (AP) -- H. B. Tennison, 17 year old University of Arkansas freshman was found dead i his room here Friday, with a suicide note describing himself as the notorious Texarkana "phantom killer."

Five persons were killed near Texarkana from March 24 to early May, 1946. Two young couples were waylaid on country roads and a man was killed in his farm home by an assailant who also shot and wounded his wife as she fled to a neighbor's home.

The note did not mention the "phantom killer" as the slayer of five became known as [sic in] Texarkana. However, Sheriff Crider said, it did state:

"Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Mantin [sic Martin] in the city park that night." They were the second couple killed by the "phantom" slayer.

The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[Page 8]

Student Suicide Checked As 'Phantom' Killer of 5

[This headline is consistent with the reasonable interpretation that Doodie might have been trying to described himself as a killer of 5 people in his confession note, even if he only explicitly confessed to killing 3.]

FAYETTEVILL, Ark. (AP) -- Authorities maintained official silence yesterday in their investigation of the suicide of a University of Arkansas freshman who left a note implicating himself in Texarkana's "phantom" killlings two years ago.

Check Fingerprints

Arkansas and Texas officers were to check the fingerprints of the student, H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, Texarkana, Ark., with prints they had that might have been left by the mysterious slayer.

In addition, they faced the task of trying to trace Tennison's movements sice early in 1946, when the "phantom" shot and killed five persons and wounded another within a six-weeks period.

Police here took fingerpints of Tennison before Coroner Edmond Watson released the body to the family.

Coroner Watson said Tennison swallowed poison in his room Friday, and left a number of notes and messages. One of them, taken from a strongbox in the youth's room, "confessed" slaying two high school students and a farmer and attempting to kill the farmer's wife.

The Terre Haute Tribune (Terre Haute, Indiana)

Sunday, November 7, 1948

[page 13]

OFFICERS STUDY NOTE OF SUICIDE

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., Nov. 6. -- (UP) -- Law officers here today reserved judgment on the authenticity of a suicide confession in which a moody college freshman claimed to have been "the phantom killer" -- a marauder which terrorized citizens of Texarkana two years ago.

The note was left yesterday by H. B. Tennison, a 17-year-old [sic 18] freshman at the University of Arkansas. His body was found in the rooming house where he lived. The youth's statement said he killed himself because he was the Texarkana "phantom."

Tennison claimed to ahve been responsible for three of the five slaying in the bordertown during the spring of 1946. He said his victims were Betty Jo Booker, 15; Paul Martin, 17, and Virgil Storks, 36. [sic Starks]

Traverse City Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Michigan)

Saturday, November, 6, 1948

[page 11]

FAYETTEVILLE, ARK., Nov. 6 -- (UP) -- A moody college freshman claimed in suicide notes to have been the phantom killer who terrorized his home town, but police today began an investigation with doubt.

H. B. Tennison, 17, of Texarkana, Ark-Tex, was found dead in his rooming house here, where he attended the University of Arkansas. In the room with his body -- he apparently used poison -- were found notes telling that he killed himself because he was the Texarkana "phantom."

Five persons were mysteriously slain here in the spring of 1946. Tennison's notes said he was responsible for three of the slayings. He listed the victims as Betty Jo Booker, 15, Paul Martin, 17; and Virgil Starks, 36.

Sheriffs who investigated the cases, however, doubted that he was the killer or that the deaths of Miss Booker and Martin, slain on a lonely road, were connected with that of Starks. The latter was shot by rifle fire in his farm home, and his wife was wounded, three weeks after the Booker-Martin shooting.

The boy's father, J. D. Tennison, of Memphis, told officers that he and the youth had traveled together during the summer and that his son appeared rational. But, he said, he must have been ill when he wrote the notes in a peculiar, pseudo-poetic, rhythm.

The "confession" was found on paper roled [sic rolled] and hidden in the casing of a ball-point fountain pen. Officers found it through another note in a folder. There was evidence that several rough drafts had been made before the version was typed out.

The six-foot tall youth, who weighed only 130 pounds, was said by friends to have an inferiority complex which investigators thought may have been aggravated by his going away from home to college.

The first note said:

"The opening to my box will be found in the following few lines.

"In a tube a paper is found, rolls on colors and it is dry and round."

