A shocking new book sheds light on the many long-haul truckers in the US who operate as serial killers, remaining dangerously undetected. The last photos of Regina Walters, 14, show her forced into a black dress and high heels, her face contorted in fear. She was murdered by Robert Ben Rhoades, the 'Truck Stop Killer', who built a torture chamber in his semi and killed up to 50 suspected victims over 15 years.
Frank Figliuzzi’s book Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers argues that Rhoades is not an isolated case but part of a wider sociological phenomenon. Long-haul trucking is the number one profession of serial killers. Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director, was shocked to learn of at least 850 murders along America’s highways over recent decades, with more than 200 cases unsolved and about 450 suspects.
Victims are almost all sex-trafficked women, picked up at truck stops in one jurisdiction, assaulted and murdered in another, and dumped along a highway in a third. Twenty-five long-haul truckers are serving time for multiple homicides, and crimes still occur today. The FBI opened the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to address the crisis.
Figliuzzi rode over 2,000 miles in a truck to understand the subculture. He notes that trucking is mentally and physically taxing, often solitary, and can take a toll on health. He asks whether the occupation attracts sociopaths or the job aggravates sociopathic tendencies, but stresses that only a tiny fraction of truckers are killers.
