William “Willard” Langston stepped off the train in Newport on Jan. 19, 1946, after he served a stint as a U.S. Marine in World War II. He’d grown up in the nearby town of Sulphur Rock, but Newport was the closest large town and many of his childhood friends now lived there.
As he strolled the streets and stores, he encountered many people who knew him. Even though he didn’t look like the youthful teen who moved to Michigan long before the war started, many came away convinced it was him.
There was only one problem. Langston was reported killed 10 months earlier on March 7, 1945 on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The mystery of the “Phantom Marine” would reach the highest levels of the U.S. government and at one point would prompt a multistate manhunt, New York Times bestselling author Chris DeRose told Talk Business & Politics.
If the man was an imposter, he did a masterful job of convincing nearly everyone he met that he was Willard Langston, DeRose said.
“He went back to a town with a lot of people he knew,” DeRose said. “… He clearly recognized a lot of people he met, calling them out by old nicknames. … He knew stories about their families. People came away thinking that it was him. It’s a strange situation. It’s a bizarre story for sure.”
DeRose was researching for his World War II era book, “The Fighting Bunch” when he came across several stories about the “Phantom Marine” being spotted in Memphis.
“Every single wire service in the country was covering this story,” DeRose said.
Langston was born in 1917 in Sulfur Rock. He was one of five children born to Naomi and Bill Langston. He reportedly liked to play basketball and swim, DeRose said.
In 1933, the couple divorced after the father abandoned the family. Naomi ended up in Jonesboro and Bill in Newark. Willard Langston made his way to Michigan where he got a job at a factory, and he married Linda. They had a son named Duane, and when the war started, he could have gotten a deferment to remain in the manufacturing industry, DeRose said. But he chose to join the Marines and go to war and was subsequently killed months before it ended. Or was he?
One man the “Phantom” encountered in Newport was George Crownover, a man he knew when he was an adolescent. Although the man didn’t look like Langston, Crownover was completely convinced it was him, DeRose said. The man even had a picture of Linda.
Langston might not have looked like himself because it had been 12 years since he lived in the area, and he’d gone through stress of battlefield combat, which can alter a person’s appearance, DeRose said.
The mystery man encountered Jimmy Allen, another man who’d served in the Marine Corps. Allen encountered Langston three days before he died on Iwo Jima. Allen was convinced the man was indeed Willard Langston, DeRose said.
The Fields family confronted the Phantom and asked him about a specific visit that was made to his boyhood home
15 years prior. The man, who was walking from a limp, was able to identify a man and two women that came to his house during that specific visit, DeRose said.
Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, operated a Ben Franklin store in downtown Newport at the time. It’s entirely possible the mystery man and Walton interacted, DeRose said.
As the man claiming to be Langston made his way through the restaurants, bars, pool halls and stores in the town, his story spread like wildfire. Eventually, the FBI became involved and the “G-Men” visited Newport. The investigation was overseen by Jay Edgar Hoover, then the head of the agency.
The federal government had to get involved, DeRose said. More than 400,000 Americans died in the war, and the government couldn’t have citizens doubting the accuracy of who lived and died in combat.
Days after he arrived, the mystery man with a limp he said was caused by losing a foot in the war left Newport. He told people he would come back to visit his family after he got medical help at a veteran’s hospital in Oklahoma. He was spotted in Conway where he helped a man get his cattle back to his property. He also wrote his mother a letter from there, telling her he would visit once he received medical care.
Newspapers reported he was seen in Fort Smith, but DeRose thinks that was a ruse. Someone called the local sheriff’s department and reported seeing him there.
“I believe it was the man with the limp,” DeRose said. “He was trying to throw the FBI and police off his trail.”
Around the same time the man was reportedly in Memphis. An identification card for William Langston was found in a pool hall in Ripley, Tenn., and the mystery man sent a letter to a Memphis newspaper. In the letter, he still claimed to be William Langston, and said he was sorry he started a sensational story that led to an FBI investigation. He also described a brutal arrest at the Memphis train station that DeRose was able to confirm through his research.
He also told a story about a sea monster. At first the sea monster story didn’t mean much to DeRose, but after consulting with a historian, it added to the belief that the man was Langston. There were numerous reports of a sea monster in the White River near Newport during Langston’s youth.
The Tennessee sighting is the last of the Phantom Marine. The FBI continued to investigate, and dozens of people were interviewed by the agency and local media. Nearly all believed it was Langston, DeRose said.
For a time, many thought the perpetrator wasn’t Langston but rather his younger brother, Marion. Marion had been shipped off to the Civilian Conservation Corps after his parents divorced, and eventually, through work records, the FBI was able to prove he couldn’t have been in town impersonating his brother.
Another curious detail that emerged was that Langston’s wife, Linda, remarried one week before the Phantom arrived in Newport. When he was asked why he didn’t go home to Michigan to see his wife and child, he said she was remarried, and it was better for him to stay away. DeRose said this is interesting because the other marriage was held in secret and not publicized.
“If this was an impersonator, how could he know about the secret marriage?” DeRose said.
Langston was buried on Iwo Jima, but even there the mystery deepened. Of the thousands of people buried in the cemetery there, his was the only grave that didn’t have a dog tag associated with it.
A few years later, Langston’s father was contacted and told that people buried on Iwo Jima were going to be moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, also known as Punchbowl Cemetery, which is dedicated to service members who died in war. Langston could be taken there or brought back to Arkansas, his father was told.
The father said he wasn’t sure if the person in that grave was his son, so the body was moved to the Punchbowl, DeRose said. Before it was moved, however, a dental examination was done and there were discrepancies with fillings. It could have been a charting error, but despite this finding, the Marines still listed this deceased service member as Langston, DeRose said.
Each day six people are disinterred at the Punchbowl for identification purposes. There are thousands of unidentified soldiers from several wars last century and an effort is underway to identify them. Langston, however, remains low on the list because he has already been officially identified by the government, DeRose said.
DeRose said he hopes that changes. Several of Langston’s relatives are still alive and would like closure, he said.
He talked to Langston’s son, Duane, before he died. He took the stance that Linda did many years ago. Publicly, she said she didn’t think it was him, but privately she thought it might be, but if he wanted to remain anonymous then they had to accept it.
DeRose isn’t sure if the Phantom Marine was Langston, but whoever showed up in Newport had deep knowledge of the people, history, and places in that area.
“This is not some guy who served in a foxhole with some other Marine and heard a few stories and memorized them,” DeRose said. “This is a person who had deep, intimate knowledge of the people and places in Newport. There’s no doubt about that.”
For more information, listen to the podcast “The Phantom Marine” or reach out to Chris DeRose at chrisderosebooks.com.