American Monsters: Robert Ben Rhoades

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning, Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. I'm zevn Odelberg, host of Kind of Murdery, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of Murdery. That's right, folks, Just like it says in the intro, I am zevn Odelberg, and this is kind of Murdery. Welcome. I'm glad you're here.

0:52 Speaker 2: I first encountered the story of the truck Stop Killer in an article with the same name, written by Vanessa Vasselka and published in GQ on October twenty fourth, twenty twelve. In her GQ article, Vanessa Vselka tells her story in first person. The story you're about to hear on this episode of Kind of Murdery is Vanessa's story combined with information and narratives from other sources I've consulted and told in the third person to create a version of the truck stop Killer's story that is both personal and general, factual and emotional, and of course true.

1:29 Speaker 2: We're headed for a dark, haunting ride down an abandoned highway full of hidden dangers and unforgivable violence. So buckle up and join me as we uncover what truth we can and solve what mysteries we may kind of murderies. The truck stop Killer starts now. He methodically proud the highways, targeting teenage girls who had run away, those seemingly invisible to the world. In the scorching summer of nineteen eighty five, she was one such girl. A chance encounter on nine ninety five with a stranger led to the most petrifying ordeal of her life.

2:17 Speaker 2: Years later, she revisits the haunts of her fraught youth, seeking insights into the terror she faced and the fate of the girls who were not as lucky. In the sweltering summer of nineteen eighty five, near Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, the grim discovery of a body in a truck stop dumpster sent shockwaves through the area. The girl had just secured a ride and found herself in a nearby truck. Heard driver momentarily away to settle the fuel payment. When the body was discovered, The discovery unleashed chaos.

2:46 Speaker 2: A restaurant employee burst out doors, urging onlookers to keep their distance, as a curious crowd formed under the drizzle around the dumpster. The murmurs among the gathered revealed the victim was a girl, a teenage hitchhiker. This hit close to home as she was a teenage hitchhiker herself, and with a shudder, she realized that the victim's fate could easily have been hers. Her gaze followed the truck driver as he navigated the rainslicked asphalt back to their vehicle. A sinister thought crept into her mind.

3:17 Speaker 2: Could her driver be the murderer? His demeanor upon returning did nothing to quell her fears. With a brief comment about avoiding delays, he promptly resumed their journey, conspicuously avoiding any mention of the tragedy unfolding behind them. As they departed, she glanced in the side mirror, capturing a final image of the scene. Now being cordoned off by crime tape as additional law enforcement arrived. This moment, etched in her memory, marked the beginning of a haunting journey into the heart of darkness that lay hidden along the highways.

3:47 Speaker 2: Her ride to North Ohio with this particular trucker was unexpectedly pleasant, marked by the simple comforts of diet coke, the anthems of Bruce Springsteen, and the shared silence that comes with mutual respect. The trucker, by offering lunch without expecting anything in return, earned a rare esteem in the girl's eyes, a fleeting glimpse of decency in a world that often showed her the opposite. However, the precarious nature of her travels was brought back into stark relief several days later, on a southward path along I ninety five through the Carolinas.

4:19 Speaker 2: A new ride. Another trucker, distinguished by his tall, lean frame and the unusual choice of a cotton button down instead of the typical trucker attire, presented a facade of cleanliness and order in his cab that was enough to persuade her to join him. Initially, he might have seemed safe, but as they merged onto the open road, his demeanor took a dark turn. He withdrew into silence, ignoring her attempts at conversation, and transformed before her eyes. His posture straightened, his expression morphed into a mix of arrogance and emptiness, and then, unsettlingly, he began to speak.

4:55 Speaker 2: His topic of choice was morbid, focusing on the recent discovery of a dead g girl in a dumpster, a subject that chilled her to the bone given her own close proximity to that exact scene days before. But it was the trucker's introduction of the Laughing Death Society, a group that mocked the finality of death, that truly unsettled her. We laugh at Death, he declared, a statement that encapsulated the terror of the situation and underscored the unpredictable danger of her hitchhiking existence. Minutes after the conversation had veered into the morbid territory of death and mockery, the trucker abruptly steered his truck onto the road's shoulder, adjacent to a wooded area.

5:35 Speaker 2: He pulled out a hunting knife and issued a chilling command for her to move to the back of the cab. Desperately, she employed words as her defense, repeatedly pleading with him and telling him over and over again that he didn't have to do this, that it was his choice, it was his choice, telling him he had the power to not proceed, and promising to be quiet if she was spared. Please, she said, you don't have to do this. It's your choice. It's your choice. But when his gaze met hers, a silent understanding passed between them.

6:06 Speaker 2: The time for words had ended. Instinctively, she knew the grim finality of her situation. Then, unexpectedly, he uttered a single word run. Eating this command without hesitation, she fled into the woods, concealing herself for what felt like hours until the truck's departure signaled it was safe to emerge. Despite the encroaching darkness and the lingering shock, she found herself back on the same road, thumb outstretched, continuing her journey southward, never reporting the incident. Years later, in the spring of twenty twelve, a friend's message brought the past into stark relief, linking her to a news story about Robert Ben Rhodes, a convicted serial killer and long haul trucker.

6:47 Speaker 2: Initial photographs of roads didn't trigger recognition. However, images of his younger self stirred a haunting familiarity. The resemblance lay in the glasses, the cheekbones, and the unmistakable arrogant expression. Although despite those similarities, doubts lingered. Her memories of the trucker painted him as older, and Rhodes was only thirty nine at the time, but perhaps he appeared older than that in a teenager's eyes. To many teenagers, thirty nine is ancient. The peculiar lighting of that cloudy day just before a storm, cast everything, including her memory, in shades of gray, leaving her to ponder the identity of the man who had let her run, and to wonder, as she often had over the years, why he did.

