Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, the FBI was tipped off
Speaker 2: to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today,
Speaker 2: at least eight hundred and fifty homicides have been linked
Speaker 2: to a solitary breed of predators, long haul truck drivers.
Speaker 2: They've been given names like the truck stop killer, who
Speaker 2: rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his
Speaker 2: truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and
Speaker 2: the Interstate strangler, who once answered a phone call from
Speaker 2: his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The
Speaker 2: crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit,
Speaker 2: the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. In many cases, the victims,
Speaker 2: often at risk women, are picked up at truck stops
Speaker 2: in one jurisdiction, sexually assaulted and murdered in another and
Speaker 2: dumped along a highway in a third place. The transient
Speaker 2: nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these
Speaker 2: cases incredibly difficult to solve. Based on his own on
Speaker 2: the ground research and drawing on his twenty five year
Speaker 2: career as an FBI's special agent, Frank Figluozy investigates the
Speaker 2: most terrifying cases. He also rides in a big rig
Speaker 2: with a long haul trucker for thousands of miles, gaining
Speaker 2: an intimate understanding of the life and habits of drivers
Speaker 2: and their roadside culture. And he interviews the courageous traffic
Speaker 2: victims of these crimes and their inspiring efforts to now
Speaker 2: help others avoid similar fates. Long Haul is a gripping
Speaker 2: exploration of a violent, disordered world hiding in plain sight
Speaker 2: and the heroes racing to end the horror. It will
Speaker 2: forever unsettle how you travel on the road. The book
Speaker 2: that we're featuring this evening is long Haul, Hunting the
Speaker 2: Highway serial Killers with my special guest, former FBI Assistant
Speaker 2: director and National Security contributor for him News and author
Speaker 2: Frank Figluzy. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much.
Speaker 2: For this interview, Frank big Luesy.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan. I am I'm thrilled to be a
Speaker 3: part of this and be a small part of what
Speaker 3: you've been doing for fourteen fifteen years, So thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. You take us right into this book,
Speaker 2: long Haul Hunting the Highway serial Killers. You offer a
Speaker 2: dramatic example of what readers will discover in the following
Speaker 2: pages and know hear from you in this interview. You
Speaker 2: take us to April fools Day, nineteen ninety. Arizona State
Speaker 2: Trooper Mike Miller spots a truck with its hazard lights
Speaker 2: on on the shoulder of I ten in Casta Grande.
Speaker 3: Tell us what he finds, Yeah, the Grande. If anybody's
Speaker 3: ever driven between Phoenix and Tucson, the Costa Grande marks
Speaker 3: the halfway point on Ien and this trooper seize the
Speaker 3: truck hazard lights on, gets out of his car, puts
Speaker 3: his trooper hat on, and approaches the cab of the truck.
Speaker 3: And that's when he hears the screams of a young
Speaker 3: woman who is shackled in the back of the cab
Speaker 3: and naked except for a pair of fuzzy lion bedroom
Speaker 3: slippers and he realizes, you know, I've got a problem here,
Speaker 3: and that driver was Robert Ben Rhodes, who we later
Speaker 3: find out was a notorious killer who may have killed
Speaker 3: as many as fifty people, mostly women. This begins a
Speaker 3: massive investigation. Amongst Robert Ben Rhodes's victims was a fourteen
Speaker 3: year old girl whose body is found only later, much later,
Speaker 3: in an abandoned Illinois farmhouse. This fourteen year old was
Speaker 3: hitchhiking boyfriend outside of Houston, Texas. He you know, the
Speaker 3: boyfriend and her were picked up by Rhodes. The boyfriend
Speaker 3: was quickly killed because he was a mere speed bump
Speaker 3: in the way, and then for the next weeks, Rhodes
Speaker 3: proceeds to rape and torture Regina Walters at his discretionion.
Speaker 3: The cruelty of Rhodes is really mind blowing. At one point,
Speaker 3: he calls he actually anonymously calls Regina's father, who of
Speaker 3: course is distraught over where Regina may or may not
Speaker 3: be yes and he says, I've made some changes. I've
Speaker 3: cut her hair, and he hangs up. I tell the
Speaker 3: story of Regina in the book, because number one, it's ghastly.
Speaker 3: But the photos that Rhodes took up her just before
Speaker 3: he killed her. Are seared into my brain because if
Speaker 3: you see the photos of Regina Walters, you're looking at
Speaker 3: a girl who's been tortured and raped, knows she may
Speaker 3: be killed and has been. Her hair's been cut into
Speaker 3: a short bob, she's been forced into a black dress
Speaker 3: and high heels, and the look on her face and
Speaker 3: the body language is someone who is really pleading to
Speaker 3: not be raped again. Her arms are outstretched, the look
Speaker 3: on her face is ghastly, and it's something that really
Speaker 3: sticks with you.
