Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with
Speaker 2: Frank Figlusey. His book is called Long Haul. Will tell
Speaker 2: you where you can get it in a moment, Frank,
Speaker 2: you highlight on the FBI's Highway Serial Killings initiative. What
Speaker 2: caused them to start it?
Speaker 3: A great question. I go into the birth of the
Speaker 3: initiative deeply in the book. As is often the case, George,
Speaker 3: the FBI responds to a need. They don't necessarily have
Speaker 3: that great original idea, but rather sometimes they need to
Speaker 3: get slapped about the head and shoulders and dragged to
Speaker 3: the law enforcement problem before they've realized they can support it.
Speaker 3: In this case, it was Oklahoma. It was a female
Speaker 3: crime analyst back in late nineties, late nineties, and she
Speaker 3: starts realizing that she's got bodies piling up, young women
Speaker 3: from Oklahoma, their bodies turning up in other states. And
Speaker 3: there's two, and there's three, and there's four, and in
Speaker 3: a manner of months, she's got ten, as she calls them,
Speaker 3: her girls, women from Oklahoma turning up dead in other states,
Speaker 3: and they are linked to sex trafficking, and she pounds
Speaker 3: her fist on the table. This is years ago now,
Speaker 3: and it's not necessarily the case in many law enforcement
Speaker 3: agencies that the woman crime analyst was given a lot
Speaker 3: of credence and she's pounding her fists on the desk
Speaker 3: and she's saying, we've got a problem. It's truckers, it's
Speaker 3: sex trafficking, it's dead bodies. And finally she was allowed
Speaker 3: to have a meeting. She put out a teletype to
Speaker 3: law enforcement agencies and homicide detectives across the country, thinking,
Speaker 3: if I have a meeting, maybe we'll get I don't
Speaker 3: know ten twelve detectives showing up. Well, it was in
Speaker 3: the dozens. They showed up and said we have cases
Speaker 3: like this too. Invited the FBI and she said you
Speaker 3: have to see this meeting. You have to see these cases.
Speaker 3: And they showed up and they said, you're right. This
Speaker 3: absolutely qualifies as serial killings and you can count us in.
Speaker 3: And that was the birth of the FBI's Highway Serial
Speaker 3: Killings Initiative. It was never publicly acknowledged until two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine when they needed the public help. There were
Speaker 3: too many killings and too many unsolved killings to not
Speaker 3: enlist the help of the public.
Speaker 2: Where were the bodies found? Generally Frank.
Speaker 3: So, in order to qualify for the HSK initiative at
Speaker 3: the FBI, you've got to meet a couple of standards.
Speaker 3: One is, you've got a female victim that's been taken
Speaker 3: or last seen from or close proximity to an interstate highway.
Speaker 3: And then the dump site has to be the same
Speaker 3: close proximity to an interstate highway. If you have those
Speaker 3: three things email victim last seen alive at or near
Speaker 3: an interstate highway, and dumped at or near an interstate highway,
Speaker 3: you've qualified for the initiative. That's and that's where these
Speaker 3: bodies are being found. And then you know, I get
Speaker 3: deep in the book George into what's called victimology and
Speaker 3: then all of the study of the crime scene. So
Speaker 3: was the body near water, was she partially clothed or nude?
Speaker 3: Was she a shot and or strangled? Was she ripped
Speaker 3: before before death or after death? All all of this
Speaker 3: goes into connecting the dots within the FBI's database.
Speaker 2: You had one story of a police officer who found
Speaker 2: a woman in a cab shackled in there with fishhooks.
Speaker 3: This is the case of Robert Van Rhodes and a
Speaker 3: state trooper in Casa Grande off It ten between Phoenix
Speaker 3: and Tucson. A rig with its hazard light flashing, gets
Speaker 3: out of his car, strolls up to the cab of
Speaker 3: the truck, and here's a woman screaming inside. She is
Speaker 3: literally shackled, naked except for buzzy bathroom slippers, and she
Speaker 3: has been kidnapped and would have been the next victim
Speaker 3: of Robert Ben Rhodes, who is good for at least
Speaker 3: fifty five zero murders, including fourteen year old Regina Walters,
Speaker 3: who he took as a hitchhiker outside of Houston, tortured
Speaker 3: her for weeks and raped her in times and places
Speaker 3: of his choosing, and killed her in an abandoned farmhouse
Speaker 3: in Illinois. In fact, Regina Walter's photograph, which is the
Speaker 3: last photo of her taken alive by Rhodes, is perhaps
Speaker 3: the most ghastly photo I have ever seen. I've seen
Speaker 3: a lot in twenty five years in the FBI. Blood, guts, gore,
Speaker 3: that's not what this photo is about. She's fully clothed
Speaker 3: in this photo, but she's clothed in a black dress
Speaker 3: and high heels that he bought and forced her to wear.
