When the FBI extradited him to Illinois, he was able to get a phone number off a waitress while shackled hand and foot and wearing an orange prison suit. Roadside Prey. The only thing they neglected to take down is a website with the words Martinsburg TravelCenter of America flashing like a beacon online. In the morning, they talked me into applying to the college. A remembrance before rape, torture and murder. In her mouth was a bit similar to ones used for horses. Ad Choices, He was methodical, he rode the highways, and he preyed on teenage girls. The interior of the truck's cab contained a hidden compartment that could only be seen if you were between the seats. You didn't do it.". Watching the driver of my truck walk back across the wet asphalt, a second thought arose: It could be him. Officers later discovered this was the name Rhoades, who had been involved in BDSM for years, went by when he used his CB radio to communicate with his fellow truckers. The sun is coming down on her long hair, and she's laughing. It made sense. I lived among artists in the Lower East Side squats. Could Debra help solve an active investigation? He shows it and asks what they think is going on. He would then keep them alive, torturing and sexually assaulting them for weeks at a time before murdering them and disposing of their bodies. It was a raw moment. However, before he killed the 14-year-old, Rhoades took several haunting images of Walters that the authorities eventually recovered from his home. Shana was a pretty girl with freckles and blank blue eyes. I said I knew he didn't want to do it. Like Young and Lee, she had never heard of the Laughing Death Society, and since it had featured so strongly in my experience, I thought it salient. Nothing came up, but that wasn't too surprising. Her thick red-blond hair had been cropped close to her head with a knife or scissors and was now growing back. Robert started with petty crimes like public fighting and tampering with vehicles while he was still in high school. It would appear that crime was in Roberts blood. So I went back to hitchhiking in circles and discovered a state of half-consciousness wherein I could be asleep and not asleep at the same time. The next morning, I drove to the Gateway Travel Plaza in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Her facial expression could be described as a combination of desperation and abject fear. Serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades kidnapped and tortured his victims inside a chamber set up inside his big rig truck. The outlet reports that Rhoades had filled the rest of the sleeper of the cab with various pieces of "BDSM equipment and pain-implementation devices." It was a made-up destination, a Grapes of Wrath narrative of brighter futures. Rhoades is additionally suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than 50 . The source notes that Rhoades kept a "murder kit" in the cab, containing tools that he would use on anyone unlucky enough to be caught in his lair. Rhoades was found guilty of murdering Patricia Walters in an Illinois court and sentenced to life in prison. Berdella was conscious of his homosexuality. Davis asked quietly. I looked at the picture on Young's computer. I could rest but not dream. allowing the middle-aged husband and father to torment and abuse women as he crisscrossed the United States. And who's going to believe him? At the bottom of the yellow legal paper, scrawled in all caps, he wrote, "IT WASN'T ME!!!" Follow us on Twitter: @AShudders. Knowing the capacity of his sadism made this unbearable. November 22, 2021. ", "Oh no, not at all!" In 1994, Robert Ben Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Regina Walters. Another is called "Beat Me Daddy," another "Frigid Woman." Listening to her, it occurred to me that this investigation of mine wasn't a detective novel. Whatever the man thought he had broken in her had already been broken and healed back stronger. While I was hitchhiking, he was driving. It seems our profound fascination with serial killers is matched by an equally profound lack of interest in their victims. Law enforcement eventually learned that in addition to BDSM, Rhoades was a swinger who regularly had sexual liaisons with other married people in his hometown of Houston, Texas. But then, Rhoades looks like a lot of guys. We both had our own systems, our own rituals, and our own beliefs about what people were really like and how they acted under pressure. First Name Robert. Bottles of isobutyl nitrite and rotgut aphrodisiacs like Locker Room and Spanish Fly crowded the counters by the register, along with the iconic bumper sticker ASS, GAS, OR GRASSNO ONE RIDES FOR FREE. I don't remember much about him except that he was taller and leaner than most truckers and didn't wear jeans or T-shirts. Police photo. Robert Ben Rhoades was a truck driver with a torture chamber attached to his semi. The picture was given to Young by Regina's mom. In one, he relaxed on the grass in a park. When it turned, when it downshifted, when it drifted toward the shoulderI woke. There was no safe way for me to get it. Inside the cab of the truck was a woman, chained to the wall and screaming, with only a pair of slippers on her feet. 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. Piercings around the breasts, bruising, and other signs of torture were also frequently found. It said he would see me if I promised never to say that I had seen him or what had passed between us. He got over 900 matches. To her shock and horror, she realized Rhoades had converted the cab of his truck into a mobile torture chamber, equipped with chains, shackles, and handcuffs to help him restrain his victims. Though his first confirmed murders didn't occur until 1990, one woman may have barely escaped with her life the year before. "Of course," Lee says, "Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff. 1 of 3 DNA26C-C-24JAN00-EZ-HO --- Convicted murderer Robert Boyd Rhoades was linked to the 1984 slaying of eighteen year-old Julie Connell through DNA records. Inside the briefcase, officers found dildos, alligator clips, handcuffs, leashes, and whips, as well as pins which Rhoades had used to pierce the young woman's nipples and genitals. Stowing his paperwork, he released the brake. The time had come to do it anyway. Rhoades avtjnar ett livstidsstraff