Meanwhile, late at night on Tuesday, May 7, a 45-year-old black man named Herbert Thomas was flagged down by a hitchhiker in Kilgore. The hitchhiker offered $5 and said that he needed a ride to Henderson because his mother was seriously ill. Thomas said that he would not normally have given the man a ride, but felt like he needed to because the man told such a sad story. When they neared Henderson, the hitchhiker pulled out a pistol and told Thomas to keep driving or he would kill him like the five people he killed in Texarkana, mentioning Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker by name.