7:33 Speaker 2: Upon receiving an email from her friend asking if Rhodes was the guy, she reached out to the FBI, though she admitted to herself that part of her felt a sense of relief when her messages went unanswered. The incident was a distant memory, twenty seven years old, and in the eyes of the law, perhaps not actionable. Yet, the photographs of Rhodes haunted her, along with a cascade of questions that refused to be silenced, the possibility that the man who had threatened her life could be responsible for the death of the hitchhiker in the dumpster, and others nodded her.

8:07 Speaker 2: Why had she been spared, who was the girl discarded so callously in the dumpster? And why had she remained silent for so long? Driven by a need for closure and understanding rather than a fascination with the macabre, she delved into the dark world of Robert Ben Rhodes. Despite her lack of interest in serial killers, she discovered that Rhodes was infamously well documented through articles, television episodes, and books with titles like Driven to Kill, Roadside Prey, and Killer on the Road. She confronted the horrifying reality of the man that she may have encountered.

8:41 Speaker 2: Rhodes, a sexual sadist, had left a trail of unimaginable cruelty, abducting women, subjecting them to prolonged torture and rape before finally ending their lives. His activities in the nineteen eighties remained obscured by shadows, yet it was known he frequented the BDSM and Swinger Sirs in Houston and was married at the time his confession upon capture, claiming a fifteen year span of criminal activity, suggested his crimes dated back to the nineteen seventies. The three years leading up to his arrest saw him in the vicinity of fifty unsolved murders, as evidenced by his trucking logs.

9:18 Speaker 2: While direct connections to Rhodes for all fifty cases remain unconfirmed and Rhodes himself only acknowledged three murders, the FBI believes that at his most active he may have been responsible for the deaths of one to three women monthly. This chilling insight into rhodes life offered a grim understanding of the depths of human depravity, raising profound questions about evil, survival and the elusive nature of justice. Robert ben Roade's reign of terror was abruptly halted by an Arizona State trooper's discovery that would chill the spine of anyone who heard it.

9:51 Speaker 2: A woman, Lisa Pennell, was found screaming chained in the back of rhodes truck cab, leading to his immediate arrest on charges of kidnapping and assault. However, it was the harrowing case of Regina Walters that would ultimately seal Rhodes's fate, condemning him to a life behind bars. Regina, a fourteen year old girl from Pasadena, Texas, became one of Rhodes's most notorious victims after she and her boyfriend Ricky Jones accepted a ride from him in February of nineteen ninety. Jones' life was swiftly extinguished, his body later found in Mississippi, while Regina endured a nightmarish existence for weeks under Rhodes's control.

10:28 Speaker 2: The details of Regina's ordeal are harrowing. Rhodes subjected her to unimaginable acts of cruelty, including shaving her head in pubic hair, piercing her body with fishing hooks, and forcing her into a black dress and heels. He documented her terror in photographs before ultimately strangling her with a garret fashioned from baling wire. Her slight, one hundred pound frame was discarded at an Illinois barn off of Interstate seventy, where it was left to decay, a silent testament to the brutality she suffered.

10:57 Speaker 2: This tragic narrative resonated deeply with the girl now woman whose story we're telling mirroring her own past experiences in a haunting echo of despair. Like Regina, she had ventured away from home with an older boyfriend, placing her trust in the transient mercy of truck drivers for survival. Regina's story illuminated an unforgiving reality. Within the vast, anonymous expanse of the road. She became invisible, her suffering unnoticed by those who encountered her, the forgotten in a world where danger lurked in the guise of salvation and the line between life and death was perilously thin.

11:37 Speaker 2: In early nineteen eighty five, she was fifteen and found herself grappling with a predicament that far outweighed the typical concerns of adolescence. It was a relentless challenge just to find a safe place to sleep. Her departure from home was not a journey embarked upon lightly, but a desperate escape from life in New York City that had become untenable. She fled the city accompanied by her twenty one year old boyfriend. Their meager possessions included sixty dollars a Smith and Wesson five shot revolver, which they inadvertently discharged during a heated debate about whether or not the safety was on in a Maryland field a guitar and a knapsack filled with memories of her youth.

12:18 Speaker 2: Her decision to leave home was not rooted in a desire for adventure, but rather a profound sense of necessity. At home, the escalating conflict and emotional turmoil between herself and her mother had become unbearable, with no apparent resolution in sight. Discussions about relocating to her father's in Virginia offered little solace. Her academic struggles and personal battles with self harm were outward manifestations of a deep seated feeling of alienation in her mind. Her physical departure merely formalized an emotional detachment that had long since taken hold.

12:53 Speaker 2: In a symbolic act of severance, she obliterated every photographic trace of herself beyond the age of twelve, racing any potential leads that might be used in a police search. This destruction was an expression of her feelings of invisibility and a profound disconnection from her past, as she ventured into an uncertain future with little more than hope for something resembling safety and peace, Her journey into the unknown began in the depths of a Maryland winter. The girl and her boyfriend stayed in an abandoned barn that stood as a silent sentinel beside the freeway.

13:26 Speaker 2: The barn, with its loft pierced by the chill winds through broken slats, nestled amidst the landscape of brown, grassy fields and frozen mud, bore an uncanny resemblance to the grim final resting place of Regina Walters. That night, amidst the biting cold that made sleep and elusive dream, she poured her thoughts into a small journal, a solitary act of defiance against the darkness that enveloped her. By the first light of dawn, they were on the move again, their figures shrouded in hoodies, navigating the icy gauntlet of the highway.

13:57 Speaker 2: Their fortunes took a temporary turn for the better when a trucker emerging with the daybreak, offered them passage. The experience of riding high in the cab of a semi warmed by the heater and overlooking the endless stream of traffic was a novel and welcome change from the frigid ordeal of hiking along the highway. The trucker, a seemingly genial host, extended his hospitality further with a meal of chicken fried steak and engaged in light conversation. He even allowed them the luxury of napping in the cab as he drove.

