The Hook
/You know the story: A couple at makeout point hears some strange noises, drives home, discovers a bloody hook on their car door. But where did this story come from? And why do we keep telling it? This episode, we even dredge into true crime territory to reveal some of the potential origins of this infamous urban legend.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, gore, sexual content, assault, murder, ableism, misogyny, violence, hanging, blood, law enforcement, gun violence, and imprisonment.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. Amanda, I'm going to tell you a story.
AMANDA: Always, babe.
JULIA: It is going to be a story that you've heard before, but it is the spookiest of all seasons right now. So I have to share this urban legend with you because despite the fact that we've probably heard it a million times before, it might have a little bit of a deeper history than you would think. So come with me to a town in, let's say, middle America. Bren, if you don't mind, set the scene for me. It's fall. A couple just went on a date, right? They went to go see a movie at the local drive-in, let's say, and after deciding that they wanted to spend a little more time together, they decide that they are going to park their car at inspiration point, or makeout point, or lovers' lane, whatever they call it in your hometown.
AMANDA: Behind the Dunkin' Donuts.
JULIA: Hey, if that works for you, that works for you. So as they sit there on this night, the music they were listening to in order to set the mood is interrupted. Breaking news. A murderer colloquially called the Hook Man has escaped from the local state prison. He is believed to be armed with a knife and extremely dangerous. Everyone in the region is warned to keep watch and to report anything suspicious to the local authorities. He is described as Caucasian, with dark hair, most notably his left hand is missing and in its place he wears a hook. This has been a breaking news announcement.
AMANDA: Damn. Hook in the left hand, knife in the right. What can't this guy do?
JULIA: For the girl, this announcement is, of course, a total mood killer. Combine that with the fact that they've parked in a particularly secluded and dark path in order to give themselves a little bit of that privacy that they desire, she begins to feel nervous, exposed perhaps. "This," she tells herself, "seemed like the perfect spot for a deranged murderer to claim another victim." But, Amanda, as often does in stories like this, her boyfriend still has more amorous thoughts on his mind and tries to keep getting his kisses in.
AMANDA: How much of this story is just a sort of, like, "Men, am I right?" Sort of situation?
JULIA: Well, we'll talk about a little bit about that in a second. The girlfriend, Amanda, not into this, pushes him off and tells him, "I think we should probably head home. That Hook Man they mentioned sounds really dangerous." Now, the boyfriend tries to play it off as no big deal, but she does not let it drop, saying that she wants to leave, that she is scared. They argue a bit back and forth. Eventually, the boyfriend rolls his eyes, agrees to get them home. And as he finds his keys, Amanda, to put them in the ignition, start the car up, the girlfriend hears something scrape against the car. She, panicking, tells him, "Go quicker, find the keys faster. Let's go."
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: Then she feels the car shake a bit, like something has made contact with it. And so she yells at him, "Get us out of here now." The boyfriend, rolls his eyes again, saying something about her overreacting or whatever and pissed off, aggressively starts the car and speeds off of the Lovers Lane. They sit in silence for the entire ride home and when they pull into her driveway to drop her off, he doesn't even bother getting out of the car to open her door or to escort her to her house. How rude of him. This is, like, the 1950s. All men are expected to do this for women.
AMANDA: Mm-mm-mm-mm.
JULIA: So she angrily lets herself out of the car, and when she whirls around to slam the door to the car, she lets out a piercing scream of terror. Now, the boyfriend jumps out of the car, confusingly, like, grabs her, being like, "What's going on? What's wrong?"
AMANDA: Oh, now, you're showing up, big man?
JULIA: And all she can do was point at the door. And when he turns, he saw exactly what made her so scared, which is a bloody hook hung dangling from the handle of the passenger side door.
AMANDA: It's an evocative story, Julia. I remember one of the first times I heard this story being genuinely really freaked out.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Do you remember— like were the details that you heard when you first heard this story, the same beat for beat or do you remember some slight variations on it?
AMANDA: The main one I remember is the exact one that you just told. I think there are variations where, like, you see a silhouette, where maybe the man was in the trunk. You know, there was, like, some amount of involvement of, like, in the car or around the car, but it's always the you know the, "That could have been me," aspect of it that I think really creeped me out.
