Armed with statements from the prisoners, Tackett and cohorts interviewed a series of witnesses keyed to Swinney’s actions while at Antoine, Arkansas.
• Kelly Caldwell: “On Friday, May 3, 1946, I was at a café in Antoine. Youell Swinney came by the café about dusk dark and told me that he was going to Texarkana and asked me if I wished to send any word to my brother who lives in Texarkana. Peggy Stevens was with Swinney. He turned and drove down the street and turned toward Prescott road and out of sight.”
• Leonard Hare: “On Saturday, May 4, 1946—I am positive of this date because it was the Saturday following Virgil Starks’s death in Texarkana—I saw Swinney and some woman who I presumed to be Peggy Stevens come into Antoine from the cut-off road leading to the Delight and Prescott road. They turned and passed directly in front of my house and entered Highway 26, which is the main Delight and Antoine road. It was just breaking daylight when I saw them. I had seen the two of them several times and knew it to be Swinney and the car he had been driving.”
• Clyde Lamb: “Lee Swinney, Louis Lamb, and myself went to Murfreesboro, Arkansas, on Friday or Saturday 19 or 20 of April to see about a job. The following Monday we went to work. Everett Lamb, Louie Lamb, and Jack Barton rode with Swinney to work and back, a distance of about seventeen miles. Rode with him until May 3. This was last day.”
• Everett Lamb: “Swinney told me that he was going to Texarkana late in the afternoon of May 3, 1946, and that he was not going to work any more on the Murfreesboro job, as he had no place to stay, and that we would have to secure rides with someone else. All the time that I have known Swinney at Antoine he has told me several times that he was going to Texarkana and he would leave the job. On one occasion I had to catch a ride from work to home because Swinney had left the job and was not there to carry me home.”
Tackett entered a note: “Everett Lamb stated that Swinney told him that on one occasion he was stopped and checked by the police near Texarkana in connection with those murders.”
• Jack Barton: “I rode to and from work with Swinney in his car. On one occasion Swinney tried to sell me his car, but I could not buy it. I loaned Swinney fifteen dollars at one time, but he paid me back. I left a pair of cheap white cotton gloves in Swinney’s car; they had a blue cuff. Swinney talked once to me about going squirrel hunting and asked me if I had any guns. He said that he might be able to get one from Louie Lamb.
“I believe that Swinney went to Texarkana every Saturday that he was in this part of the country. I remember only Saturday that Swinney did not leave town. On one occasion I saw Swinney arranging his trousers and I glimpsed a large roll of money folded in the middle fastened in some way to his underwear in such a way that it was held in place by his belt, this was about a week or maybe less before he left here for good.
“Swinney told me that at one time he and his wife were parked near Texarkana and a policeman came up to the car and told them that they were in danger and might get killed by the Phantom Killer.
“About dusk dark on Friday, May 3, 1946, Swinney came to my house and told me that I would have to get another ride as he was leaving the job and going to Texarkana. However, I believe that on Saturday morning, May 4. 1946, I rode to work with Swinney. I am not sure Everett Lamb rode or not.”
• Mrs. Louis Lamb: “My sister Peggy Stevens and Youell Lee Swinney arrived at my house on Wednesday before Easter Sunday which is the seventeenth day of April, I think. That was the first time I had ever seen Youell Lee Swinney. We went to Hot Springs on Easter Sunday. On the following Monday Swinney and my husband started working at Murfreesboro, Arkansas. Swinney and Peggy boarded at my house until May 3, 1946.
“Immediately after Swinney and my husband arrived home from work on the afternoon of May 3, we engaged in a quarrel concerning some board money due me. I asked Swinney and Peggy to leave. I left and went to a neighbor’s home and when I returned they were leaving. This was shortly before dark. My husband told me that he saw Swinney and Peggy in the car in Antoine about five A.M. Saturday morning, May 4.”
The witnesses filled out the picture that had Swinney leaving abruptly following a quarrel with Peggy’s sister, going to Texarkana the evening of Friday, May 3. He and Peggy were seen the following Saturday morning back in the Antoine area, and they were in Nashville at noon that day, having the car repaired. He was known to have gone to Texarkana almost every weekend. On the critical Friday evening he had headed toward, then back from, Texarkana, which would have taken him by the Starks home, in an emotional state hardly conducive to calm behavior.