14:27 Speaker 2: However, this brief rest was shattered when she awoke to find the trucker's hand inappropriately placed under her shirt. In a moment of shock and violation, she chose stillness and silence, feigning sleep to avoid what could be a dangerous confrontation. Later, seizing a moment of perceived normalcy, they stepped out of a small truck stop, only to return to a stark realization. The truck, along with their belongings, was gone. The guitar that carried the melodies of home, the knapsack filled with cherished keepsakes, all vanished, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and the smith and wesson, which would later be sold in New Orleans as a final separation from their past.

15:08 Speaker 2: This first ride set the stage for her future encounters with truckers, a mix of evading, unwelcome advances and the risk of abandonment. The experience taught her a vital survival rule, always be ready to exit when a truck slows down. Initially, having a boyfriend made sleep manageable, as one of them could keep watch while the other rested, But six weeks in they got in a fight and broke up in Arizona, leaving her to navigate the dangers of the road alone without a fake ID. Shelters were off limits, and the vulnerability of sleeping alone on the streets or the demeaning trade off of sex for a place to sleep were unappealing options.

15:48 Speaker 2: Thus she returned to hitchhiking, mastering a state of semi alertness that allowed her to rest without fully succumbing to sleep, maintaining a precarious awareness of her surroundings. Trucks became her chill and sanctuary over cars, for the semblance of safety that they offered at truck stops. Her jery into a truck was visible, noted and discussed over CB radios, providing a layer of visibility of public existence that was crucial for her survival. Yet this visibility came with its own risks, a high stakes game of brinksmanship where the consequences of a trucker's intentions became magnified.

16:24 Speaker 2: In this environment, She navigated a delicate balance, living in the narrow margin of safety that existed before a situation could escalate, a testament to her resilience and adaptability in the face of constant uncertainty. In the nineteen eighties, truck stops were mysterious domains, detached from the gaze of the external world, shrouded in dim lighting in the haze of cigarette smoke, a stark contrast to today's family oriented travel plauses. The shelves were laden with adult magazines from glossy publications like Hustler and Barely Legal to cheaper newsprint editions, all flaunting lurid The counters near the registers were cluttered with dubious items like isobutal nitrate and so called aphrodisiacs such as locker room and Spanish Fly, alongside bumper stickers proclaiming ass, gas or grass.

17:15 Speaker 2: No one rides for free. Within this harrowing pastiche of the crass, the visceral, and the downright dangerous, her concerns were pragmatic rather than ideological. The immediate need was to secure rides. The hostile atmosphere often barred her from entering the restaurant area, as the prevailing assumption cast on any unaccompanied woman was that she was a prostitute. By default, this suspicion relegated her to soliciting rides near the shower area, a strategy that was obviously fraught with its own dangers.

17:47 Speaker 2: Gradually, she adapted, learning to leverage the trucker's use of CBE radios to arrange transportation indirectly. The Zoo channel, notorious for its unfiltered and often offensive banter, was there's no place for a woman's voice, which would invariably provoke a barrage of vulgar commentary. On the CB, women were crudely referred to as beaver, a dehumanizing label even the well intentioned used. While trying to assist her. They concocted stories to garner sympathy and secure her a ride. A fabricated tale of a woman needing to reach flagstaff for a relative's funeral, invariably cast as an innocent victim of a callous boyfriend who had absconded with all of her possessions.

18:28 Speaker 2: This method of securing rides, while effective, underscored the lengths to which she had to go to navigate the perils and prejudices of the road. Through her journey, she leaped from truck to truck, literally seldom touching the ground. Yet even in constant motion, safety remained elusive. Adhering to her guiding principle that the only safe truck was won in motion meant she was perpetually alert. Every change in speed, every turn, downshift, or drift towards the shoulder snapped her awake. The toll of constant vigilance and sleep de probation led her to categorize her encounters based on a scale of sexually aggressive behavior, ranging from one to five, from benign to overtly threatening.

19:10 Speaker 2: One the driver kept any sexual thoughts to himself. Two the driver propositioned her offering to pay for sex. Three the driver asserted she owed him sex for the ride and the meal, threatening to leave her in a dangerous location if she refused. Four the driver made good on that threat, abandoning her in a perilous place. Five she found herself contemplating escape at the slightest indication of a threat, ready to jump from the truck to avoid assault. Most truckers fell within the middle of this scale, but the one who had resembled Robert Ben Rhoades, the notorious truck stop killer, was off the charts.

19:48 Speaker 2: The presence of the hunting knife and his demeanor neither nervous, angry nor excited, but calm and methodical, placed him in a category of his own, more akin to a hunter pairing for a kill than a long haul trucker. Her research into Rhodes twenty seven years later highlighted his preference for hitchhikers over prostitutes, especially targeting runaways. The first step in his pattern involved luring them into his sleeper cab modified with anchor points for restraints. Though she hadn't seen any shackles, his knife was evidence enough of his intentions.

20:23 Speaker 2: It has to be him, a friend had said, I mean, how many of these guys could there be? According to the FBI, the terrifying answer is a lot of them. The grim reality of the dangers lurking along the nation's highways was starkly highlighted in two thousand and nine when the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. This program was a response to an alarming trend. A growing number of bodies, predominantly women, discovered along the edges of the interstates, many discarded in dumpsters. Focusing on victims last scene near truck stops and rest areas, the FBI identified over five hundreds such cases.

21:00 Speaker 2: Among the suspects, nearly all were long haul truckers, painting a harrowing picture of the risks associated with transient lifestyles Intersecting with these mobile predators, The existence of individuals like Rhodes who preyed on vulnerable women and evaded capture was a reality the girl was all too painfully aware of, even without official confirmation. The truck stop rumor mill was rife with horrifying tales of violence against women, from brutal slayings to gruesome acts of retaliation by truckers against those they accused of transgressions.

