850 Women Are Dead. The FBI Says Truckers Did It.

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A 35-year-old Mexican national working for an Arizona-based trucking company was arrested at the border after allegedly targeting middle school girls and multiple women during a single night in Ellensburg, Washington. The case fits a disturbing pattern the FBI has tracked since 2004 through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative, which has linked more than 850 murders to long-haul truck drivers and currently tracks 450 active suspects. FLOCK license plate readers traced the blue semi to the carrier and caught the driver trying to re-enter the country.

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In 2004, the Bureau noticed something trending on America's highways: women's bodies kept turning up along interstates. Not random locations. Not scattered patterns. A trail of death follows our trucking corridors from coast to coast. They launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. Twenty years later, that database contains over 850 murdered women linked to long-haul truckers. And here's the number that should keep you up at night: 450 suspects remain active persons of interest.

That means right now, as you're reading this, the FBI believes there are multiple serial killers behind the wheels of big rigs sharing the road with your family.

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A predator picks up a woman at a truck stop in Georgia. He can sexually assault and murder her in Alabama. He dumps her body along an interstate shoulder in Florida. By the time anyone finds her, if anyone ever finds her, he's 800 miles away in Texas, picking up another load and looking for his next victim. Three states. Three jurisdictions. Zero connection between the victim and the location where she's found. Virtually no witnesses. A crime scene spread across half a continent.

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Robert Ben Rhoades called himself "The Truck Stop Killer." Between 1975 and 1990, he turned his sleeper cab into a mobile torture chamber complete with chains, handcuffs bolted to the ceiling, and a collection of implements designed to maximize suffering.

His confirmed victims include 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters, a runaway he held captive for weeks. He photographed her throughout her captivity. He called her father from payphones along his route to taunt him about what he was doing to his daughter. When he finally killed her, he'd already shaved her head, tortured her with fish hooks, and taken what investigators believe were trophy photographs. The FBI suspects Rhoades killed at least 50 women.

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