Speaker 2: Now, you were a former FBI Assistant director and twenty
Speaker 2: five years as special agent and true you talk about
Speaker 2: the long haul this book project, it's origins beginning in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one with the conversation. Tell us about that
Speaker 2: conversation and who that was with and how this was
Speaker 2: the impetus for this book to begin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I kind of with all my various
Speaker 3: leadership roles around the FBI, I kind of prided myself
Speaker 3: on how much I knew about the corners of the FBI,
Speaker 3: the nooks and crannies of the FBI. At one time,
Speaker 3: I was the Chief Inspector of the FBI, which meant
Speaker 3: I had to audit programs everywhere in the FBI.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: People think, oh, well, Frank has probably written a book
Speaker 3: about something he's worked here in the FBI. Well that's
Speaker 3: not true. The truth is that I knew little to
Speaker 3: nothing about the Highway Serial Killer Initiative inside the FBI
Speaker 3: until I retired and had a discussion with the woman
Speaker 3: who has headed up this initiative, the HSK within the FBI.
Speaker 3: She's assigned to Behavioral Analysis Unit for at Quantico, Virginia.
Speaker 3: And I said, what do you do for a living?
Speaker 3: And she said, I head up the Highway Serial Killings
Speaker 3: Initiative And I said what. She said, Yeah, we have
Speaker 3: an initiative involving at least eight hundred and fifty murders
Speaker 3: that we know of alongside our nation's roadways that we
Speaker 3: believe are committed by long haul truckers. And I said, okay,
Speaker 3: you got to tell me more, and she did. I
Speaker 3: had to learn more myself. That's the investigator in me.
Speaker 3: I had to dig deeply. The FBI can't talk about
Speaker 3: pending investigations, and so I knew that and I respected that,
Speaker 3: but now I had to know more. And this is
Speaker 3: my journey. This book is really the story of my
Speaker 3: journey into three cultures. Long haul trucking, for which, by
Speaker 3: the way, I rode over two thousand miles with a
Speaker 3: long haul trucker on a flatbed across the country to
Speaker 3: try to get deep into the long haul trucking culture
Speaker 3: and understand it. Then second culture I dig into is trafficking,
Speaker 3: sex trafficking, because the vast majority of these victims eight
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty of them are indeed sex trafficking victims.
Speaker 3: And then thirdly, of course, the crime analysis, the behavioral
Speaker 3: analysis of these crimes, and the people who work to
Speaker 3: connect the dots to stop the killer. So it's a
Speaker 3: book about three cultures focused around the most heinous killers,
Speaker 3: the most compelling victims. Really a deep dive into trafficking
Speaker 3: and crime analysis.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Catherine Devein and the Highway Serial Killings Initiative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, indeed, one of the people I spent a great
Speaker 3: deal of time with was Catherine Devane. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that is a pseudonym. You know, serial killers tend to
Speaker 3: be a bit unpleasant, and so the head of the
Speaker 3: initiative is you know, asked me to please use an
Speaker 3: alias and I did. And she's been doing this for
Speaker 3: seventeen years. And her job is to lead a team
Speaker 3: that gathers the data from local, county and state law
Speaker 3: enforcement agencies around the country with regard to their unsolved
Speaker 3: highway killings. And she starts connecting the dots. And yes,
Speaker 3: there are fils and ow algorithms, but quite honestly, also
Speaker 3: it is brain power. It is their knowledge and expertise
Speaker 3: that says this one looks like that one. And I
Speaker 3: get deep in the book into commonalities victims, something called victimology,
Speaker 3: of course, which is the study of how a victim
Speaker 3: comes to be the victim, what the crime scene looks like.
Speaker 3: Are they redheads? And I get deep into the well
Speaker 3: known series of murders called the Redhead murders along our
Speaker 3: nation's highways, committed by truckers. Are they shot? Are they strangled?
Speaker 3: Are they duct taped? If so rare? Are they found
Speaker 3: in a ditch, under a tree or in water? Is
Speaker 3: their own clothing used to strangle them or to gag them?
Speaker 3: Are they raped before they die or post mortem? All
Speaker 3: of this is discussed in the book because those are
Speaker 3: the details that matter, Those are the details that connect
Speaker 3: one case to another. And then of course, even when
Speaker 3: you've connected cases because of those commonalities, well that's nice,
Speaker 3: but you then have to solve the case by finding
Speaker 3: the killer. And this initiative is based on the premise
Speaker 3: that law enforcement agencies will enter their data and allow
Speaker 3: the FBI to make those connections. That's the key, and
Speaker 3: part of Catherine De Bane's job is getting out there
Speaker 3: on the road preaching the gospel of the HSK two
Speaker 3: police departments who often say, look, we were a small department,
Speaker 3: we're a sheriff's office. We don't have an analyst to
Speaker 3: enter the data. You know, there's like two two hundred
Speaker 3: questions on these FBI forms that you've got to fill
Speaker 3: out about your victim, your crime scene, your location, your murder,
Speaker 3: and if you don't answer those questions that the FBI
Speaker 3: is really challenged. In fact, sometimes this unit at Quantico,
Speaker 3: Virginia will simply pick up a lead from reading the newspaper.
