Freeway Phantom

[3] On her way home from the store, Spinks was abducted; her body was found six days later at 2:46 pm behind St. Elizabeths Hospital on a grassy embankment next to the northbound lanes of I-295, about 1,500 feet south of Suitland Parkway.[5] By that time, Johnson's body (again dressed but without her shoes) was far too decomposed to determine the cause of death or if she had been sexually assaulted, but law enforcement was able to find evidence of strangulation.[8] "A white man picked me up, and I'm heading home in a cab," Crockett told her sister, adding that she believed she was in Virginia before abruptly saying, "Bye" and hanging up.[5] Authorities quickly concluded that Crockett likely called her home at the behest of the killer, who fed her inaccurate information in order to buy the necessary time to perpetrate the crime, and to hamper the investigation.At 5:50 am the next day, a hitchhiker discovered Crockett's shoeless body in a conspicuous location on U.S. Route 50, near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Prince George's County, Maryland.After having dinner with a high school classmate on November 15, 1971, Woodard,[10] 18, from Baltimore boarded a city bus around 11:30 pm to return to her Maryland Avenue home.Approximately six hours later, a police officer discovered her body, which had been stabbed multiple times and strangled, in a grassy area near Prince George's County Hospital, along an access ramp to Route 202 from the Baltimore–Washington Parkway.FRee-wAy PhanTom[13] Based on handwriting samples, authorities surmised that the note, written on paper cut from the victim's school notebook, had been dictated to and handwritten by Woodard.Numerous investigative tips came from the general public by a telephone hotline operated by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) and information also came by way of the mail.During this period, an election was being held in Maryland, and one of the candidates publicly announced to the press that a break had occurred in the Freeway Phantom investigation, and provided that an inmate at Lorton Prison had given the information.On December 28, 1938, Askins—then a 19-year-old student and member of the science club at Miner Teachers College—served cyanide-laced whiskey to five prostitutes at a brothel, resulting in the death of 31-year-old Ruth McDonald.Askins, who died at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland on April 30, 2010 at the age of 91,[27] remained in prison for two D.C.-area abductions and rapes in the mid-70s, and had been contacted by both Davis and press regarding the Freeway Phantom slayings.