Robert Ben Rhoades’ Traveling Torture Truck
IMDbRobert Ben Rhoades, a.k.a. the “Truck Stop Killer.”
Horror stories of dangerous hitchhiking encounters are fairly common, but Robert Ben Rhoades made that horror a reality for the nearly 50 victims he kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed between 1975 and 1990.
His first confirmed murders happened in January 1990, when he picked up a newlywed couple named Patricia Walsh and Douglas Zyskowksi who had been hitchhiking to Georgia and preaching Christian gospel.
Rhoades killed Zyskowski right away, but he kept Walsh as his prisoner for over a week, tortured her, raped her, and ultimately shot her to death before dumping her body in Utah.
YouTubeRobert Ben Rhoades’ murder kit.
Between the seats of his truck was a dungeon-like compartment where he would keep his victims. There were handcuffs attached to the ceiling so he could torture and rape the women he picked up using tools from his “murder kit,” including chains, cords, whips, leashes, dildos, clips, pins, and fish hooks.
Not long after killing Zyskowski and Walsh, Rhoades picked up a young couple, Regina Kay Walters and Ricky Lee Jones. Walters was 14 years old, hitchhiking with her boyfriend, according to GQ.
As he had done before, Rhoades killed Jones, dumping his remains in Mississippi — but he kept Walters hostage for several weeks in his “traveling torture chamber.”
It was during this time that he took what many consider to be one of the most haunting photos of all time: young Walters, with her head shaved and covered in bruises, moments before her death.
Public DomainRegina Kay Walters, moments before Robert Ben Rhoades murdered her.
As investigators later learned, Rhoades tortured Walters with fish hooks and various other instruments, finally killing her with a baling wire garrote and throwing her body in a barn off of Interstate 70 in Illinois.
He earned a life sentence for Walters’ murder, and he ultimately confessed to killing Zyskowski and Walsh in 2012. After cross-referencing Rhoades’ trucking logs with reports of missing women, however, police estimate he may have been responsible for close to 50 deaths.
If true, that would mean Robert Ben Rhoades killed at least three women per year for 15 years.
“I’ve been a prosecutor since 1979,” said Steve Smith, the prosecuting attorney during Rhoades’ trial. “It was one of the rare occasions when I was in the court where the defendant walked in and you felt the evil. The hairs on my arm stand up right now talking about it.”