21:35 Speaker 2: The Cbee radio, a lifeline and a source of community for many on the road, also carried the desperate calls of prostitutes, known derogatorily as lot lizards, looking for clients among the truckers, an echo of their parallel, perilous existence in this world. The distinction between a hitchhiker and a prostitute was often blurred by the trucker's perceptions, casting her by association as a lot lizard as well. This label signified more than a mere occupation. It marked her as expendable, a person whose disappearance might not be noticed or investigated for months, if at all.

22:11 Speaker 2: The challenge of connecting a missing person's report in one state to human remains found in another was daunting, a fact underscored by the overwhelming response to a teletype message sent by Illinois state troopers seeking information on missing young females. The request aimed at identifying Regina Walters, yielded over nine hundred matches, a stark testament to the scale of the crisis and the anonymity that shielded roadway predators. The woman in twenty twelve, who had been the fifteen year old girl in nineteen eighty five, knew that if any connection to roads existed, it would hinge on the discovery of the teenager in the dumpster.

22:53 Speaker 2: Details from that case could pinpoint a date and location to cross reference with roads trucking logs. Offering a straightforward answer to the haunting question was Rhades. The trucker she encountered her initial step searching for dead girl, truck stop Martinsburg, yielded no leads. Unsurprising giving the events timing in the pre digital era. Exploring Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, she found it unexpectedly small, a mere dot unlikely to host a significant truck stop. This prompted her to consider other Martinsburgs across states like Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, West Virginia, and New York.

23:30 Speaker 2: A crucial piece of her history involved a visit to her father in Virginia a week before the discovery of the body in the dumpster. Her dad was a man of modest means, making her hesitant to impose further. Upon departing, she sought a ride toward an imagined brighter future in California, a detail her father confirmed years later without hesitation, pinpointing Martinsburg, West Virginia as her departure point. Curiously, she asked her father were there any murders that summer, to which he recalled the message she left him warning of a seventeen year old female hitchhiker found dead and ensuring him that it wasn't her that she was safe.

24:07 Speaker 2: This confirmation was a relief, solidifying the existence of both the Martinsburg truck stop in her story and the unfortunate hitchhiker. The challenge now was to delve deeper, fortified by the knowledge that her memories, despite their haziness from sleep deprivation, were rooted in an awful reality. The investigation into Robert ben Roade's heinous crimes formed a daunting maze that stretched across local and federal jurisdictions, encompassing five states before converging on Houston, Texas. This focal point emerged not by chance, but due to a myriad of connections binding key elements of the case to the state.

24:43 Speaker 2: Rhodes himself hailed from Texas, as did his wife, Deborah Davis, and the unfortunate victims Regina Walters and Ricky Jones, alongside others he had ensnared within Texas's borders. Seeking deeper insights into the case, she traveled to Austin, Texas to consult with two f former FBI operatives, Mark Young and Robert f Lee, both of whom had dedicated a significant portion of their careers to unraveling the road's mystery. Young, with his dual expertise as a profile and a field agent, offered her a nuanced understanding of criminal patterns over a meal located at a local sushi restaurant.

25:19 Speaker 2: He delineated the distinction between a criminal's modus operendi or mo mutable habits shaped by circumstance and whim and their signature, the immutable mark of their inner compulsions. Rhodes methods varied, employing firearms, ligatures, and likely knives in his assaults, yet it was his signature that laid bare the unchanging core of his sadism. The ritualistic shavings of his victims heads and pubic areas, along with piercings, bruisings, and other indicators of sustained torture, tracing back to deep seated, perverse fantasies that remained consistent over time.

25:59 Speaker 2: Mark Young, standing at an imposing six foot four, embodied the legacy of a Texas law man through the generations. He unveiled the ordeals of Shanna Holtz, a grim prelude to the capture of Regina Walters. Rhodes, detained for assaulting Holtz, had ensnared her at a truck stop, subjecting her to a harrowing captivity, and escaped from his truck's confines at a Houston brewery. Although Rhodes was known for chaining his victims. Young clarified that Holtz had not been shackled when she escaped. Rhodes had told her to sit there and be a good girl.

26:35 Speaker 2: Shana Holt's resilience forged from years of survival on the streets to fight Rhodes's expectations, leading her to flee and momentarily land him in the hands of justice, although she ultimately refrained from pressing charges. Young goes on to share photographs of truck stop killer Robert Ben Rhodes with our protagonist, the woman who had been that fifteen year old runaway nineteen eighty five and was now on a mission to determine if the man she had escaped was in fact the notorious truck stop killer.

27:09 Speaker 2: The pictures stir memories and the peculiarities of recognition, underscoring the fallibility of memory itself. Amidst all this, Young anticipates her recounting a narrative that she has reluctantly become more acquainted with. She finds herself sharing her story once again, despite its emotional toll. Part of her survival strategy was to look through a trucker's cassette collections, a tactic which provided both a distraction and a means to gauge the driver's demeanor, a method that revealed a critical shift in one particular driver's attitude.

27:45 Speaker 2: This part of her story leads to a discussion with Mark Young on the significance of weapons, with Young noting a gun was about control, but a knife is personal, highlighting the intimate brutality that Rhodes preferred. The conversation then turns analytical as she probes the nature of her encounter, comparing it to Rhodes's psychological profile. Young's observation that the trucker's willingness to share his morbid fascinations without physical restraint suggests a predilection for terror as manipulation, a trait resonant with Rhodes's own modus OPERENDI.

28:19 Speaker 2: But a real serial killer wouldn't have let me go, right, she asks Young. His reply is speculative. I don't know. Maybe he didn't think you'd run. Even at the time, She'd wondered if her decision to run away was merely a component of his twisted game. Rhodes harbored a profound fascination with games, drawing considerable influence from the book game's people play, which positive that each social interaction was a strategic game. This book, particularly the game's Courtroom, Beat Me Daddy, and Frigid Woman, described scenarios that Rhodes found captivating, even reflective of his own manipulative endeavors.

