Agathos Dorea

“Deep into the darkness peering,
long I stood there wondering, fearing.”

~Edgar Alan Poe

On the evening of March 23rd, 1946, Richard Griffin and his teenage girlfriend, Polly Ann Moore, were brutally murdered on the back roads of a small, sleepy Arkansas town known as Texarkana. Each shot in the back of the head, their bodies were found the next morning by police officers who were searching for them after their parents reported them missing.

Less than a month later, on April 14, Paul Martin, 17, and Betty Jo Booker, 15, were killed in a rural park also outside of Texarkana. Martin’s body was found a mile and a half from his car near a rural highway. Booker’s body was found two miles from the car, near a patch of woods. Both had been shot several times.

By the time the news of the second murders broke, the citizens of Texarkana had entered a state of panic. Many residents bought firearms, fortified their homes, and stayed in at night. The police, meanwhile, began patrolling Texarkana’s secluded streets and Lover’s lanes, apparently prompting the killer to change tactics.

On May 4, a man was reported hiding in an outbuilding on the farm property of Texarkana local, Virgil Starks. Sensing the time was right, the killer left the outbuilding and walked across an open yard and shot owner Virgil Starks, 36, twice through a parlor window, killing him instantly. Virgil’s wife, Katy, 35, upon hearing breaking glass, left her bedroom and entered the parlor. The assailant, still outside the house, shot her twice, hitting her in the face and mouth, but Mrs. Starks managed to escape from the house and get help from a neighbor. While Mrs. Starks sought aid, the killer searched the house, leaving muddy footprints on the floor.

By the time the police reached the house, the killer had again vanished–this time for good.

The Texarkana Murders were the subject matter of the 1976 cult-classic, ‘The Town That Dreaded Sundown’. Despite national attention and a manhunt of seldom seen proportion, the killer was never caught.

The case remains open to this day.