Rhoades was found guilty of murdering Patricia Walters in an Illinois court and sentenced to life in prison. Eventually, law enforcement discovered Robert Ben Rhoades was a serial killer, in addition to being a sexual sadist who enjoyed torturing women and girls. It had the same neutral arrogance. This photograph, of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters, was taken by Robert Ben Rhoades, a serial executioner who was later discovered driving a 18-wheeler with a torture chamber in the back. Rhoades, in exchange for dropping the death penalty, pleaded guilty to their deaths . When it turned, when it downshifted, when it drifted toward the shoulderI woke. Maybe they would remember something the others hadn't. Had I confused the state? She had existed enough for me to call my dad all those years ago and warn him about what he would read. Rhoades was a great lover of games. I spent a week on the road in Appalachia, visiting truck stops, interviewing the older truckers and waitresses. She never reported the incident, as she had promised Robert. He then forced her to wear heels and a black dress before taking several photos of her, strangling her with baling wire, and leaving her body to decompose in the barn. I go through the paperwork, get fingerprinted and led through a channel of air-locked doors into a room with him. After she was rescued from Robert Ben Rhoades's vehicle, the woman told law enforcement that she had met the middle-aged husband and father at a truck stop, and he had agreed to give her a ride to her destination. We were back on the road before dawn, walking down a highway covered in black ice, shivering in our hoodies. I needed to understand what my responsibility was and to find my own answers, if nobody else's, so I began to look. It's more like a set of still photos. 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. Why did he let me go? Also like me, Regina became dependent upon the grace of truck drivers. I have no fascination with serial killers, so I didn't realize that Rhoades was famous. I asked him. It touched a nerve I didn't know I had. In her weeks with Rhoades, many drivers saw her, but somehow no alarm was raised. The memory was twenty-seven years old, and nothing in it was actionable. You didn't do it.". In the 1990s, the Berkeley County sheriff's department's computer crashed and burned. After Evil: Master Manipulator. I remember driving around Ohio howling along with Bruce Springsteen and buzzed out of my brain on Diet Cokes and being sad that the ride ended because it was a safe one and I had almost been able to be myself for a second, but that second had passed. He could be the killer. There was talk of me going to live with my dad in Virginia, where I had traditionally spent my summers. Waitresses were the first to kick you out. Most say she's a prostitute and that it's a "transaction gone bad." 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. And I remember being in the woods off I-95. Bruce Willis. One library archivist explained that I was looking for the kind of news nobody wanted to read. According to The Daily Nonpareil, Rhoades' truck logs placed him in the area where at least 50 unsolved murders were believed to have taken place. Robert Benjamin Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. 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. He said he didn't want to get caught up in anything time-consuming. "What I find interesting is that he told you about the body of the girl and talked about the Laughing Death Society while he was still driving. On the table in front of Young was a snapshot of Regina Walters that I hadn't seen, taken not very long before she was abducted. Regina Kay Walters 14 years old died by the hands of Robert Ben Rhoades. October 20, 2022. An FBI agent who reviewed the contents of the briefcase dubbed it a "rape kit," and he claimed it was one of the most "refined" kits he'd ever seen, leading him to conclude Rhoades had been torturing and abusing victims for a very long time. Roberts relationships didnt last very long, he had been married three times. Rhoades later was extradited to Texas for the murder of Jones and another victim. need your help for this. Robert Ben Rhoades used his job as a long haul truck to satisfy his sexually sadistic needs. Debra had a difficult time coping with the news that Robert had tortured women and killed multiple people. One story Debra Davis told still haunts me. 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. He was wrong. I arrived at his door melting in the hundred-degree heat. I asked around until I found someone who had been there in 1985. He'd told Shana Holts to "sit there and be a good girl." It said there had been a string of prostitute murders in truck stops in the area beginning in June of 1985, which was right on the edge of my time frame. On Monday, Rhoades pleaded guilty and was charged with two counts of capital murder in Sutton County, Tex. In this automatic appeal ( Cal. ", I was in the one place where I knew for certain women had been found, one less than a hundred yards away from where she was standing. A report from 2012 stated that Debra lived in College Station, Texas. Prosecutors say the trucker kept a mobile torture chamber in the cab of his long-haul rig. He said a gun was about control but a knife is personal. 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. Of the 200 people on a suspect list, almost all of them were long-haul truckers. 