Five people were dead. Three survived. The man who terrified Texarkana simply disappeared.In the spring of 1946, the twin cities of Texarkana, divided by the Texas-Arkansas state line, were drawn into a nightmare that would outlive everyone who first investigated it.Young couples were attacked after dark. Two double murders were connected by the same firearm. A married couple was later shot inside their own farmhouse. As fear spread, residents armed themselves, police watched isolated roads, Texas Rangers joined the hunt, and newspapers gave the unidentified attacker the name that would follow the case for generations: the Phantom Killer.Then the attacks stopped.No murder conviction followed.The Phantom at Sundown reconstructs the Texarkana Moonlight Murders from their beginnings in February 1946 through the frantic investigation, the surviving witnesses, the evidence connecting the crimes, the panic that transformed the city, and the complicated case against principal suspect Youell Swinney.Rather than turning suspicion into certainty, this account examines what investigators could prove, what they believed, and what remains unresolved. It also explores the false confessions, limitations of 1940s forensic science, competing theories, and the enormous influence of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which helped transform an unfinished murder investigation into American true-crime folklore.Behind the mask and the mythology were real people whose lives were permanently altered by a series of crimes that never received a courtroom ending.More than eight decades later, the central question remains unanswered:Who was the Phantom?

Five people were dead. Three survived. The man who terrified Texarkana simply disappeared.In the spring of 1946, the twin cities of Texarkana, divided by the Texas-Arkansas state line, were drawn into a nightmare that would outlive everyone who first investigated it.Young couples were attacked after dark. Two double murders were connected by the same firearm. A married couple was later shot inside their own farmhouse. As fear spread, residents armed themselves, police watched isolated roads, Texas Rangers joined the hunt, and newspapers gave the unidentified attacker the name that would follow the case for generations: the Phantom Killer.Then the attacks stopped.No murder conviction followed.The Phantom at Sundown reconstructs the Texarkana Moonlight Murders from their beginnings in February 1946 through the frantic investigation, the surviving witnesses, the evidence connecting the crimes, the panic that transformed the city, and the complicated case against principal suspect Youell Swinney.Rather than turning suspicion into certainty, this account examines what investigators could prove, what they believed, and what remains unresolved. It also explores the false confessions, limitations of 1940s forensic science, competing theories, and the enormous influence of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which helped transform an unfinished murder investigation into American true-crime folklore.Behind the mask and the mythology were real people whose lives were permanently altered by a series of crimes that never received a courtroom ending.More than eight decades later, the central question remains unanswered:Who was the Phantom?

Five people were dead. Three survived. The man who terrified Texarkana simply disappeared.In the spring of 1946, the twin cities of Texarkana, divided by the Texas-Arkansas state line, were drawn into a nightmare that would outlive everyone who first investigated it.Young couples were attacked after dark. Two double murders were connected by the same firearm. A married couple was later shot inside their own farmhouse. As fear spread, residents armed themselves, police watched isolated roads, Texas Rangers joined the hunt, and newspapers gave the unidentified attacker the name that would follow the case for generations: the Phantom Killer.Then the attacks stopped.No murder conviction followed.The Phantom at Sundown reconstructs the Texarkana Moonlight Murders from their beginnings in February 1946 through the frantic investigation, the surviving witnesses, the evidence connecting the crimes, the panic that transformed the city, and the complicated case against principal suspect Youell Swinney.Rather than turning suspicion into certainty, this account examines what investigators could prove, what they believed, and what remains unresolved. It also explores the false confessions, limitations of 1940s forensic science, competing theories, and the enormous influence of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which helped transform an unfinished murder investigation into American true-crime folklore.Behind the mask and the mythology were real people whose lives were permanently altered by a series of crimes that never received a courtroom ending.More than eight decades later, the central question remains unanswered:Who was the Phantom?