[The "dry and round" wording is different than that reported in other newspapers, which reported the second sentence in the riddle note as "It rolls on color and it is dry and sound." The wording "dry and round" makes more sense than "dry and sound." "Dry and round" is likely to have been Doodie's intended wording, and likely, what he actually wrote.]

"The head removes, the tail will turn, and inside is the sheet you yearn.

"Two bees mean a lot when they are together. These clues should lead you to it."

The Wilkes-Barre Record (Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 11]

Arkansas Freshman Kills Himself, Admits 4 Murders

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

Fayetteville, Ark., Nov. 5 (AP) -- A University of Arkansas Freshman ended his ilfe here today and later a note was found in his room in which he admitted committing two "double murders" at Texarkana. In 1946 a wave of unsolved slayings in the Texarkana area -- there were five in all -- were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington County said the student was H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 17, a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strongbox in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke up the strongbox by force. The note was inside.

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed tow double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the City Park that night, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Starks) and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

Miss Booker, 15, ad young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the socalled [sic so-called] "Phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in a state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, 1948, [sic 1946] Gil [sic Virgil] Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

There was no reference in Tennison's note to the deaths of Griffin and Miss Moore or the beating of Hollis and Larey.

Texas State Rangers joined in the search for the assailant. Months rolled by, a number of persons were questioned and one or two arrests made, but officers never found the person they sought.

The first strike attributed to the "Phantom" was in February, 1946. Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, and Jimmy Hollis, 24, were beaten on a roadside by a masked man. The other attacks followed.

Authorities withheld comment on whether the shocking series of deaths had at long last been solved.

Max Tackett, Arkansas State Highway Patrolman who worked on the "Phantom" case, hurred from El Dorado, Ark., to Fayetteville, to investigate. Tennison's mother broke up a visit in Parsons, Kans., to come here. The youth's parents were divorced. His father, J. D. Tennison, has remarried and resides in Memphis, Tenn., where he is an executive with the Tennison Bros., Inc.

Joplin Globe (Joplin, Missouri)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 3]

STUDENT ADMITS IN SUICIDE NOTE HE KILLED FOUR

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

(Continued from page 1) [page 1 is not available]

....Booker and Paul Martin, 15, and 17, respectively.

The same thing occurred here -- the same pattern of beating and death for the man, assault and finally death for the girl. The young couple had attended a dance, they had parked and then an unknown man had attacked and killed them. Their bodies were also found the following morning,
some distance apart. And agin, the site was in the approximate locality as the others.

Three weeks after the April attack the phantom struck again. This time it was not a couple parked in a car on a dark roadside. It occurred at a farm house, a neat white six-room bungalow near Texarkana.

The victim was Virgil Starks, who was shot to death. His wife was wounded. The mysterious killer fled.

Youth Was Shy.

Texarkana, Ark., NOv. 5. -- (AP) -- Friends and neighbors "find it difficult" to believe H. B. Tennison was the 'phantom killer," Editor J. Q. Mahaffey of the Texarkana Gazette-News, said tonight.

Tennison, a University of Arkansas freshman, committed suicide in Fayetteville today. He left a suicide note in which he admitted slayings here which had been attributed to a "phantom killer."

Mahaffey, who was acquainted with Tennison, member of an old Texarkana family, said the youth was shy and more or less an introvert.

He quoted Tennison's sister, Mrs. Alys Jo Daniel, as saying the boy was an almost constant reader of comic books and an ardent follower of radio detective programs.

She also said the youth -- widely known as "Doodie," his mother's pet name for him -- had "seemed to grow up almost overnight, was six feet, four inches tall and weighed 130 pounds."

Mahaffey reported that Mrs. Daniel said her brother had never owned a firearm and knew nothing about them, and that she was almost certain he did not know how to drive a car two years ago -- when the "phantom killer" struck.

Young Tennison, the youngest of four children, was a trombone player in the high school band. His sister said he made "average grades." Before going to college, he worked as a part-time usher in a local theater.

Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City, Iowa)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 3]

Note Claims Youth Killed Four

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

Arkansas College Freshman May Have Been Texarkana "Phantom'

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- Was a University of Arkansas freshman really Texarkana's notorious "phantom" killer, or was his suicide note merely a bizarre hoax?

