Serial killer left harrowing message for victim’s dad after killing daughter | World | News
Robert Ben Rhoades, dubbed the “Truck Stop Killer”, transformed his lorry into a chamber of horrors, murdering over 50 young women in a chilling spree of wickedness – even leaving a macabre message for the parents of one of his victims.
Rhoades preyed on vulnerable females, often hitchhikers, sex workers, or solitary women at lorry stops during his reign of terror across the US from 1975 to 1990.
His lorry routes spanned state borders, leading detectives to believe he exploited the solitude of interstate travel to elude the police. Investigators suggest at the height of his depravity, he may have been kidnapping and torturing women in his vehicle for weeks before killing them and discarding their bodies in remote areas across Texas, Utah and Illinois.
His first confirmed victim was 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters, who was kidnapped in Illinois in 1990. He subjected her to rape and torture, captured a distressing image of her raising her hands in self-defence, before brutally murdering her in a deserted barn.
Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI with 25 years of service, told The US Sun: “The sheer evil and cruelty of these killers is shocking. During my FBI career, I saw a lot of horrific crime scenes but these trucker-killers are particularly gruesome in the way they carry out their evil against their victims.”, reports <a href=”https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/serial-killer-who-tortured-raped-36225740″ rel=”Follow” target=”_self”>the Mirror</a>.
“[Rhoades] suspended Regina from fish hooks inside his lorry, and even rang her father to tell him, ‘I’ve made some alterations. I cut her hair.’ Rhoades snapped a photo of Regina before he murdered her. That image, with Regina begging for her life, is horrifying.”
His chilling torture lorry was fitted with handcuffs on the ceiling, which allowed Rhoades to chain his female victims so that he could torment them before ending their lives. Two of his other known victims were newlyweds Patricia Candace Walsh, 24, and Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 25, who left Seattle and began hitchhiking toward Georgia in late 1989.
The gospel missionaries accepted a lift from Rhoades, who shot Mr Zyskowski and discarded his body next to a motorway. He took Mrs Walsh alive before torturing and sexually assaulting her in the lorry repeatedly over the course of a week.
Her remains were discovered in October 1990 by deer hunters in Millard County, Utah.
After a dishonourable discharge from the Marines in the late 1960s, Rhoades became a long‐haul lorry driver with a sleeper cab rig and soon began his reign of terror. Though he has only been convicted of a handful of murders, law-enforcement estimates place his suspected victim count at 50 or more women and girls, citing his pattern of kidnappings, torture locations and long-haul routes.
On April 1, 1990, Rhoades was eventually arrested in Arizona on charges of aggravated assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment after a state trooper discovered a woman chained inside the sleeper cab of his truck. Four years later, he was convicted of Regina’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
