Long-Haul Serial Killers

Source: Photo by K. Ramsland

Frank Figliuzzi rode with a long-haul trucker for a week, enduring rough conditions to gain some sense of the advantages a predatory trucker might have when looking for victims. Although most truck drivers are law-abiding (like the one Figliuzzi rode with), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that certain types of serial killers gravitate toward this isolated occupation. Victims are easy to come by, and the truck can provide a private and highly mobile killing space.

Using embedded journalism for his book, Long Haul, Figliuzzi drew on several sources: law enforcement, social workers, trafficked women, long-haul drivers, and solved murder cases. The most intensive effort to identify and catch these killers is the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings (HSK) Initiative, which has been linking long-haul routes over the past 15 years with murdered women found along the roadways. Unsolved cases might go back 30 or 40 years.

Many of the victims were hitchhikers, runaways, or sex workers seeking clients at truck stops. The database started with 500 murdered women and girls and 200 potential suspects. Figliuzzi says there are now more than 850 cases and some 450 persons of interest to investigate. Several have been charged and convicted.

An investigation in Oklahoma in 2004 inspired the HSK database, officially launched in 2009. Long-haul trucker Robert Ben Rhoades is the most often described success story. Rhoades had a sexual fetish for captivity and torture. He was arrested in Casa Grande, Arizona, in 1990 after a state trooper found a live woman chained inside his truck. Linkage analysis added murder victims to Rhoades’ criminal portfolio.

Linkage analysis is the process of matching physical and behavioral evidence from several crime scenes to determine whether they are associated with a specific offender or set of offenders. Based on probability analysis is the psychological foundation for the FBI’s profiling methodology. With the truckers, the analysis also uses data from routes, driving records, and camera footage.

Back to Rhoades. Fourteen-year-old Regina Walters and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky Jones, went missing while hitchhiking in Texas. Walters’s body turned up in a barn in Utah. The timing and location coincided with Rhoades’ travel schedule. Collaboration between law enforcement agencies linked Rhoades to this unsolved case, largely based on photos of Walters found in Rhoades' possession. Jones’ body was found in Mississippi. Rhoades was eventually convicted of two murders, but he’s suspected of up to 50. He has confessed to two others.

Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director of counter-intelligence, interviewed one of the HSK analysts to offer a basic overview of how the program works. “I collected intelligence about the FBI’s Highway Serial Killing Initiative,” he told a reporter for A&E, “and I’m reporting and disseminating it out with the intention of not just detecting and deterring the threat, but hopefully stopping some of the killing that’s going on along our nation’s highways.”

By riding with a trucker, sleeping in the cab, following a grueling schedule, and talking to other truckers, Figliuzzi revealed the challenges that could motivate some men to grow aggressive. It’s stressful, lonely, and often frustrating, not to mention unhealthy. Some truckers develop drug habits, especially meth. They get little exercise and frequently must resort to junk food. On the darker side, those with predatory intent can exploit the isolation to avoid getting caught. They can pick up targets, take them miles from where they might have been seen together, kill them, and leave the bodies anywhere along the route. The freedom to move around and targets willing to get into their trucks gives them plenty of opportunity.

Victimology is key. Figliuzzi also talked to people associated with the trucker sex trade. Truckers call the women and girls who solicit them “lot lizards,” thereby devaluing them. These women have few advocates, but some fight for their protection. Celia Williamson, a professor of social work at the University of Toledo and founder of Ohio’s first anti-trafficking program, dedicates herself to raising awareness about sex trafficking. Figliuzzi interviewed her to get a better sense of the murder victims (although many are also victims of rape, beating, and robbery).

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Williamson described the power disparity between truckers with freedom and money and the women who are addicted, hungry, homeless, afraid, and enslaved to demanding pimps. The police, she said, often fail to take their plight seriously. As to the type of woman most likely to become a murder victim, Williamson offered a complex typology that involved drugs, pimp control, earnings, and transaction locations. Those with high “chatting and checking” skills were likelier to stay safe. They can spot signs of trouble from clients or cops and “calculate a quick escape.”

So, what about prevention? It seems that things have changed in the trucking industry, especially in corporate trucking, where there’s much more accountability. Technology allows for close monitoring of driver behavior and location. This helps the HSK program and can also deter random murder. Still, with the rise of online appointments, the victims are still quite vulnerable. The trucker can take a cab or ride-share to a difficult place to link back to him. In addition, some predators leave their trucks to look for victims. Edward A. Surratt drove through Ohio and Pennsylvania, getting out of his truck to enter homes to seek women to rape and kill. He confessed to a dozen murders.

Figliuzzi’s immersion in this subculture brings attention to a specialized type of investigation that merits support. Some of the victims are just kids. They all need better protection. The FBI is taking this seriously.