Behind him was a shoulder-high pink plastic castle. Getting sleep was pretty easy with a boyfriend, because one of us could always stay awake. The officer saw that the truck's driver, 44-year-old Robert Ben Rhoades, was also in the vehicle, and he was able to handcuff the middle-aged man and place him in the back of his patrol car. Det. In 2009 the feds went public with a program called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative in response to a rising number of dead bodies found along the interstates. Plaintiff Robert Ben Rhoades, an inmate of the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC") who is currently incarcerated at Menard Correctional Center, brings this action for deprivations of his constitutional rights pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Similarly, Rhoades' hometown newspaper also noted that he was suspected of the torture, rape, and . To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. I asked. But in the picture, with her inch-long hair and dog collar, she looked like a gutter punk, like any girl you might see in any university district. I flew to Austin to meet with two retired FBI men, special agents Mark Young and Robert F. Lee, who'd both worked on the case. The stores were dimly lit and filled with smoke, radically different from the family travel plazas of today. I go through the paperwork, get fingerprinted and led through a channel of air-locked doors into a room with him. Walsh was murdered, and her body was dumped in Utah. I said it was his choice. Davis mentioned the case of Colleen Stan, a 21-year-old hitchhiker who had been kidnapped in 1977 by a couple who tortured her and kept her as a sex slave for seven years while she slept in a box under their bed. Debra said she looked about 18 or 19 and desperate. Douglas remains were identified in 1992. for the slayings of Patricia Walsh, 24, and her husband Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 28. Arizona state trooper Mike Miller was cruising along I-10 one April morning in 1990 when he noticed a tractor-trailer parked on the shoulder of the highway. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. Martinsburg was nothing but a pinprick, just a dot on a minor route feeding into a midsize highway on the outskirts of Altoona, PA, not the sort of place you'd expect to find a busy truck stop. Without fake ID, I couldn't stay in a shelter. While I was hitchhiking, he was driving. The dissonance between my emotional world and the one around me was still too great, and soon I left again, but in a more sanctioned way. He was given two life sentences inTexas without the possibility of parole. Lee told me that the final lines of Holts's police statement read, "I don't see any good in filing charges. 16. Friend, 43, says she wants "California voters to know what kind of offenders are on death row," men like Robert Boyd Rhoades, who sodomized, tortured and killed 8-year-old Michael Lyons two . When he grew tired of her, he choked her to death with a garrote made of baling wire (via The Daily Nonpareil). The question of what you do with your old SWAT jacket when you retire had never entered my mind. "He liked people to think he was in uniform," she said. Even the guys who were trying to help had used it. Thank you very much in advance. She started to . I don't think either of us knew what to do about it. To a teenager, though, someone pushing 40 is pretty old, and hair often looks darker in photos. The trucker bought me lunch and didn't even try to have sex with me, which made him a prince in my world. Who was the girl in the Dumpster? He requested information on missing Caucasian females aged 13 to 15 years old who had disappeared six to nine months earlier. He then tried to join the police force but was ultimately denied due to his robbery conviction. On my way out, I destroyed every single picture of me over the age of 12 so that there would be nothing to give to the police. In January 1990, Douglas Zyskowski and his wife Patricia Candace Walsh were hitchhiking to Georgia from Seattle on their honeymoon when they accepted a ride from Robert. Laying asleep next to her was the driver of the truck, Robert Ben Rhoades. Her remains were found in September 1990. She would be easy to dismiss. Debra told me that "Bob" always wore matching Dickies, usually dark blue. Debra wanted to give her money or do something. The vehicle had been converted into a refuge for the killer, a place where his most sinister desires could be inflicted on victims without detection. I remember coming down through the Blue Ridge Mountains in a truck with its brakes on fire and dropping over Chester Gap in the middle of the night when it was still hot and the air was loud with the chirping of bugs. Rhoades is thought to have killed Zyskowski while the young man slept. There