The Shocking Story of the Trucker Who Killed 50 People | The FBI Files | Real Crime

The nation's long network of interstate highways provided the perfect hunting line for a depraved predator that preyed on hitchhikers wandering the highways, holding them captive and then torturing and raping them when that didn't satisfy its twisted cravings, instead of that, he was killing all over the country, a serial rapist attacked. unsuspecting women it was only a matter of time until his dark impulses got out of control and led to murder. He followed a path so random he was untraceable and all that tied him to his

crime

s was his access to the roads and a strange sexual fetish I'm Jim Calstrom former head of the FBI's New York office when investigators believe the suspect had committed dozens of murders, the FBI was determined to stop his nationwide rampage on February 5, 1990, on a highway in Houston, Texas, 18-year-old Nicole. tuttle desperately tried to warn passing motorists someone finally stopped because of the bruises and bleeding the driver took her to the nearest phone to call the police at the houston police station nicole told the officers that she had been kidnapped and attacked but had managed to escape The ordeal began in California a week earlier, on January 29, she asked a

trucker

for a ride at a rest stop, he said his name was Dustin, who was heading east through From Arizona, after a few hours on the road, she fell asleep in the back compartment of his truck.

It seemed like that was exactly what he was waiting for. He climbed in the back and overpowered her before she was fully awake. He chained her to the walls and gagged him with a horse pit the

trucker

whipped her and pierced her with pins and fish hooks he also raped and sodomized her nicole told the police she was chained inside the taxi for six days her ordeal didn't end there inside her apartment in Houston the truck driver allowed her to take a bath then he changed her to the bed and raped her again she watched helplessly as he approached she with a razor pressed the blade close to her scalp and began to cut her hair after three hours the forced to return to the truck this time he couldn't tie her up when they stopped at a brewery he left her alone as she walked he went in to sign for her new load nicole knew this might be her only chance she ran still with a dog leash around her neck Houston police stopped a truck driver in the area whose truck fit Nicole's description, saying he was not the man who attacked her.

A background check revealed no warrants or outstanding convictions, so police released the trucker. Nicole told the officers to stop searching. She was too scared to testify against her attacker. She just wanted to return to her home in California on February 5, the same day Nicole escaped from another young woman. Was on the road looking for transportation just 15 miles away in Pasadena, Texas, fourteen-year-old Regina K Walters was running away with her new boyfriend. Her parents were divorced and Regina usually stayed with her father in Houston. She had been visiting her mother for a few days when she ran away and started hitchhiking, whether she was following the lead of a new teenage boyfriend or simply testing her independence, a trucker soon stopped by the cute young woman.

Regina's mother, Carolyn Walters, was a single mother who worked long hours at a department store. The employee, when she came home from work, was surprised to discover that her daughter was not home. Her daughter did not respond. Carolyn found no notes or saw any other signs that her daughter had returned to the house. She checked the answering machine, but Regina hadn't come out. messages carolyn called her daughter's friends and regina's father in houston hi chris no one had heard from the girl the distraught mother reported her daughter as a missing person to the Pasadena, Texas police spoke with a juvenile detective and provided the officer with a description of regina 14 her fourteen year old daughter was about five feet tall weighed 95 pounds and had long curly brown hair the detective asked carolyn what steps she had taken so far to find her carolyn had posted missing persons pamphlets but no one had responded yet the worried mother She hadn't heard from her daughter since they argued two nights earlier at 9:30 that night Regina told her mother she was going to visit a friend.

I just think you should stay home when Carolyn objected. The girl insisted that she would return right away. Regina. Against her better judgment, Carolyn relented, trusting that Regina would call if she stayed out later. Although the young teenager had a hi

story

of running away, she always returned alone. Her mother believed this time was different, the police detective from Pasadena, Texas, Suzanne Jackson, of the juvenile division, was assigned the case and understood Carolyn's concern. Several days passed and Regina usually called her mom when she left the house and let her know that she was okay and that she had just left, she would be back when she was ready to come home and she hadn't.

