Texarkana Moonlight

Well Mary and Jimmy went courting,
Down lovers lane they did meet,
When a hooded face peered through the window,
And told them to get to their feet,
The butt of the gun smashed down heavy,
And Jimmy dropped down from the whack,
Mary offered up a silent prayer,
Then headlights burned up from the track.

The fiend turned and ran swift for cover,
This time they’d bin lucky for sure,
But the next time the moon was smiling,
He came back for Polly Ann Moore,
She lay there with Richard her boyfriend,
Neither of them made it through,
Rubbed out by the midnight killer,
And the barrel of a colt forty-two

That Texarkana boomtown,
The dives and the clubs closed their gates,
But that phantom killer was still at large,
And more victims would soon meet their fate.

He murdered li’l Betty Joe Booker,
Paul Martin and poor Virgil Starks,
But Virgil’s pretty young wife Betty,
Got winged and escaped in the dark,
They called in the Texas Rangers,
And the Arkansas state patrol,
Who tracked down a stolen motor,
And that was the ace in the hole.

They locked up the thief Youell Swinny,
And his wife who said he was the one,
They took him down to Little Rock,
Under the hot mid-day sun,
They tried to break his story,
They tried to look into his soul,
But he just nodded out in the jailhouse,
Too much sodium pentothal.

Sent down for grand theft auto,
He never confessed to the crimes,
But there were no more sundown killings,
The phantom was gone for all time.