Equally intriguing were Swinney’s comments that, while parked near Texarkana, a policeman had warned him and Peggy that the Phantom killer was loose and they were in danger by parking there. They had been perceived as potential victims of the killer, because they were a couple. He had told this account to two men, Everett Lamb and Jack Barton. Considering the tenor of the times, it’s almost certain that if Swinney had been alone he would have been taken into custody and investigated, as was many another man by himself during that time. Most of all, his car, which was stolen, would have been checked out, leading to his arrest.
Peggy was his shield, his “cover.” Her presence must have protected him on more than one occasion. Little thought seems to have been given to the possibility that the Phantom might have had a girl friend or wife. If policemen had taken the license number, a check would have revealed a stolen car.
The faded khaki work shirt found among Swinney’s clothing immediately became a focal point of the investigation. The laundry mark wasn’t Swinney’s. The shirt was faded. On the collar a dim mark, STARK, had no S on the end of the name but was close enough to the slain man’s surname to raise suspicions. Most laundry marks did not spell out the owner’s full name unless it was quite short. It made sense to believe that STARK was the mark for STARKS. It was too close to be ignored. The old laundry mark could be seen with the naked eye but all of the letters weren’t clear. To satisfy any doubts, Sheriff Davis sent the shirt to the FBI lab for confirmation. Under a black light the full laundry mark was verified.
In the shirt pocket they also found fragments of metallic matter that could have come from a welding shop.
On July 21 the FBI sent a Teletype message to its Little Rock office.
MR. VIRGIL STARKS. VICTIM OF MURDER. DEBRIS FROM POCKETS OF TAN SHIRT FROM SUSPECT CONTAINS MAGNETIC METAL SLAG BALLS, SIMILAR TO THOSE IN GRINDING AND WELDING OPERATIONS. HUMAN BROWN HAIR FRAGMENTS ALSO FOUND. SUGGEST KNOWN HAIR SPECIMENS FROM STARKS AND FROM SUSPECT. QUANTITY OF SAND ALSO FOUND. SUGGEST SAND SAMPLES BE SUBMITTED FROM STARKS RESIDENCE FOR COMPARISON.
[J. EDGAR] HOOVER
Starks was long buried by then, with no hair samples available. Had DNA testing been a reality, positive data probably could have been obtained, but that technology would be decades in the future.
Tackett and Johnson took a dozen pillboxes to the Starks farm and collected samples at random. The welding shop had a dirt floor. The two men scooped up shavings, soil, and slag from different parts of the shop. They sent their collection to the FBI lab.
The report came back that the metal fragments in the shirt were “matching and similar” to those in the Starks welding shop. This was good evidence, but it didn’t go far enough.
The shirt was almost identified by the surviving victim. “This shirt was taken to Mrs. Starks,” said Tackett, “and she said, yes, that was her husband’s shirt and she pointed to a place on the front of the shirt where she remembered personally repairing it.
“But on reflection the next day or so she said she couldn’t be sure. She knew it would mean death for the suspect, based on her identification of the shirt, and she said she could not positively identify it. The name was spelled STARK instead of STARKS, and any woman would have repaired a damaged place such as that on her husband’s shirt.”
Johnson then took the shirt to the three laundries in town. At the third one, Nelson-Huckins, a leading laundry on the Texas side, the manager acknowledged it was their mark. It belonged to one Billie Starr, madam of a well-known brothel several blocks away. All of the whorehouses were situated in Texarkana, Texas; the Arkansas-side police didn’t tolerate them.
Armed with the shirt and the laundry’s assessment, Johnson headed for the Star Club at 807 West Fourth Street in Texarkana’s notorious red-light district. Billie Starr’s bordello was housed in a long, one-story dormitory-style building at the bottom of the street and across from her major competitor, Fannie’s. He rang the bell at the front door of the white frame structure and waited. He waited a long while. Finally, the proprietress appeared in a robe, unsmiling, and asked him what he wanted—at that time of day, her expression implied. He told her briefly without disclosing the heart of his mission.
“I can’t see you right now, Mr. Johnson,” Ms. Starr said. “I was in bed. We work late. You woke me up. You’ll have to wait till I get dressed.”
She ushered the chief deputy into the parlor.
When she reappeared, she had her makeup on and her hair combed. Johnson held the rough khaki shirt up for her inspection, explaining that the laundry records showed it had her code on it.