Carolyn posted more flyers at the store near her. house was hoping her daughter was unharmed perhaps she was simply staying with a friend along with the photo and description of regina carolyn offered a reward for information on her daughter's whereabouts five Days after Regina's disappearance, Carolyn received a phone call. The person she called had seen Regina talking to two young men the night she left her mother's house. Well, the person only knew that the man was Billy and Ricky, but she remembered that Billy had a girlfriend with a peculiar name. from urana carolyn immediately called the police detective jackson please the next day a second person gave carolyn the address of an apartment where she had seen regina at a party two days earlier when the police arrived no one answered the manager told them that the The apartment was rented to a man named Billy Wayne Gibbs.

The next morning, the detective told his colleagues about the case. He mentioned that he was looking for Gibbs in connection with Regina's disappearance. He was also looking for two others, a woman named Ureña and a man. named ricky did not know his last To his surprise, the officers names were billy wayne gibbs had a girlfriend named uranus sweet and a friend named ricky lee jones the three were wanted in connection with a car theft the units were sent to the department of Gibbs to await his return, officers patrolled the nearby highway after After several hours of surveillance, they picked up 17-year-old Gibbs and his girlfriend Urena near their apartment.

The police handcuffed the young couple and took them to the station for questioning. The third suspect, Ricky Lee Jones, was still at large. The arresting officer asked Gibbs if he had seen it. regina or ricky lee jones gibbs said he had spoken to them four days ago, but not since he told police that ricky and regina were in love and planned to flee to Mexico, where ricky had relatives, detectives suspected that jones, 18 years, he had another reason. for leaving the city, if they caught him with Regina, they could accuse him of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Regina was 14 years old and they were obviously dating. At the time they saw the fliers that the mother had left with a reward at her location, they decided that It would be better to leave the area so they wouldn't get caught and that's when they decided to leave the area by hitchhiking to Mexico. The detective learned that Ricky Lee Jones was already on probation for robbery, fleeing the jurisdiction was a violation of probation. , she issued an arrest warrant and also entered Regina's description into the NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, a database that lists both victims and offenders nationwide, if Regina were located by any police department in the country, the Pasadena, Texas police, would be notified until then with no known address. or vehicle it would be difficult to find the couple 15 miles away houston police interviewed jerry walters regina's divorced father told him he had received a disturbing call at his unlisted home number on the afternoon of march 17 the conversation was brief and walters did not recognize the caller's voice the man asked if you are regina's father when walters replied yes the man told him he knew where to find regina he said she was in the attic of a barn and that there had been some Changes had cut the girl's hair Regina's father was asked if she was dead or alive The caller hung up without answering Detective Jackson asked Southwestern Bell to trace the call The company told him it would take several days The police simply would have to wait apart from the phone records the trail of the missing 14-year-old girl and her boyfriend was cold as a stone in March 1990 Pasadena, Texas police detective Suzanne Jackson continued her search for Regina K Walters, from fourteen years.

The girl had not been seen since early February, when she left a friend's house with her 18-year-old boyfriend. ricky lee jones the detective's only lead was an anonymous phone call made to regina's father on march 17 the call had not yet been traced the same night regina's father received his call in houston her mother in Pasadena Texas also received a called hello she recorded the Conversations that the police had advised an unknown man told Carolyn to meet him at 6:30 the next morning at the local store. She had something to tell him about Regina and she wanted to say it in person without giving her name or description of her.

He hung. They called Carolyn. Detective Jackson told her it was risky to meet the man and Carolyn insisted that Jackson said the police would accompany her to protect her from a distance. The officers monitored Caroline while she waited in the store for the unknown person she had no way of knowing. If the man knew who she was and there was no way to identify him, her only hope was for him to approach her, she studied everyone who entered and left her and everyone who used the phone. carolyn waited more than two hours, the person she called never showed up two days later, Pasadena Texas police received phone records of both calls to Regina's parents.

They learned that the call to Regina's father in Houston was made from a gas station in Annas, Texas, 200 miles northwest of where she was last seen. The call went to her mother's house in Pasadena, Texas. Done from a pay phone just a few blocks away at that particular time, it was obvious that we were very concerned about Regina's whereabouts with the phone calls and information we received we were pretty sure there was going to be foul play involved. Two weeks later, Carolyn told Detective Jackson that the man who had called her before her wanted to set up another meeting at the same store.