Speaker 3: They'll say, look, look at this. This happened in our
Speaker 3: Alabama and doesn't this look like the thing that happened
Speaker 3: the murder that happened in Oklahoma. It's those kinds of
Speaker 3: connections that get made.
Speaker 2: You're talking about that she's trying to impress to law
Speaker 2: enforcement agencies about the importance of entering information into the
Speaker 2: FBI's ViCAP Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, because, as you say,
Speaker 2: it's essential that they put that information in. You also
Speaker 2: chronicle in the book the reasons why on Earth they
Speaker 2: wouldn't enter information into this database.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the hsk I Highway Serial Killings Initiative is a
Speaker 3: sub database within ViCAP, and many many police departments don't
Speaker 3: even know it exists. So again, a large part of
Speaker 3: the FBI's job is education and awareness, and then you
Speaker 3: know as to reasons why that data may not get
Speaker 3: entered at all. You got everything from a lack of
Speaker 3: resources and budget to lack of computer resources. Again, some
Speaker 3: of these departments don't even have a crime analyst, let alone.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they don't have detectives. If you've got to stay
Speaker 3: you know, a county sheriff's office, for example, whose job
Speaker 3: is road patrol, and they're stuck with this case. Somebody's
Speaker 3: got to do this, And in some cases, the IFI
Speaker 3: will help get a grant from DOJ to get that
Speaker 3: analytical resource. Sometimes, if you've got a serious of cases,
Speaker 3: they'll they'll fly out to you and say, look, we'll
Speaker 3: enter the data for you, but this is garbage and
Speaker 3: garbage out. We can't help you if we don't know
Speaker 3: about your case.
Speaker 2: Now you include the Nashville Metro Police Department homicide detective
Speaker 2: path Postaglione, and he caught up with long hauler killer
Speaker 2: Bruce Mendelhall sitting in his vehicle at a Tennessee truck stop.
Speaker 2: Tell us about this case and this officer and Bruce Mendelhall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mendenhall is another notorious repeated serial killer. And actually
Speaker 3: this was a this was a good news story, if
Speaker 3: there's any such thing in this business. By that, I
Speaker 3: mean he was captured within two weeks of one of
Speaker 3: his murders. And sometimes these things go on for literally decades, decades,
Speaker 3: meaning they don't Sometimes it's decades before they the police
Speaker 3: even know the name of a victim. DNA, by the way,
Speaker 3: no surprise, is now solving many of these cold cases
Speaker 3: where a detective says, well, I'll let me enter the
Speaker 3: DNA and see what happens, and bingo, now we get
Speaker 3: a connection to a killer or to DNA found on
Speaker 3: another victim years ago. And that, by the way, that
Speaker 3: happened a couple of times while I was writing this book,
Speaker 3: I had to you know, I thought I had a
Speaker 3: comprehensive understanding of all the cases, and then I had
Speaker 3: set alerts on my on Google Alerts to alert me
Speaker 3: if another development occurred in any case involving truckers and
Speaker 3: killers and bingo. You know, I had a couple happened
Speaker 3: while I was writing the book and I had to
Speaker 3: insert them. So the story of the story of yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's very much still happening. This is not a
Speaker 3: history book. It is, but it's also still very much
Speaker 3: at real time. So Mendenhall interesting story. And there's something
Speaker 3: really kind of spooky that happens to me personally I'll
Speaker 3: share with you. But he grabs a girl named Sarah
Speaker 3: Nicole Hulibert at a truck stop, and yes, she is
Speaker 3: a trafficking victim related to that. That truck stop, it's
Speaker 3: it's one of the rare truck stops that is in
Speaker 3: a downtown area of a city. You don't usually see that,
Speaker 3: but the highway dumps you off quickly into Nashville, and
Speaker 3: this truck stop was there, and he grabs her. There. Now,
Speaker 3: a really sharp detective named Pat pestil Pastilione, Nashville, PD
Speaker 3: is work and gets assigned to that case, and he's,
Speaker 3: you know, occasionally he's surveilling that truck stop afterwards, just
Speaker 3: to get familiar with it. And sure enough he sees
Speaker 3: this truck. It seems suspicious to him, him the way
Speaker 3: the driver's acting, and he decides he's going to walk
Speaker 3: up and talk to the driver. And he says something
Speaker 3: to Mendenhall, like are you the guy we're looking for?
Speaker 3: And Mendenhall shrugs his shoulders and says, if you say so.
Speaker 3: And in that truck Pasciglione finds basically a mobile crime scene.
