Today, Davis lives in College Station, Texas, and her kids, the product of a previous marriage, are grown. Knowing the capacity of his sadism made this unbearable. I said I wouldn't go to the cops if nothing happened to me, but it was his choiceuntil he looked at me and I went still. . We drove up to Ohio drinking Diet Coke and listening to Bruce Springsteen. Without any hesitation he said Martinsburg, West Virginia. The original Rhoades investigation had woven a complex web, entangling local and federal agencies in five different states. Several days later, though, heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, I got picked up by another trucker who was not fine. The victim began saying anything she could think of to try and save her own life. When questioned by police, The Daily Nonpareil reports that Rhoades calmly told officers that the woman was "clearly crazy," and the officers believed him. Smith said that should Rhoades ever be released from the Illinois prison for any unforeseen reason, he would be returned to a Texas prison. Debra stated that he seemed like a nice guy, and they eventually started dating. She had been missing from the Houston area since early 1990 after running off with her boyfriend. The case of Robert Ben Rhoades serves as an excellent example of the type and nature of case to which VICAP s services would provide critical assistance and support. However, she fell asleep shortly after climbing into the vehicle, and when she awoke, she found Rhoades had placed restraints around her wrists and ankles. The serial killer's name was Robert Ben Rhoades. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. According to law enforcement officials, almost immediately after he picked up the hitchhiking runaways, Rhoades killed Jones and dumped his corpse in Mississippi. I watched the truck idle on the side of the road until it finally pulled off. Then he started talking about the dead girl in the Dumpster and asked me if I'd ever heard of the Laughing Death Society. She occasionally speaks on domestic violence at conferences and in classrooms at AM. 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. 76 Year Olds. 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. He wasn't nervous, angry, or excited. 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 . He shows it and asks what they think is going on. You asked me to have sex and offered to pay. Similarly, Rhoades' hometown newspaper also noted that he was suspected of the torture, rape, and . A remembrance before rape, torture and murder. There was a gap before that line, and most truckers wouldn't take it that far. I stayed there until I saw the truck pull onto the interstate. He said he didn't want to get caught up in anything time-consuming. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. He grinned. Silence fell over the Sacramento County courtroom as Judge Loyd H. Mulkey . The morning I left, I asked him to take me to the closest truck stop so I could get a ride going toward California. When a state trooper founda nude woman chained up and terrified in the cab of Robert Ben Rhoades's vehicle, he inadvertently stumbled upon a sadistic serial killer who had been using his job as a long-haul truck driver to find vulnerable victims for years. 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. I also knew the first thing he did was to get them into the back of his sleeper cab, which had anchor points for shackles. In 1985 my biggest problem was sleep. Even so, it still wasn't safe to sleep. Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is a serial killer and rapist and a native of Council Bluffs. So, if youre curious about where Debra might be today, heres what we know! Robert Benjamin Rhoades 19451122 - 32 1975199050 Five years ago, the truck stop was demolished along with its restaurant. Rhoades didn't live a double life as much as a shadowed one. I remember thinking it could be me, since I was also a teenage hitchhiker. "Well," said Lee, sitting back after I finished, "you're probably right. The sun is coming down on her long hair, and she's laughing. "Bob was fascinated by secret societies.". That it turned him on, just like Rhoades.". And then you were still a prostitute. "Her body was found months later so she was probably kept alive for a while," Smith said. It's believed that Rhoades would abduct his prey from various truck stops and rest areas along his trucking route. Rhoades received a second life sentence in the plea, in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. Between 1984 and 1987, he murdered at least six men in Kansas City, Missouri. He would only have been 39 at the time, and I remember the trucker as an older man with light brown or graying hair. Robert was immediately arrested and charged with unlawful confinement, and sexual and aggravated assault. Rhoades was handcuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car while Miller questioned the woman in the truck. I said it was his choice. 6min. I parked in front of the family travel plaza, then walked back past a sign that read TRUCKS ONLY. The story was that she was too scared, but I wondered if there was more. Appeal-Democrat. A sex worker went to the police in 1989, claiming that Rhoades had held her against her will. 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. He was sentenced to life without parole at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. Rhoades had told her to "sit there and be a good girl." allowing the middle-aged husband and father to torment and abuse women as he crisscrossed the United States. Robert found pleasure in taunting Reginas father about his daughters disappearance and the fact he had cut off her hair. 97.107.136.113 But an expert in what, I thought, killing? He would then take them to his torture chamber (yes, he had a torture chamber . In this automatic appeal ( Cal. Initially, agents had disagreed over whether the young girl on Rhoades's film was Regina. It was a ghost story. The photo was of a beautiful young girl, possibly Native American. By the restaurant door was a young woman with a baby, trying to get a ride. "It has to be him," a friend said. The arrest set off a chain of events that led to Robert being convicted for three murders and suspected of many more. "There's this compartment that's hidden completely from view other than between the seats," Steve Smith, first assistant for the 112th District Attorney's office in Texas, told ABCNews.com. Today Rhoades is a prisoner of the Illinois Department of Corrections. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. 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. This was 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters just before she was sexually assaulted and murdered. I had been a drifter. In a letter to his wife on the subject of psychological games, he wrote: "I always told you there were three things you could do: play, pass, or run." My whole body relaxed. Rhoades must have just picked her up, because he hasn't cut her hair yet. Look at Lisa Pennal. Piercings around the breasts, bruising, and other signs of torture were also frequently found. 