Although most truckers are hardworking and law-abiding, trucking has its bad apples. In fact, being a long-haul truck driver is one of the most ideal jobs for serial killers, according to the FBI. These drivers move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, which helps them evade police. Some, like “Truck Stop Killer” Robert Ben Rhoades, have even used their trucks as mobile torture chambers.
In 2003, a crime analyst from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation noticed a pattern in the bodies turning up alongside highways across the country. She contacted other police departments, and eventually the FBI. This led to the FBI establishing the Highway Serial Killing Initiative (HSK), which is part of the bureau’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP). After police enter details about violent crimes into ViCAP, the HSK Initiative analyzes information about crimes committed on or close to highways. The initiative aims to reveal connections between unsolved cases and identify killers.
Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, delved into the FBI’s HSK Initiative to write Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers. He also investigated the world of sex trafficking, where many of these truckers’ victims come from, and learned about the long-haul trucking industry. He spoke to A&E True Crime about why the truck driving profession attracts some serial killers, how murders by truckers have changed over the years and how technology may make things harder for would-be killers.
How does your background in the FBI relate to the subject of long-haul truckers who kill?
When you look at my counterintelligence background, you may not see an obvious connection. But counterintelligence is about gathering intelligence and reporting it accurately. What we call counterintelligence is the three Ds: we detect, we deter and we defeat the adversary. That’s a lot like what I’m doing, or trying to do, with Long Haul.
[Stream Invisible Monsters: Serial Killers in America in the A&E app.]
I collected intelligence about the FBI’s Highway Serial Killing Initiative. And I’m reporting and disseminating it out with the intention of not just detecting and deterring the threat, but hopefully stopping some of the killing that’s going on along our nation’s highways.
Can you tell us more about the Highway Serial Killing Initiative?
The numbers are staggering. We’re looking at 850 known murders of women, mostly sex trafficking [victims], alongside our nation’s highways. Two hundred of those cases are considered active and unsolved. And the FBI is looking at 450 suspects in those unsolved cases.
Are those 450 suspects killers who are active in the present day—or from the past?
The answer is both. Those suspects include long haulers who have been looked at for murders that are as many as 30 or 40 years old. And they include suspects in murders that have taken place just in the last decade.
Serial killers don’t stop killing; the majority of them just can’t stop. That leaves the conclusion that there are, right now, multiple serial killer long-haul truckers out in our society.
Even more disturbing would be the [killers] that the FBI doesn’t even have on its radar screen. That’s quite possible as well.
How does trucking attract serial killers?
[For this book], I put my investigator hat on and rode over 2,000 miles in a big rig with a driver. Trucking is a very isolating, antisocial lifestyle that affords you the opportunity of great freedom on the road, and freedom to do what you want within certain parameters.
There’s overlap in the kinds of people that are attracted to the profession of long-haul trucking with what we know about many serial killers–that antisocial aspect.
[Incarcerated killers who were truckers] have been interviewed almost endlessly. They answer truthfully. ‘I had these predilections, I’m a pretty violent person. Trucking was a way for me to get away from society that gives me time to do my own thing.’
You wrote that there are police departments that don’t use ViCAP. How is the FBI encouraging its use?
Small departments…may not have plainclothes detectives, let alone a crime analyst. And now you’re asking them to please fill out a few-hundred-question survey about their unsolved homicide along the side of the highway.
[The FBI] tells them where grant money is to get the analysts, and in the worst-case scenario, they may even offer to fill out the forms themselves through the local field office.
And if it’s done right…filling out that form and working with the FBI absolutely connects killings and ultimately identifies bodies and killers.
Has the rate of these highway murders changed over the years, for example in the peak ‘Golden Age’ of serial killers (1970 to 2000) versus the present day?
Outwardly, yes, it would appear that there is less serial killing going on amongst long-haul truckers today. If we theorize about why that may be, the big trucking companies are [now] using technology to monitor their trucks, their drivers. They’ve got cameras. There’s electronic logging. There’s GPS tracking. So it’s not impossible, but it’s harder for a big-time corporate trucker today to not be tracked.
The other thing is that the sex trade has also moved online. Meetings are taking place off the property of the truck stop. Why does that make it harder to count the serial killing truckers? Because if [a victim is] found deceased or beaten in a motel room, it’s very hard for law enforcement to figure out that a trucker [was involved].
Are long-haul serial killers driving their own trucks, not working for trucking companies?
We can’t rule out corporate truckers as suspects, even though the technology is making it harder for them to do it. Writing the book, I came across cases where corporate truckers were parking their rigs at truck stop parking lots. Then they were getting an Uber or renting a car and going out and killing their victims.
[Even] killers who had torture chambers [in the cabs of their rigs], I wouldn’t assume [they owned their trucks]. A corporate driver can be on the road for months before you take the truck back to the company for maintenance or inspection.
In addition to killers, you investigated and wrote about sex trafficking. What did you learn about how to help victims?
The more forward-thinking police departments now realize that the answer is not to handcuff and criminally charge a trafficking victim. The police department can say, ‘We’re not arresting you. What do you need to get out of this trap of trafficking? I have a social worker who partners with me who can get you the resources you need.’
Although trafficked women make up the majority of victims, are there other victim types?
[Some] people are going to say, ‘These [serial killer] victims are all sex-trafficked women. I don’t know anybody that that would ever happen to.’
I’m here to tell you that my research shows differently. A teenage girl was almost raped or killed in her bedroom in the greater Boston area because a long-haul trucker made his way into that neighborhood. Thank God the noise of her whimpering woke up her parents.
The notorious Robert Ben Rhoades kidnapped 14-year-old Regina Walters, who was hitchhiking in her hometown outside of Houston, Texas, with her boyfriend [and murdered her].
If you think you don’t know anybody who could fall into this trafficking trap, the [formerly trafficked] women I interviewed came from all demographics, all walks of life. And the recruitment process has moved online, so parents have got to understand what their kids are doing online.
Your book mentions the development of self-driving trucks. Do you see that technology affecting these serial killers?
We are absolutely headed toward driverless trucks. So where do the serial killers go? My prediction would be, like everything else in our society, they go online. Enter an ad for sex for cash, get that woman alone.
They don’t stop, even if truck driving stops.
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