Brenda Denise Woodard was an 18-year-old Black woman taking night classes at Cardozo High School when she disappeared on the evening of November 15, 1971. After dinner at Ben’s Chili Bowl she and a friend rode the bus; Brenda got off at 8th and H Street to transfer and was not seen alive again. The next morning a police officer found her body along the shoulder of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled, and stabbed six times, and defensive wounds on her hands showed she had fought back.

A chilling handwritten note signed by someone calling himself the Freeway Phantom was found with her body. Brenda’s murder was later linked to a series of abductions, sexual assaults, and strangulations of young Black girls and women in the Washington, D.C. area in 1971–1972 attributed to the Freeway Phantom. Suspects and persons of interest have been investigated over the decades but no one has been arrested or convicted in Brenda’s killing. If anyone knew Brenda, saw her that night, or has information about the Freeway Phantom, please come forward.