JULIA: Then that is important. We'll talk about that a little bit more. But this story, which is known as The Hook, but sometimes The Hook Man, is definitely what I would consider a classic urban legend or even a campfire story, right? It gained its popularity in the 1950s and '60s. And despite what the details and the variations are, the elements usually remain the same. Like there's a couple in a car, they hear a news report about escaped killers over the radio, they hear strange noises. Sometimes it's scratching, sometimes it's footsteps, and then the girl insists on being driven home. And then finally, when they get home, they make the discovery of the bloody detached hook embedded in the car in some way. Now, as you can imagine, often with many urban legends, there are several fun and spooky variations to this story. And I say fun, but I mean, usually more bloody and more violent.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, I know I asked already about the first time you heard it. Have you heard other variations of this, though?
AMANDA: Probably, but none stick out. It's more kind of, like, children's books where you can, like, flip the blouse or flip this pants, or flip the head of the doll to make different variations. It's like all kind of, you know, elements of the same recipe.
JULIA: I've heard a couple of variations myself and in doing the research, I found plenty of variations, too. Shout out to Sally, who also did the bulk of the work for the research for this episode. There are a couple of variations. One is, like, a couple is on a road trip and they stop either, like, because, I don’t know, the man has to pee in the woods or because the car breaks down, right? And so the man decides he's going to walk back to the gas station they just passed for help, leaving his girlfriend alone in the car.
AMANDA: In a world where women can't have credit cards or arguably drivers licenses, then at least the dude's gotta show up to take care of them.
JULIA: So while she waits for him to return, the woman then hears that sort of signature radio report, warning of an escaped prisoner. Sometimes it's, you know, an escaped mental patient because this is the '50s and '60s when this story was originally being told. But as she's listening to the radio, she starts to hear a thumping noise on the roof of the car, which, you know, begins to scare her.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And then when she finally, like after waiting for so long and the boyfriend not returning, she exits the car only to see the escapee sitting on the roof of the car banging the boyfriend's severed head against the roof.
AMANDA: Oh, that's a lot worse.
JULIA: The mortality rate in the various variations continues to just escalate.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: So this version of the story also has a couple of these different brutal endings where, like, the beginning is the same, but essentially the way the boyfriend dies is different.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, is there any stump situation happening? Do we have some Washington Irving perverts out in here?
JULIA: I mean, we did have a beheading already. You're absolutely right. You got me there.
AMANDA: Well, shit. That was about the head, not the stump, though.
JULIA: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. So there's a couple of different versions. Usually, it's the boyfriend who gets killed in these versions. One story, the scraping on the roof of the car is because the boyfriend has been killed and has, like, been hung from the tree above the car.
AMANDA: Ugh.
JULIA: So it's either his, like, feet or his fingernails that are scratching against the roof.
AMANDA: Scary.
JULIA: Pretty brutal. Pretty scary for sure. There's another version, of course, which is the odd dripping noise that continues to confuse and scare the woman and it turns out to be the boyfriend's blood dripping onto the roof instead.
AMANDA: Man, that's so interesting. I feel like the near miss is really a huge part of the story to me. And the woman stays alive in a lot of these versions, but that really surprises me.
JULIA: Well, I'm glad you point that out because there is a version where the woman does not survive, which is the man survives, he goes, he gets help, he returns back to the car only to find his date has been killed with the hook still embedded in her body.
AMANDA: Shoulda listened.
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. So, like, as you can tell by all of these variations, there's a lot of different versions that sort of depend on who the storyteller is and kind of how brutal they want to make it. Urban Legends go through the cousin network, right? So I guess it depends on how exposed to horror movies your oldest cousin was before they told you this story.
AMANDA: How much baggage does your oldest cousin have that they're trying to kind of work on, you know, passing along scary stuff to the next generation?
JULIA: In a lot of these stories, the answer is a lot. So there is one last one that I think is kind of fun. It's a similar legend with similar beats to the ones that I previously mentioned, which is a couple is coming back from a date, car breaks down, you know how it is. The man decides to head off on foot in order to find help. Woman stays in the car. Same beats continuing. She falls asleep while she is waiting for her boyfriend. And when she wakes up, she sees a horrifying-looking man staring at her through the car window. Honestly, my nightmare. I'm gonna tell you right now. Hate that. Luckily, she's like, "The car's locked. This is scary, but I'm safe because he cannot get inside," which is so funny because it's like windows break, girlfriend. What are you talking about?
AMANDA: They really do. I think those locks were pickable with, like, a stiff breeze in the '50s.
JULIA: The story kind of goes, she's like, "Oh, well, this man is very scary, but thank God, he can't get in the car." And then to her horror, the person raises both of his arms to reveal one is the hooked hand skewering the boyfriend's severed head.
AMANDA: Oh, no. I thought it was gonna be the boyfriend who'd been mutilated by the hook hand, and so the girlfriend would try to, like, run him over or something and then turns out afterward it's the boyfriend.
