The Texar Cana moonlight murders are the unsolved violent crimes committed in and around

the spring of 1946 by an unidentified serial killer known as the Phantom Killer, who attacked

eight people within ten weeks. Five of the eight were killed. The attacks happened on weekends

between February 22, 1946 and May 3, 1946. There were four attacks, each attack apparently

attempting to commit double murder. Contrary to popular belief, the killer did not attack during

a full moon, but did strike late at night. The murders sent the town of Texar Cana into a

state of panic throughout the summer. In 1976, a film, the town that dreaded the sundown, was released

and loosely based on the events. In the first attack, committed on February 22, 1946, around midnight,

in the city of New York City, Jimmy Hollis, 25, and his girlfriend, Mary Jean Lary, age 19,

were attacked while parked on a secluded road. The attack happened about 50 feet off of Richmond

Road on an unpaved street, about 100 yards from the last row of city homes.

The couple had only been parked for about 10 minutes when a man walked up to Hollis's driver's

side door, blinding him with the flashlight. The man had a pistol and told him to get out of the car.

Both of the victims got out through the driver's side door. The man told Hollis to take off

his bridges. After Hollis removed his trousers, he was struck twice in the head with a heavy blunt object.

The attacker then struck Lary with a heavy blunt object. She would later say that she felt

like she was hit with an iron pipe. After being attacked, she tried to escape. Running up the road,

she saw an older car parked further, down the street, facing their vehicle. She quickly looked

inside to see if anyone could help her, but after seeing no one, she began to run. But then she was

once again overtaken by the attacker. The man asked her while she was running, she told him,

you told me to run. He called her a liar and he began to attack her again. He knocked her to the

ground and sexually assaulted her. Later reports indicated that the assailant sexually assaulted her

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