Authorities hoped to learn the answer today as they continued an investigation of the poison death of H. B. (Doodie) Tennison, 18, of Texarkana, Texas. [sic Arkansas]

For two years police of two states have been unable to solve five slaying at the state-line city. All slaying were attributed to a "phantom."

Tennison was found dead in his room here Friday night. He left a signed note admitted three of the mysterious deaths. No motive was given. Sheriff Bruce Crider said the note, found in a strong box, read in part:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question. Well, when you committed two double murders you would co (correct). [sic too] Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Stark and tried to get Mrs. Stark. You wouldn't have guessed it, I did it when mother was either out or asleep, and no one sawy me do it. For the guns, I disasimbled (correct) [sic disassembled] them and discarded them in different places."

Mrs. Ella Lea McGee, the student's landlady, found the body. A poem was on the dresser. It contained a riddle when it said, if solved, would give the combination to a strongbox. Officers broker the box open and found Tennison's ""confession" note.

* * *

Police said other messages, including one suggesting a newspaper headline about his death, also were found in the room.

Coroner Edmond Watson confirmed Sheriff Crider's finding that the youth took poison.

The "phantom" slayings, all occurring at night within a six-week period, cast a pall of fear over the Texarkana community for weeks.

The frst victims attributed to the "phantom" were Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, found shot to death on the outskirts of Texarkana, March 24, 1946.

April 14, two high school students, Paul Martin, 17 and Betty Jo Booker, were found shot fatally, near the same spot.

May 3, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home in Miller County, Ark., near Texarkana. Mrs. Starks who was wounded seriously, said the gunman fired through a window. Authorities ran down every meager clue without success.

No reference was made in the note to the deaths of Griffin and Miss Moore or the non-fatal attack a masked man made on a couple near Texarkana in February, 1946.

Folks in Tennison's home town said they found it difficult to believe that the quiet, slender, six-foot-four son of an old Texarkana family, actually committed the crimes. His death created almost as much of a sensation as did the slayings.

Tennison's parents are divorced.

The Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Youth Takes Life; Note Says He Killed Four

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

Fayetteville, Ark., Nov. 5 (AP)

A university of Arkansas freshman ended his life here today and later a note was found in his room in which he admitted committing two "double murders" at Texarkana.

In 1946, a wave of unsolved slayings in the Texarkana area -- there are five in all -- were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county said the student was H. M. (Dooty) [sic H. B. (Doodie)] Tennison, 17, [sic 18] a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strong box in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke open the strongbox by force. The note was inside.

SHERIFF CRIDER said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking thaat [sic that] question? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Stark) and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

Miss Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in a state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, 1946, Gil [sic Virgil] Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Student Kills Self -- Admits Double Slayings

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. -- (AP) -- A University of Arkansas freshmen [sic freshman] ended his life here Friday and later a note was found in his room in which he admitted two "double murders" at Texarkana.

In 1946, a wave of unsolved slaying in the Texarkana area -- there were five in all -- were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county said the student was H. B. (Dooty) [sic (Doodie)] Tennison, 17, [sic 18], a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

Break Strong Box.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strong box in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke open the strong box by force. The note was inside.

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed tow double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Stark), and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

Slain on Road.

Miss Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "phantom" killer, who kept Texargana [sic Texarkana] in a state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier,, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, 1946, Gil [sic Virgil] Starks, 36, was shot to death in his room and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

There was no reference in Tennison's note to the deaths of Griffin and Miss Moore or the beating of Hollis and Miss Larey.

Altoona Tribune (Altoona, Pennsylvania)

Saturday, November 6, 1948

[page 1]

Youth's Suicide Note Confesses Four Murders

[This is one of the newspapers that acknowledges that Doodie's confession note implied that Doodie killed more than just 3 people.]

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- (AP) -- A University of Arkansas freshman ended his life here Friday and later a note was found in his room in which he admitted committing two "double murders" at Texarkana. In 1946, a wave of unsolved slayings in the Texarkana area -- there were five in all -- were attributed to a "phantom" killer.

Sheriff Bruce Crider of Washington county said the student was H. M. (Dooty) [sic (Doodie)] Tennison, 17, [sic 18] a member of a widely known Texarkana, Ark., family.