JULIA: Ooh. Amanda, that's a good variation. Keep that in mind for the next time you tell this at a scary story spooky hour. I'd love that.
AMANDA: I will, I will.
JULIA: As you can imagine, usually the story ends there, you know, with just him dangling the keys. Doesn't reveal the fate of the woman, but you can kind of guess the implication it's about to happen.
AMANDA: It's scarier to imagine.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. So the story is so familiar to us, right? Even with its various iterations. But my question, as it always is here on Spirits is how and why did we start telling this story in the first place. First off, I want to highly recommend a book by Jan Harold Brunvand called The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, which essentially has a entire chapter specifically about The Hook story. Brunvand traces the origins of this story to the 1950s, and it's clear that it spread pretty quickly. The story was considered widespread amongst American teenagers by 1959, and it spread further and further as it began to pick up steam in the 1960s. And what is really interesting, I think, is Brunvand talks about how he spoke to several teenagers from around this time period. And what was particularly interesting is all of the teens insisted that the story was specific to their hometown, or at least like a neighboring town that was close to their hometown.
AMANDA: That's really cool, the proximity of like, "No, no, no. This is real and it happened near me."
JULIA: Like, so for example, if you were in Utah, and you asked a teenager about the story, they're like, "Yeah, that happened like in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. And like it happened in like one of the Canyon valleys." And he was like, "Oh, that's so interesting, because like the person in the Bay Area says it happened right over there as well." So I think that's extremely cool that this one is such a personalized tale in that— again, the beats are so kind of, like, anyone can tell the story and add any details they want so long as they continue with the beats that make up the story. But the fact that you can personalize it so much, I think, is a really interesting part and also probably why this has persisted for as long as it has. The story itself, according to Brunvand, probably hit its peak on November 8th, 1960, which is when we have the first verifiable written reference to the tale. And Amanda, it was posted in all places, in a Dear Abby column.
AMANDA: No. This bitch again?
JULIA: I'm gonna read you the Dear Abby column. Are you ready?
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: "Dear Abby, if you're interested in teenagers," wild statement to make by the way, "If you're interested in teenagers, you will print this story. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it doesn't matter because it served its purpose for me. A fella and his date pulled into their favorite lovers' lane to listen to the radio and do a little necking."
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: This is printed. It printed, "Do a little necking."
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: "The music was interrupted by an announcer who said that there was an escaped convict in the area who had served time for rape and robbery. He was described as having a hook instead of a right hand. The couple become frightened and drive away. When the boy took his girl home, he went to open the car door for her, then he saw a hook on the door handle. I will never park to make out as long as I live. I hope this does the same for other kids. Signed, Jeanette." [14:39]
AMANDA: Jeanette, respectfully, I will park and make out at any opportunity, okay? I will be late to anything if it's because I parked and made out. That's like the stuff that life is made of, Jeanette, okay?
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. So this is really interesting to me, because I think we talked about this a little bit in the Bloody Mary episode, right? About the sort of like, sexual awakening of teenagers and particularly, like, female-presenting and like female-raised children during this time period, right? And the idea of them having some sort of, like, sexual awakening scared the shit out of adults during this time.
AMANDA: Exactly. And particularly of white women, particularly of middle and upper class white women, where their virtue is something to be guarded and probably arguably for the men, like the moral of story is be protective of the woman you've been entrusted with in this sort of, like, model of hetero-patriarchy.
JULIA: Yes. So that's why I think this being printed on November 8th, 1960, the year that everyone's going and voting for JFK. The literal day everyone's going and voting for JFK, by the way. This was—
AMANDA: Oh, my God, it's election day. You're right.
JULIA: This was the election day.
AMANDA: Abby said, "Enough with the politics."