Police traced the call to a nearby pay phone. The person she called had already fled on April 23. Police found a partial skeleton of a petite woman near a riverbank in Pasadena, Texas. They determined that the young woman's age and weight were close to those of Regina Detective Suzanne Jackson took Regina's dental records to the doctor. coroner went to the emmy's office with my information we did a comparison on some dental x-rays and found out that this particular person was not regina. Months passed without clues. Regina's parents feared the worst on October 12. Two children were playing near a dirt road in Manville, Texas, 26 miles south of Houston.

Near the road they came across a pile of wood. They found something they would never forget Human remains They ran home to tell their parents Who called the police They arrived and secured the area They couldn't identify the body at the scene It was very decomposed and there was no wallet or identification nearby All the police could I guess the victim was a child or young adult. They hoped an autopsy would tell them more. The detective from Pasadena, Texas, traveled to the Harris County medical examiner's office bringing Regina's dental records, so he almost had a match.

I compared those records with x. -The rays taken from the body didn't match, which was a bit disappointing, although we were very relieved that it wasn't Regina. Her parents at this particular point were concerned that we were going to recover a body and we were not going to locate it. Regina was alive and they were ready for some kind of closure at that point as the search continued in Texas until the fall of 1990. A farmer was preparing to burn down her old barn in Bonn County, Illinois. He hadn't been inside in years. The farmer went up.

He entered the hayloft to do a final check of the place. He looked through the abandoned building, but only found items long since discarded. Nothing seemed especially unusual or out of place. Then something caught his attention. He looked closer at the scattered hay and saw a skeleton appear. to be human, the farmer immediately called theIn October 1990, while Detective Jackson was searching Texas for 14-year-old Regina K Walters, a decomposed body was found in the hayloft of an abandoned barn in Bond County, Illinois, State Police Agent Mike Shealy from illinois. I responded to the scene. I received a call from the local sheriff's office in Bonn County, Illinois, and they had told me that they had found a body in a rural setting near Interstate 70, which is a major interstate highway that passes through the Bond County Crime Scene.

They conducted a thorough search of the barn, no clothing was found on or near the body, there was no wallet or other identification, they did find a white thread near the bones that looked too new to have been in the old barn for long. , police photographed the remains from various angles and found baling wire that matched the wire wrapped around the body's neck. There was some hair left on the head because the skull was very small. Police believed the victim was likely a child. People in nearby Greenville had not seen a murder in 10 years. The anonymity of this

crime

was especially disturbing.

Police had no way of knowing if the victim was from the area or was simply abandoned there by someone passing by on nearby Interstate 70. At first they weren't even sure of the body's age or sex. Forensic anthropologist Mark Johnsy was called in to conduct an examination. He made several discoveries that helped Illinois State Trooper Mike Shealy begin to identify the victim. Mark was able to determine that she was a young woman between 14 and 16 years old, weighing approximately 90 to 110 pounds. There were indications that her hair had been cut. The distal ends had begun to grow back but forensics had told us.

Said it was recent, it was determined that the cause of death was strangulation. The murderer had almost cut off the victim's head by twisting wire around her neck 16 times. That is what we found from the state of the joints and vertebrae. Johnsy discerned that the girl was murdered. Almost a year before a forensic scientist analyzed the white fiber found near the body to perhaps give a clue to what the young woman or her killer had been wearing, he determined that the fiber was primarily cotton, but did not come from clothing, it probably came from a towel.

Searching the national crime database, State Trooper Mike Shealy listed Jane Doe from Illinois as a white female, 14 to 16 years old. The age was probably

killed

as early as September 1989. We were alarmed to discover that there were 950 matches for the age group in the category and time frame, which made the task very difficult to begin the identification process. He fielded approximately 100 specifying the victim's time of death closer to the spring of 1990. The investigator then sent teletypes to law enforcement agencies working those cases. The detective investigating the disappearance of Regina Walters in Pasadena, Texas, received the ticker on October 16.

She believed the body's description matched Regina's and she called the Bond County Sheriff's Office in Illinois. The receptionist told her that she had received so many responses that the sheriff would have to call her back before she hung up. The detective remembered the mysterious phone call Regina's father had received. she said the girl was in a barn when I asked her if the body was found in a barn she immediately transferred me to the sheriff in which I started talking to him immediately and it was immediately discovered that it was possibly Regina so We immediately jumped.

