Pascagoula, Mississippi: The Phantom Barber's Midnight Crime Spree

From Hometown History · 19:49

Show by Shane Waters

In the summer of 1942, Pascagoula, Mississippi, was a quiet Gulf Coast town that the Ingalls Shipbuildingyard had turned into a wartime boomtown almost overnight. That summer someone began cutting through windowscreens at night, slipping into bedrooms, and snipping locks of hair from sleeping residents. Localnewspapers called him the Phantom Barber. He first struck on June 5, 1942, taking hair from two girls atthe Our Lady of Victories convent, eleven-year-old Mary Evelyn Briggs and twelve-year-old Edna Marie Hydel.The attacks kept coming. Six-year-old Carol Peattie lost her blonde curls, and investigators found a sandyfootprint on the empty bed by her window. Mrs. R.E. Taylor woke to a sickening smell in the room, andinvestigators suspected chloroform, while her family slept around her. Then the crimes turned violent, andTerrell Heidelberg and his wife were beaten with an iron bar. Police arrested a 57-year-old chemist witha German background named William A. Dolan, convicted him of attempted murder, and sentenced him to tenyears. He was never charged with a single hair-cutting incident. Dolan received a limited suspension ofhis sentence after the polygraph, later made indefinite, with some accounts reporting a later pardon, andthe identity of the Phantom Barber was never established.Timeline of Events1938: Ingalls Shipbuilding is established along the Pascagoula River.December 1941: Pearl Harbor brings a flood of federal wartime contracts to Ingalls.Summer 1942: Pascagoula's population swells from roughly 4,900 to roughly 14,000.June 5, 1942: The first attack. Mary Evelyn Briggs and Edna Marie Hydel have their hair cut at the convent.June 8, 1942: The second attack. Carol Peattie's hair is taken and a sandy footprint is found on the emptybed by the window.June 13, 1942: Terrell Heidelberg and his wife are beaten with an iron bar.Late June 1942: Mrs. R.E. Taylor wakes to a sickening smell in the room; investigators suspect chloroform.August 14, 1942: Newspapers report William A. Dolan's arrest as the Phantom Barber.1942: Dolan is convicted and sentenced to ten years.About 1948: Governor Fielding Wright arranges a polygraph and Dolan is released.About 1951: Wright's suspension is made indefinite; some accounts report Dolan was later pardoned by GovernorHugh White.Historical SignificanceThe Phantom Barber case sits where wartime paranoia, rapid social upheaval, and criminal justice failuremeet. Pascagoula's overnight transformation into a boomtown two or three times its size built the perfectconditions for fear. Neighbors no longer recognized each other, night-shift workers left their familiesalone in unfamiliar houses, and wartime anxiety was already running high. The panic reached ship productionitself, because workers refused to leave home for night shifts at Ingalls. Dolan's eventual pardon suggestsMississippi came to acknowledge the conviction was wrong. No hair-cutting incident was ever reported againafter Dolan's imprisonment, and the case remains one of the strangest unsolved mysteries in American crime.SourcesMississippi EncyclopediaNewspapers.com archives of 1942 Pascagoula and Jackson County coverageNational Park Service records on Gulf Coast wartime industryContemporary Ingalls Shipbuilding employment recordsIf you liked this: Episode 198, Carrollton, Mississippi. Another Mississippi story the official recordtried to file away quietly.Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs,and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode atmythsandmalice.com/hometown-historyEpisode 210 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane WatersAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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