JULIA: Abby said, "I don't care who becomes president, but these teens should stop having sex in lovers' lanes."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But I just think it's so— like this is the perfect time period to really encapsulate this story because it is such a, like, sex mania, like, "Look what happens if you have sex," sort of thing. And, like, predating the official, you know, rules of horror so early that are established in horror movies. So I just think it's fascinating. I truly do. But these stories, Amanda, which made it all the way to one of the most famous advice columns in the country, and like, you know, a staple of American households. Dear Abby was a staple of a lot of American households. The woman has a Hollywood star, you know? This had to have come from somewhere. It didn't just appear in Dear Abby one day, right? I want to get to some of the potential inspirations for the story, as well as why it captured our imagination for as long as it has, just as soon as we grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, it's Julia. And welcome to the refill. Let's give a quick shout-out to our newest patron, Greg. Greg, thank you so much for joining up on our Patreon. You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Rikoelike, Lily, and Wil. And of course, our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. And you, too, listener, right now can join our patron at patreon.com/spiritspodcast where you get cool rewards like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every single episode, bonus urban legends episodes each and every month, and so much more. Check it out, that is patreon.com/spiritspodcast. And hey, so many of you have been sending in more urban legends but we need more, more, I tell you. I need more urban legends for the spooky season. So you can either email us at spiritspodcast@gmail.com or go to our website and fill out the form that allows us to check out your urban legend. You just type it all up and it sends right to us. It’s great. I love it. It's awesome. Other things that are awesome, hey, another show here that we love at Multitude. Have you checked out Tiny Matters yet? Science shapes every part of our lives, but so much of its influence is overlooked or buried in the past. Tiny Matters is an award-winning podcast about tiny things from molecules to microbes that have a big and often surprising impact on society. I think you would really love their most recent episode about the extinction and how like— you know those articles that were out being like, "They're going to remake dire wolves. There's gonna be dire wolves again." They have a really interesting into that. But from deadly diseases to forensic toxicology, to the search for extraterrestrial life even. Host and former scientist Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti embrace the awe and messiness of science and its place in history and today, and how it can our world's future. Tiny Matters is brought to by the American Chemical Society, which is a non-profit scientific organization based in Washington, DC, and they're a part of Multitude. You can get new episodes from them every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, this episode is sponsored by Shaker & Spoon, our OG, our faves. We love you, Shaker & Spoon. Shaker & Spoon is a subscription cocktail service that helps you learn how to make handcrafted right at home. It's like mixology but delivered to your door. Every box comes with enough to make three different cop— every box comes with enough to make three different cocktail recipes develop by world-class mixologists. All you need to do is buy one bottle of that month's spirit, whether that is gin, or vodka, or whiskey, or rum, or what have you, and then you have all you need to make 12 drinks at home. At just $40 to $50 per month, plus the cost of that bottle, it is a super cost-effective way to craft cocktails. And you can skip or cancel boxes at any time. So if you decide, "Hey, I don't want to do the vodka box this month." That's okay, you can skip it, or you can cancel it. It's all good. Invite over some friends, class up your night caps, or be the best house guest of all-time with your Shaker & Spoon box. I'm just saying, if someone brought a Shaker & Spoon box to my house, if they were staying with me, like, for the holidays or something, I would be freakin' delighted. And you can get $20 off your first box at shakerandspoon.com/cool, that is C-O-O-L. shakerandspoon.com/cool. Thanks, Shaker & Spoon. And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back and for this episode, I wanted to do a cocktail that was inspired by a cocktail called the Red Hook.
AMANDA: Now, I say to myself sometimes, how could Julia possibly find a cocktail pairing that says, "We're youthful teens trying to experiment with our sexuality without anyone getting pregnant in the front seat of a US-made Chevrolet?" And somehow you do it.
JULIA: For some context, the cocktail is named for the Brooklyn neighborhood, Red Hook.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And it is a twist on a classic Manhattan. So traditionally, it is made with rye whiskey, maraschino liqueur, and a bitter Italian vermouth that is called Punt e Mes, it means like a piece and a half essentially.
AMANDA: Oh, cool.
JULIA: One piece bitter and then half a piece sweet. That's why they call it that.
AMANDA: Aw, Julia, just like us.
JULIA: Just like us. But I want to mix things up a bit. I don't want to just take the Red Hook. I want to feel inspired by the Red Hook. So we're going to keep the rye. We will keep the maraschino liqueur, but Punt e Mes is like not super easy of a liqueur to find. So I think you could just sub in a, like, sweet vermouth, like a vermouth Rosso, you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then to give it that sort of, like, darkness that feels appropriate for this cocktail and the story, I was going to recommend a few dashes of black walnut bitters.
AMANDA: I love it. Tastes like a combo of an Old-fashioned and a Manhattan, and I'm very into it.
JULIA: Exactly. And I think it's a great cocktail for fall, going into winter. It feels appropriately, like, spooky and toasty, like a bonfire on a fall evening.
AMANDA: Shout out to the late great Van Brunt distilling in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which had a very good Nocino cocktail.
JULIA: Ooh. Yeah, that does sound good. Shout out. So we were wondering, before we took our break, how this story picked up so much steam and where exactly it might have come from to help inspire the story. There is a lot of speculation. And as we often talk about with urban legends, it can be hard to nail down exactly where or what started it, right? But one of the most repeated speculated origins dates back to 1946. And this is where we do the thing where we very rarely bump up against the true crime space. So, like, just a heads-up we are going to be talking about a series of real crimes and real murders that happened in 1946 in Texarkana.