28:56 Speaker 2: He frequently referenced this book, treating it as a guide for his actions. His correspondence with his wife underscored his mindset, especially his advice that one could play pass or run, a mantra that echodominously in her ears, resonating with her own harrowing experience. The more she uncovered about roads, the clearer the disturbing parallels between their lives became. While she navigated the perils of hitchhiking, he roamed the highways with sinister intent. As she honed her survival skills, Rhodes refined his predatory techniques, sharpened his teeth and claws.

29:34 Speaker 2: Among the documents that Young had spread out for her to review was a photograph of Regina Walters, captured moments before her life took a tragic turn. The image showed Regina radiating youth and joy, a stark contrast to her tragic fate. The photograph provided by Regina's mother had been pivotal in confirming her identity with Young, noting the distinctive small gap in her teeth and matching freckles. Young Men presented another photograph, this one of a young girl, possibly Native American, an unidentified victim, who sat in Rhodes's truck, appearing disoriented or tired.

30:07 Speaker 2: Her untouched, glossy black hair suggested the photo was taken when she had been one of Rhode's recent captives. If he'd had her for long, her head would have been shaved. These haunting images served as grim reminders of the unknown numbers of Rhodes's victims, their stories untold, and faces unrecognized. On the phone. Retired FBI agent Robert F. Lee was civil and to the point, but not overtly warm. She arrived at his door in the sweltering heat, was greeted and then ushered into a spacious living room.

30:38 Speaker 2: Lee, imposing and capable, could easily be mistaken for someone still active in the field. A whimsical pink plastic castle stood in his living room. Granddaughter, he explained, on the couch lay a large pillow adorned with the FBI seal that's from my old swat jacket, Lee shared with a grin, noting the emblem's retirement due to its resemblance to a target. She sensed that Lee liked it when people were concise, and aimed to cut straight to her pressing questions, But before she could, Lee interrupted her with a profound statement.

31:10 Speaker 2: I just want you to know, he said, earnestly, making eye contact, that what Rhodes did to those women, he did to those women, you didn't do it. This unexpected reassurance from Lee shifted the atmosphere, addressing an unspoken guilt she'd harbored about not contacting the police sooner. His acknowledgment of her feelings without prior confession was startling and provided a moment of raw honesty. She confessed to Lee a truth she had kept from others, that her silence had been born from the fear that no one would believe her.

31:45 Speaker 2: I just didn't think anyone would believe me, she said, well, Lee reflected, acknowledging the validity of her concerns. You're probably right, look at Lisa Pennell. Pennell was identified as the woman found chained in Rhodes truck upon his arrest in Arizona. The fantastical nature of these stories led detectives to doubt her reliability for trial. Her statement, recorded on the night she was freed from Rhodes Truck remains a tool that Lee uses to educate police detectives on interrogation techniques.

32:13 Speaker 2: He presents the tape, querying detectives on their perceptions. The common response labels her as a prostitute, embroiled in a quote Transaction gone Bad, showing detective's predisposition to trust Rhodes over Pennell. Lee points out that quote, of course, Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff, microchips in her brain, holds in the ozone layer, she was wearing those lion slippers, but she was telling the truth. Vanessa Elka, the woman interviewing Lee who had once been the fifteen year old runaway in nineteen eighty five, envisioned Lisa Penel as a figure akin to a truck stop Collie, Collie being the Hindu goddess of destruction, wandering the outskirts in her denim skirt and fuzzy lion slippers, crowned with an ozone layer for a halo, an image both vivid and haunting, yet easily dismissed by those who failed to see beyond the surface.

33:06 Speaker 2: Rhodes had a pattern of targeting women perceived as lacking credibility, a tactic ensuring that their stories would be met with skepticism or outright disbelief. This sense of incredibility was not only imposed by external judgment, but sometimes internalized by the victims themselves, as painfully evidenced by Shane Holtz, the young woman who managed to escape from roads at the brewery. Holt's resignation to the futility of seeking justice was encapsulated in her police statements concluding lines, she said, I don't see any good in filing charges.

33:37 Speaker 2: It's just going to be my word against his. If there was any evidence, I would file, I would file charges and sue him. Understanding the weight of Holt's final remarks took her a moment. What evidence could Shana possibly be considered to lack? Discovered running naked and screaming through the streets of Houston, her body was a testament to her ordeal, marked with DNA evidence, her head and pubic hair forced removed, Rhodes's chain still draped around her neck. The question of lacking evidence seemed almost absurd, Yet her statement, it would just be my word against his, resonated deeply, hinting at an unspoken continuation of that gut wrenching thought, who is going to believe me?

34:17 Speaker 2: This echoed a sentiment all too familiar, one that could easily have been her in her own youth, a soft, despairing whisper seeking belief in a world so quick to doubt. The deeper her investigation into rhodes life and crimes went, the more apparent, the unsettling parallels between their two lives became Hers and Rhodes. Despite the chasm between their intentions, one a survivor and the other a predator, they shared the grueling rhythm of life on the road. Both faced the relentless monotony and sleepless nights that come with constant movement, their world oscillating between tedium and terror.

34:52 Speaker 2: As she honed her instincts for survival amidst the ceaseless uncertainty of hitchhiking Rhodes in a dark mirroring was likely refining his methods of predation. Each had developed their own coping mechanisms, their rituals for navigating the endless highways and their own cynical conclusions about human nature and its responses to extremity. This reflection did not equate their actions, but illuminated the disturbing thought that life on the road could shape individuals in profoundly different, yet parallel ways.