Speaker 3: He cut her hair short and she is pleading for
Speaker 3: her life in this photo. It's one of the worst
Speaker 3: photos I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: He even taunted her father, didn't he.
Speaker 3: He had the audacity to anonymously call Regina's father and say,
Speaker 3: I made some changes. I cut her hair. And in fact,
Speaker 3: you can see in this photo that he did do that.
Speaker 3: And you know, the crime scene produced, as is usually
Speaker 3: the case, some fantastic forensic evidence in terms of looking
Speaker 3: for that signature of the killer, and the FBI agent
Speaker 3: who worked in this case said he found that signature
Speaker 3: at Regina's dump site, which was that her pubic hair
Speaker 3: had been shaven after death.
Speaker 2: After death, when the police officer on the other case
Speaker 2: spotted the woman in the cab, Where was Rhodes? How
Speaker 2: did they find him?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Roads, Roads has finally been caught. He had a traveling
Speaker 3: torture chamber that he had rigged up in his truck
Speaker 3: and he was imprisoned. He will die in prison, and
Speaker 3: he is not cooperative with law enforcement at all. But
Speaker 3: they eventually caught up with him because he had committed
Speaker 3: so many crimes that they began to find fingerprints DNA
Speaker 3: in common and they and the police eventually caught up
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 2: Was a movie called The Vanishing with I believe it
Speaker 2: was key for Sutherland.
Speaker 3: You remember that one I do remember, yeah, I do.
Speaker 2: About a sicker long haul truck driver who abducted his
Speaker 2: wife at a convenience store. So these guys are all
Speaker 2: over the place.
Speaker 3: Well, it's you know, again, it's a shame because again
Speaker 3: we're talking about a tiny fraction of long haul truckers
Speaker 3: that are doing this. But if I get deep into
Speaker 3: the three subcultures in my book Long Haul Trucking, Sex, trafficking,
Speaker 3: victims and crime Analysts, I learn a whole lot about
Speaker 3: the unhealthy nature of trucking, and I actually offer some
Speaker 3: some changes to be made near the end of the
Speaker 3: book at all three of these areas. But the sedentary lifestyle,
Speaker 3: the healthy diet. Even in my short time on the road,
Speaker 3: you have to work very hard to eat healthy, and
Speaker 3: you're unlikely to get that. At the truck stop convenience store,
Speaker 3: we did a lot of cooking in the cab. By
Speaker 3: the way, the trucker I rode with actually was a
Speaker 3: graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and we had
Speaker 3: some We cooked some mighty fine meals right in the
Speaker 3: truck that were very healthy.
Speaker 2: Do they live in the trucks? Basically? Don't they?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's your home. I slept in the
Speaker 3: top bunk of the sleeper berth. I won't get into
Speaker 3: detail about answering nature's call in the truck.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm an older guy, so the bladder
Speaker 4: starts to go and you you're not necessarily stopping time.
Speaker 4: Time is everything to a trucker, as they know.
Speaker 3: But I learned a lot. I mean the business side
Speaker 3: of things, things like the discounts that trucking companies get
Speaker 3: with certain truck stop companies, and you know, whether you're
Speaker 3: a TA guy or a love guy at Walmart, the
Speaker 3: relationship between truckers and Walmart, and the parking spaces and
Speaker 3: the trucker app that tells you that you've got spots
Speaker 3: open at a trucks at a truck stop that you
Speaker 3: can sleep for the night in, and the free showers
Speaker 3: if you're part of the you know, the membership club,
Speaker 3: and then what it takes to gas up, and the
Speaker 3: multiple tanks and over one thousand dollars filling up and
Speaker 3: watching that gauge on the on the tank going. All
Speaker 3: of this is in the book. If you're if you're saying,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not really into the serial killing thing,
Speaker 3: but I've always wondered what goes on on the highway
Speaker 3: and that rig next to me. This book could be
Speaker 3: for you as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Now, is there a similar profile among these serial killers?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, here's the thing. So the analysts confirmed
Speaker 3: that there's two kinds of serial killers, and this does
Speaker 3: not change much when you're shifting over to a trucker
Speaker 3: serial killer. But the two kinds are generally this. First,
Speaker 3: you have the killer who gets off on the power
Speaker 3: of life and death. This killer is about controlling the
Speaker 3: outcome and that means that he and it's almost always
Speaker 3: he is going to take longer to kill and that
Speaker 3: you know, we talked about Robert ben Rhoades grabbing Regina
Speaker 3: Walters and raping and torturing her for weeks. This is
Speaker 3: how this goes. He's a control killer. So they are
Speaker 3: going to have sex with the victim. There's going to
Speaker 3: be abuse and torture. The second kind of serial killer
Speaker 3: is all about the killing. Sex is not a part
Speaker 3: of this or a primary reason, they will kill quickly,
Speaker 3: and for law enforcement that means you've got to move fast.
Speaker 3: The clock is.
