I said it was his choice. Just a few months after she left Robert, he was taken into custody for a kidnapping. 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. If there are more murder confessions to make, there may be time yet for other families to find some semblance of closure and justice. On the couch beside me was a large pillow with the FBI seal. "Bob was obsessed with how they used an imaginary secret society to keep her from running away," Davis said. Last Photo Taken of Regina before she was killed by Robert Ben Rhoades in Bond County IL Barn. Smith said that should Rhoades ever be released from the Illinois prison for any unforeseen reason, he would be returned to a Texas prison. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. Just a few months after she left Robert, he was taken into custody for a kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison. There was a Martinsburg truck stop somewhere in my story, and there was a dead 17-year-old hitchhiker. The picture was given to Young by Regina's mom. She brought the police right back to Rhoades's truck but then balked at pressing charges, so they had to let him go. Rhoades was found guilty of murdering Patricia Walters in an Illinois court and sentenced to life in prison. She looks like any other skinny kid just out of middle school. The trial began in 1994 and Robert was ultimately convicted of the first-degree murder of Regina Kay Walters. She was found running naked, screaming down a street in Houston with DNA all over her body, her head and pubic hair shaved, still with his chain around her neck. These were my private feelings. Robert Ben Rhoades will serve two life sentences without parole. This obviously doesn't recommend the waitress's judgment, but at least some of the credit has to go to Rhoades. Games People Play was a bible for Rhoades. I needed visibility to stay alive. Robert Ben Rhoades Is A Member Of . Regina Kay Walters 14 years old died by the hands of Robert Ben Jones was promptly killed, and his remains were discovered later in Mississippi. How could she lack evidence? Richard Speck, A New Kind of Mass Murderer, Henry Howard Holmes, The Devil in the White City, Charles Ng & Leonard Lake, Family Slayers, Timothy Jay Vafreades, The Vampire Trucker, Highway Horrors: Robert Ben Rhoades, The Trucker With A Mobile Torture Chamber. "Human memory is not like a video recording," they said. Last Name Rhoades #7. Rhoades is currently being held in an Illinois prison where he will spend the rest of his days behind bars. According to the FBI, quite a few. There was only one word for woman on the CB, and that was beaver. The phrase "play, pass, run" is used twice in the letter. I remember being in the woods off I-95. Young, a six-foot-four Texan and third-generation lawman, opened his laptop and pulled up a picture of a woman named Shana Holts. And while I was getting more adept at survival, he was very likely getting more adept at killing. The trucker went to pay for gas, and my boyfriend and I went to use the bathroom. ", 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. Could Debra help solve an active investigation? The couple were traveling from Georgia to Seattle when they allegedly crossed paths with Rhoades, a long-haul trucker suspected of a decade of rape . The store for professional drivers was clean and quiet. That's where my fantasy ends, in a game of "Who Is Credible Now?". Listening to her, it occurred to me that this investigation of mine wasn't a detective novel. Megan Fox. In Robert Ben Rhoades's truck, authorities recovered a briefcase filled with sex toys and torture devices which the hitchhiker said the trucker had used to abuse her over the course of several hours. Robert Ben Rhoades was a truck driver with a torture chamber attached to his semi. "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." His wife, Debra Davis, was from Texas. From 1975 to 1990 he is believed to have tortured . The woods were blue in the gray light, which was either dusk or a coming storm. The FBI theorized Robert had killed at least three women per month. Patricia was newly married to Douglas Zyzkowski. Laying asleep next to her was the driver of the truck, Robert Ben Rhoades. He will die in prison.". I lived among artists in the Lower East Side squats. "Were there any murders that summer?" I said he could do it in a few minutes. I woke when it slowed for traffic. Even in jail, his shirt and pants were always ironed and pressed.". Candace Walsh and her husband Douglas Zyskowski were hitchhiking when Rhoades' picked them up in a truck stop. They get more nuanced and elaborate, but the basic topography remains the same. The birds went silent, and I didn't know what it meant. 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. She had a stocking down her throat, I think. The stores were dimly lit and filled with smoke, radically different from the family travel plazas of today. Sagittarius. 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. Between 1984 and 1987, he murdered at least six men in Kansas City, Missouri. 202202. In a letter to his wife on the subject of psychological games, he wrote: "I always told you there were three things you could do: play, pass, or run." Sure, serial killers ~killed~ people, but what did they actually do? 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. In his early life, Rhoades got into trouble from a young age, he was arrested for . Further compounding this problem is that Rhoades did not presumably kill his victims where he met them. Robert Ben Rhoades, a Houston trucker who kept a torture dungeon in the cab of his long-haul rig, accepted two life prison sentences http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/sns-ap-tx--serialkiller-texas,0,3734866.story Houston trucker already imprisoned in Illinois for murder avoids Texas death penalty with plea In her weeks with Rhoades, many drivers saw her, but somehow no alarm was raised. I lived with my mom in New York, and the fights between us were growing in intensity and emotional violence. 