35:21 Speaker 2: Her decision to reach out to Rhodes was fraught with reluctance, primarily due to her fear that he might actually write back. Yet motivated by the necessity of understanding and the strategic advice of Mark Young, who noted Rhodes pensiant for being regarded as an authority, she crafted a letter. Her letter, steeped in deliberately chosen permissive language, sought to coax Roads into a semblance of a collaboration by inviting him to educate her on her survival tactics during her time on the road.

35:51 Speaker 2: The act of writing to someone known for his sadistic crimes was an ordeal in itself, especially given her acute awareness of his capacity for cruelty. Rohad's existence wasn't so much a life of duality, but one cloaked in darkness. An image circulating online showcased him in leather and chains, a visual testament to his dark inclinations. This photograph, however, captured a moment from a Halloween party in Houston, where he adopted the role of a slave led by his wife in the guise of a dominatrix.

36:20 Speaker 2: This stark representation contrasted sharply with the grim reality of his actions and was a chilling reminder of the facade he presented to the world. Deborah Davis first met Robert Benjamin Rhodes at chip Kickers, a lively Houston bar in the nineteen eighties. Rhodes dressed like an airline pilot and managed to captivate Davis with his fabricated identity. The truth about his impersonation unfolded months later when they were dating, yet Davis chose to stay with him, a decision that highlights Road's manipulative charm and charisma and demonstrates his persuasive abilities.

36:54 Speaker 2: Rhodes, even while being extradited to Illinois under heavy restraints and clad in a conspicuous orange prison jumpsuit, managed to charm a waitress into giving him her phone number. While you or I may question that waitress's judgment, the stories of women carrying on love affairs with convicted murderers are Legion, and the fact that she gave her number to a manacled man in prison jumpsuit Orange underscores Rhodes's skillful manipulation and the extent of his charismatic influence. Deborah Davis, who would eventually marry Robert Benjamin Rhoads and become Deborah Rhodes, resides in College Station, Texas, leading a life that has moved beyond the shadows of her past with Rhodes.

37:34 Speaker 2: Her children from a prior union before she met Rhodes have all grown up, and now she lends her voice to combating domestic violence, sharing her insights in various forums, including conferences and educational sessions. Despite Davis's efforts to distance herself from the traumatic years spent with Rhodes, his presence intermittently resurfaces through letters. The letters, varying in tone from threatening to seemingly concealty, remain a constant reminder that Rhodes himself could teach a masterclass in manipulation.

38:06 Speaker 2: During the summer of nineteen eighty five, the summer when teenaged Vanessa became a runaway, Rhodes was employed by a trucking company located in Georgia with premises directly off the I ninety five. She recounted her experiences to Davis, and upon mentioning the abrupt change in the trucker's demeanor, Davis's response was immediate and affirming. That's him. That's exactly like him, she exclaimed, indicating that she recognized the pattern in rhodes behavior. Davis also mentioned that Rhodes initially might have left his firearm at home, opting instead for a knife.

38:39 Speaker 2: While Davis acknowledged other aspects of the story with that sounds like Bob, her confirmations varied in conviction, leaving some room for doubt regarding her total agreement. Young Lee and Davis were all unfamiliar with the Laughing Death Society. Considering its significance to her story, she questioned whether this absence of knowledge might diminish the likelihood of Rhodes's involvement. Don't you think that facts start to rule him out? She asked. However, Davis dismissed her doubts, reinforcing Rhodes's interest in clandestine organizations.

39:11 Speaker 2: Oh no, not at all, she responded. Bob was fascinated by secret societies. Davis brought up the distressing story of Colleen stan who was abducted in nineteen seventy seven and subjected to years of torture by her captors, who fabricated the existence of a menacing group known as the Company to deter her attempts to escape. Bob was obsessed with how they used an imaginary secret society to keep her from running away, Davis remarked, while discussing Rhodes's fascination with the psychological control that the kidnappers exerted over Colleen.

39:43 Speaker 2: His instruction to Shana Holtz to quote sit there and be a good girl unquote, and the fact that Regina Walters was seen apparently unconfined in standing outside his truck exemplified his preference for psychological over physical bondage. Rhodes's interest in such control mechanisms aligned with his sadistic nature, illustrating a brutal, almost scientific approach to ensnaring and manipulating his victims. Davis's inquiry about rhodes attire during her encounters brought a unique focus to the narrative, a detail often overlooked yet vivid in memory.

40:16 Speaker 2: Do you remember what he was wearing? Davis asked quietly, The absence of the casual wear that most truckers preferred with roads not donned in jean's, a T shirt or a flannel pointed to a specific image he aimed to project. His preference for matching dickies, typically in dark blue, as Davis revealed, was deliberate. He liked people to think he was in uniform, she explained, reminiscent of the time that she met him impersonating an airline pilot. Further discussion about the state of rhodes Cab led her to tell Davis that it was meticulously clean, a characteristic that Davis affirmed matched Rhodes's broader behavior pattern.

40:53 Speaker 2: This pensant for cleanliness and order was not limited to his vehicle, but extended to his personal living spaces and even his appearance while incarcerated, indicating a deep seated need for control and presentation. When she mentioned the spotless truck Cab, Davis replied that sure sounds like Bob. When I first saw his apartment, I thought I walked into the showroom of a furniture store. Even in jail, his shirt and pants were always ironed and pressed. In Martinsburg, West Virginia, she'd expected to find the location of the truck stop where so many years ago that body had been discovered in the dumpster, But the truck stop had been replaced by a vast Walmart with a huge parking lot, Like so much of what she remembered from her years on the endless highway that which once was had been erased.

41:40 Speaker 2: The demolition of the truck stop and its adjoining restaurant had occurred five years earlier, yet intriguingly, a website for the Martinsburg Travel Center of America persisted its presence online, flickering like a distant, unreachable beacon of bad times. Past efforts to secure a Shana Holtz police report or were thwarted by the claim that no official suspect had been named, rendering the document inaccessible. Similarly, Lisa Pennell's comprehensive statement had been discarded to free up filespace, a justification that seemed to trivialize the significance of her testimony.