She handled it gingerly, inspected it with an imperial glance, and sniffed.
“We don’t have customers who’d wear shirts like this!” she said haughtily. Handing the shirt back to him, she dismissed the subject.
Studied closely, each letter of the word STARK was more faded than the one preceding it. A quick glance might overlook the terminal K. Years later, when it was too late to be of practical use and the laundry records no longer existed, Johnson realized that the man at the laundry, with a cursory look, must have missed the K. Seeing only STAR, he immediately recognized Billie Starr’s mark, and had assumed it was hers, or at least one of her clients’. Johnson felt he had come close to tying the shirt to Starks. If a laundry already had a mark for STAR, it would assign a different mark to Starks, the most logical way being to simply add the next letter, K. Johnson worried about this, but by then there was nothing more he could do.
If the shirt did belong to Starks it was easily explained how it had come into Swinney’s possession, linking him tightly to the crime. Swinney frequently stole clothing. If he’d been at the scene that night, looking for something to steal, he would have entered the welding shop, flashlight in hand. The shirt was oversized for Swinney but would have fit Starks, who was brawny and muscular. A work shirt would have been as useful as any other item. At a time when Swinney was employed as a laborer, its utility would have been obvious.
Katie Starks, hearing a noise in the back yard, had asked her husband to turn down the radio. This would have coincided with the intruder’s coming from the welding shop. Minutes later the shootings began.
Tackett compiled a detailed chronology of Swinney’s whereabouts from February 22 until deep into May, based on information from Swinney and Peggy. There were gaps for days when data were not available, plus the timeline was based primarily on what Swinney and Peggy had told him, subject to error and variations depending on memory and motivation. It did, however, establish their presence in Texarkana during the Texas-side crimes and in the vicinity the night of the Starks shootings. Although details of their lives in a portion of May were not clear, a new phase began in May when they left Delight, winding up in Waynoka, Oklahoma.
Waynoka, a railroad center of three thousand in northwestern Oklahoma, is not far from the state’s Panhandle. Hundreds of miles northwest of Texarkana, Waynoka was a short drive north to the Kansas line. Swinney found work with an extra gang on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, a leg of which operated from Wellington, Kansas to Amarillo, Texas. Waynoka was an important stop on the line.
Swinney later contended that he only worked there three or four days in the latter part of June and the first part of July—clearly untrue, for he had been in Shreveport on June 28, getting married. Peggy said he had worked there about two weeks versus just a few days. Tied to other accounts from people in the area, her statement seems to be more accurate. He put her in the Commercial Hotel at first, a reasonably priced lodging where railroad people stayed. Later they stayed at private homes.
In late August, Tackett typed a note referring to a stolen car.
“The gray Dodge sedan, used by Swinney when he stole the clothing in Nashville, Ark., from the sailors, has been located in Salt Lake City, in possession of two sailors, who claimed that a strange man gave it to them to use. The subjects and car at Salt Lake City at this time.”
Two days later he had an even more interesting report, about Swinney’s behavior in Waynoka.
“The FBI of Dallas, Texas, has received information from some officer of Waynoka, Okla., that a Negro man purchased a pistol from a stranger, believed to have been Swinney. The Negro later shot up the railroad camp near Waynoka where he was employed and was fired by the foreman the following day. The pistol was taken from him by the foreman on the night of the disturbance but given back to the Negro on the following morning when he was fired.
“The pistol or Negro have neither been located at this time. I have been told by the local FBI agent that the office at Dallas, Texas, is attempting to locate the Negro and pistol.
“The information that we received here is ‘That the pistol in question was a .22 caliber automatic pistol.”
That would have fit the caliber of the gun that killed Virgil Starks and wounded his wife, Katie.
The search was on for Harry Woods, alias Lawton, who had obtained the gun from Swinney. Woods had been a cook in Extra Gang #1, but the records weren’t clear as to which foreman was over the gang at that time, as each of them had worked in that capacity at one time or another near Waynoka.
Tackett drove to Dallas, chasing down claims Swinney had made that would have established partial alibis. Swinney had told Texas-side officers that he could prove he wasn’t in Texarkana the night of the Martin-Booker murders, because he had been involved in a minor traffic violation in Houston that day, for which a Texas highway patrolman had issued him a warning ticket. Tackett had the highway patrol office in Dallas check with Houston authorities. “We ascertained that no such ticket was ever issued to either the name Swinney or to the license numeral on his car.”