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. Despite the initial deception, Debra wanted to give the relationship a shot and continued to date him. Please enable javascript before you are allowed to see this page. "He liked people to think he was in uniform," she said. Robert Ben Rhoades: From 1989 to 1990, Robert Ben Rhoades is believed to have tortured, raped and killed more than fifty women, although he has only three confirmed victims. I have no fascination with serial killers, so I didn't realize that Rhoades was famous. She'd been picked up in a truck stop, shackled into the back of the cab, tortured and raped for weeks. Rhoades picked her up along with her boyfriend, Ricky Jones, in February of 1990. But nobody had to tell me that people like Rhoades killed people like me and got away with it. You were not under his control. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Though his first confirmed murders didn't occur until 1990, one woman may have barely escaped with her life the year before. I began by Googling things like "dead girl truck stop Martinsburg." 16. By her own account, she had been raped at least twenty times and had already had a baby. Rhoades intentionally chose women who lacked credibility. She walked back out onto the road and hitchhiked south. He was grave and methodical as if preparing to dress a deer. I needed to understand what my responsibility was and to find my own answers, if nobody else's, so I began to look. I asked. They were heading west on I-10 and stopped somewhere in Arizona at a busy truck stop. "Do you remember what he was wearing?" I began talking, saying the same things over and over. In the second installment of Death on the Open Road: Highway Homicides, we cover the case of evil serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades aka The Truck Stop Killer. He lived with his mother, Fay Rhoades, and several siblings in a two bedroom home at 2400 Avenue D. Robert's father, Ben Rhoades,. While he was in the Marine Corps, he committed a robbery and was dishonorably discharged in 1968. He pled guilty to the first degree murder of 14-year-old Regina Walters in 1992 after investigators found haunting photos of the teenager in his apartment. I crouched on netted twigs and breathed into my shirt to muffle the sound. Regina Walters had been seen in Chicago standing freely outside his truck in a public place. 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. Debra had a difficult time coping with the news that Robert had tortured women and killed multiple people. Her facial expression could be described as a combination of desperation and abject fear. Eventually, law enforcement discovered Robert Ben Rhoades was a serial killer, in addition to being a sexual sadist who enjoyed torturing women and girls. The 40+ Best Companies To Work For By The Beach in Southern California. Adhering to my rule (that the only safe truck was a moving truck) meant I woke when a truck took an exit. I didn't tell him about my recent inquiries at first; I just asked where he'd dropped me off. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. Instagram: @openshuddetspodcast. November 22, 2021. The Daily Nonpareil reports that Robert Ben Rhoades was set to be free on work release when Illinois police identified the body of 14-year-old Regina Walters. Prosecutors believe Rhoades may have put many other women through the cycle of "kidnap, torture, and kill," but Smith said they do not know how many women he may have hurt, since he traveled so much. As we pulled away, I looked once more in the side mirror. Like a lemur in a canopy of trees, I barely saw the ground. 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. Robert Ben Rhoades, 59, was linked by DNA in 2003 to the murder of 24-year-old Patricia Candice Walsh. I asked. Walsh was murdered, and her body was dumped in Utah. To a teenager, though, someone pushing 40 is pretty old, and hair often looks darker in photos. Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. Her remains were found in September 1990. On the phone, agent Robert F. Lee was civil and to the point but not overtly warm. This kit included numerous sex toys, chains, whips, fishhooks, pins, and other items used to inflict on his captives. A man from the restaurant ran out and started yelling for everyone to stay away as a small crowd gathered around the Dumpster in the rain. It is also worth mentioning that Debra has spoken at domestic violence conferences over the years and shared her story. Bruce Willis. I only saw the man with the knife. In one photo, the teen is standing in a barn, clad in a black dress and wearing high-heeled shoes. Rhoades was a long-haul trucker, in jail since 1990, who had recently been convicted of a couple of new "cold cases." 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. Robert Benjamin Rhoades, fdd 22 november 1945, r en amerikansk seriemrdare och vldtktsman, aktiv mellan 1989 och 1990. It's just going to be my word against his. Young then showed me some photos of Rhoades in the 1980s that had come from his wife. After that, she spoke of feeling inadequate and questioning if something was wrong with her. After Evil: Master Manipulator. Just a few months after she left Robert, he was taken into custody for a kidnapping. All That's Interesting tells us that chains hung from the ceiling, used to fasten his victims in place in agonizing positions. Between Pennal and Rhoades, it's Rhoades they believe. Follows the disturbing story of truck driver Robert Ben Rhoades, whose obsession with violent sex prompted him to pick up prostitutes, runaways, and lonely women and torture them to death, a practice that went undetected for fifteen years. According to her, in the summer of 1985, Rhoades was driving for a trucking company based in Georgia that has an office right on I-95. I'd heard of at least one who got hung up on a meat hook in the back of a refrigerated trailer because a trucker thought she'd given him VD. But then, Rhoades looks like a lot of guys. In one, he relaxed on the grass in a park. By now papers and photographs were spread out all over the table, and Young was waiting for me to tell my story. He pulled