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. While she slept, he handcuffed her hands and feet. They chatter about it on the CB, and you are driving off in what amounts to a huge billboard advertising the name of the company. It was agent Young who recognized the small gap in Regina's teeth and noticed that a few freckles were in the same place. At first, I would ask about the girl in the Dumpster, but no one had heard of her, so I asked if there had ever been any women found in truck stops. I have no fascination with serial killers, so I didn't realize that Rhoades was famous. Roberts relationships didnt last very long, he had been married three times. Inside the cab of the truck was a woman, chained to the wall and screaming, with only a pair of slippers on her feet. I knew from talking to the Martinsburg police that the truck stop had been under the jurisdiction of the Berkeley County sheriff. 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. Robert Ben Rhoades. I needed to understand what my responsibility was and to find my own answers, if nobody else's, so I began to look. Candace Walsh and her husband Douglas Zyskowski were hitchhiking when Rhoades' picked them up in a truck stop. Laying asleep next to her was the driver of the truck, Robert Ben Rhoades. The serial killer's name was Robert Ben Rhoades. His eyes were greeted with a shocking scene. Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is a serial killer and rapist and a native of Council Bluffs. Patricia and Douglas were later confirmed as victims of serial killer, Robert Ben Rhoades. A signature, however, does not change. She was on a trip with her husband, Bob, the last she ever took in his truck. My memory may have been bent by sleep deprivation, but I was not crazy. Wikipedia External References "The hairs on my arm stand up right now talking about it.". she said. Young was right. 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. Once out on the road, though, he changed. Robert's victims were hitchhikers. She also had children from another marriage. By her own account, she had been raped at least twenty times and had already had a baby. Rhoades is thought to have killed Zyskowski while the young man slept. He even had a horse's bridle, which he had placed around the young woman's neck to immobilize and control her. He'd told Shana Holts to "sit there and be a good girl." 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 The pair were on their way to attend a religious conference but sadly never made it. I could rest but not dream. That's exactly like him!" I was 15. But to ex-wife Debra Davis, when they. Performance & security by Cloudflare. If we went missing, months could pass before a report was filed, and by then there was little to connect the missing person in one state with the decomposed remains in another. I remember being in the woods off I-95. She's shown sitting in Rhoades's truck wearing a gray hoodie. Prosecutors say the trucker kept a mobile torture chamber in the cab of his long-haul rig. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events. He was charged with kidnapping and assault. He was married. When it turned, when it downshifted, when it drifted toward the shoulderI woke. *Some of the victims names have been changed. Unlike those of other young women on the road, my story was now recognizable. Could Debra help solve an active investigation? He said a gun was about control but a knife is personal. Without looking back, I ran into the woods and hid. Most say she's a prostitute and that it's a "transaction gone bad." I could easily imagine my own teenage voice whispering those same words. Why did he let me go? She had been missing from the Houston area since early 1990 after running off with her boyfriend. An unidentified girl, shown here in a photograph taken by Rhoades. Click to reveal Described by authorities as a sadistic killer, Rhoades was charged with their 1990 abductions and slayings, and pled guilty to their murders. "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." Robert started with petty crimes like public fighting and tampering with vehicles while he was still in high school. Megan Fox. His bearing shifted. Word filtered back that the dead girl was a teenage hitchhiker. Some of these were women left in Dumpsters. She didn't do what he expected. On the show, she talked of feeling a lot of guilt. He was not wearing flannel. Rhoades allegedly dumped the body of Walsh's husband, Douglas Scott Zyskowski, 28, in Texas. Rhoades picked her up along with her boyfriend, Ricky Jones, in February of 1990. Lee told me that the final lines of Holts's police statement read, "I don't see any good in filing charges. Why didn't I go to anyone? 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. The body was found in 1990, but not identified until 1992. She later stated that she wasnt comfortable with some of the things he made her do. 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. The dungeon-like compartment was described in "Roadside Prey" by Alva Busch, a book written about Rhoades. If there are more murder confessions to make, there may be time yet for other families to find some semblance of closure and justice. 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. Watch with discovery+. Rhoades had been arrested in early 1990 for a similar kidnapping in Houston, in which he kept an 18-year-old girl in the cab of his truck for two weeks, shaving her pubic hair . Regina would end up being the main focal point in a photo that would later be deemed one of the most terrifying photographs in the world. Six weeks later, though, we parted ways. In the morning, they talked me into applying to the college. What evidence was she lacking? I finally got to Davis through agent Young. I flew to Austin to meet with two retired FBI men, special agents Mark Young and Robert F. Lee, who'd both worked on the case. But, months later, she learned that Robert wasnt a pilot. Though her remains were discovered within months of her death, it wasn't until 2003 that she was able to be positively identified (via The Daily Nonpareil). One snowy night several months later, I was hitchhiking through Amherst, Massachusetts, and a carful of students from Hampshire College picked me up and let me stay with them. Evil Lives Here: Deadly Fetish has serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades ex-wife, Debra Davis, talk about when she met Robert and how their relationship ended eventually. Maybe they would remember something the others hadn't. The middle-aged husband and father to torment and abuse women as he crisscrossed the United states a.! Busch, a book written about Rhoades. `` the United states exchange for prosecutors not seeking the penalty. 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