Speaker 3: He's got blood from five different victims in there, He's
Speaker 3: got sex toys and knives and guns and pornography. It's
Speaker 3: then that POSTIONI knows, of course, that he's got his man. Now, ironically,
Speaker 3: as I'm on the road researching this book, I happen
Speaker 3: to find myself riding through Nashville past Nashville, and I've
Speaker 3: spent a week with this particular driver who was gracious
Speaker 3: enough to have me sleep in his cabin, ride along
Speaker 3: with him for thousands of miles, and I go, look,
Speaker 3: you know, it is time for me to go home.
Speaker 3: We've got to find an airport that I can you know,
Speaker 3: I can get I can get to and get home.
Speaker 3: And we realized the next big city coming up with
Speaker 3: an airport is Nashville. And I am, you know, as
Speaker 3: many people who spend time in a long time in
Speaker 3: a truck, I'm in need of a shower. And so
Speaker 3: he goes, look, we'll pull off at this in Nashville.
Speaker 3: We'll stop at this truck stop and you can take
Speaker 3: a shower at the truck stop and get and then
Speaker 3: take an uber to the airport. And as I'm inside
Speaker 3: this truck stop and I'm showering, I start thinking about
Speaker 3: where I am, and I realize I am at the
Speaker 3: very same truck stop where Mendenhall killed Sarah Hulbert and
Speaker 3: where Mendenhall was arrested as well. That you know, there
Speaker 3: were coincidences throughout my trip, but this one really struck me.
Speaker 2: You say, in your journey with this truck driver you
Speaker 2: call Mike, you learned of the many characteristics of truckers
Speaker 2: that would lend themselves to an environment conducive to serial killing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, twenty five years as an FBI agent, I
Speaker 3: didn't want to write a book that just regurgitated high
Speaker 3: profile killer truckers. I mean, many true crime fans know
Speaker 3: many of these murders and many of these victims. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to write that book. I wanted to write
Speaker 3: a book that said, and by the way, I'm an investigator,
Speaker 3: and I have my own theories. I want to ask
Speaker 3: the questions like which truckers are more likely to be killers?
Speaker 3: I also asked the question which victims, which kinds of
Speaker 3: sex trafficked women and girls are more likely to be killed.
Speaker 3: This is the kind of thing that I'm trained to
Speaker 3: do as an FBI agent, and I wanted to kind
Speaker 3: of help my colleagues in law enforcement to focus more squarely. So,
Speaker 3: for example, when I asked the head of this FBI initiative, so, look,
Speaker 3: you've got about eight hundred and fifty killings that you
Speaker 3: know of over the years. You're telling me that twenty
Speaker 3: five long haul truckers are already in prison for multiple merders.
Speaker 3: And yet you're telling me there's also about two hundred
Speaker 3: cases that are considered unsolved and active. How many suspects
Speaker 3: do you have right now that you're actively working in
Speaker 3: these unsolved cases? The answer staggered me. It was four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty suspects right.
Speaker 2: Now that are on the roof.
Speaker 3: So I say that to say that I wanted to
Speaker 3: get in the weeds about Okay, how do we break
Speaker 3: this down? There's just too many truckers. So I get
Speaker 3: into the different kinds of trucking. There's a hierarchy of trucking.
Speaker 3: You've got people at the high end of the pace
Speaker 3: scale that are doing flatbed. I happen to ride flatbed.
Speaker 3: What does that mean? It means you've got to have
Speaker 3: some knowledge of math and physics, weight distribution, strapping and
Speaker 3: chaining and tarping your load, meeting mandatory DOT requirements for
Speaker 3: points of securement based on the size and weight of
Speaker 3: your load. You've got to determine whether you can even
Speaker 3: get gas today because your load's too heavy or not.
Speaker 3: You're physically engaged with the load because you are the
Speaker 3: one that is doing the chains and straps. You know what,
Speaker 3: One day we picked up and carried a what's called
Speaker 3: a suicide coil, which is an incredibly heavy roll of
Speaker 3: steel and that has to be chained and strapped and
Speaker 3: secured properly. And why is it called a suicide coil
Speaker 3: because if you do it wrong and it's not secured,
Speaker 3: it could roll right through the back of your cab.
Speaker 3: So you don't want that happening, so I go through.
Speaker 3: You know, those people are paid well. But even more
Speaker 3: higher pay is for truckers who do the heavy loads
Speaker 3: that you see on the highway, you know with the
Speaker 3: follow car and the lead car hey load, heavy load.