He said the youth took poison. A poem found on a dresser said that if the puzzle it contained could be solved, it would disclose how to open a strong box in Tennison's room. Authorities, instead, broke up the strong box by force. The note was inside.

Sheriff Crider said the note read:

"Why did I take my own life? You may be asking that question? Well, when you committed two double murders you would too. Yes, I did kill Betty Jo Booker and Paul Martin in the city park that night, and kill Mr. Starks (Virgil Starks) and tried to get Mrs. Starks."

[Perhaps H. B. Tennison spelled "Starks" correctly.]

Miss Booker, 15, and young Martin, 17, were the third and fourth victims of the so-called "phantom" killer, who kept Texarkana in a state of tension for months.

They were found slain April 14, 1946, on a road outside Texarkana.

Earlier, Richard Griffin, 29, and Polly Ann Moore, 17, had been slain. They were the first deaths in the grim series. In May, Virgil Starks, 36, was shot to death in his farm home and his wife was shot and wounded seriously.

139 Headlines

     Many people only read headlines of newspaper articles. As in many other instances, reading only the headlines of articles related to H. B. "Doodie" Tennison could be highly misleading. For example, many headlines claimed or implied that H. B. Tennison had been ruled out as possibly having been the Phantom Killler. Yet, as the comments of Colonel Homer Garrison indicate, H. B. Tennison was never ruled out as possibly having been the Phantom Killer.

    Another aspect that is revealed by examining headlines is the fact that some newspapers were fully aware that H. B. Tennison's Confession note, besides explicitly confessing to the murders of 3 specific people, strongly implied that H. B. had committed 2 double murders. For those familiar with the facts of the crimes, a reasonable interpretation of H. B. Tennison's notes was that he was trying to convey the idea that he had killed 5 people. For those not familiar with the facts of the crimes, such as newspapers outside of Texarkana, a reasonable interprestation of H. B. Tennison's notes was that he was trying to convey the idea that he had killed 4 people.

     It is instructive to read the headlines and reflect how public opinion can be influenced by over-simplistic; often misleading; and often demonstrably false headlines about H. B. "Doodie" Tennison. In many instances, to understand how these headlines are false or misleading, the reader will need to be familiar with my analysis of the evidence pertaining to H. B. Tennison that I presented at the November 8, 2014 Phantom Killer Forum in Texarkana, Texas.

     The following are headlines related to H. B. "Doodie" Tennison from articles in the www.newspapers.com database as of August 1, 2015 when the keywords "Tennison" and "1948" are entered as keywords:

Miami Daily News-Record
Miami, Oklahoma
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Arkansas Student Suicide Probe I's Pushed by Police

The Vernon Daily Record
Vernon, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 1

Witness Says Confessed Phantom Was at Home on Night of Slaying

The Escanaba Daily Press
Escanaba, Michigan
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 9

Arkansas Freshman Is Phantom Killer, Says Suicide Note

The Odessa American
Odessa, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Investigation Continues In 'Phantom' Confession

Rangers Checking Confession

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
Lubbock, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 10

Officers Studying 'Phantom' Case

TEXAS RANGERS JOIN IN INVESTIGATION OF NOTE

Joplin Globe
Joplin, Missouri
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 4

Students Fingerprints Do Not Match Thoase of Texarkana "Phantom Killer"

The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City, Utah
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 8

Officers Silent On Student's Suicide Probe

Corsicana Daily Sun
Corsicana, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 14

Self-Slain Youth Said Home When 'Phantom' Struck

The Brownsville Herald
Brownsville, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

Doubt Held Suicide Was The Phantom

Friends [sic Friend] Says Youth Was At Home Night Of Killing

Hope Star
Hope, Arkansas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 2

Youth Had Nothing to Do With Murders

The Camden News
Camden, Arkansas,
Monday, November 8, 1948

New Evidence In Slayings

Pampa Daily News
Pampa, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1
1 of 10 matches on this page.