42:14 Speaker 2: The obliteration of the Martinsburg truck stop, now the site of a Walmart supercenter, symbolized a broader trend of vanishing evidence and memories related to those who had once crossed path with the truck stop's shadowy figures. Upon discovering that the Martinburg Police's jurisdiction over the former truck stop was actually under the Berkeley County Sheriff's domain, her next step was clear. Contacting the Sheriff's office led her to an automated greeting, but eventually she got in touch with a live representative and initiated a conversation that she hoped would uncover a potential homicide record from the summer of nineteen eighty five at the Martinsburg truck stop.

42:51 Speaker 2: When she asked about records, the deputy's reply was brief, we don't have any records. At first, she thought they meant digital records. Come down. In person, she offered, we don't have any records, the deputy repeated, leaving her with yet another dead end. As it turned out, in the nineteen nineties, a critical incident at the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department resulted in the loss of significant historical data. Their computer system crashed and burned. Compounding this digital disaster, the department had previously disposed of paper records to free up filespace, effectively erasing any archival material from the nineteen eighties.

43:30 Speaker 2: She made a request to converse with any senior officer who might have served during that time. The response was disheartening. There was only one officer who fit the criteria, and he was currently unreachable. Having, wait for it, gone fishing, she dedicated a week to traversing the roads of Appalachia, stopping at various truck stops, seeking insights from the older generation of truckers and waitresses. Initially, inquiries were specific to the girl found in the dumpster, yet this line of questioning led nowhere, as no one seemed aware of such an incident.

44:00 Speaker 2: Her questions then broadened to any knowledge of women founded truck stops, but the response was consistently dismissive, testing such events never occurred. This widespread denial stood in stark contrast to the alarming statistics compiled by the FBI over three decades, indicating, as I had mentioned in episode one, at least nine hundred such cases. The silence extended to local newspapers, reflecting a societal disinterest in the fate of serial killer victims. And and this is my note, the fact that people often used denial as a form of self protection, and likely nobody wanted to believe that something like that could happen in their community.

44:42 Speaker 2: Her encounter with a library archivist shed some light on the phenomenon. The lack of attention to such stories stemmed in part from a reluctance to engage with narratives involving victims seen as outsiders. The girl wasn't one of our own. She was a drifter, the archivist remarked. The labeled drifter hit her like a punch in the gut. She had been a drifter too, and she knew then what she had always known, what she had been fighting so hard to disprove. It was a painful truth. The stories of drifters, the stories of those who live in the margins, often vanish, leaving barely a trace in the collective memory or in official records.

45:21 Speaker 2: The pursuit of understanding and acknowledgment for these lost lives seemed to dissipate, much like a path fading into the wilderness, challenging the very possibility, or perhaps proving the near impossibility, of bringing their stories to light. Unwilling to give up, she made a final desperate effort, visiting a smaller truck stop in Hancock, Maryland, where she had a conversation with a longtime employee. She told the story of the dead girl and the dumpster and the truck stop employee who idly touched the gold cross around her neck listened intently.

45:53 Speaker 2: When asked if she'd ever heard of such an incident, she initially responded with a shake of her head, signaling no recollection. A moment of reflection brought a change in her demeanor, her eyes taking on a thoughtful haze. Wait a minute, she said, there was that one girl. She was a prostitute. They found her near a dumpster behind the restaurant at the Gateway Travel Plaza in Breezewood. She had a stalking down her throat. I think the woman shivered. That was way back in the early seventies, though she recalled.

46:23 Speaker 2: The revelation from the woman at the Hancock truck Stop inadvertently led to a significant discovery, albeit not the one she had initially sought. The incident the woman recalled did happen, but she'd gotten the timeframe wrong. It was actually from nineteen eighty seven, involving a nineteen year old girl named Lamonica Cole, not the early seventies. She discovered this detail later in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, which chronicled Lomonica's tragic end in Breezewood, a victim of strangulation. Additionally, the article mentioned another similar grim fate of a woman in two thousand and six, also associated with Breezewood, her life cut short with her throat's slit found far away from where she had last been seen.

47:02 Speaker 2: While these cases were tangential to the primary search, they introduced a broader pattern of violence that aligned closely with the timeline that she was interested in. The article from the Gazette mentioned a series of murders targeting prostitutes at truck stops starting in June of nineteen eighty five, precisely aligning with the critical period that she was investigating. The next morning led her to the Gateway Travel Plaza in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, a site with a dark history of known murders.

47:30 Speaker 2: She hoped that Gateways notoriously blood soaked past would make the locals more open to sharing their memories. Upon arrival and a brief walk past the truck's only signage in the section for professional drivers, her quest to find someone with memories from nineteen eighty five succeeded when she met a woman in her mid fifties who greeted her with an open smile. The questions she posed were direct. Did you ever hear about a hitchhiker and a dumpster? No, said the woman. She tried widening the scope of her question.

48:00 Speaker 2: Did you ever hear of anything like that at all? In other times? Any other bodies of women found along this stretch of the I seventy No, said the woman. I never heard of anything like that anywhere. While listening to people's responses at the Gateway travel plaza, a vivid memory resurfaced. Being in the woods off of I ninety five, the panic, the visceral survival instinct that drove her to run nearly one hundred yards before concealing herself, uncertain of pursuit. The physical act of muffling her breath with her shirt a raw testament to the fear and urgency of the moment.