Speaker 3: Or there's also something called low boys. Low boys are
Speaker 3: inches off the ground because their cargo, their load is
Speaker 3: extremely tall and requires the lower profile truck so it
Speaker 3: can fit under bridges and such. You've got hasmat people
Speaker 3: who carry has mat. They're well paid. You've got reefer
Speaker 3: drivers that refers to refrigerated trucks where our nation's produce
Speaker 3: is transported. And then you have what's called the dry banners,
Speaker 3: the guys and gals who are carrying you know, dry goods,
Speaker 3: a load of Kleenex from California to North Carolina. That's
Speaker 3: the simplest form of driving. I'm not saying it's easy,
Speaker 3: but their physical engagement with the load consists of opening
Speaker 3: the back door when they drop off their load. So
Speaker 3: I get into the psychology of that. Who does what
Speaker 3: and who's more likely to be the killer. I also
Speaker 3: talk about corporate drivers, you know, big names we all
Speaker 3: are familiar with. We see it on the side of
Speaker 3: the trailers, right JB. Hunt, Warner, et cetera. And the
Speaker 3: high tech monitoring that goes on in those companies making
Speaker 3: it a little less likely that that driver has the
Speaker 3: time to kill and the opportunity to kill. I talk
Speaker 3: about own owner operators who have a little more free
Speaker 3: license and less monitoring. I do the same thing for
Speaker 3: the victim side and talk about the different kinds of
Speaker 3: sex trade and pimp controlled girls. And I say girls
Speaker 3: by the way, because some of them are literally not
Speaker 3: not women yet they're they're miners. Most start as miners
Speaker 3: in the trafficking world. And I get into you know,
Speaker 3: whether a pimp controlled girl or renegade or an outlaws
Speaker 3: these are different terminolog's a different terminology that describes trafficking
Speaker 3: victims who's more likely to die. And some of the theories
Speaker 3: in the book I hope may help law enforcement.
Speaker 2: That's as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: You talk about also the analysis of the kinds of
Speaker 2: offenders that have been seen in these trucker serial killing cases.
Speaker 2: And now are seeing more recently. So tell us about
Speaker 2: the type of offenders that have been analyzed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's not so. I'm careful to say after talking
Speaker 3: to the experts that there's not a huge distinction between
Speaker 3: the average There is such a thing as an average
Speaker 3: serial killer and a trucker serial killer. There are, of course,
Speaker 3: some obvious distinctions, but essentially serial killers, including the truckers,
Speaker 3: fall into one of two categories. The one The first
Speaker 3: one is where the killer simply enjoys the power of
Speaker 3: life and death. He gets off on that and even
Speaker 3: to the point of sexual satisfaction. Often those people take
Speaker 3: their time killing. They like that feeling of prolonged power
Speaker 3: and control, and they they often will rape their victims,
Speaker 3: perhaps multiple times, as as Robert ben Rhodes did. And
Speaker 3: then there's the second kind of killer who dispatches with
Speaker 3: his victims very quickly because he's about killing. He just
Speaker 3: wants to kill, and it's not so much about sex.
Speaker 3: Now he may again become aroused with the killing and
Speaker 3: thinking about it afterwards and take a souvenir, but he's
Speaker 3: going to kill very quickly. He's about the killing, often
Speaker 3: not interested in sex at all.
Speaker 2: Tell us about this the reality of the trucking industry
Speaker 2: and the intersection between addicted women and the reality of
Speaker 2: the trucking industry and commercial sex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a long history here and I get into
Speaker 3: that in the book. You know, even in the days
Speaker 3: where there was a widespread usage of the CB radio,
Speaker 3: which is less happens less today, but it was all
Speaker 3: about the CB radio. And of course, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: CB radio back then was kind of the let's say,
Speaker 3: the social media of the trucking world. People would get
Speaker 3: to know each other. They would talk incessantly to the
Speaker 3: truckers would talk incessantly to other truckers. They talk about
Speaker 3: their kids and their family, where the good food was,
Speaker 3: and where the cheapest gas was, and hey, look out
Speaker 3: ahead because there's a traffic jam, bad weather's coming. All
Speaker 3: of that happened on the CB radio. But you know
Speaker 3: what else happened on the CB radio advertising for sex.
Speaker 3: And there's a whole language of that that I get
Speaker 3: into in the book and explain the coded language, you know,
Speaker 3: and truckers would say, who would pull into a truck
Speaker 3: stop would say to the the would be a sexual partner. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm in the red house in the corner well, that's
Speaker 3: the red truck in the corner of the of the
Speaker 3: truck stop, and the advertising would happen there, and the
Speaker 3: communication would happen there. It's much and so a lot
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: Then.
Speaker 3: It still happens today, but to a much lesser extent.
Speaker 3: It was actually physical transactions were happening in the truck stops,
Speaker 3: in the parking lot, in the truck itself. These trafficked
Speaker 3: women would work the parking lots and or the restaurants
Speaker 3: at the truck stop. And that's how they do it,
Speaker 3: often with a pimp watching or nearby, or what's called
Speaker 3: a bottom, and I get into that language of its
Speaker 3: own there. A bottom is kind of the deputy, the
Speaker 3: deputy to the pimp, the assistant to the It's a girl,
Speaker 3: a woman who's been around and who the pimp trusts.
Speaker 3: She's she's worked her she's worked the business herself, and
Speaker 3: she's very close watching. That's a pimp controlled situation. And
Speaker 3: it happened. The whole thing is it happened in the
Speaker 3: truck and at the truck stop. Okay where I moved?