New Evidence In 'Phantom' Case Twisted

Hope Star
Hope, Arkansas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Possibility That University Freshman Was Really the Phantom Killer Is Questioned

Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 11

OFFICERS SEEK--
CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

Hope Star
Hope, Arkansas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 2

Reveals Youth Was Not the 'Phantom'

Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

LAST SUICIDE NOTE
'Phantom' at Home Night of Killing

Pampa Daily News
Pampa, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Authorities Silent About Death-Probe

Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 1

Note With "Clue" Left By Tennison Believed Written Last Week

Officers Seek To Find Dates For Messages

Store Proprietors Recall Sales Made To Texarkana Boy

The Amarillo Globe-Times
Amarillo, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

Alibi for Tennison

The Indiana Gazette
Indiana, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 11

Suicide Poses As Phantom Slayer Posing Riddles for Puzzled Police

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 2

Authorities Silent About 'Killer' Note

Lubbock Morning Avalanche
Lubbock, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 10

Suicide Claims He Was Killer

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Student Kills Self, Claiming He's Phantom

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 13

Police Doubt Youth 'Phantom' Slayer

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 4

The Phantom

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Student Is Found Dead; Note Says He's 'Killer'

'HARD TO BELIEVE'

Report Stirs Town

Arkansas Freshman's Note Admits Texarkana Slayings

Lubbock Morning Avalanche
Lubbock, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Officers Study Texarkanan's Suicide Note

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Authorities Silent About 'Killer' Note

Joplin Globe
Joplin, Missouri
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

STUDENT ADMITS IN SUICIDE NOTE HE KILLED FOUR

Youth Was Shy

Clovis News-Journal
Clovis, New Mexico
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 3

HOAX

'Fantastic'

The Indiana Gazette
Indiana, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Suicide Poses As Phantom Slayer Posing Riddles for Puzzled Police

The Evening News
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 8

2 Developments Indicate Collegian Not Phantom

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

Tennison Left 2 Other Notes

The Atchison Daily Globe
Atchison, Kansas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 8

Doubt Youth's Note As 'Phantom' Killer

Iowa City Press-Citizen
Iowa City, Iowa
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

Note Claims Youth Killed Four

Arkansas College Freshman May Have Been Texarkana "Phantom'

Carrol Daily Times Herald
Carroll, Iowa
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 5

Student Leaves Suicide Note Admitting 'Phantom' Slayings

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 9

The Phantom

The Evening News
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 15

Youthful Suicide Admits He Was "Phantom' Killer

Corsicana Daily Sun
Corsicana, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 11

PHANTOM

CONTINUED FROM FIRST PAGE

The Camden News
Camden, Arkansas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Arkansas Student Leaves Suicide Note Confessing To 'Phantom' Murders

The Eugene Guard
Eugene, Oregon
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Phantom Killer?

Student's Suicide Raises Question

The Monroe News-Star
Monroe, Louisiana
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

DOUBT YOUTH IS PHANTOM KILLER

Confession Believed Bazarre [sic Bizarre] Action Or [sic of] Unhappy Young Man

Del Rio News Herald
Del Rio, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

INVESTIGATE 'PHANTOM' CONFESSION

Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 1

Locker Used By Tennison Is Sought

Investigation Is Continued By Officials

Series of Notes Confusing; Disregard Others, One Says

Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton, Texas
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

TEXARKANA'S 'PHANTOM' KILLER?

Officials Silent on Suicide Of 'Confessor' To Slayings

Del Rio News Herald
Del Rio, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 1

Ballistics Expert Reports On 'Phantom'

Miami Daily News-Record
Miami, Oklahoma
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 2

Evidence Indicates Youth Suicide Not 'Phantom Slayer'

The Wilkes-Barre Record
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 11

Arkansas Freshman Kills Himself, Admits 4 Murders

Corsicana Daily Sun
Corsicana, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 14

Bullet In Phantom Case Not That Of 'Confessed' Youth

The Post-Standard
Syracuse, New York
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 47

Student Suicide Checked As 'Phantom' Killer of 5

Check Fingerprints

The Camden News
Camden, Arkansas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 3

YOUTH VIRTUALLY OUT OF "PHANTOM CASE"

Clovis News-Journal
Clovis, New Mexico
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Hoax Scented As 'Phantom' Ends His Life

Washington C.H. Record-Herald
Washington Court House, Ohio
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Confession or Hoax?

Arkansas Freshman Leaves Suicide Note Indicating He Was 'Phantom Killer'

The Indiana Gazette
Indiana, Pennsylvania
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 14

Phantom Story Is Discredited

The Amarillo Globe-Times
Amarillo, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 2

Phantom...