AMANDA: And let me guess, Julia, a whole lot of ableism because this is defined by a body with a difference.
JULIA: Well, so that's interesting, Amanda, because I'm going to tell you right from the start, The Hook does not come into play here.
AMANDA: Hmm. just added by society to kind of further, like, differentiate and, like, make spooky the person.
JULIA: Yes. and we'll talk about why that is a little bit later. We have some interesting theories. Sally and I had a great discussion about it. I'm really excited to talk about it. So—
AMANDA: Shout out.
JULIA: —it's 1946 in Texarkana. In less than three months, Texarkana was devastated by four brutal crimes, which included, importantly to our conversation, three attacks on young people who had been parked on lovers' lanes.
AMANDA: Oh, man.
JULIA: So Texarkana, as the name suggests, is an area right on the border of the states of Texas and Arkansas, and was technically made up of two towns. It was the town of Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.
AMANDA: Real Kansas City situation.
JULIA: I love when there's twin towns just on a border and they're like, "Which side are you on? The Texas side." You know? Like, that's really fun. So these crimes terrified the region. Law enforcement from both the Texas side and the Arkansas side worked together to try to solve the case. It gained national press coverage as they worked to find the assailant who was dubbed by the local papers as The Phantom Killer. And these crimes became known as the Texarkana Moonlight Murders. I mean, great branding, I will say. Like, you know, for all that you want to talk about with true crime and everything like that, and the way that media tends to sensationalize deaths and, you know, murder cases and everything. Good branding, take it with a grain of salt, but good branding. Now, these crimes specifically targeted couples with the first attack happening on February 22nd, 1946. So Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey were parked on a lovers' lane after seeing a movie.
Sounds very familiar, doesn't it, Amanda?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: While they were there, a man wearing a white cloth mask, which the witnesses described as looking like a pillowcase with eyeholes cut out of it, appeared on the driver's side door, shining a flashlight into the window. Now, thinking that the masked man was looking for someone else because, you know, maybe he was trying to find someone else who was parked on lovers' lanes. Maybe someone was fooling around with someone's girlfriend. Who knows, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Hollis tells the man, "You found the wrong person. You're looking for someone else." But the assailant replied, "I don't want to kill you, fella. So do what I say."
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: So at gunpoint, Hollis and Larey were ordered out of the car. Hollis was told by the masked man to take off his pants. Nothing happens to him other than his skull gets fractured.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: I'll say that much. So when he does so, the masked man strikes him in the head with his firearm, fracturing his skull, to the point where Larey fully believed he had been shot because the sound was so loud of the cracking of his skull.
AMANDA: Ooft.
JULIA: Ooft, indeed, yes. Larey, believing that they were being robbed, which is a fair assessment of the situation, I would say, tried to show the assailant that they had no money, like took out Hollis' wallet, took out her wallet, was like, "Look, there's nothing in here. I promise."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Instead the assailant ordered her to stand up and run. She first tried to flee into a ditch, but then the assailant yelled at her that she was running the wrong way, and so she changed direction and ran up the road.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, Larey, as she is running up the road, sees a older car in the road and so she checked to see if anyone was in there to try to get help, found that it was empty.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Later they believed that this might have been the assailant's car but they're not entirely sure. Now at this point, the attacker reappears behind her and asked her why she was running.
AMANDA: Well, that's very confusing, considering he just demanded her to run.
JULIA: Exactly. So terrified and confused, she told the man that he had ordered her to do so, and he called her a liar and then attacked her.
AMANDA: Oh, Lord.
JULIA: Eventually, he left her there and she was able to flee to a house, which the closest one was half a mile away. So she ran half a mile in order to get help. She woke the occupants of that house, was able to call the police. Around this time in which Larey is finding help and getting the police called, Hollis regained consciousness as well and was able to flag down a passing car who also called the police.
AMANDA: I'm glad both of them were able to reach for help. This feels like a scenario that you don't, you know, come back from.
JULIA: Yes. So this was a fortunate situation. I will say the other victims in the story are not as lucky. They sort of got away and— but that is often a thing that happens with people who are committing crimes over and over again, is the crimes will escalate. So in this case, Hollis and Larey were very lucky to have survived. The police arrived, they surveil the scene. There is no evidence of the assailant. is long gone at this point. Both of them, Hollis and Larey, are hospitalized for their injuries and the account they gave the police did not give a clear indication of who the suspect might have been. What annoys me about this in particular, because there's no evidence. It was just like a police gut situation, was that law enforcement believed that Larey might have known the identity of the attacker and was covering for him. But, like, any modern report and, like, you know, someone looking into the case now, there's no indication that that was likely.