Speaker 2: Ticking generally, Frank, the victims are who hitchhikers.
Speaker 3: The victims in the vast majority of these cases, George,
Speaker 3: are sex trafficking victims. They are being trafficked to truckers.
Speaker 3: And during my research, I spoke to women who had
Speaker 3: survived violent encounters with truckers. They had fallen into the
Speaker 3: trafficking trap. And just as there's commonalities that we're talking
Speaker 3: about kinds of serial killers, there are kinds of sex
Speaker 3: trafficking and kinds of victims. There's pimp controlled sex trafficking victims.
Speaker 3: There's victims called outlaws and victims called renegades. I get
Speaker 3: deep into that those two don't work.
Speaker 2: But the are they initially doing this though, because they
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 3: So this varies. But there's a checklist that the experts
Speaker 3: have established in terms of street level trafficking, George, And
Speaker 3: even as I interviewed some victims, in my head, now
Speaker 3: having talked to the experts, I'm starting to check off
Speaker 3: that checklist of commonalities, because as different as these women were,
Speaker 3: they were the same and here's some of the commonalities.
Speaker 3: Early trauma at an early age, often unwanted sexual touching
Speaker 3: or worse. Early drug use, often starting with marijuana but
Speaker 3: escalating quickly, often through an older sibling or older boyfriends series.
Speaker 3: A series of bad boyfriends is very common in this.
Speaker 3: And then once they switch to heavy drug use, the
Speaker 3: judgment goes out the window and everything is about getting
Speaker 3: the next fix and the rationalization of courses. Look, I'm
Speaker 3: already having sex. I might as well have sex for money.
Speaker 3: And I'm here to tell you if you're thinking your
Speaker 3: listeners are thinking, Look, no young lady in my family,
Speaker 3: in my neighborhood, in my circle of friends, would ever
Speaker 3: fall prey to something like this. You're talking about somebody else.
Speaker 3: I'm here to tell you. I interviewed women, white girls
Speaker 3: with blue eyes, from the Midwest who went to college.
Speaker 3: One woman I interviewed was a preacher's daughter. If you
Speaker 3: think it can't happen to your young person, I would urge.
Speaker 1: You to think again.
Speaker 2: Generally, then how does the truck driver find.
Speaker 3: Them so today, so years ago? And your trucker listeners
Speaker 3: will know this if they've been around a long time.
Speaker 3: The women would apply their trade, and their pimp would
Speaker 3: take them to the truck stop lot and they would
Speaker 3: work their trade there and the advertising would start on
Speaker 3: the CD radio. This is years ago now, and they
Speaker 3: had their own language. You know, anybody looking for commercial
Speaker 3: tonight that was sex for money. The truckers would say,
Speaker 3: I'm at this stop, I'm in the red house. The
Speaker 3: red house is the red truck. This would go on
Speaker 3: like this, and quite frankly, the police would either look
Speaker 3: the other way or not show up at the truck stop.
Speaker 3: The truck stop companies would think, you know, we don't
Speaker 3: want to discourage this necessarily, We're not going to get
Speaker 3: involved in this. That was years ago. The game has
Speaker 3: moved now to online advertising. And I saw this when
Speaker 3: I was on the road because I deliberately looked for it.
Speaker 3: And you'll see ads by women or by their pimps
Speaker 3: that say I am trucker friendly.
Speaker 4: I'll come to you.
Speaker 3: And this now happens. The transaction has agreed upon online
Speaker 3: or on the phone from that advertisement, and the young
Speaker 3: lady shows up either at the stop and gets in
Speaker 3: the truck, or even more likely these days, it happens
Speaker 3: at it's very close by motes or massage parlor where
Speaker 3: I think the girl is in even greater danger.
Speaker 2: Are they aware of the serial killer truckers?
Speaker 3: So the good news is that the law enforcement and
Speaker 3: social services organizations make a great effort to reach out
Speaker 3: and tell the young ladies that we've got a killer
Speaker 3: in the area. We suspect we have a serial killer
Speaker 3: here in our region. And even they distribute flyers with
Speaker 3: picture of a truck or.
Speaker 1: What the guy might look like. That's been going.
Speaker 3: On for a few years now, and that meets with
Speaker 3: some great success. You'll get some great intelligence from these girls.
Speaker 3: But here's the problem. That drug use factor, on top
Speaker 3: of mental illness, which if they didn't have when they started,
Speaker 3: they sure have after doing this for a while, fear
Speaker 3: of their pimp. All of these factors in to the
Speaker 3: point where their judgment goes out the windows. So yes,
Speaker 3: and they're clean and sober, do they know they're risking
Speaker 3: their lives? Yes, when they're looking for that next fix
Speaker 3: and they're high on heroin or meth when they're doing
Speaker 3: the transaction, are they able to think of that safety
Speaker 3: and security?
Speaker 4: No.
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