Corsicana Daily Sun
Corsicana, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

"PHANTOM" SLAYINGS CONFESSION STUDIED BY ARKANSAS POLICE

TEXARKANA STUDENT AT UNIVERSITY KILLS SELF, LEAVES NOTE

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 1

Sheriffs Rule Out Student As 'Phantom'

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 6

Find Out More On Death Notes

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 2

Texarkana Youth's Guns Don't Match Phantom Killer's

The Odessa American
Odessa, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 3

'Phantom' Claim Of Student Fade

The Odessa American [This is a UP article.]
Odessa, Texas
Thursday, November 11, 1948 - Page 7

Phantom Solution Misses Connection

The Eagle
Bryan, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 4

Suicide's Notes Texarkana Case

Traverse City Record-Eagle
Traverse City, Michigan
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 10

Doubt Story of Young Suicide

Kingsport News
Kingsport, Tennessee
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

College Boy's Suicide Note Admits Murder

The Decatur Herald
Decatur, Illinois
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Youth Takes Life; Note Says He Killed Four

The Sandusky Register
Sandusky, Ohio
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Police Puzzle Last 'Confession' Of Phantom Killer

Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 1
1 of 2 matches on this page

Sheriffs Clear Tennison In One Case

Doubt Connection With Deaths In Texarkana

Lubbock Morning Avalanche
Lubbock, Texas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 1

Officers Doubt Suicide Victim Was Texarkana 'Phantom Killer'

The Terre Haute Tribune [UP]
Terre Haute, Indiana
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 13

OFFICERS STUDY NOTE OF SUICIDE

The Mason City Globe-Gazette
Mason City, Iowa
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Claims He Was Phantom Killer

Police Study Suicide Note Left by Youth

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 10

Texarkana Was Town of Terror When the Phantom Roamed

Manhunt Was One of Biggest in Southwest

Hard To Believe Tennison Is Him

The Courier-Gazette
McKinney, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

AUTHORITIES CHECK STORY OF STUDENT

The News-Palladium
Benton Harbor, Michigan
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Youth's Suicide Puzzles Police

Note Describes Killing 4 Persons

The Pantagraph
Bloomington, Illinois
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Student Kills Self -- Admits Double Slayings

Break Strong Box

Slain on Road

Pottstown Mercury
Pottstown, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Youth Takes Life; Note Admits Killings Blamed on 'Phantom'

The News-Herald
Franklin, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Doubt Suicide Note Claim by Freshman Of Being 'Phantom'

The Kane Republican
Kane, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

College Freshman Says in Suicide Note He Was Killer; Cops Doubtful

The Post-Standard
Syracuse, New York
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Arkansas Youth Admits Slayings in Suicide Note

The Ludington Daily News
Ludington, Michigan
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Study Student's Phantom Claim

The Record-Argus
Greenville, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 2

STUDENT TAKES LIFE, SAYS HE WAS PHANTOM

The Evening Sun
Hanover, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 5

SUICIDE'S NOTE SAYS HE WAS MYSTERY KILLER

Council Bluffs Nonpareil
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 7

Texarkana Youth "Phantom" Killer?

Student Leaves Note, Takes Dose of Poison

The Record-Argus
Greenville, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 4

STUDENT TAKES LIFE, SAYS HE WAS PHANTOM

The Circleville Herald
Circleville, Ohio
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 2

'Phantom Slayer' Claimed Suicide

The Brownsville Herald
Brownsville, Texas
Thursday, November 11, 1948 - Page 7

Suicide's Claim To Being Killer Is Discounted

Macon Chronicle-Herald
Macon, Missouri
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 6

Student Leaves Note Admitting 'Phantom' Killings

The San Bernardino County Sun
San Bernardino, California
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

COLLEGE STUDENT KILLS SELF, ADMITS MURDERS

The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake City, Utah
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 4

Student Suicide Note Bares Slaying Clues

The Oregon Statesman
Salem, Oregon
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 5

College Student Ends Own Life; Admits Killings

Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton, Texas
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 2

Phantom

(Continued from Page 1)

The Oelwein Daily Register
Oelwein, Iowa
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Suicide Note Claims Boy Was 'Phantom Killer'

The Daily Messenger
Canandaigua, New York
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