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. Appeal-Democrat. I never went to the police and didn't tell anyone for years. The picture was given to Young by Regina's mom. But an expert in what, I thought, killing? However, before he killed the 14-year-old, Rhoades took several haunting images of Walters that the authorities eventually recovered from his home. Smith said that should Rhoades ever be released from the Illinois prison for any unforeseen reason, he would be returned to a Texas prison. "She's one of the invisible people. Megan Fox. Regina Kay Walters is remembered among his victims for the terrifying photograph he took of her moments before he murdered her. Everywhere I looked, evidence of these girls was disappearing. She attested that she was pressured to perform acts to satisfy his masochistic fantasies. The victim, Lisa Pennal, told Miller that Rhoades had picked her up at a coffee shop in Buckeye, Arizona. Ricky Lee Jones body has never been found. "We laugh at death," he told me. It made sense. The sheer amount of victims he had coupled with the contrast of how little we know about his crimes makes this case haunting. He attempted college but he soon decided it wasnt for him and dropped out, becoming a long-haul truck driver instead. "But a real serial killer wouldn't have let me go, right?" She also had children from another marriage. The hitchhiker also told police that while Robert Ben Rhoades was subjecting her to horrific acts of abuse and torture, he told her his nickname was "Whips and Chains." This is the last picture ever taken of Regina Walters. She also claimed that Rhoades was bringing men into their home to act as her sex slaves. Rhoades intentionally chose women who lacked credibility. After receiving my friend's e-mail, I left messages with the FBI but was relieved when they were not returned. Word filtered back that the dead girl was a teenage hitchhiker. 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. 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. 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. I pulled up a map of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, and that's where things started to get hazy. He was given two life sentences inTexas without the possibility of parole. While the first few months were great, Debra noticed that Roberts appetite for sex increased. Robert Ben Rhoades Popularity . Robert Ben Rhoades, truck driver, is a serial killer, and rapist. My whole body relaxed. Patricia was newly married to Douglas Zyzkowski. But, months later, she learned that Robert wasnt a pilot. I said it was his choice. 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. He was not wearing a T-shirt. 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. She's tried to put the years with Rhoades behind her but still gets letters from him sporadically. I asked. "No," she said, "I never heard of anything like that anywhere.". 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. Picture taken by the killer of Regina Kay Walters before her murder. The birds went silent, and I didn't know what it meant. 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. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1905de5cd6c356 "Her body was found months later so she was probably kept alive for a while," Smith said. 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. Rhoades was dressed that night as an airline pilot, and it was months before Davis found out he wasn't one. Some of these were women left in Dumpsters. A trucker picked us up at daybreak, and I rode in a semi for the first time. I asked. Truck stop killer: Robert Ben Rhoades, described by authorities as a sadistic killer, was first jailed in 1990 for killing a 14-year-old runaway girl in Illinois (left), also pleaded guilty to. The more I learned about Rhoades, the more I saw parallels between us. Anyone want to party?". These were my private feelings. Drew Peterson, former police sergeant, was sentenced to 38 years for the murder of his 3rd wife, Kathleen Savio. What we do know about this dark story shines a light on the hell faced by as many as 50 women before they met their ultimate demise. Robert Benjamin Rhoades ( 22 de novembro de 1945) um assassino em srie americano e estuprador. They were stringing crime tape around the Dumpster just as another state trooper rolled into the lot. That was way back in the early '70s, though.". *Some of the victims names have been changed. He even had a horse's bridle, which he had placed around the young woman's neck to immobilize and control her. I remember being in the woods off I-95. She started to . Several days later, though, heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, I got picked up by another trucker who was not fine. Shana was a pretty girl with freckles and blank blue eyes. What is known about him in the 1980s is murky. Clearly the answer is: Make a throw pillow. Roadside Prey. That ride turned out to be fine. ", "That sure sounds like Bob. His trucker handle on the CB radio waves was "Whips and Chains," a reference to his kink. I remember coming down through the Blue Ridge Mountains in a truck with its brakes on fire and dropping over Chester Gap in the middle of the night when it was still hot and the air was loud with the chirping of bugs. Behind the tragic elements of Regina's story, like some kind of pentimento, I saw my own. Rhoades is additionally suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than 50 . 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 I first saw his apartment, I thought I'd walked into the showroom of a furniture store. 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