AMANDA: Got it. Somebody was like, "This kid. [mumbles]"
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. Like, "Oh, this woman, she was probably covering for this guy." I'm like, "What are you talking about? Stop it." Like, I think they were trying to imply, like, she had another boyfriend and he's the one that came looking for him and attacked—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —them for being there, you know? That kind of thing.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: It was about a month later on March 24th that the next lovers' lane attack happened and this one unfortunately resulted in the death of both of the victims. So Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore were both found dead in Griffin's car on the morning of March 24th by a passing motorist. Both had been shot and killed, though there was evidence that Moore was killed outside of the car and then moved into the backseat before the killer left the scene, which is interesting.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And I say interesting being like, why not just kill them both in the car? That kind of thing. Another double murder, a little less than a month later, was on April 14th. Three months and we had five people dead and three people injured by the end of this streak, right?
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: So this is April 14th. This is the death of Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker. So Martin had picked up Booker from, like, a musical concert sort of thing at a local VFW club around 1:30 AM, according to the witnesses that saw him pick her up. Their bodies were found the next morning, though the locations of the bodies were, what, confused and disturbed the local police. So Martin's body was found shot about a mile and a half away from his car.
AMANDA: Far.
JULIA: Now, they had to search for Booker after that. So he was found around, I want to say, 7:00 AM. They found Booker's body at 11:00 AM the same morning. She was two miles away from Martin's body, propped up against a tree, also shot, and her body was even further from the car, so about three miles from the car.
AMANDA: When you remember that people weigh, you know, a hundred pounds and up, that is a very—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —far distance to transport someone injured or deceased.
JULIA: The indication, too, that they had was both of them put up significant struggles, whereas the other victims, that was not the case. So it may be that they tried to flee and then were caught or something to that effect.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: There was a fourth attack, which resulted in the death of a man named Virgil Starks and his wife, Katie inside of their home, though Katie was able to survive the attack.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Now, there is some doubt as to whether or not Katie and Virgil's assault was connected to these attacks. They tend to get lumped in together because they were around the same time period—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —and because it was couples being targeted, but they were targeted inside their home rather than at a lovers' lane.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So at this point, the investigation is in full swing. You have local police, you have Texas Rangers, you have county sheriff's departments, you even have the FBI assisting with the investigation, right? So over 200 people were questioned as part of the investigation. They were trying to bait the attacker at one point by having local teenage boys sit in parked cars in lovers' lanes while the police waited nearby.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: At one point, they were like having police officers also sit in cars, but with like a female mannequin next to them.
AMANDA: With wigs.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, it's either wigs or it's a mannequin, baby.
JULIA: There is a great article about this from Texas Monthly titled Texarkana Murder Mystery, and the way that they described how the town felt during this investigation was ongoing, I think, is really good. So here's the quote, "Fear paralyzed the town. Women of means packed their clothes and children, and checked into downtown's Hotel Grimm while their husbands were away on business. Others rigged Rube Goldberg-esque security systems, attaching pots and pans to wire that was strung around their property. People who had never owned guns slept with loaded pistols on both sides of the bed and made pallets on the floor so that their children could sleep beside them. Lawmen from Arkansas and Texas and members of the national press overwhelmed the town in pursuit of the assailant, who was dubbed The Phantom Killer by the Texarkana Gazette."
AMANDA: "Ooft."
Yes.
JULIA: In the end, 400 suspects were investigated and there were numerous false confessions. But the man that was the prime suspect, the one that in the end, a lot of the investigators were like, "It was definitely this guy," was a career criminal and a car thief named Youell Swinney. However, the only evidence that the police had against him was a statement from his wife and circumstantial evidence. And then when they tried to investigate further, when they tried to bring charges against this man, his wife refused to testify against him. And so the prosecutors chose not to pursue murder charges, though he later went to jail, a year later, for a car theft conviction. So he ended up serving a decent amount of time because he was a repeat felon. And at this point, they were just like, "Oh, well, you've done this enough, so life in jail for you."
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: He ended up getting paroled a couple of decades later, I want to say, because of, like, habeas corpus rules, because he wasn't given proper representation. So—
AMANDA: Man, no happy endings in the US judicial system.
JULIA: No, no, this is not a true crime podcast, so I'm not going to go into it—
AMANDA: Thank God.
