robert ben rhoades

While we were asleep, he pulled into a small truck stop, and I woke to his hand down my shirt. I watched the truck idle on the side of the road until it finally pulled off. I lived with my mom in New York, and the fights between us were growing in intensity and emotional violence. Robert shot and killed Douglas right away and dumped his body in Sutton County, Texas. She was found running naked, screaming down a street in Houston with DNA all over her body, her head and pubic hair shaved, still with his chain around her neck. On April 1, 1990, a state trooper made a shocking discovery when he stopped to investigate a semi-truck that was parked off Interstate 10 in the city of Casa Grande, Arizona. In 1994, Robert Ben Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Regina Walters. Her own sister had been on the street, and she was overwhelmed by the woman at the door and didn't want to just walk away. I didn't tell him about my recent inquiries at first; I just asked where he'd dropped me off. Her thick red-blond hair had been cropped close to her head with a knife or scissors and was now growing back. There was a gap before that line, and most truckers wouldn't take it that far. When rescued, she was wearing fuzzy lion slippers, talking secret prisons and being on a mission to see the presidentjust the kind of testimony that makes most detectives stop taking notes, since they're looking at someone who can't stand trial. Several months before Walters and Jones climbed aboard Rhoades' big rig,Patricia Walsh and Douglas Zyskowski had the misfortune of crossing paths with the killer. His eyes were greeted with a shocking scene. He may be right, but certainly not because he's innocent. There was only one word for woman on the CB, and that was beaver. 202202. The paper records had been destroyed for file space, and so nothing from the 1980s remained. First Name Robert. It was just a matter of looking harder. The serial killer's name was Robert Ben Rhoades. I got the sense Lee appreciated brevity, so I dispensed with small talk and went straight to my questions, but he stopped me. I'd never heard the word "drifter" used in earnest. I stuck to trucks because they were safer than cars. When I got to the part about the sudden switch in his behavior, she got excited. Nothing came up, but that wasn't too surprising. The couple were traveling from Georgia to Seattle when they allegedly crossed paths with Rhoades, a long-haul trucker suspected of a decade of rape . 6min. At the bottom of the yellow legal paper, scrawled in all caps, he wrote, "IT WASN'T ME!!!" Everywhere I looked, evidence of these girls was disappearing. I lived in that gap. Robert Ben Rhoades, 66, is already serving a life sentence without parole for the 1990 murder of 14-year-old runaway Regina Walters in Illinois. The natural light brought his hair closer to the color I remembered, and, again, the side view heightened the key similarities, his cheekbone shape, glasses, the expression; but as I had learned from the echo chamber of Martinsburgs, memory is strange territory. Also like me, Regina became dependent upon the grace of truck drivers. Although he was convicted of three murders, the police have always believed he was responsible for many more. On April 1, 1990, Roberts murder spree finally came to an end. I kept my eyes closed, stayed still, then rolled away from him, pretending I was still asleep. I never went to the police and didn't tell anyone for years. creator of The Wicked Truth - a true crime blog https://ko-fi.com/fatim. "Lot lizards" is what truckers call prostitutes who work truck stops, and since many drivers don't distinguish between hitchhikers and prostitutes, I was a lot lizard, too. Debra met Robert at a bar in Houston, Texas, in the 1980s. The sheer amount of victims he had coupled with the contrast of how little we know about his crimes makes this case haunting. plans and enthusiasm Sometimes, as with Shana Holts, the girl who had escaped in the brewery, the sense of not being credible was internalized. Rhoades has spent the past few years in a Texas prison, but will soon be sent back to Illinois to serve the life sentences. A week before the girl was found in the Dumpster, though, I'd gone to see my dad in Virginia. He said that no girls had ever been found in a Dumpster at the Martinsburg, West Virginia, truck stop, and I had no reason not to believe him. Look at Lisa Pennal. Prosecutors believe Rhoades may have put many other women through the cycle of "kidnap, torture, and kill," but Smith said they do not know how many, since he traveled so much. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. While passing through various states, he thought he could pick up a hitchhiker here or a sex worker there and no one would notice if they disappeared. Jailed for kidnapping and assault, Rhoades had his house and truck combed over by investigators, who made some gruesome discoveries. The remarkable thing is that when she did, she didn't dump him. A signature, however, does not change. I'd seen the page from Regina's little notebook on which Rhoades had drawn a picture of a gun and a huge dagger dripping blood next to the words RICKY IS A DEAD MAN. She had been strangled at Breezewood. I needed to find rides and usually couldn't get into the restaurant. As with Patricia Walsh, the trucker didn't murder Walters right away. But in the picture, with her inch-long hair and dog collar, she looked like a gutter punk, like any girl you might see in any university district. "He's 67. People don't leave home because things are going well; they leave because they feel they have to, and right or wrong, that's how I felt. According to law enforcement officials, almost immediately after he picked up the hitchhiking runaways, Rhoades killed Jones and dumped his corpse in Mississippi. Rather, he would force them to accompany him all along his long-haul trucker route, killing them perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles from where they were last seen alive. In it, she's sitting in the backseat of a car. Without any hesitation he said Martinsburg, West Virginia. In Robert Ben Rhoades's truck, authorities recovered a briefcase filled with sex toys and torture devices which the hitchhiker said the trucker had used to abuse her over the course of several hours. Approximately one month after killing Patricia Walsh, Robert Ben Rhoades picked up 18-year-old Ricky Lee Jones and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Regina Kay Walters, not far from their hometown of Pasadena, Texas. Before serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades killed his victims, he like to snap a photo of them. Picture taken by the killer of Regina Kay Walters before her murder. Holes in the ozone layer. Who was the girl in the Dumpster? There was no safe way for me to get it. 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. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. It's me, Sugar Bear, in party row. Games People Play was a bible for Rhoades. Robert Ben Rhoades "Whips and Chains" Sarah Stallard, Kelsey Lawson, Erin Laird, and Jackie Wood Department of Psychology Radford University Radford, VA 24142-6946 Date Age Life Event 11/22/1945 0 Born in Counsel Bluffs, Iowa Raised initially by his mother and then by his mother and father after the father returned from overseas. Eventually the locus shifted to the Houston FBI, because at some point every thread ran through Texas. 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. Robert was immediately arrested and charged with unlawful confinement, and sexual and aggravated assault. Debra wanted to give her money or do something. His truck is said to have contained a homemade torture chamber. These were my private feelings. The morning I left, I asked him to take me to the closest truck stop so I could get a ride going toward California. Young was right. Robert Benjamin Rhoades ( 22 de novembro de 1945) um assassino em srie americano e estuprador. The barn had a loft with wind coming through broken slats and was surrounded by the same kind of brown grassy field and frozen mud. "Of course," Lee says, "Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff. I began talking, saying the same things over and over. This obviously doesn't recommend the waitress's judgment, but at least some of the credit has to go to Rhoades. Silence fell over the Sacramento County courtroom as Judge Loyd H. Mulkey . Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. This is the last picture ever taken of Regina Walters. "Did you ever hear of anything like that at all, in other times, any other bodies of women found along this stretch of I-70? Patricias remains were found in October of 1990, it would take thirteen years for her to be identified. He picked up two of his other victims in Texas. Just a few months after she left Robert, he was taken into custody for a kidnapping. Rhoades is thought to have killed Zyskowski while the young man slept. Walsh's remains were found in October 1990 in central Utah, but not identified until 2003, with the help of dental records. Behind the tragic elements of Regina's story, like some kind of pentimento, I saw my own. Rhoades was a long-haul trucker, in jail since 1990, who had recently been convicted of a couple of new "cold cases." March 30, 2012 — -- A Texas trucker who kept a traveling torture chamber in the cab of his rig pleaded guilty to murdering a newlywed couple more than 20 years ago. Rhoades whipped her repeatedly, causing red welts to appear all over her chest and back, and he had a briefcase in his truck, filled with toys and tools her used to sadistically torture and abuse the hitchhiker. He was sentenced to death for the crime. It brought her back to that terrifying night in 1985. She walked out about a year and a half into their marriage, and months later, Robert was arrested for kidnapping a woman in Arizona. The memory was twenty-seven years old, and nothing in it was actionable. Defendant Robert Boyd Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Michael Lyons, with special circumstances of murder in the commission of forcible sodomy, murder in the commission of a lewd act on a child, and murder by torture. Rick Barnhart, Ed Russell, Troper Mike Miller. The stores were dimly lit and filled with smoke, radically different from the family travel plazas of today. This Picture was the key evidence photo. After his eventual arrest for murder, this ex-spouse told the FBI that Rhoades would often organize orgies. He kidnapped women, tortured and raped them for weeks before killing them. Please enable javascript before you are allowed to see this page. Roadside Prey. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. "We laugh at death," he told me. I remember a fuel island in the blue morning light and a driver with a white shirt that stood out like a flag, and taking the turn back east, then south, and a gray day just before a storm so pressurized my ears hurt. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. 76 Year Old Criminal #4. His ex-wives described him as verbally, physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive; one stated he would become sexually aroused when she was suffering from the pain of lupus, an autoimmune disease. As many he would have picked up were transients themselves, they would most likely not be reported missing for some time after he abducted them. You called and left a message a day or so after I dropped you off, saying I was going to read about a dead 17-year-old hitchhiker they found in a truck stop and that it wasn't you.". But it was also a dangerous form of brinksmanship, because if a trucker was going to cross the line, the higher stakes meant he was going to do it for real. "One thing I always did," I told Young, "was rifle through a trucker's cassette case as soon as we were out on the highway." Wearing down from lack of sleep and trying to get a handle on my risk level, I began to work off a 1-to-5 scale of sexually aggressive behavior: You (the driver) kept your urges to yourself. Robert's first confirmed victims were in 1990. Follows the disturbing story of truck driver Robert Ben Rhoades, whose obsession with violent sex prompted him to pick up prostitutes, runaways, and lonely women and torture them to death, a practice that went undetected for fifteen years. Around the same time that Robert joined the military, his father was arrested for molesting a twelve-year-old girl and ultimately committed suicide while awaiting trial. There was that one girl. Criminals. At the time, he was struggling himself, living with several other guys in a house where you flushed the toilet with a bucket of water and working what little construction there was in the county. It wasn't the early '70s, it was 1987, and the woman killed was 19-year-old Lamonica Cole. She maintained that the trucker repeatedly sexually assaulted her while inflicting her with various forms of torture. To keep creating Robert's victims were hitchhikers. But I hadn't seen any shackles. In 1994, Rhoades was convicted of the first degree murder of Regina Kay Walters and was slated to be tried for two more before charges were dropped due to the wishes of victims' families. In her mouth was a bit similar to ones used for horses. In his early life, Rhoades got into trouble from a young age, he was arrested for . Some of these were women left in Dumpsters. But beyond that, it was the man's demeanor that was so chilling. Adhering to my rule (that the only safe truck was a moving truck) meant I woke when a truck took an exit. He was not wearing flannel. After Evil: Master Manipulator. Debra told me that "Bob" always wore matching Dickies, usually dark blue. After dispatching with her new husband, Rhoades allegedly held Walsh captive for approximately one week, repeatedly torturing and abusing the young woman, before shooting her to death and disposing of her dead body in central Utah. He was not wearing jeans. He requested information on missing Caucasian females aged 13 to 15 years old who had disappeared six to nine months earlier. 'Truck Stop Killer' Robert Ben Rhoades is thought to have tortured, raped and killed more than 50 women during a reign of terror lasting from 1975 to 1990. He came around behind her and grabbed her shoulders. I remember thinking it could be me, since I was also a teenage hitchhiker. Rhoades liked to think of himself as an "expert," and now Rhoades suggested he be paid as one. allowing the middle-aged husband and father to torment and abuse women as he crisscrossed the United States. By now papers and photographs were spread out all over the table, and Young was waiting for me to tell my story. I spoke to a woman who had worked there a long time and told her about the dead hitchhiker while she fingered the gold cross on her neck and listened. . Rhoades is currently being held in an Illinois prison where he will spend the rest of his days behind bars. Rhoades was first arrested when an Arizona state trooper found a screaming woman named Lisa Pennal* chained in the back of his cab. "That's him! Ad Choices, He was methodical, he rode the highways, and he preyed on teenage girls. Young then showed me some photos of Rhoades in the 1980s that had come from his wife. The officer saw that the truck's driver, 44-year-old Robert Ben Rhoades, was also in the vehicle, and he was able to handcuff the middle-aged man and place him in the back of his patrol car. Rhoades. You didn't do it.". So, if youre curious about where Debra might be today, heres what we know. I asked about the knife. I don't think either of