was a Martinsburg truck stop somewhere in my story, and there was a dead 17-year-old hitchhiker. But Holts, 18 years old, had been on the street since she was 12. Had she ever heard about it? Rhoades. Robert Boyd Rhoades was sentenced to death Friday for the 1996 brutal attack on 8-year-old Michael Lyons. The barn had a loft with wind coming through broken slats and was surrounded by the same kind of brown grassy field and frozen mud. "How many of those guys could there be?". Between 1984 and 1987, he murdered at least six men in Kansas City, Missouri. SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Robert Boyd Rhoades was sentenced Friday to die by lethal injection for the rape, torture and murder of an 8-year-old Yuba City boy kidnapped three years ago while walking. The driver reached the cab, swung up behind the wheel, and said we should get going. By then, though, I had been kicked out of two schools for absences and was cutting myself regularly. He was not wearing a T-shirt. It doesn't matter what he says. 1983. Today Rhoades is a prisoner of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Further compounding this problem is that Rhoades did not presumably kill his victims where he met them. Every trucker I ever met had a gun, so the knife seemed significant. First Name Robert. Last Photo Taken of Regina before she was killed by Robert Ben Robert Ben Rhoades was born in Council Bluffs in 1945. But nobody had to tell me that people like Rhoades killed people like me and got away with it. Like me, she left home with her older boyfriend. She shook her head; then her eyes clouded some. I only ran about a hundred yards before I turned and hid, because I didnt know if I was being chased. Rhoades in Bond County IL Barn. The ruling went on to question the admissibility of eyewitness testimony. Women couldn't really get on the "zoo channel," as they called it then, because the sound of their voice would trigger twenty minutes of crass chatter. She later stated that she wasnt comfortable with some of the things he made her do. I told Young about the Laughing Death Society. Young pulled out one last picture and slid it across to me. It is also worth mentioning that Debra has spoken at domestic violence conferences over the years and shared her story. He grinned. I had a guitar and a knapsack full of souvenirs of my girlhood: notes from friends, earrings, and song lyrics. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1905de5cd6c356 Javascript is required. Whether or not he'll make any confessions to police about other murders remains to be seen. From 1975 to 1990 he is believed to have tortured,. I had not told him or anyone else how I felt about failing to go to the cops. Candace however was not so lucky. Rhoades was from Texas. That's exactly like him!" Robert Ben Rhoades was a truck driver with a torture chamber attached to his semi. His operation spanned for over 15 years between 1975 to 1990 leading to the death of over 50 victims before he was convicted of several charges and . I could easily imagine my own teenage voice whispering those same words. From reading about Rhoades, I knew that he preferred hitchhikers to prostitutes and specifically targeted runaways. Instead, police suspect he held the teenager captive for at least two weeks, subjecting her to sickening acts of torture and rape, before he strangled her to death with a garrote and dumped her corpse in an abandoned barn in Illinois. She's tried to put the years with Rhoades behind her but still gets letters from him sporadically. And they're right. She was a drifter." She told me there was only one and he had gone fishing. I crouched on netted twigs and breathed into my shirt to muffle the sound. "He was on the interstate everywhere.". There was talk of me going to live with my dad in Virginia, where I had traditionally spent my summers. Rhoades kept Regina for at least two weeks. When the FBI extradited him to Illinois, he was able to get a phone number off a waitress while shackled hand and foot and wearing an orange prison suit. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, thenView saved stories. I knew in my body that it was over. As a 15-year-old, the author left home and became a hitchhiker, hopping from semi to semi on the interstate. I needed to find rides and usually couldn't get into the restaurant. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Thinking that it would be her word against his, his victim recanted her statement, and Rhoades was free to go. When rescued, she was wearing fuzzy lion slippers, talking secret prisons and being on a mission to see the presidentjust the kind of testimony that makes most detectives stop taking notes, since they're looking at someone who can't stand trial. It wasn't lost on me that while I was hitchhiking and he was driving, we would both have struggled with some of the same challengessleep deprivation and the hypnotic dullness of going through identical locations over and over, a world constructed of boredom and violence. Akin to the murders of Douglas and Patricia, Robert killed Ricky immediately and disposed of his body but held Regina captive for a long period of time, periodically calling her father from a payphone. His ex-wives described him as verbally, physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive; one stated he would become sexually aroused when she was suffering from the pain of lupus, an autoimmune disease. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 1 of 3 DNA26C-C-24JAN00-EZ-HO --- Convicted murderer Robert Boyd Rhoades was linked to the 1984 slaying of eighteen year-old Julie Connell through DNA records. The body was found in 1990, but not identified until 1992. In his early life, Rhoades got into trouble from a young age, he was arrested for . "Do you remember what his cab looked like? The only thing they neglected to take down is a website with the words Martinsburg TravelCenter of America flashing like a beacon online. That's where my fantasy ends, in a game of "Who Is Credible Now?". He was convicted for three murders, and slated to be tried for two more before charges were dropped due to the wishes of victims' families. Davis asked quietly. "One thing I always did," I told Young, "was rifle through a trucker's cassette case as soon as we were out on the highway." He lived with his mother, Fay Rhoades, and several siblings in a two bedroom home at 2400 Avenue D. Robert's father, Ben Rhoades,. Bottles of isobutyl nitrite and rotgut aphrodisiacs like Locker Room and Spanish Fly crowded the counters by the register, along with the iconic bumper sticker ASS, GAS, OR GRASSNO ONE RIDES FOR FREE. Sure, serial killers ~killed~ people, but what did they actually do? Investigation Discovery's ' Evil Lives Here: Deadly Fetish' has serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades' ex-wife, Debra Davis, talk about when she met Robert and how their relationship ended eventually. She walked out about a year and a half into their marriage, and months later, Robert was arrested for kidnapping a woman in Arizona. The sentence of death had been a possibility because on May 6, 1992, the State had filed a notice that it intended to seek the death penalty. He grew taller in his seat, and his face muscles relaxed into something both arrogant and blank. Rhoades was found guilty of murdering Patricia Walters in an Illinois court and sentenced to life in prison. When she saw Miller, she began screaming for help (via GQ). I asked to speak to any senior officer who might have been there at the time. Robert Ben Rhoades Is A Member Of . Movie Actress. Robert Ben Rhoades, who is serving a life sentence in Illinois for killing a 14-year-old girl, pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder when he appeared before a West Texas judge . ", "That sure sounds like Bob. This kit included numerous sex toys, chains, whips, fishhooks, pins, and other items used to inflict on his captives. The light in my memory is strange, too. Could Debra help solve an active investigation? The more I learned about Rhoades, the more I saw parallels between us. According to the FBI, quite a few. Unbeknownst to Regina Walters or Ricky Jones, the man behind the wheel was Robert Ben Rhoades, also known as the Truck Stop Killer. Debra had a difficult time coping with the news that Robert had tortured women and killed multiple people. When they found her, there was shouting. She had been missing from the Houston area since early 1990 after running off with her boyfriend. The remarkable thing is that when she did, she didn't dump him. The two had a few drinks together and danced that night. Rhoades picked her up along with her boyfriend, Ricky Jones, in February of 1990. The arrest set off a chain of events that led to Robert being convicted for three murders and suspected of many more. Now, years later, she returns to the scenes of her fugitive youth looking for clues to that terrorand the girls who lost their lives to it, All the Under-$20 Style, Tech, and Home Goods We're Feeling This March, 35 Alarmingly Good Watch Deals to Upgrade Your Wrist, Fellas, You're About to Blow Your Rent Money at the SSENSE Sale, Jeff Staple Breaks Down Pigeon Dunk, Building a Brand & Top 5 Sneakers | My Life In Sneakers, Symbas Slow But Steady Path to Rap Stardom, The Best Sandals for Men Make Every Season Even Hotter. Her hair, long at the time of her abduction, had been clumsily cut short. I only ran about a hundred yards before I turned and hid, because I didn't know if I was being chased and needed to see. And I remember being in the woods off I-95. ", "Oh no, not at all!" Mark Young said Rhoades