During the 80s, Robert was heavily into the BDSM and swinger lifestyle, dubbing himself as whips and chains. He continuously tried to involve his wife in his fantasies but she wasnt interested, so Robert found other ways to satisfy his sexual urges. He attempted college but he soon decided it wasnt for him and dropped out, becoming a long-haul truck driver instead. The trucker went to pay for gas, and my boyfriend and I went to use the bathroom. HOUSTON . So I told him the truth, which I had not told othersthat I didn't say anything because I didn't think anyone would believe me. It wasn't lost on me that while I was hitchhiking and he was driving, we would both have struggled with some of the same challengessleep deprivation and the hypnotic dullness of going through identical locations over and over, a world constructed of boredom and violence. After receiving my friend's e-mail, I left messages with the FBI but was relieved when they were not returned. Sure, serial killers ~killed~ people, but what did they actually do? 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and her boyfriend Ricky Lee Jones had run away from their homes and like Roberts first victims, they were hitchhiking when he picked them up. Rhoades was dressed that night as an airline pilot, and it was months before Davis found out he wasn't one. Look at Lisa Pennal. What put him away for life, though, was the rape and murder of Regina Walters, a 14-year-old girl from Pasadena, Texas. November 22, 2021. Debra met Robert at a bar in Houston, Texas, in the 1980s. Her hair, long at the time of her abduction, had been clumsily cut short. 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 took me a second to understand those last sentences. "Bob was fascinated by secret societies.". One library archivist explained that I was looking for the kind of news nobody wanted to read. Lee told me that the final lines of Holts's police statement read, "I don't see any good in filing charges. He raped, tortured, and killed at least six men. It wasn't the early '70s, it was 1987, and the woman killed was 19-year-old Lamonica Cole. On April 1, 1990, Roberts murder spree finally came to an end. Ricky Lee Jones body has never been found. Read More: Where is Robert Ben Rhoades Now? He lived with his mother, Fay Rhoades, and several siblings in a two bedroom home at 2400 Avenue D. Robert's father, Ben Rhoades,. Or rather, I remember what he was not wearing. I got the sense Lee appreciated brevity, so I dispensed with small talk and went straight to my questions, but he stopped me. When I got to the part about the sudden switch in his behavior, she got excited. Somewhere in Arizona we had a fight in a gas station off I-10, and we each climbed into separate trucks, and that was it. As with Patricia Walsh, the trucker didn't murder Walters right away. We do the interview, but I don't take notes. Robert Benjamin Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. . But his insistence that everything on board was consensual wasn't going to go without investigation by Miller, especially when a search of Rhoades revealed a loaded handgun. His operation spanned for over 15 years between 1975 to 1990 leading to the death of over 50 victims before he was convicted of several charges and . It made sense. 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. "That's from my old SWAT jacket." This was 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters just before she was sexually assaulted and murdered. That forced me into asking for rides in the hallway by the showers. 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. He kidnapped women, tortured and raped them for weeks before killing them. The girl, he said, "wasn't one of our own. Robert Ben Rhoades, born November 22, 1945, in Council Bluffs, Iowa turned out to be one of the most sadistic sexual predators that the US had ever encountered. I remember being in the woods off I-95. Robert Ben Rhoades. 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. She had been strangled at Breezewood. From 1975 to 1990 he is believed to have tortured . Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. It doesn't matter what he says. Over lunch at a local sushi place, he taught me the difference between a mode of operation and a signature. The sentence of death had been a possibility because on May 6, 1992, the State had filed a notice that it intended to seek the death penalty. Behind him was a shoulder-high pink plastic castle. 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. VI, 11, subd. Eventually, they reconciled and got married as well. Robert Ben Rhoades (defendant), pursuant to negotiations with the State, on September 11, 1992, pled guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to imprisonment for natural life. The vehicle had been converted into a refuge for the killer, a place where his most sinister desires could be inflicted on victims without detection. In her mouth was a bit similar to ones used for horses. If there are more murder confessions to make, there may be time yet for other families to find some semblance of closure and justice. 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. When they visited his home, they uncovered a number of disturbing photographs, taken right before he murdered one of his teenage victims- photos that are perhaps even more disturbing than Rhoades's mobile torture chamber. The stores were dimly lit and filled with smoke, radically different from the family travel plazas of today. I had been a drifter. Robert Ben Rhoades known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Friend, 43, says she wants "California voters to know what kind of offenders are on death row," men like Robert Boyd Rhoades, who sodomized, tortured and killed 8-year-old Michael Lyons two . 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.". "Bob was obsessed with how they used an imaginary secret society to keep her from running away," Davis said. Every trucker I ever met had a gun, so the knife seemed significant. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). He shaved her head and pubic hair, pierced her with fishing hooks, dressed her up in a black dress and heels, and photographed her in moments of terror, then killed her with a garrote made of baling wire, leaving her one-hundred-pound body to decompose in a barn in Illinois off Interstate 70. A remembrance before rape, torture and murder. He requested information on missing Caucasian females aged 13 to 15 years old who had disappeared six to nine months earlier. Rhoades is thought to have killed Zyskowski while the young man slept. They are more like habits, he said, and can adapt to circumstances or mood. Rhoades, for instance, used guns and ligature strangulation and probably knives, too. The next morning, I drove to the Gateway Travel Plaza in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Although I'd told it more in the preceding week than in the past two decades, I still wasn't used to doing it, and the nausea still came. Last Photo Taken of Regina before she was killed by Robert Ben A man from the restaurant ran out and started yelling for everyone to stay away as a small crowd gathered around the Dumpster in the rain. Candace Walsh and her husband Douglas Zyskowski were hitchhiking when Rhoades' picked them up in a truck stop. But to ex-wife Debra Davis, when they. Among the photographs recovered from Rhoades' home while he was jailed was several of Walters. Regina Kay Walters 14 years old died by the hands of Robert Ben "Wait a minute. I woke when it slowed for traffic. In the second installment of Death on the Open Road: Highway Homicides, we cover the case of evil serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades aka The Truck Stop Killer. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1905de5cd6c356 Robert Ben Rhoades' love for the BDSM scene wasn't something that he kept a secret. 76 Year Old Criminal #4. There was always a sick mom or dead grandparent involved, and I was almost always abandoned by my jerk of a boyfriend, who'd made off with all my money and my car. I did a search on towns named Martinsburg. He struck a deal with prosecutors in Texas, pleading guilty to avoid the state's death penalty for the murder of both Patricia Walsh and Douglas Zyskowski. He'd told Shana Holts to "sit there and be a good girl." But, months later, she learned that Robert wasnt a pilot. I remember sitting in the drizzle in a truck while the crime-scene tape was strung around a Dumpster. A few minutes later, I got up like nothing had happened. Now the whole Martinsburg truck stop had been swallowed by a Walmart Supercenter. Thank you very much in advance. I only ran about a hundred yards before I turned and hid, because I didn't know if I was being chased and needed to see. I didn't recognize him from the initial photos, but as I found pictures of him as a younger man, his face came to seem more familiar. *Some of the victims names have been changed. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. Wherever I went, I was told nothing "like that" ever happened, which was remarkable given the numbers of bodies the FBI had tracked over the past thirty years. In 1985 my biggest problem was sleep. Rhoades is considered one of the most dangerous and notorious serial sex offenders and killers in the United States. 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