Speaker 3: Fast forward to today and much of this has gone online,
Speaker 3: no surprise. The advertising usually occurs online even as I
Speaker 3: was traveling, I was checking out spots on the internet
Speaker 3: that cater to sex and truckers. You know, ads from
Speaker 3: women saying I'm trucker friendly, I'll come to you, or
Speaker 3: you can come to me. And a lot of this
Speaker 3: has gone to as the as the truck stop industry. Boy,
Speaker 3: is that a big industry. I get into that in
Speaker 3: the book too. Man, we're talking, you know, billion dollar
Speaker 3: industry here and and by the way, they're buying each
Speaker 3: other up, so it's connected, you know, you know Ta
Speaker 3: t you know, the TA Travel America and and all
Speaker 3: of these loves and the other big ones they're they're
Speaker 3: kind of consolidating. And trucking companies actually get discounts by
Speaker 3: joining the club of one of those truck stops, so
Speaker 3: they gets the drivers get discounted gas, they get discounted
Speaker 3: showers or free showers at those truck stops. But today
Speaker 3: it's gone offline, it's gone online, excuse me, And so
Speaker 3: it happens at massage parlors near the tr truck stop,
Speaker 3: or cheap motels near the truck stop, or the woman
Speaker 3: will show up after an online agreement at the truck stop.
Speaker 3: And I asked the question in the book, is that
Speaker 3: more or less dangerous than the physical plying of your
Speaker 3: trade at the truck stop itself. You could argue that
Speaker 3: making that sex and money transaction happen at a truck
Speaker 3: stop might actually be safer in the sense that a
Speaker 3: victim can kick and scream and bang on the window
Speaker 3: of the truck and somebody's probably going to hear it,
Speaker 3: and a pimp or a bottom is watching nearby and
Speaker 3: could come to resk come to the rescue, as could
Speaker 3: other truckers. And maybe this is this is more dangerous
Speaker 3: now as a woman a victim is exposing herself in
Speaker 3: a room alone at a cheap motel. I get into
Speaker 3: that as well.
Speaker 2: You take us to a case that exemplifies what victimology
Speaker 2: is all about, cases like the red Head murders in
Speaker 2: West Memphis, Arkansas, September nineteen eighty four. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us about the Redhead murders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And most of your listeners who are really into
Speaker 3: true crime, they're gonna know about the red Head murders.
Speaker 3: In fact, there's even been high school criminal justice classes
Speaker 3: where high school kids have devoted a semester or more
Speaker 3: to studying and trying to solve the red head killings.
Speaker 3: And the bottom line is that while we're looking at somewhere,
Speaker 3: we can't even get agreement on how many victims are
Speaker 3: part of the red head killings. But there's something between
Speaker 3: ten and fourteen, you know, that's where we're looking at.
Speaker 3: And these are historical. They're not happening anymore. Definitely, there's
Speaker 3: been one suspect that's good for several of them, but
Speaker 3: not necessarily all of them. So I consider the red
Speaker 3: head killings to be only partially solid. And again this
Speaker 3: gets deep into the victimology. When you've got you know,
Speaker 3: it's very it's very interesting when you've got the same
Speaker 3: hair color happening, the same bill, the same age range.
Speaker 3: But that's what we have with the redhead killings, historically,
Speaker 3: red or auburn hair, fair skinned complexion. And without a doubt,
Speaker 3: the suspect and suspects I had a prefer this is
Speaker 3: a preferential killing. This, this person, this victim meets their
Speaker 3: their criteria in this case because of hair color. And
Speaker 3: they weren't in just in one location. They were absolutely
Speaker 3: kind of most of them along Eye forty, which runs
Speaker 3: east to west across southern United States, all the way
Speaker 3: to California. That's where a lot of this happened Tennessee, Kentucky,
Speaker 3: particularly for the Redhead killings.
Speaker 2: You talk about a girl and you say the title
Speaker 2: of the chapters girls next Door, and again probably an
Speaker 2: alias Hannah Abritt. Yes, tell us what you learned from
Speaker 2: speaking with Hannah Everrett.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to admit. I'll make a confession of
Speaker 3: my own here that I think I had a bias.
Speaker 3: That is that, well, you know, trafficked victims, young ladies
Speaker 3: who fall into the trafficking trap. They probably come from
Speaker 3: a disadvantaged background and bad families and blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Well I'm wrong. I'm wrong about that. And if nothing else,
Speaker 3: this book could open people's eyes that trafficking can happen
Speaker 3: to someone, you know. So, two of the victims I
Speaker 3: spoke to, who, by the way, survived violent encounters with truckers.
Speaker 3: They truly are survivors. And these two women in particular,
Speaker 3: I consider thrivers. They'll tell you I am a i ami.
