Jorge Marin, Jr., S.O.

Specialist,
Institution Historian
(19 Oct 2014)
THE PROFILING OF THE
PHANTOM KILLER
The first ever analysis of criminal human behavior
for the purpose of profiling a suspect was provided
for the first time in recorded history in the month of
November of 1888 by Dr. Thomas Bond. Dr. Bond,
which some believe was characterized by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle as the preeminent detective Sherlock
Holmes, provided a profile of a suspect which had
murdered and mutilated five women in the
Whitechapel area of London, a serial killer which
became infamously known as Jack the Ripper.
1

Fifty-eight years later the City of Texarkana, Texas
makes the national headlines, during the spring of
1946, when the Nation is tightly gripped at the
throat by the terror which haunted the city of
Texarkana, a horrifying terror that became the,
Moonlight Murders.
It was February 22
nd
, 1946 and the first of a series of
horrifying assaults by an assailant wearing a burlap
bag over his face with a pair of openings for the eyes
occurs at an isolated area of Texarkana on Richmond
Road
2

3
. Although the victims of the first brutal
assault by the Phantom Killer survived, this would
not be the case for five other victims. In all, a total
five victims were murdered and three others were
severely wounded when the final murder, attributed
to the Phantom killer, had occurred on May 3
rd
of
that year.
By the fifth murder, law enforcement officers from
Arkansas, Texas, and the FBI converged upon the
City of Texarkana in a massive attempt to capture
the Phantom Killer and news of the moonlight

1
Offender Profiling. Wikipedia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offender_profiling>
2
Hendricks, Nancy. Texarkana Moonlight
Murders.<http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4478>
3
Geringer, Joseph. The Phantom Killer: Texarkana
Moonlight Murders
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/unsolved
/texarkana/index_1.html>
murders captivated a nation with articles written in
life magazine and other national newspapers. As the
Phantom Killer continued to successfully evade
capture the question as to who and what type of
man could commit such atrocities finally demanded
that the editor-in-chief of the Texarkana Gazette, J.
Q. Mahaffay, find someone who could answer these
questions. This finally led to Mahaffay approaching
Dr. Anthony Lapalla, a psychiatrist at FCI Texarkana,
to provide a Criminal Profile of the Phantom Killer
4

5
.
According to Dr. Lapalla he believed the Killer to be a
white male between 30 and 50 years of age and was
responsible for all five murders. He also believed
that the Killer was a sadist motivated by a strong sex
drive
6
. Dr. Lapalla Discounted military veterans,
believing that such, maniacal proclivities would
have been identified within a year. Dr. Lapalla also
opined that the Killer was, Intelligent, clever, and
shrewd and was constantly aware of what was
going on in the investigation due to the killers ability
to avoid capture
3 4 5
.
Even though offender profiling was in its infancy,
profiling had been used in the United States to
profile criminals such as a serial bomber in New York
City and Adolf Hitler. However, this was perhaps the
first time in American history that Criminal Profiling
was deployed on a Serial Killer, establishing Dr.
Anthony Lapalla of FCI Texarkana as one of a small
handful of pioneers in the field of Criminal Profiling,
twenty-six years before the FBI established the
Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit for the
purpose of understanding criminal human behavior
7
.



4
Newton, Michael. The Texarkana Moonlight
Murders: The Unsolved Case of the 1946 Phantom
Killer. McFarland & Company, Inc. 2013 (Pg. 64, 65)
5
Presley, James. The Phantom Killer: Unlocking the
Mystery of the Texarkana Serial Murders: The Story
of a Town in Terror 2014.
6
Texarkana Gazette. Mutilated Body of Man Found
on RR Tracks, Latest Phantom Killer Victim.
Schenectady Gazette. May 8, 1946 (Vol. LII. No. 89,
pg. 1)
7
Critical Incident Response Group Behavioral
Research and Instruction Unit
<http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cirg/investigations-
and-operations-support/briu>