Swinney had claimed to Arkansas officers that he had a minor accident with a city bus in Dallas that day, presuming to establish an alibi. Tackett called upon the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County sheriff’s office, and the Dallas city bus officials. None of them found a report of the claimed bus accident. The company running the city bus service, Tackett said, “stated that under no circumstances would their driver have failed to report even a minor fender bumping.”
Swinney said that he frequently made trips for Mack’s Travel Bureau at 708 Commerce Street in Dallas. “Upon checking there,” reported Tackett, “I located a former operator of the establishment who knows Swinney, but who would offer no assistance in checking on him. He was very unfriendly to any policeman. The bureau only keeps the signatures of the people who ride with them for a period of one month at a time, for the purpose of maintaining their own books. At the end of that time the cards with the signatures are destroyed.
“Swinney and his wife stated that on April 13 they picked up an old painter at Mack’s Bureau in Dallas and contracted to take him to Shreveport. They claim that he got out of the car near Longview, Texas, and that they brought his clothing on to Texarkana, arriving about dark on the evening of April 13. Upon checking at the travel bureau, there was no record of this man and no one apparently remembered him.”
Sergeant O. D. Morris of the Arkansas State Police’s criminal division wrote the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe’s superintendent of special services in Amarillo about Swinney, noting that he was being held for Virgil Starks’s murder. He mentioned a supervisor’s statement that Harry Woods, alias Harry Lawton, working as a cook on gang #1 at Heman, had purchased a pistol from Swinney. A special agent for the railroad investigated.
“I drove to St. Vrain and talked to Mr. [Albert] Calloway; he stated he seen a gun, a .32 or .38 caliber which he thinks was a Colts make, in the possession of Harry Woods, that Woods told him he bought from Swinney. He also stated there was two guns in camp, one a .22 automatic, which he never seen but talked to Jim Snapp, who did see this gun.
“Calloway also stated this man Snapp seen Swinney give his wife a gun to hold on a man whose name he does not know; then Swinney whipped this man with a chain; is possible this gang can be located at Plains, Texas.”
A crucial statement began to fill in the blanks of Swinney’s activities. Albert O. Calloway, a relief section foreman for the railroad, was foreman of gang #1 at Heman, Oklahoma. One evening he watched a dice game between members of a work gang. Harry Woods, another employee and the cook, also was watching the game after going broke. Woods pulled a pistol from his pocket, either a .32 or .38 caliber automatic, a Colt, and tried to borrow money. Calloway didn’t see anybody lend him money. Calloway asked him where he’d gotten the gun. Woods said he bought it from “the bootlegger.” Calloway later learned “the bootlegger” was Youell Lee Swinney.
“I also know that Swinney had a .22 automatic in his possession as he was trying to sell it,” stated Calloway. “I never did see the gun, but a man, Jim Snapp, now on gang #5, seen the .22 pistol and told other boys that they could buy it.
“This man [i.e., Jim Snapp] also seen Swinney have his wife hold a gun on a man who was working on gang #13, and Swinney then took a chain and whipped this man. I don’t know who the man was that was whipped.”
Peggy’s version was that Swinney held the gun, a shotgun he’d rented, and made her whip the man. This would reverse the role the other witness had assigned her, her account protecting herself by claiming she had no choice but to comply while Swinney held the gun on both her and the whipped victim. The conflicting version made her more of a collaborator, suggesting that Swinney derived deep pleasure from beating the man himself while ensuring that his victim couldn’t fight back.
The incident reminded officers of the savage Hollis-Larey beatings.
It became difficult to trace witnesses who had seen and told others of the events. The extra gang laborers didn’t stay on the job long and were reluctant to provide information to officers. Turnovers were fast. Some worked a few days or a week or a month, often using “flag,” or fictitious, names.
The report concluded: “It seems that Swinney had two or more pistols while working on this gang and that you might be able to pick them up for ballistic examination.”
An excellent suggestion, easier said than done.
The string of circumstances implicating Swinney steadily mounted. Swinney, taking Peggy with him, had fled Arkansas and Texarkana for western Oklahoma soon after the Starks murder. Desperate for money, he had done what he rarely did—he took a job at hard labor, far off from Texarkana. This suggested that he was feeling the heat following the Starks shooting. He needed to get away—far, far away.