Upon that and beginning to send the tickers back and forth, the detective asked another question based on the March 17 phone call to Regina's father. Did the girl in the barn have her hair shaved? Illinois authorities confirmed yes. The girl found in Illinois matched the description of the person she called. of regina we sent a copy of the dental x-rays to greenville illinois to the sheriff's office and those dental x-rays were compared to the body that was discovered there and confirmed to be regina's body, one question remained: where was regina's boyfriend Regina, Ricky Lee? Jones detectives asked the FBI for help, Special Agent Mark Young, a behavioral expert in the Houston field office was assigned as the case agent and I tried to go in and contact everyone who had any relationship with Ricky or Regina. .

I wanted to see if there was anything they mentioned that would have been valuable in locating Ricky at his old high school. Pasadena, Texas detectives also continued to pursue Ricky Lee Jones. A guidance counselor said Jones had not been enrolled in school. for the last year and that I had little information about him. Although he provided his last known address, it was the Jones family home. His sister Tammy was the only one there. He said no one in the family had seen Ricky for over a year. They had written him off as a bad boy believing it was him.

I ended up in prison the detective asked if they had relatives in Mexico Tammy said her mother had some in Matamoros just south of the Texas border Jackson showed him a photo of Regina but Tammy didn't recognize her okay that was the last time Ricky was already there He was listed as wanted because he had violated his parole, so we felt that maybe he was afraid to come home if he knew anything about Regina's disappearance and her death. We were afraid that he wouldn't want to call us and tell us what had happened or that he might participate himself as a special agent. mark young analyzed the details of the case developed a profile of regina's killer the agent determined that 18-year-old ricky lee jones was probably not committed the crime if ricky lee jones had murdered regina, he would have done it in a fit of rage and that would have been reflected in the crime scene and it was not seen that it was a very controlled and intentional crime scene, he had the impression that it is an elderly person, a white man, a traveler, a truck driver, a salesman. someone who had a reason to be on the other side of the country the fact that the barn was near an interstate supported agent young's theory the crime scene told the agent more about the sadistic killer who had taken regina's clothes , he

killed

her slowly by strangulation and, most notably, cut off Regina's long hair whoever did this crime was doing things beyond what was necessary to perpetrate the crime perhaps a sexual predator sexual sadist a person who had other crimes also the investigators were alerted to another crime in the city of marshall texas 200 miles north of partial houston The skeletal remains of a young man were found washed up on the bank of a stream.

The skull had been pierced on the left side by a small-caliber firearm, although there was little evidence to positively identify the body. The age and location of the victim led the police to conclude that it was probably Ricky Lee Jones I concluded that there were no other leads to cover in this case for all intents and purposes the case was closed in our division we had no other place to turn investigators seemed the man who had killed regina k walters and her boyfriend had gotten away with it when the search for a sadistic killer stopped in Pasadena, Texas, a thousand miles to the west, in Arizona, authorities They found a problem on their own roads, an Arizona Highway Patrol trooper was at the end of his shift when he came across a tractor-trailer parked on the side of an interstate entrance ramp, the truck had to be moved, it was a danger to the public.

Passing motorists, he noticed that the lights were on and the engines approached the driver's door, Officer Michael Miller recalled that a man suddenly came out of the cab and immediately extended his arms against the truck and I asked him, I told him what was going on and he didn't say anything officer we're fine they said no problem hey I have a gun in my back pocket. and he pointed to his back pocket and then put his hands on the side of his truck. This was an unusual situation. He could still hear the woman screaming inside the truck.

Miller handcuffed Robert Ben Rhodes and escorted the trucker back to his car for further questioning, he said it was okay, they were there together in a uh, I guess it would be called a consent situation and uh, but he didn't know if the screams coming from the woman with the fact that she was surprised, he was surprised but he was going to find out what the situation was Rhodes's hands were handcuffed behind his back Miller put him in the patrol car the officer returned to the truck to see the frantic woman he found her handcuffed to the wall by his wrists and ankles, the client assured him that he was no longer in danger.