48:32 Speaker 2: This memory prompted a profound realization about the nature of her quest. It was not merely an investigative journey akin to the plot of a detective story. Rather, it had morphed into something far more ethereal and haunting. It had become a ghost story. The stories of Regina Walters, Shana Holtz, and Lisa Pennell emerged not merely as testimonies or cases to be solved, but as spectral presences, each embodying a facet of girlhood tragically halted, each embodying a facet of herself. Regina captured in a moment of laughter and lightness, Shana defined by her resilience and changed appearance, Lisa marked by a ready defiance.

49:13 Speaker 2: All coalesced into a haunting narrative. Their experiences, though distinct, interwove to form a tragic, blood curdling tapestry of memory and loss, casting their collective shadows across her investigation, transforming it into a journey through the echoes of lives interrupted, a journey through her own trauma. The New Jersey Supreme Court, in a landmark statement dating back to twenty twelve, offered a profound insight into the nature of human memory, highlighting its complexities in the inherent unreliability that accompanies it.

49:46 Speaker 2: This judicial observation raised significant doubts about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, a cornerstone of legal evidence for centuries. The court metaphorically differentiated memory from the precise capture of a video recording, instead, suggesting that it resembles a collection of still photographs. The analogy acknowledges the fragmentary and selective aspects of how memories are formed, stored, and recalled, underscoring the fact that human recollection is subject to distortions, omissions, and influences that can dramatically alter the perceived reality of an event.

50:22 Speaker 2: When she read this, she found herself agreeing with the court, and her own memories came flooding back like fragments of a dream, vivid and disjointed, each one etched with its own unique hue. In her mind's eyes, she sees a descent through the rugged terrain of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The trucks breaks ablaze, the night alive with the symphony of insect chirps. As she plunges over Chester Gap, there's the lingering image of sitting amidst a gentle drizzle by a truck, the air heavy with the tension of a crime scene unfolding nearby.

50:53 Speaker 2: Ohio's highways blur past, accompanied by the anthems of Bruce Springsteen, the rush of diet cokes fueling a fleeting sense of freedom soon eclipsed by the inevitability of the journey's end. And then there's the haunting memory of the woods beside I ninety five, a fleeting moment of uncertainty and fear as she sprints and hides, her breath ragged against the silence of the forest. In that surreal moment, as the world hanks suspended between dusk and impending storm, she finds solace in the rhythmic cadence of her own heartbeat, unaware of what lies ahead, yet undeterred by the unknown.

51:29 Speaker 2: One snowy night, several months after the incident on the I ninety five, when she'd sprinted for her life into the woods, she finds herself hitchhiking through Amherst, Massachusetts, when a car full of students from Hampshire College pick her up and offer her a place to stay. The next morning. May encourage her to apply to the college, and to her surprise, she's accepted. College acceptance provides a thin strip of pride on which to stand while she reconnects with her family. Her mother is willing to pay for her schooling, and being sixteen and in college feels like an easier situation to discuss than the fact that she ran away or what happened while she was hitchhiking along the endless Highway.

52:09 Speaker 2: College appears to be a solution that brings redemption, but it's a solution that doesn't last long. The dissonance between her emotional world and the one around her is still too great, leading her to leave once again, albeit in a more sanctioned manner. She hitchhikes through Europe and eventually settles in Vienna for a few years before moving again and living among artists in the Lower East Side squats of New York City. We return now from the bohemian adventures of her early twenties to the adult woman investigating roads twenty seven years later.

52:40 Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, when she returned home from West Virginia, a letter from Rhodes awaited her. It contained a demand that she meet him under the condition that she never disclosed their encounter or what transpired between them. It was precisely the kind of response a sexual predator or a child molester would make. Moreover, he requested five hundred dollars in response him the journalistic ethics prevented her from paying for interviews. She anticipated that this would be the end of their communication, but she received another letter.

53:07 Speaker 2: It seemed that Young was correct. Rhodes considered himself an expert and proposed that he be compensated as such. However, she couldn't help but wonder an expert in what killing. At the bottom of the yellow legal paper in bold capitals, he emphatically declared it wasn't me. As she pondered the letter, she acknowledged that while he might be technically correct, she'd never be sure. It certainly wasn't because he was innocent. For a brief moment, she entertained the idea of traveling to Illinois.

53:37 Speaker 2: She envisioned navigating the paperwork, submitting to fingerprinting, and being escorted through a series of air locked doors into a room with him. She imagined him sitting there with his impeccably pressed shirt and overwhelming arrogance. They would conduct the interview, but she wouldn't bother taking notes. Ultimately, his words wouldn't matter. It would inevitably boil down to his word against her, and who would believe him. During the same time that she was receiving letters from Rhodes, the senior officer from the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department returned from his fishing trip.

54:11 Speaker 2: He adamantly denied any accounts of girls ever being found in a dumpster at the Martinsburg, West Virginia, truck stop, leaving her with no reason to question his assertion. One story shared by Deborah Davis continued to haunt her thoughts. Deborah recalled a journey she had embarked on with her husband, Bob, the man who would later become infamous as the notorious truck stop killer Robert Benjamin Rhodes. It was their final voyage together. In his truck, traveling westward on iten, they made a stop at a bustling truck stop in Arizona.

54:41 Speaker 2: Near the entrance of the restaurant stood a young woman with a baby, desperately seeking a ride. Deborah, feeling a pang of empathy, contemplated offering assistance, perhaps money, or support. Memories of her own sister, who had faced life on the streets flooded her mind, amplifying her empathy. Yet, when Bob Rhodes, deborah husband, noticed his wife's concern, he approached her from behind, gripping her shoulders and slowly guiding her gaze toward the girl. In a low voice, he whispered in her ear.

55:11 Speaker 2: Do you see that, Debbie, She's one of the invisible people. Oh man, that guy is a monster. Poof. I'm glad we made it through that story together. Until next time, I'm Zevan Odeleberg and this has been kind of murdery.

55:29 Speaker 1: Should you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kinda Murdery or email at kindomurdery at gmail dot com.