If he’d had nothing to worry about, he could have remained in the Texarkana area, his comfort zone.
A pattern had formed. The spat with Peggy’s sister over unpaid board money—a triggering mechanism—had stirred his anger. The Starks shootings followed—within hours. He’d gone to Texarkana. On the way back, a prosecutor could postulate, he had seen the un-shuttered light from the Starks home with Virgil Starks’s silhouette by the window. He parked across the railroad tracks from the residence, waiting for darkness to deepen. Indications were that Peggy was with him, for he rarely, if ever, went anywhere without her. His car was parked heading north, away from Texarkana and toward Delight, where he later claimed to be.
If he’d only intended to steal from Starks’s shop, he wouldn’t have needed a gun. Being armed indicates that he intended to use it, possibly to kill the stranger by the window and anybody else in the house.
All circumstances pointed toward him. He had no alibi. The couple at the hotel in Delight refuted his claim there. Statements added up to place him near the scene and in a sour mood.
Then there was his marriage to Peggy after months of rambling around together with hardly a care to legitimize their relationship. She had filed for divorce from Stanley Tresnick after the Texas murders had thrown the area into turmoil. The day after her divorce became final, he hustled her to Shreveport for an impromptu courthouse wedding, suggesting that he was in haste to gain legal control of her so she could not testify against him, a maneuver that succeeded by mere hours.
Ironically, if an unpaid debt had led to his trip to Texarkana on May 3, another deadbeat episode—not paying rent due Jim Mays—had led to his eventual arrest.
Tracing and locating the .32 and .22 automatic pistols Swinney had been known to possess proved to be a major frustration. Harry Woods, the extra gang’s cook, could not be found. The Santa Fe Railway special agents were unable to locate Woods. The chief of police in Denver reported that Woods had no criminal record there. The draft board in Denver described Woods as born in Mart, Texas, in 1894 (making him fifty-two), five feet six, 150 pounds. His wife’s name was Hortense.
Harry Woods, however, seemed to have vanished, taking with him the suspect weapon that might have tied Swinney to the Starks murder.
Carl Miller of the Arkansas State Police summarized the status of the Swinney couple. His report included several relevant points, indicating the certainty with which Arkansas authorities suspected Swinney’s guilt. His treatment of Swinney’s brief Waynoka experience thickened the plot.
FBI agent Dewey Presley also followed Harry Woods’s trail. Woods had quit the work gang at Hoover, a small town in West Texas. The foreman of the extra gang at Heman confirmed that Woods had purchased the .22 automatic pistol. Records verified that Swinney was employed from May 13 to June 3—close to Peggy’s contention.
Meanwhile, Peggy was still talking. She told Tillman Johnson that while they were in Waynoka, Swinney bootlegged whiskey. At one point, she said, officers got wind of his illegal activities and seemed to be chasing them.
“Swinney got out of the car and ran off to hide,” Johnson reported. “There was another man in the car, name unknown, and they—Peggy and this man—drove off with the whiskey in the car and hid it out in the woods. They sat in the car for awhile and the man tried to get her to have an entercourse [sic] with him. She refused and later told Swinney about it. It made Swinney mad and they drove over toward Woodward, Oklahoma, where he rented a double-barreled shotgun and returned to the camp at Heman where the man worked. Swinney tried to get her to go into the camp and bring the man out and she refused. He went in and came back to the door of the cook shack and told her to bring the shotgun. She took it to the door and went back to the car. Swinney brought the man out and made him get in the car and then drove off down the road and into the woods on a side road. They got out of the car and Swinney held the gun on the man and made her whip him with a short chain.”
Johnson wrote at the end: “Peggy states that there were several men in the cook shack when they drove up to get the man, that she was sure they knew what was going on. Swinney did not report back for work after this and they left that night.”
Johnson added, as if an afterthought, “Peggy states that she stole the wrist watch from a Mrs. Williams in Waynoka.”
Tackett prepared a sheet listing the assaults and murders by date, commenting on Swinney’s whereabouts on each date.
First, the Hollis-Larey beatings: Swinney and Peggy occupied a room at 1906 West 16th Street, only about three miles from the crime scene.