JULIA: —too much. There was several other suspects that they had. At one point, they were saying that, because this was 1948, a German prisoner of war had escaped and so they thought that maybe he was doing this. There was a connection to one of the victims about—she had a saxophone in the car and they were like, "Well, there was a traveling saxophone salesman around the time of the murders. Maybe he did it." And I'm just like, "Oh, the police had no leads." Like truly no leads.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: It was kind of wild. All of this to say, Amanda, this particular series of murders and attacks on couples in lovers' lanes gained national attention. It caught the public eye. And it is not surprising that this story sort of spread through the teenage oral storytelling network, right? Like this really hits all of the themes that teens love to talk about in urban legends. There's sex, there's danger, there's the titillation of being alone with someone you're romantically or sexually interested in, only to be caught in a, quote-unquote, "compromising position," right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Plus, think about the inherent prudishness of American culture. And we talked about this a little bit earlier, but teens having sex? That's scandalous.
AMANDA: And this is not unrelated to the invention of teenage-hood, particularly in the post-war years. We are trying to protect innocence. The project of white supremacy, particularly in the South, is trying really hard to enforce morality and virginity on white folks and an attempt to preserve whiteness. So there is a lot going on here that really leans into the stereotypes of seeing young people with cars, spending money and time alone as a sort of, like, uniquely vulnerable population that we, meaning, you know, white Christian society, need to protect at all costs.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. Oh, you nailed it. You nailed it, so I think this is like a really important context to have for talking about American urban legends in particular.
AMANDA: It's Americana, we're swimming in the soup.
JULIA: We are. Oh, We're swimming in that soup. That soup—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —is thick, but we're swimming through it.
AMANDA: We are.
JULIA: This story also encapsulates a larger theme in urban legends in America, which is the dead boyfriend urban legend, right?
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: We kind of talked about this earlier with the variations that we have on the Hook Man story. But this one doesn't require the man who is killing the teenagers to have a hook, but rather just is endangering the lives of usually the girlfriends, which leads to a dead boyfriend, as the name implies. So, again, you'll recognize the beats of this one. Parked couple, abandoned girl while the boyfriend leaves to go get help, a mysterious noise, a rescue, sometimes by a passerby, sometimes— especially later, it's like, the police or the local authorities came and rescued her, right? And then the horrible realization that the boyfriend never managed to get help and instead was killed.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, there is a more modern version, and I'll say modern, I just mean more like as more and more retellings have happened, this tends to get added on like a little, like, button at the end. But this idea of this almost like Orpheus-like twist to the story, which is when escorted from the car, the rescuer, whether that is a police officer or a good Samaritan, doesn't matter, will tell the girlfriend not to look around, you know? "Don't— like, don't look back at the car, just focus on me, let's get out of here."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And inevitably, she will turn around and look at it, and we'll see the butchered boyfriend.
AMANDA: Wow. Yeah, another puncturing of an illusion, the puncturing of innocence, it's cinematic, I get it.
JULIA: It is, it is. But this, much like the hook story, seems to be designed, again, to scare teens who they themselves like to park, as the kids would say, or go necking or what have you.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Make out in a car, et cetera, et cetera. And so might recall times where they were in a similar situation and be like, "Oh, my God, look how close to death I might have been because I put myself in that situation."
AMANDA: Yeah. And, like, at the— in the best of scenarios, you're worried someone's going to catch you. Like you go to a lovers' lane because it's secluded and you, you know—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —you're not going to be caught up past curfew or by the local cop who knows your parents. Like you're— it's already a little clandestine, which is why I think it also, with that layer of, you know, of sex or titillation, is just really such a ripe scenario for an urban legend.
JULIA: Right, but there's also this idea of, "Because you are trying to gain privacy, you're sacrificing your safety," right?
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: And so the idea that they're trying to push on these teens is like, wouldn't you rather be safe? You know, you don't need privacy if it means you're going to get murdered because you had sex in a car.
AMANDA: You don't need privacy when you're doing the right thing.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. As the, you know, Big Brother state would have you believe, for sure.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But it's also this idea, too, of like— and we talked about this again in the Bloody Mary episode, as much as this is supposed to be a warning, like don't go have sex in cars in lovers' lanes or else you'll get murdered. There is a certain aspect of, like, teenage rebellion of being like, "Oh, yeah, that is scary. But at the same time, I'm titillated by how scary this potential brush with death could be." And I think that's why that first version—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —of the story is so popular, not the dead boyfriend version, but the hook on the car version, because it's, "Look how close we got to death, but we still managed to, you know, have the experience we wanted to have and, like, whew, well, I'll know better for next time." However—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —will there be a next time?