the truck into a wooded area, took out a hunting knife, and told the girl to get into the bed of his truck. I had been a drifter. I watched the truck idle on the side of the road until it finally pulled off. Everything I expected from Bob Lee changed in that moment. I remember sitting in the drizzle in a truck while the crime-scene tape was strung around a Dumpster. The ruling went on to question the admissibility of eyewitness testimony. But I thought about what she'd said"It would just be my word against his," which was clearly followed by the unvoiced thought: And who is going to believe me? It was off the side of the freeway and probably very much like the one Regina Walters was found in. Walters and Walsh had been held captive by Rhoades while he traveled the interstate highways in his truck. Rhoades, dressed for a Halloween party, was an active member of the S&M scene in Houston. A few minutes later, I got up like nothing had happened. Rhoades has spent the past few years in a Texas prison, but will soon be sent back to Illinois to serve the life sentences. But to ex-wife Debra Davis, when they. 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. There were other points where she saw similarities and would say, "That sounds like Bob," but these were less emphatic, and it was hard to tell what she really thought. Young was a profiler for the bureau as well as a field agent. Rhoades allegedly dumped the body of Walsh's husband, Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 28, in Texas. It's supposed that Rhoades quickly killed Jones and disposed of his body (via The Telegraph). He was given two life sentences inTexas without the possibility of parole. That was way back in the early '70s, though.". There was going to be no more talking. I expected that to be the end of it, but I got another letter. 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. It was a woman, probably in her midfifties. Also like me, Regina became dependent upon the grace of truck drivers. The idea that I might have been responsible for what happened to girls like Regina was devastating, and Lee's directness startled me. 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. She's tried to put the years with Rhoades behind her but still gets letters from him sporadically. The couple had just recently wed and were hitchhiking to Georgia from Texas. She knew how to survive. He said a gun was about control but a knife is personal. In her mouth was a bit similar to ones used for horses. 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. Then he said one word: Run. You called and left a message a day or so after I dropped you off, saying I was going to read about a dead 17-year-old hitchhiker they found in a truck stop and that it wasn't you.". Rhoades was dressed that night as an airline pilot, and it was months before Davis found out he wasn't one. An unidentified girl, shown here in a photograph taken by Rhoades. Rhoades didn't live a double life as much as a shadowed one. "Do you remember what his cab looked like? Rhoades had told her to "sit there and be a good girl." Rhoades whipped her repeatedly, causing red welts to appear all over her chest and back, and he had a briefcase in his truck, filled with toys and tools her used to sadistically torture and abuse the hitchhiker. The sheer amount of victims he had coupled with the contrast of how little we know about his crimes makes this case haunting. Ex-Wife Of Serial Killer Robert Ben Rhoades Speaks Out | Evil Lives Here: After the Evil. Debra also mentioned that she remarried and worked with domestic abuse and rape survivors. The driver reached the cab, swung up behind the wheel, and said we should get going. Most truckers occupied the middle of the scale, but the trucker who resembled Rhoades didn't have a place on it. This gave me a screen behind which to observe drivers when they thought I was distracted. 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. Every trucker I ever met had a gun, so the knife seemed significant. I finally got to Davis through agent Young. Robert Ben Rhoades at one of his swingers clubs in Houston TX 1985. She didn't do what he expected. Rhoades received a second life sentence in the plea, in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. "Bob was fascinated by secret societies.". Read More: Where is Robert Ben Rhoades Now? And who's going to believe him? 76 Year Olds. The body was found in 1990, but not identified until 1992. 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. 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 kidnapped women, tortured and raped them for weeks before killing them. Walters, however, did not have such a quick and painless death. Robert started with petty crimes like public fighting and tampering with vehicles while he was still in high school. Behind him was a shoulder-high pink plastic castle. I found her in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette later that night. I was 15. "There was that hitchhiker. Could Debra help solve an active investigation? HOUSTON . creator of The Wicked Truth - a true crime blog https://ko-fi.com/fatim. After all, it's just going to be his word against mine. Sometimes, as with Shana Holts, the girl who had escaped in the brewery, the sense of not being credible was internalized. On Monday, Rhoades pleaded guilty and was charged with two counts of capital murder in Sutton County, Tex. I asked about the knife. He would then keep them alive, torturing and sexually assaulting them for weeks at a time before murdering them and disposing of their bodies. "She's one of the invisible people. He was involved in the BDSM and swinger scene in his hometown of Houston. ", Vanessa Veselka is the author of Zazen (Red Lemonade), which won the 2012 PEN/ Bingham Prize for fiction, Apply Bed Bath and Beyond Coupon and save 25% Off your entire purchase, Target Circle: up to 50% Off with Target promo code, With Asos Promo Code you take 70% OFF Select styles, Michael Kors Promo Code: sign up for KORSVIP + Get 10% Off on First Order, 2023 Cond Nast. 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