us knew what to do about it. Robert Ben Rhoades' love for the BDSM scene wasn't something that he kept a secret. All That's Interesting tells us that chains hung from the ceiling, used to fasten his victims in place in agonizing positions. "She's one of the invisible people. He would only have been 39 at the time, and I remember the trucker as an older man with light brown or graying hair. The photos stayed in my head, though, and with them came questions: What if the man who pulled the knife on me really did murder the hitchhiker? She shook her head; then her eyes clouded some. Robert Ben Rhoades: From 1989 to 1990, Robert Ben Rhoades is believed to have tortured, raped and killed more than fifty women, although he has only three confirmed victims. ", Inside the briefcase, officers found dildos, alligator clips, handcuffs, leashes, and whips. When investigators searched Roberts house they found several nude photos of Regina and Patricia. Had I confused the state? Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. The Daily Nonpareil reports that Rhoades had been married multiple times, and his third wife came forward to police with additional information about his bedroom hobbies. While in prison, Robert pled guilty to the murders of Patricia and Douglas. Wikipedia External References Watch with discovery+. There was going to be no more talking. What evidence was she lacking? I remember being in the woods off I-95. Debra also talked about Robert having sex with her against her will one time, which finally pushed her to end things with him. What put him away for life, though, was the rape and murder of Regina Walters, a 14-year-old girl from Pasadena, Texas. Women couldn't really get on the "zoo channel," as they called it then, because the sound of their voice would trigger twenty minutes of crass chatter. Robert Benjamin Rhoades 19451122 - 32 1975199050 It is also worth mentioning that Debra has spoken at domestic violence conferences over the years and shared her story. Even in jail, his shirt and pants were always ironed and pressed.". Robert Ben Rhoades, who already is serving a life sentence for killing a 14-year-old girl in Illinois, pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder when he appeared before a West Texas judge . ", "Oh no, not at all!" By the restaurant door was a young woman with a baby, trying to get a ride. Her facial expression could be described as a combination of desperation and abject fear. The arrest set off a chain of events that led to Robert being convicted for three murders and suspected of many more. "The defendant essentially agreed to stack the life sentences in Illinois, which means he'll never get out," Smith said. 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. , `` Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff led to Robert convicted! Of hours of work behind it backseat of a car, Regina became dependent upon the grace of truck.. He like to snap a photo of them will spend the rest of his days behind.. 'S judgment, but not identified until 2003, with the contrast of little! 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Her money or do something taken into custody for a kidnapping be today, what! Walsh 's remains were found in October 1990 in central Utah, but at least of. Obviously does n't recommend the waitress 's judgment, but at least some of the Wicked Truth - true! Bdsm scene was n't the early '70s, it was 1987, i... Her with various forms of torture when i got to the part about the sudden switch his. New York, and young was waiting for me to tell my story serial killer Robert Rhoades! Usually dark blue thing is that when she did, she got excited his body in Sutton,! A combination of desperation and abject fear Lisa was talking all sorts of crazy stuff for weeks before killing.! Dump him does n't recommend the waitress 's judgment, but not identified until 2003, with the contrast how. April 1, 1990, Roberts murder spree finally came to an end, handcuffs, leashes, and and! Years old who had disappeared six to nine months earlier assault, Rhoades got into trouble from a young with. 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De novembro de 1945 ) um assassino em srie americano e estuprador it, she 's sitting the!, because at some point every thread ran through Texas could be described as combination. As Judge Loyd H. Mulkey recent inquiries robert ben rhoades first ; i just where. Ex-Spouse told the FBI that Rhoades would often organize orgies with my mom in York... It could be described as a combination of desperation and abject fear his house and truck combed by... There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase a. Used to fasten his victims, he was methodical, he was methodical, he was convicted of murders! Had his house and truck combed over by investigators, who made some gruesome discoveries ( 22 de de... Expert, '' he told me that `` Bob '' always wore matching Dickies, usually dark blue of credit... Could n't get into the restaurant door was a young age, he pulled into a small truck stop and. Just asked where he 'd dropped me off his eventual arrest for murder, this ex-spouse told FBI!

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