Speaker 3: I am no longer a victim. I am a thriver.
Speaker 3: I am a survivor and a thriver. In fact, both
Speaker 3: of these women are now associated with organizations that help
Speaker 3: other women get out of the trafficking trap. But my
Speaker 3: point on kind of breaking my bias about who falls
Speaker 3: victim to this. One of these women was a preacher's
Speaker 3: kid from the Midwest. The other Hannah you're referring to,
Speaker 3: and that is a pseudonym for her. The other woman
Speaker 3: doesn't didn't request a pseudonym. Her name is Nancy Yarborough.
Speaker 3: She's got a great story. But Hannah came from the Midwest,
Speaker 3: had a year of college. She's white as blue eyes.
Speaker 3: This is not you know, this is not someone you
Speaker 3: think what this would have happened to the family, you know,
Speaker 3: went to church. But as I talked to these women,
Speaker 3: in my mind, I started checking off the commonalities that
Speaker 3: I was taught by two of the top experts in
Speaker 3: the country on trafficking, and that those two extras they
Speaker 3: are they are kind of hands on on the street
Speaker 3: doing work that gets people out the help they need
Speaker 3: to get out of the trafficking trap. And so I
Speaker 3: was very impressed. But they taught me the commonalities to
Speaker 3: look for, and sure enough, I, you know, I would
Speaker 3: talk to these these victims and survivors and in my mind,
Speaker 3: here we go. I've seen. I'm seeing the trauma at
Speaker 3: an early age. Often that means unwanted touching or sexual molestation.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing a tower of trauma, I call it. In
Speaker 3: their lives. Someone close to them dies, the family member dies,
Speaker 3: there's divorce, there's there's fighting, there's domestic incidents. Then there's
Speaker 3: early drug use is very common to see. Then there's
Speaker 3: a series of bad boyfriends, and the drug use gets
Speaker 3: heavier and heavier, and mental health issues and drug abuse
Speaker 3: are freak found in these cases. And you know the
Speaker 3: other takeaway here and again the experts support this is again,
Speaker 3: if you think, well, this can't happen to someone in
Speaker 3: my family or my neighborhood, it does. It does this.
Speaker 3: This kind of myth is out there from the movies
Speaker 3: and TV that we see a stranger abduction, a young
Speaker 3: girl is thrown into the back of a van, never
Speaker 3: to be seen again, trafficked international. I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: doesn't happen, but that's rare. But what is far more
Speaker 3: common is that someone in their own circle, their own
Speaker 3: network of friends and relations, eventually grooms and convinces them
Speaker 3: to be trafficked. And if you were to ask them
Speaker 3: at that age, hey, are you Are you a trafficking victim?
Speaker 3: They would look at you and say, I don't know
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. My boyfriend has me, you know,
Speaker 3: in a business where I have sex for money, and okay,
Speaker 3: but only later do they wait a minute. I was
Speaker 3: travel and it gets worse from there as the drug
Speaker 3: addiction and the mental illness and trauma take over. And
Speaker 3: then there's your judgment simply flies out the window, and
Speaker 3: you're putting yourself literally in harm's way every day, multiple
Speaker 3: times a day.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. You talk of what you've learned from the
Speaker 2: pioneer professor, doctor Celia Williamson and her fight against human
Speaker 2: trafficking and prostitution at the University of Toledo and director
Speaker 2: of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute and the
Speaker 2: Second Chance Program, and then you also talk about, of
Speaker 2: course Terry Turner, Oklahoma crime analysts. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: some of the initiatives that some of the things you
Speaker 2: learned from doctor Celia Williamson and also the initiatives by
Speaker 2: Terry Turner.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There, you know, there are killer in my book,
Speaker 3: but there are also heroes in my book, and you've
Speaker 3: just mentioned some of those heroes. I can't say enough
Speaker 3: good things about doctor Celia Williamson and the Second Chance
Speaker 3: Program and the work she's doing to really make a
Speaker 3: difference in her community. And the same goes for doctor
Speaker 3: Dominicuro Sepowitz at Arizona State. Doctor Sepowitz has a place
Speaker 3: called Starfish Place in Phoenix, Arizona. It's a joint effort
Speaker 3: between the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University. It's
Speaker 3: a residential program. I visited there myself. I had to
Speaker 3: see it for myself, see the young ladies. It's specifically
Speaker 3: for young women who have young children, and those women
Speaker 3: are want to come out of trafficking, and they get
Speaker 3: their own apartment on this campus, this facility and all
Speaker 3: the help they need. The support system is there, the
Speaker 3: education opportunities are there, life awareness, life coaching, all of
Speaker 3: that's there to help them on their way, including in
Speaker 3: many cases of free, subsidized, free or subsidized housing. That
Speaker 3: is the key to getting them away from their pimp
Speaker 3: or their bad boyfriend relationship. And occasionally, you know, it's
Speaker 3: a very secure campus lockdown because sometimes those pimps will
Speaker 3: show up trying to get their girl back. But I
Speaker 3: visited there. I was completely impressed. And doctor Stepowiz also
Speaker 3: is doing some amazing research. I mean, she was the
Speaker 3: first one that pointed out the trafficking that goes on,
Speaker 3: particularly of underage victims at major American events like the
Speaker 3: super Bowl. And she has received grants to study trafficking
Speaker 3: at the super Bowl, people with money traveling from all
Speaker 3: over the world to get those really expensive tickets to
Speaker 3: watch the super Bowl. These are big players, right for
Speaker 3: some reason, they decide, you know, it's time also to
Speaker 3: to pay for sex, often of underage people. And she's
Speaker 3: done some amazing work in that area with the police.