p Menard Correctional Center i Chester i Illinois . Reading it, I found it hard not to hear the man telling me to "run.". "Well," said Lee, sitting back after I finished, "you're probably right. Rhoades immediately exited the cab of his truck and attempted to give a hasty explanation of what the patrolman was seeing. When he was caught, he said that he had been "doing this" for fifteen years, which would put the onset of his murders back into the 1970s. Years later, Veselka read a news story about a serial killer who had been a long haul trucker named Robert Ben Rhoades. The sheer amount of victims he had coupled with the contrast of how little we know about his crimes makes this case haunting. Regina Kay Walters 14 years old died by the hands of Robert Ben Rhoades. The birds went silent, and I didn't know what it meant. She had been missing from the Houston area since early 1990 after running off with her boyfriend. This spring a friend sent a news story link about a serial killer with the subject line "Is this your guy?" Another prostitute had been grabbed there as well, in 2006, but was found farther down the road with her throat slit. We were back on the road before dawn, walking down a highway covered in black ice, shivering in our hoodies. Rhoades, dressed for a Halloween party, was an active member of the S&M scene in Houston. It was agent Young who recognized the small gap in Regina's teeth and noticed that a few freckles were in the same place. She looks happy. creator of The Wicked Truth - a true crime blog https://ko-fi.com/fatim. She attested that she was pressured to perform acts to satisfy his masochistic fantasies. Without looking back, I ran into the woods and hid. 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 She hid there until she was sure she heard his truck leave. The photo was taken by serial rapist, torturer and murderer, Robert Ben Rhoades, who dressed the young teen in a black dress and heels, forcibly cutting her hair for the occasion. She'd been picked up in a truck stop, shackled into the back of the cab, tortured and raped for weeks. Robert Ben Rhoades was born in Council Bluffs in 1945. Movie Actress. While she slept, he handcuffed her hands and feet. Young then showed me some photos of Rhoades in the 1980s that had come from his wife. While we were asleep, he pulled into a small truck stop, and I woke to his hand down my shirt. plans and enthusiasm After Debra Davis interviewed about life with her ex-husband, serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, Kentucky state troopers reached out, telling her that they suspected Rhoades in a 1985 cold case. I knew from talking to the Martinsburg police that the truck stop had been under the jurisdiction of the Berkeley County sheriff. I was 15. The young girl ran out of Roberts truck and into the woods. We had $60 and a Smith Wesson five-shot with one bullet in it, which we accidentally fired off in a field in Maryland during a discussion about whether the safety was on. Rickys remains were never located. Lisa Pennal's full statement, it turned out, had been destroyed for file space. I'm a 30-something true crime writer living in North America with my hubby & two fur babies https://thewickedtruthblog.com/membership Follow More from Medium Fatim Hemraj 8-Year-Old Boy Solves His Own Mom's Murder Fatim Hemraj Teen Murders Her Best Friend for $9 Million Dollars Jonathan Harker When I first saw his apartment, I thought I'd walked into the showroom of a furniture store. Performance & security by Cloudflare. Girls who'd run away. Games People Play was a bible for Rhoades. When you get in a truck at a truck stop, everyone notices. He was given two life sentences inTexas without the possibility of parole. The idea that I might have been responsible for what happened to girls like Regina was devastating, and Lee's directness startled me. they uncovered a number of disturbing photographs, taken right before he murdered one of his teenage victims, Inside the cab of the truck was a woman, chained to the wall and screaming, Rhoades had converted the cab of his truck into a mobile torture chamber, he told her his nickname was "Whips and Chains. 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. Rhoades was first arrested when an Arizona state trooper found a screaming woman named Lisa Pennal* chained in the back of his cab. (Robert Ben Rhoades) An unidentified girl, shown here in a photograph taken by Rhoades. Young was right. When I got to the part about the sudden switch in his behavior, she got excited. ", Pennal was the woman chained into Rhoades's truck when they arrested him in Arizona. Unbeknownst to Regina Walters or Ricky Jones, the man behind the wheel was Robert Ben Rhoades, also known as the Truck Stop Killer. I remember being in the woods off I-95. Silence fell over the Sacramento County courtroom as Judge Loyd H. Mulkey . While not all fifty cases have been tied to Rhoades yet and Rhoades himself has admitted to only three murders, the FBI has strong reason to believe that at his peak he was killing one to three women a month. The rig was equipped with handcuffs on the ceiling, which enabled Rhoades to chain his female victims so that he could torture them before killing them. Megan Fox. They were stringing crime tape around the Dumpster just as another state trooper rolled into the lot. This modus operandi makes it difficult for authorities to determine how many victims Robert Ben Rhoades had. Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. Not even the FBI knew that he had already tortured, raped, and killed at least two people along his routes. 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. Rhoades allegedly dumped the body of Walsh's husband, Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 28, in Texas. That first ride was a preview of how it would often go for me with truckersdodging sex and getting strandedbut I had learned one crucial lesson: When a truck slows down, you get up. My mother was happy to pay for school. Mark Young said Rhoades likes to feel like an expert and that I should ask him to "educate" me, so while writing my letter I used permissive language, saying I wanted him "to teach me what I did right and what I did wrong" when I was traveling. Her eyes are partly closed, as if she's stoned or sleepy. 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