Second was the Griffin-Moore case: “Peggy was in Miller Court (proven) and Swinney was seen at 9 P.M. on Broad Street, walking alone. He cannot account for his time from there on.”
Third, the Martin-Booker murders: “Swinney states he was at Mr. Stevens’ house that night. Stevens (i.e., Peggy’s father) denies this, but states he was there early the following morning.”
The Starks shootings: “Swinney and Peggy state they were in Delight, Arkansas, in a hotel. They are unable to describe the room. They were seen at about 5 A.M. following morning coming into Antoine from the Prescott road. The people who operate the hotel state they sold a room to a couple about midnight or after.”
Every one of the notations placed Swinney near the scene of each crime. Witnesses disputed his claimed alibis.
In a separate set of notes, Tackett compiled a list of suspicious or potentially incriminating factors connecting Swinney to the crimes.
Upon his arrest, Swinney said, “I will spend the rest of my life behind bars this time.”
Swinney asked Johnson, “Do you think that I could be lucky enough to get out in twenty-five years?”
When car stealing was mentioned en route to the jail, Swinney remarked, “Hell, they don’t want me for car stealing. They want me for something more than that.” Yet he subsequently claimed all he ever did was to steal cars.
When a lawyer told Peggy Swinney that her husband was being held for murder, she exclaimed, “How did they find it out?”
“A maroon Chevrolet figured in one of the Texarkana killings. Swinney took a maroon Chevrolet sedan in March. He used it and gave it away to two hitchhikers (in Lubbock) who promised to deliver it to a man in Texas for him. He gave them a fictitious name. He and Peggy hitchhiked back into Texarkana, Texas. If the car hadn’t been very hot he would not have gotten rid of it and hitched to Texarkana.”
“Peggy Swinney said that Swinney had her whip a man with a piece of chain in Waynoka, Oklahoma, while in a jealous rage. He held a shotgun on him. This might indicate that he was the man who brutally whipped the man and woman in Texarkana, Texas, February 22.”
“All of these killings came after Swinney got out of the pen.”
“According to all the people talked to yet Swinney was in Texarkana or the vicinity at the time of each killing.”
“R. E. Whetstone, Swinney’s brother-in-law, stated that on the morning following the Griffin-Moore killings, Swinney showed up at his house in the early morning in a very nervous state and after a while went to a bed and pulled the sheet over his head and slept the entire day.”
On the Sunday morning very early after the Booker-Martin killings, Swinney showed up at Stevens’s home and drove into the woods and remained nearly all afternoon.
Members of the Stevens family had expressed their belief that Swinney killed those people.
His brother-in-law Whetstone stated that he thought Swinney killed the people.
Swinney told his wife, “I will be blamed for all these killings in Texarkana.”
Swinney was in a hotel at Delight, Arkansas, at 5 A.M. the morning after Starks was killed.
Swinney had always stolen clothes every time he had a chance. He had a suitcase full of clothing at the time of his arrest. Virgil Starks could be the owner of the shirt found among Swinney’s possessions with the word STARK on the back of it. Mrs. Starks stated that she thought it might be one of Virgil’s; it was the right size.
If those who had seen Swinney up close were correct, then Swinney had perpetrated the murders. They added to a web of circumstantial evidence that kept the focus on Swinney.
Officers never placed Swinney in a police lineup, where survivors Hollis or Mrs. Larey—if they had been induced to return to Texarkana—might have identified him, or possibly heard him speak. That incident, in darkness, would have made facial identity difficult, particularly if he actually did wear a mask. As for his voice, it was doubtful that any voice, in a normal tone, would have matched the rage-filled demands made by the February attacker.
Time was running out for holding Swinney without a charge. By then, members of his family had hired lawyers and proposed strategies for setting him free. Miller County had a felony theft charge, for the stolen cars, almost certain to gain a conviction. There were several car-theft cases, on both sides of the state line, for which there was solid evidence. But a felony theft wouldn’t net him more than five to ten years, putting him back on the streets again.
Officers felt certain they had their Phantom. Peggy’s statements were damning. But she could not be compelled to testify against her husband, and she refused to do so. She repeatedly emphasized that she was scared to death of him. Without her testimony, could a murder conviction be won?
The question haunted officers, inspiring them to explore all possible remedies. The goal, they agreed, was urgent: to take Swinney off the streets, with no expectation of release.
But could it be done?