likes to feel like an expert and that I should ask him to "educate" me, so while writing my letter I used permissive language, saying I wanted him "to teach me what I did right and what I did wrong" when I was traveling. By her own account, she had been raped at least twenty times and had already had a baby. Criminal. It was later determined that Rhoades kept Walters alive for weeks while he subjected the young woman to an immeasurable amount of cruelty. You were not under his control. When investigators searched Roberts house they found several nude photos of Regina and Patricia. Six weeks later, though, we parted ways. "Bob was obsessed with how they used an imaginary secret society to keep her from running away," Davis said. He then killed her and dumped her body in Millard County, Utah. I left home in early January, hitchhiking south from New York City with my 21-year-old boyfriend. The source notes that Rhoades kept a "murder kit" in the cab, containing tools that he would use on anyone unlucky enough to be caught in his lair. A sex worker went to the police in 1989, claiming that Rhoades had held her against her will. I was still in shock, so I walked back out to the same road and started hitching south. Even at the time, I'd wondered if my running was part of the game. "Bob was fascinated by secret societies.". Stowing his paperwork, he released the brake. Drew Peterson, former police sergeant, was sentenced to 38 years for the murder of his 3rd wife, Kathleen Savio. Believing that the driver needed a hand, he climbed over the side of the rig and peered inside (via The Forensic Examiner). Robert Ben Rhoades. I had just hitched a ride and was sitting in a nearby truck waiting for the driver to pay for gas so we could leave. Robert Ben Rhoades will serve two life sentences without parole. "So was the trucker I met a true psychopath?" "She's one of the invisible people. Police photo. His bearing shifted. I said I wouldn't go to the cops if nothing happened to me, but it was his choiceuntil he looked at me and I went still. In the end, Debra was able to escape Roberts fury and worked on moving on. He was not wearing flannel. He kidnapped women, tortured and raped them for weeks before killing them. Look at Lisa Pennal. As per the show, when Debra decided to leave the next day, he flew into a rage, physically assaulting her. Recently, the New Jersey State Supreme Court handed down a statement on memory, describing it as complex and often unreliable. Debra stated that he seemed like a nice guy, and they eventually started dating. The interior of the truck's cab contained a hidden compartment that could only be seen if you were between the seats. Like Young and Lee, she had never heard of the Laughing Death Society, and since it had featured so strongly in my experience, I thought it salient. There are articles, TV episodes, and books on himDriven to Kill, Roadside Prey, Killer on the Roadand from these sources I learned that every grim and secret fear I have about the human race is manifest in Robert Ben Rhoades. I asked. She knew how to survive. The prisms of Regina Walters, Shana Holts, and Lisa Pennal refracted into a set of iconsone in the backseat of a car laughing as she leans on the headrest, one with the shorn red-gold hair and an expression of resilience, one slightly crazy and ready to fighteach casting her own light, each a hologram of girlhood. Robert Ben Rhoades at one of his swingers clubs in Houston TX 1985. the Murderpedia project stay alive. HOUSTON . Robert Ben Rhoades, born November 22, 1945, in Council Bluffs, Iowa turned out to be one of the most sadistic sexual predators that the US had ever encountered. Police looked at the photos, noting that the growth of Regina Walters' hair and the changing color of her bruises meant that she had been in Robert Ben Rhoades' clutches for several weeks (per All That's Interesting). Though her remains were discovered within months of her death, it wasn't until 2003 that she was able to be positively identified (via The Daily Nonpareil). Her thick red-blond hair had been cropped close to her head with a knife or scissors and was now growing back. When they visited his home, they uncovered a number of disturbing photographs, taken right before he murdered one of his teenage victims- photos that are perhaps even more disturbing than Rhoades's mobile torture chamber. It said there had been a string of prostitute murders in truck stops in the area beginning in June of 1985, which was right on the edge of my time frame. In this automatic appeal ( Cal. Wearing down from lack of sleep and trying to get a handle on my risk level, I began to work off a 1-to-5 scale of sexually aggressive behavior: You (the driver) kept your urges to yourself. There was always a sick mom or dead grandparent involved, and I was almost always abandoned by my jerk of a boyfriend, who'd made off with all my money and my car. Neither of these women were the one I was looking for, but a sentence in the article caught my attention. Robert started with petty crimes like public fighting and tampering with vehicles while he was still in high school. Walsh and Zyskowski, the newlywed victims, left Seattle in November 1989 to hitchhike to Georgia where they were going to preach the Christian gospel when Rhoades picked them up in Texas. Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. He will die in prison.". "You see that, Debbie," he whispered in her ear. In 1994, Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Regina Kay Walters and was slated to be tried for two more before charges were dropped due to the wishes of victims' families. At night I listened to the voices of prostitutes on the CB, barely intelligible between streams of name-calling: "Hello, honey. Robert was pulled over on the I-90 with his hazard lights flashing when a state trooper drove by and decided to check if the driver needed help. Girls no one would miss. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. On the show, Debra talked about a point in the relationship where she found Robert with another woman at a party. Debra also mentioned that she remarried and worked with domestic abuse and rape survivors. Her statement was videotaped the night she was freed from Rhoades's truck. The original Rhoades investigation had woven a complex web, entangling local and federal agencies in five different states. I have no fascination with serial killers, so I didn't realize that Rhoades was famous. Robert Ben Rhoades, who already is serving a life sentence for killing a 14-year-old girl in Illinois, pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder when he appeared before a West Texas judge . Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. That ride turned out to be fine. This photograph, of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters, was taken by Robert Ben Rhoades, a serial executioner who was later discovered driving a 18-wheeler with a torture chamber in the back. Serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades kidnapped and tortured his victims inside a chamber set up inside his big rig truck. Truck stops in the 1980s were closed worlds where what went on passed unnoticed on the outside. If there was any way to connect my story to Rhoades, it would be through the body of the girl in the Dumpster. Rhoades looked like the guy who picked me up. Most Popular #231965. Inside the cab of the truck was a woman, chained to the wall and screaming, with only a pair of slippers on her feet. "That was the problem with him," Smith said. Const., art. Sadly, while the remains of both Zyskowski and Walsh were discovered shortly after they were murdered, it took years for both of them to be identified and returned to their families. The FBI theorized Robert had killed at least three women per month. ", Pennal was the woman chained into Rhoades's truck when they arrested him in Arizona. allowing the middle-aged husband and father to torment and abuse women as he crisscrossed the United States. Click to reveal The rig was equipped with handcuffs on the ceiling, which enabled Rhoades to chain his female victims so that he could torture them before killing them. He narrowly avoided the death penalty, accepting a second life sentence. By the restaurant door was a young woman with a baby, trying to get a ride. "There's this compartment that's hidden completely from view other than between the seats," Steve Smith, first assistant for the 112th District Attorney's office in Texas, told ABCNews.com. As I saw it, it didn't matter if I left, because in so many ways I was already gone. She hid there until she was sure she heard his truck leave. Officers later discovered this was the name Rhoades, who had been involved in BDSM for years, went by when he used his CB radio to communicate with his fellow truckers. This was 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters just before she was sexually assaulted and murdered. "He's 67. I hadn't been able to get a copy of Shana Holts's police report because I was told there was no official suspect. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Robert Ben Rhoades, un serial killer amricain, vient de trouver un accord avec le bureau du procureur. In Martinsburg, West Virginia, where the truck stop should be is a massive Walmart stretching flat and endless along a parking lot the size of a lake. Investigation Discovery referred to Rhoades' truck as a "rolling torture chamber," based on what was kept inside this enclosure. All That's Interesting tells us that chains hung from the ceiling, used to fasten his victims in place in agonizing positions. Five years ago, the truck stop was demolished along with its restaurant. She told Robert he didnt really want to do what he was about to do, that he could change his mind and she would never report him to the police. Another is called "Beat Me Daddy," another "Frigid Woman." He was wrong. He shaved her head and pubic hair, pierced her with fishing hooks, dressed her up in a black dress and heels, and photographed her in moments of terror, then killed her with a garrote made of baling wire, leaving her one-hundred-pound body to decompose in a barn in Illinois off Interstate 70. she said. When I got to the part about the sudden switch in his behavior, she got excited. ", I had a vision of Lisa Pennal as a truck-stop Kali roaming the back lots in her denim skirt and fuzzy slippers with an ozone hole for a halo. Rhoades is currently serving life sentences in Illinois for three murders. This Picture was the key evidence photo. I was on my own. The whole thing seemed so uncanny. I arrived at his door melting in the hundred-degree heat. It was a raw moment. Rhoades liked to think of himself as an "expert," and now Rhoades suggested he be paid as one. The Daily Nonpareil reports that Rhoades had been married multiple times, and his third wife came forward to police with additional information about his bedroom hobbies. We both had our own systems, our own rituals, and our own beliefs about what people were really like and how they acted under pressure. In 1994, Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Regina Kay Walters and was slated to be tried for two more before charges were dropped due to the wishes of victims' families. He then forced her to wear heels and a black dress before taking several photos of her, strangling her with baling wire, and leaving her body to decompose in the barn. ", I was in the one place where I knew for certain women had been found, one less than a hundred yards away from where she was standing. After she was rescued from Robert Ben Rhoades's vehicle, the woman told law enforcement that she had met the middle-aged husband and father at a truck stop, and he had agreed to give her a ride to her destination. It said he would see me if I promised never to say that I had seen him or what had passed between us. Prosecutors say the trucker kept a mobile torture chamber in the cab of his long-haul rig. Rhoades was handcuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car while Miller questioned the woman in the truck. Robert Ben Rhoades, 59, was linked by DNA in 2003 to the murder of 24-year-old Patricia Candice Walsh. Robert was immediately arrested and charged with unlawful confinement, and sexual and aggravated assault. I could rest but not dream. But beyond that, it was the man's demeanor that was so chilling. However, shortly after they accepted a ride from Rhoades, the middle-aged trucker shot Zyskowski and dumped the 28-year-old's corpse near a Texas highway. "Well," said Lee, sitting back after I finished, "you're probably right. Word filtered back that the dead girl was a teenage hitchhiker. People don't leave home because things are going well; they leave because they feel they have to, and right or wrong, that's how I felt. Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. He wasn't nervous, angry, or excited. I woke when it slowed for traffic. When it turned, when it downshifted, when it drifted toward the shoulderI woke. Robert Ben Rhoades is a 71 year old white male, 6' 1" 175 pounds, and currently resides in the Menard Correctional Facility in Chester Illinois. There was a gap before that line, and most truckers wouldn't take it that far. It was a ghost story. I could tell you the last three songs played on the radio if you asked, but only if you asked. He would only have been 39 at the time, and I remember the trucker as an older man with light brown or graying hair. After Debra Davis interviewed about life with her ex-husband, serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, Kentucky state troopers reached out, telling her that they suspected Rhoades in a 1985 cold case. I didn't recognize him from the initial photos, but as I found pictures of him as a younger man, his face came to seem more familiar. She'd been picked up in a truck stop, shackled into the back of the cab, tortured and raped for weeks. Serial Killer and Rapist Robert Ben Rhoades Case Review Profiling Evil The Interview Room Profiling Evil 129K subscribers 28K views Streamed 2 years ago Robert Benjamin Rhoades, also known as. Rhoades was a great lover of games. The serial killer's name was Robert Ben Rhoades. I would file charges and sue him.". It's more like a set of still photos. "That's from my old SWAT jacket." It was a cloudy day just before a summer storm, and everything in the truck is cast in gray.
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