AMANDA: And in that scenario too, it's not even that, you know, anyone was wrong. It's that the boyfriend didn't heed the warnings fast enough. The girlfriend knew there was the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Like society functioned, right? There was the warning. She had the right instinct. She just had to, like, convince him to, like, pull his head out of his pants and, you know, listen to what she was talking about, which is why I think it, it, it has a sort of kernel of like, "I can trust myself and my instincts and I ought to," which I do think is kind of affirming to hear from an urban legend.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely.
AMANDA: Like when you hear an urban legend or watch a horror movie and you watch a character make choices that you tell yourself—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —you wouldn't do, no matter how prone we all are to do things we think we wouldn't do in an emergency situation, a part of the pleasure we get out of that is thinking to myself, "Pff. I'd never do that," or, "Pff. I'm smarter than that."
JULIA: That always frustrates me, this is a total aside, when people are like, "Oh, well, this horror movie was so annoying because, like, all of the characters made such dumb decisions and blah, blah, blah. And like no one would ever do that if they were in that situation." I'm like, "First off, you've probably never been chased by a, you know, murderer before. You've never been chased by ghost face going massed through your household and anything like that. Like, you probably would make silly decisions in the moment because you don't know what you would do in a moment like that. And also, they have to make stupid decisions. It's a movie. If they made all the right decisions, nothing would happen, and everyone would escape the killer in the first 30 minutes of the film. Like, what are we talking about here? Come on.
AMANDA: Yeah, people making prudent choices does not entertainment make.
JULIA: Anyway, something that annoys me about criticism of horror movies in general. But finally, Amanda, let's talk about why the hook, because obviously, if we're going to take the Moonlight Murders, the Texarkana Moonlight Murders as the inspiration for The Hook story, it's missing a key element here, you know? Because—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —those were just lovers' lanes murders. Those are not this particular defining feature. Sally and I were talking about this because there doesn't seem to be much research, or at least we didn't come up with anything that really explained why the hook in particular, right? And as you pointed out, Amanda, part of it is likely just ableism. The idea of visible disability makes uneducated people uncomfortable. Now, Sally, however, came at me with an interesting historical fact that I think I have to mention, which is the split hook
prosthetic was invented in 1912 and was commonly used as a prosthetic for amputations leading up to when this story became extremely popularized, right? So she also pointed out that because of the state of medical advancement at the time, many soldiers who were injured during World War 1 had amputations that were done in the field and the split hook became a popular prosthetic for hand and arm amputations because it was not only more functional than traditional ones, but it was also more cost-effective.
AMANDA: Yes. The cost of prostheses has been on my mind this whole episode because it is a worst-case scenario to have your prosthetic somewhere that you are not. And also if there's blood involved something very bad has happened.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. I think the implication for at least The Hook story is that the blood was from someone else he murdered.
AMANDA: Ah, okay. That's good. That's good.
JULIA: So Sally, basically, suggests here that there probably were a fair amount of hook-handed people in America during the first half of the 20th century. And people in general fear what they don't understand, in which case, this is an ableism plot point. Seems bad. Seems like not perhaps the best place for that horror aspect to come from, in hindsight.
AMANDA: Like a second influx of World War II veterans, maybe as prosthetic technology is advancing, the hook becomes or seems archaic, or maybe an indicator of class if it was an affordable prosthetic as opposed to other kinds, so lots to get into. I wonder if a sociologist can get in the chat here.
JULIA: Oh, I'm sure. If you have information about that, we would love to hear it, obviously. So to wrap us up, Amanda, as I started this episode, I mentioned that this is probably a story that you listening at home have heard a variation of at some point. It is a popular story to reference in pop culture, even to this day. Stephen King does a retelling. It's mentioned in movies like Meatballs and Candyman, and of course, the slasher classic I Know What You Did Last Summer is literally a hooked man murderer in that story. Of course, our buddy Alvin Schwartz, who we mentioned last episode with our Girl in the Green Ribbon.
AMANDA: Shout out, my man.
JULIA: He did his own retelling of this story in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, though it is a, more PG version. There's no mention of sex. It's also been parodied by shows like SpongeBob SquarePants or Community, or acted as inspiration for shows like Supernatural. But at the end of the day, Amanda, I have a feeling that this is going to be another one of those stories that we are going to tell for generations, you know? It is just one that is easy to tell, easy to sit down around the campfire, and it feels still somewhat relatable. The idea of, like, trying to find privacy in a place that also means you are opening yourself up to danger. So I think we're going to keep telling the story even if the details change over time.
AMANDA: Well, folks, next time you and boo are nestled up on a lover's lane, or an abandoned street, or maybe the parking lot of a suburban Dunkin' Donuts, remember—
JULIA: Stay Creepy.
AMANDA: —stay cool.
JULIA: Later, satyrs.
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