Law enforcement cross-referenced his trucking logs with records of young women that went missing over a 15-year span when he was believed to be active, ultimately suggesting that he was responsible for some 50 murders, or as many as one to three women a month during his peak. Though such allegations have never been confirmed, the authorities widely suspect that Rhoades actually killed dozens of women. Other prosecutors and cops who worked the Truck Stop Killer case over the years likewise felt Rhoades’ evil. The hairs on my arm stand up right now talking about it.” After a years-long pre-trial period, the Truck Stop Killer pleaded guilty to both murders and received another life sentence as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.Īccording to District Attorney Steve Smith, “I’ve been a prosecutor since 1979 and it was one of the rare occasions when I was in the court where the defendant walked in and you felt the evil. After he began serving his sentence, however, he started confessing to other murders committed during his long life on the road.įor one, he only faced consequences for the murders of Walsh and Zyskowski in 2012, more than 20 years after the crimes were committed. Robert Ben Rhoades was convicted for the Walters murder in 1994 and sentenced to life behind bars in Illinois, but authorities couldn’t get him for anything else for a long time. Once Behind Bars, Robert Ben Rhoades Confessed To Even More Killings By then, the Truck Stop Killer had been in custody for about five months, but the book on his reign of terror was hardly closed. Afterward, he threw her body in a barn off of Interstate 70 in Illinois, where it was found in September. Robert Ben Rhoades One of the last photos Robert Ben Rhoades took of Regina Kay Walters before killing the 14-year-old.Īfter torturing her with fishing hooks and other assorted instruments, Rhoades took one final set of photos of Walters just before killing her with a baling wire garrote. The 14-year-old from Pasadena, Texas was hitchhiking with her boyfriend, Ricky Jones, when Rhoades picked them up in February of 1990. However, it took almost 13 years for the authorities to identify Walsh’s remains after deer hunters found her body near the mouth of a canyon in Millard Country, Utah, identifiable only by dental records.Ĭommitted soon after he dispatched the newlyweds, the crime that ultimately earned the Truck Stop Killer a life sentence was the rape and murder of Regina Kay Walters. However, he held Walsh prisoner for more than a week, during which time he tortured and raped her repeatedly before shooting her to death.Īuthorities found Zyskowski’s body near Interstate 10 east of Ozona, Texas later in January, though it wasn’t identified until 1992. The Truck Stop Killer picked them up in Texas and killed Zyskowski immediately. The couple had left Seattle in November of 1989 and were hitchhiking to Georgia, preaching the Christian gospel. After he was arrested in Arizona in April of that year, he confessed to the murders of newlyweds Patricia Walsh and Douglas Zyskowski. It’s presumed that his actual first murder happened long before, but Robert Ben Rhoades’ first confirmed murders happened in January of 1990. He even took photos of some of his victims before murdering them. What the authorities learned much later is that, while out on the road, the Truck Stop Killer tortured, raped, and killed as many as 50 women. A few years later, Rhoades himself was back in trouble with the law for a robbery that saw him dishonorably discharged from the Marines.īy the 1970s, Rhoades had found work as a truck driver.
Soon after, in 1964, his father was arrested for molesting a 12-year-old girl and committed suicide before the trial. While in high school, he was arrested for tampering with a vehicle and then again for fighting in public before he joined the Marines. Pinal County Jail Robert Ben Rhoades’ mugshot from his 1990 arrest in Arizona.īorn Novemin Council Bluffs, Iowa, Robert Ben Rhoades was in trouble with the law almost from the start.