I told him, ma'am, that he will have to stay here until he can get help because this is a criminal or crime scene and some detectives will have to do it. Look at this, I said, just stay calm, this man won't bother you again, just stay calm, I left the truck and went back to my patrol car. Miller returned just in time, Rhodes had maneuvered his hands cuffed in front of him and undid his seat belt, he was about to open the car door, the officer quickly re-cuffed him, no

real

routine stop along the way, no matter what you encounter, you never know who you're dealing with and they It gives me chills knowing that this man, as cool as he was, could probably have killed me and the girl at the same time and still be in the road.

Casa Grande City Police arrived at the scene and released the man. woman and transported her up to the police station for further questioning inside the truck, they found a gruesome array of torture tools, chains attached to rings welded to the back of the sleeping compartment, fish hooks, bloody towels, a horse pit and a briefcase full of implements from a sexual sadist they also found a camera in the briefcase along with several hairs that did not belong to the woman found in the big house van police detective rick barnhart led the investigation robert rhodes had what I call a kit rape in his truck he had all kinds of paraphernalia, he had long sticks with clips on the end where he pulled out and dismembered his victims, he had whips and from that alone I knew that Robert Rhodes was a predator.

The woman found chained in Rhodes' truck was 27 years old. Old Kathleen Fond, who had never had any trouble before, told the detective that she had been picked up about an hour earlier at the Rip Griffins truck stop north of Phoenix that he was trying to rape when she fell asleep in the stall. to sleep, the trucker got back in. He assaulted her and moved her to the walls The man told her it was called whips and chains He had been doing this for 15 years The police photographed her injuries She was at risk of burns from the handcuffs and welts from the beatings She tried to defend herself of her attacker but they changed hands, all she could do to defend herself was bite him, she managed to hurt his left shoulder enough to distract him from raping her.

Kathleen agreed to press charges of assault and kidnapping, but Detective Barnhart believes she could be trouble for the prosecution. My interview. With Kathleen it was

real

ly a little strange. She would talk about this reality, this terrible attack that she endured, and then periodically return to a

story

about her trip across the country to see the president. She told me that she wanted to give the president a microchip. and she talked about the underground prison from which no one escapes and all this time my heart sank because I needed Kathleen to tell a very lucid story about this, the horrible incident that happened to her, the detective asked truck driver robert ben rhodes for his version of Rhodes said Kathleen was crazy and described her as a lizard, the trucker's term for a woman who trades sex for rides.

He claimed she requested it and that she liked rough sex, although they never actually had sex. He refused. to provide details about what happened in the sleeper compartment of the truck, spoke about it and never admitted to any crime. Police photographed Rhodes' wound. It looked like a bite mark on his left shoulder, just as Kathleen had described. Rhodes claimed he suffered the injury while loading his truck, but Detective Barnhard believed Kathleen. The story she told me she tried to bite his throat but he moved and she bit him on the upper left shoulder and we have a photo of her bite mark and her story completely corroborated, you know what happened in that taxi local dormitory.

Prosecutors arrested Robert Ben Rhodes and held him for aggravated assault, sexual assault and false imprisonment, but his only witness, Kathleen Vine, suffered paranoid delusions to keep him behind bars. They needed additional witnesses. Kathleen's claim that Rhodes had been kidnapping women for 15 years obsessed Detective Barnhart. She entered Rhodes's name in the ncic in caseother agencies had reported similar crimes while the detective pursued the case, it made headlines across the Southwest. A Houston police officer was among those who read about it. The trucker detained in Arizona sounded like the same man who was detained. Earlier this year, outside Houston, police suspected Rhodes had held a woman captive in her van for six days, raping and torturing her until she finally escaped from him.

They couldn't press charges because the woman didn't identify him. Houston Police Sergeant Beaumar described the case to Detective Barnhart I was contacted by Sergeant Bomar. This was the case in which the young woman escaped. He was pretty sure Robert Rhodes was at least a serial rapist. He had suspicions that he might be a murderer since Rhodes had crossed state lines since he last saw him. Criminal Detective Barnhart contacted the FBI for help. He hoped that with the support of the FBI he could gather enough evidence of the trucker's serial sex crimes to build a case that would let Special Agent Bob Lee of the FBI's Houston field office know where to start was at Rhodes' apartment.