University Freshman Commits Suicide, Leaves note claiming He Killed Three

Hope Star
Hope, Arkansas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 2

Possibility

Continued From Page One

The Kingston Daily Freeman
Kingston, New York
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 13

Student's Action Seen as Result of His Unhappiness

Altoona Tribune
Altoona, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Youth's Suicide Note Confesses Four Murders

Amarillo Daily News
Amarillo, Texas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 1

Say Tennison Has Not Been Suspect

Abilene Reporter-News
Abilene, Texas
Wednesday, November 10, 1948 - Page 14

'NOT PHANTOM'

Fingerprints Don't Match

The Winnipeg Tribune [Canada]
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 10

Student Admits Three Murders

The Monroe News-Star
Monroe, Louisiana
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 8

PHANTOM

(Continued from First Page)

Dunkirk Evening Observer
Dunkirk, New York
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

DEAD STUDENT MAY HAVE BEEN PHANTOM KILLER

The Iola Register
Iola, Kansas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Suicide May Solve Riddle of 'Phantom'

The Post-Register
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 1

Suicide Note By College Student Admits Slayings

The Morning Herald
Hagerstown, Maryland
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Phantom Killer Ends His Life

University Freshman Pens Confession, Takes Poison

The Bismarck Tribune
Bismarck, North Dakota
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 1

Poisoned Student Linked to Murders

Kingsport Times-News
Kingsport, Tennessee
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 2

Student

(Continued FRom Page 1)

Dunkirk Evening Observer
Dunkirk, New York
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 14

PHANTOM KILLER KEEPS TOWN ON ALERT

The Daily Inter Lake
Kalispell, Montana
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

'PHANTOM KILLER' CASE REVIVED BY

The Sedalia Democrat
Sedalia, Missouri
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 4

May Not Have Been Killer

The Bradford Era
Bradford, Pennsylvania
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 2

Student Admits Murders Guilt In Suicide Note

The Nebraska State Journal
Lincoln, Nebraska
Sunday, November 7, 1948 - Page 19

Student Suicide 'Admits' Murders

The Eagle
Bryan, Texas
Saturday, November 6, 1948 - Page 3

Student Admits In Note He Was 'Phantom' Killer

Tucson Daily Citizen
Tucson, Arizona
Monday, November 8, 1948 - Page 3

Police Doubt Boy's Claims He Is Killer

Lubbock Morning Avalanche
Lubbock, Texas
Tuesday, November 9, 1948 - Page 3

Killings Alarm Louisiana Town

The Ada Weekly News
Ada, Oklahoma
Thursday, November 11, 1948 - Page 8

Student Wasn't Phantom Killer

Closing Comments

As a forensic psychiatrist and first cousin, once-removed to H. B. Tennison, I believe I am in a unique position to reconsider and gather evidence related to him. cheap replica watches I hope my efforts will prove to be of lasting public value. Given all the evidence that I have seen, I find the evidence that H. B. Tennison was telling the truth to be entirely plausible. The evidence that H. B. Tennison was responsible for the murders that he strongly implied he committed and those that he explicitly admitted to having committed is at least as compelling, if not more so, than evidence for any other suspect of which I know, including Youell Swinney.

I am in communication with the FBI. Based on Freedom-of-Information requests made at different times, I have two sets of files that were distributed by the FBI as a result of those requests being made. cartier replica sale I have posted the complete content of these two sets of FBI files online at the Texarkana Phantom Killer Theory Forum FaceBook Group Page. One thing that the FBI documents make clear is that there is not reliable evidence to conclude that Youell Swinney was the Phantom Killer.

I have made attempts to communicate with the Texas Rangers. hublot replica I will update this website if the Texas Rangers respond with useful information.

If any reader of this webpage has any information pertaining to H. B. "Doodie" Tennison, I would appreciate hearing from them by email at nonjohn@yahoo.com or by phone at 210-884-0990.

Thanks to Jereme Kennington for making microfilm copies of relevant pages from the Texarkana Gazette and Texarkana Daily News available to me so that I could transcribe the articles related to H. B. Tennison; for transcriptions of 2 newspaper articles based on AP and UP newswires; and for facilitating my access to www.newspapers.com so that I could transcribe articles and headlines.

http://www.psychiatricjournal.com/