In Houston, he spoke with Rhodes' owner. She had checked the apartment after the truck driver's arrest and was horrified to find bloody torture devices, based on her statement. Agent Lee obtained a warrant to search the premises. We know that serial rapists often retain memories of their victims. Whether it's an article of clothing or a piece of jewelry or whatever, when we walk in we find bondage paraphernalia, we find chains, we find handcuffs, we find a rack that someone could be tied to, we find a lot of women's jewelry agents in the police. Houston too. Bloody white towels, women's clothing and stacks of photographs were found.

The snapshots showed some women with shaved hair in various states of undress, tied up and bruised. Investigators believe Rhodes took the photos as souvenirs of his crimes to relive his victim's terror, although officers now had evidence that Rhodes was likely a serial rapist; they were unable to identify any of his victims in the photos without additional witnesses. the case in arizona was still written prosecutors only the witness kathleen vine was questionable a trial would be a contest of he said she said and a mentally disturbed woman could leave jurors unconvinced in December 1990. The best the Arizona prosecutors was to offer Rhodes a six-year deal, including time served and eligibility for work release, if he pleaded guilty to the charges against Vine.

His lawyer accepted that in about a year Rhodes could be released. Parole stalking new prey In October 1991, a year after fourteen-year-old Regina K Walters was found murdered in Illinois, her case remained unsolved. Special Agent Mark Young, an FBI profiler, predicted the killer was likely a truck driver or traveling salesman with prior sex crimes. His signature. His behavior was to cut his victim's hair. The young agent spoke to area law enforcement agencies hoping to have open cases that might match the profile, one day Bob Lee, who was an FBI agent in the violent crime squad, told me He overheard me talking on the phone with a police officer and he said, "Hey, I had a case." he worked a few months ago he was a truck driver he kidnapped a girl and they cut her hair just as you say the victim's name was nicole tuttle she had also been raped repeatedly and had escaped the day regina walters and ricky lee jones were the last seen alive on Monday, February 5, 1990.

That same day Houston police had detained a truck driver named Robert Ben Rhodes who fit Nicole's description of her attacker at the time he told officers he was the wrong man, Special Agent Bob Lee of the FBI's Houston Field Office. He recalled that Nicole then changed her story at the hospital where she was treated in her room; later that night, she told detectives that Robert Ben Rhodes was actually the individual who had kidnapped her. When they asked if he wanted to press charges, he told the police officer. that all he wanted to do was go home.

Lee also told Agent Young that Nicole was not the trucker's only victim. Rhodes was serving time in an Arizona prison for the assault of Kathleen Vine and was eligible for work release in just three months. The agent then described the search of the trucker's residence and said we found some photographs in his apartment some of his own photographs with another person with short hair who appears to be in a barn the chilling photos showed a young woman in different locations wearing a variety of seductive outfits in the barn she was in a black dress shielding herself from rose's camera when I saw those photos I said I'm regina walters to verify I went with the family and got several of their photos and there are facial features and markings that exactly duplicated the photographs that the roads took the FBI began to build a kidnapping and murder case against Robert Ben Rhodes.

They reviewed the evidence from the search of Rhodes' apartment and found more photos of Regina. They also found several items of women's clothing, including a black dress. what lab examiners confirmed was the dress Regina had worn in the photos. Illinois State Agent Mike Sheeley was notified and sent the evidence found in the Greenville barn to the FBI laboratory in Houston. Laboratory examiners found that cotton fiber recovered in Illinois was consistent with blood. Towels were found in Rhodes' Houston apartment, but the results were inconclusive since that type of towel was very common. Detective Jackson of Pasadena, Texas, met with Agents Sheila Young and Lee at the Houston FBI field office to discuss what they needed for a solid case against Rhodes, not only for Regina's murder but for crimes against her other anonymous victims with roads approaching their release date.

Illinois State Trooper Mike Sheely knew they were racing cars, he was eligible for parole, and he was actually eligible to work outside of prison almost on a release system. and that's why we were under pressure to have the accusations and to have him arrested on our charges. Agents interviewed Rhodes' former employer in Houston, Mike Eggleton. The owner of the transport company was not surprised to see that Eggleton had been questioned by the authorities about the roads within a few years. Years ago, local police suspected the truck driver of assaulting a woman in the back of his truck, but formal charges were never filed.

The roads the truck had driven had been sold, but Eggleton provided the vehicle identification number, as well as the highways' transportation records and fuel receipts, while agents waited for a trace of the identification number to return. of the truck, the team began putting together a timeline from the trucker's travel agents and found fuel receipts from a gas station in Annas, Texas, dated March 17, 1990, the same location and date the father was called. of Regina. jerry walters oklahoma city several of the local calls to regina carol's mother also coincided with rhodes' time in houston a question about the calls was still the killer could have easily obtained carolyn's number from the missing persons fliers published in the city, but how did he get jerry walters off the list?

Numbers Agent Young found the answer in evidence stored in Arizona. It was in that evidence that we located Regina Walters. The small spiral notebook on the cover contained all of her personal information, the address and phone number of her mother and her father when she was young. She turned the notebook over. found something even more disturbing a message that he believed was written by Rhodes himself a knife and a gun were drawn above a phrase that appeared to have blood dripping from its letters the phrase said Ricky is a dead man only a DNA test would confirm if the partial remains of young man found in southeast texas was ricky lee jones unfortunately investigators lacked a known source of jones's dna for comparison since rhodes claimed to have been kidnapping and torturing his victims for the past 15 years the team presented his timeline for vicam to the violent criminal apprehension program an fbi database listing thousands of solved and unsolved crimes across the country despite limited information and gaps in the timeline detective jackson was not surprised when the system returned more than 50 possible matches for open homicide and missing persons cases on its trips from houston to baltimore to Los Angeles and back in a matter of four to five days at a time could give you an idea of ​​how many

people

it has access to and the remote locations where he could abuse these

people

and get rid of them.

A week later, officers located Rhodes' truck. In Houston it had been two years since Rhodes had driven the truck, the cab had since been steam cleaned, repainted and used by other drivers, but evidence of his crimes somehow survived. Investigators recovered a single lock of hair that miraculously they also found a small fingerprint on the vinyl upholstery in the bedroom compartment that matched her prints which proved she had been in the van but did not prove when or if she had been there against her will in January 1992, almost two years after Regina had disappeared. They determined that the evidence was not decisive enough to prove interstate kidnapping and dropped Federer's case with Rhodes' parole hearing just a week away.

Investigators convinced the Bond County prosecutor to file charges in Illinois for capital murder. They knew the evidence was circumstantial and they pressed on. He feared. that he could escape and I also believe that because of overcrowding in the prison systems and that type of thing, he could be released on February 6, investigators traveled to the Arizona State Prison in Florence to serve the warrant on Roads, their plan was to confront Rhodes with photos of Regina in hopes of eliciting a confession, an incriminating statement would strengthen his case. The alleged serial killer was unfazed even by the smoke.

We spent about an hour with him, but Rhodes was unwilling to talk to us and denied any involvement in the death. and he was very, very firm in his denials and at that moment we knew we were going to have to prove our case. Agents believed Rhodes knew they were seeking a confession because his evidence was weak. They suspected that this arrogant man was betting that he could beat the charges; perhaps he believed that they did not care enough about his victims to earn a conviction. Many serial offenders, whether murderers or other sexual predators, will choose victims they consider to be forgotten people because they trust that element. that law enforcement and society don't really care about hitchhikers or less wealthy people, less established people, he took advantage of those types of people in the hopes of not getting the attention that happened almost two years after the death by regina k walters. and the kidnapping and sexual assault of at least two other women robert ben rhodes was extradited from arizona to stand trial in illinois he and his lawyer managed to delay the trial date for six months on 9/11 the overconfident trucker lost his nerve in a bond county illinois court his attorney pleaded guilty to a charge of capital murder that carried a possible death sentence accepted an offer of first-degree murder with a penalty of life in prison Rhodes was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole even as he serves her sentence at the maximum security prison in chester illinois investigators have not abandoned the case they continue to gather evidence committed to proving that regina k walters was not the only victim of rhode's murder there is another photo of a still unidentified woman that was uploaded to the truck with him we are a little worried about whether he could be another victim, anyone who enters the comfort zone of a serial killer's truck could be another murder victim.

Investigators continue to work to identify unknown women from Rhodes' past in hopes of bringing the small comfort of closure. to their grieving families