Speaker 3: And she's also one of the people like doctor Williamson
Speaker 3: who says this nonsense about handcuffing trafficking victims and charging
Speaker 3: them with crimes. This has to stop. And she's really
Speaker 3: made the police departments in places like Phoenix and in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas very much change their practice. It's also happened
Speaker 3: in Toledo with doctor Williamson in the Sheriff's department in
Speaker 3: Ohio that say, look, when they come upon a victim,
Speaker 3: they say, you're not getting arrested today. You are going
Speaker 3: to be asked what you need to get away from
Speaker 3: this lifestyle? I say lifestyle. It's a victimisition, is what
Speaker 3: it is. It's trafficking, but generally it's involuntary servitude. But
Speaker 3: this is very successful because here comes not just the police,
Speaker 3: but the social services people partnering with the police. So
Speaker 3: if that young woman says, well, what I need is
Speaker 3: a roof over my head to get out of this situation,
Speaker 3: or what I need is a certificate so I can
Speaker 3: go cut hair for a living, or whatever it is
Speaker 3: they want to do. I need diapers for my baby.
Speaker 3: You know, how am I supposed to survive if I
Speaker 3: don't make this income? And they changed the dynamic. And
Speaker 3: I'm very impressed by those two heroes. And then you
Speaker 3: mentioned Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation crime analyst Terry Turner,
Speaker 3: who retired right after I wrote the book. She is
Speaker 3: the mother of this HSKI. Why do I say that
Speaker 3: it was Terry Turner who many decades ago said we've
Speaker 3: got a problem. And you know, you can imagine, say,
Speaker 3: forty years ago, a female crime analyst in Oklahoma who
Speaker 3: is kind of becoming a pest to her leadership by saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: to me, there are young ladies from Oklahoma missing, and
Speaker 3: they're turning up dead in other states. And I think
Speaker 3: that this is being done by truckers. Look at this one,
Speaker 3: look at that one. And she started in about a
Speaker 3: year or two, she started piling up victims. She calls
Speaker 3: them her girls, quote unquote her girls. Where she eventually
Speaker 3: had ten victims from Oklahoma who were turning up dead,
Speaker 3: and she founded her fist on the desk. She demanded
Speaker 3: the FBI get involved. In fact, she called for a meeting.
Speaker 3: She sent out a teletype to nationally to homicide detectives
Speaker 3: and said, look, we're gonna have a meeting here in
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City. If you've got unsolved highway killings, please come
Speaker 3: to the meeting. We'll share notes. She thought maybe she'd
Speaker 3: get ten or fifteen detectives show up. She had dozens
Speaker 3: show up and they all had similar cases. And the
Speaker 3: FBI showed up and went, holy cow, yes, you've met
Speaker 3: the criteria for serial killings case and we're going to
Speaker 3: help you. That was the birth of the FBI's Highway
Speaker 3: Serial Killings Initiative.
Speaker 2: You talk about this initiative also, you say you call
Speaker 2: it a baptism of sorts when in the murky waters
Speaker 2: of serial killings of September two thousand and three, where
Speaker 2: a body was found near I forty in Tiger Mountain, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: The thing is, she reached out to other law agencies
Speaker 2: to look for commonalities and similarities in other cases, and
Speaker 2: she wound up right and involved in a case where
Speaker 2: a serial killer was killing every month. Tell us about
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oklahoma was the start of this whole initiative. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's interesting. One of the things that you
Speaker 3: take away from the book is there are definitely hubs
Speaker 3: of trafficking with regard to interstate travel, and you can
Speaker 3: figure these out by looking at the intersections of major
Speaker 3: interstate highways that converge in a particular city. By the way,
Speaker 3: Toledo is one of those. But another place where that
Speaker 3: happens is in Oklahoma, and in the Oklahoma City area particularly.
Speaker 3: What does that mean. It means, well, you have an
Speaker 3: inordinately high number of long haul truckers passing through. It
Speaker 3: means that you have a very high percentage of trafficked
Speaker 3: women to so called service those truckers. And of course,
Speaker 3: in this book it means and in this business, it
Speaker 3: means you have an inordinately high percentage of victims coming
Speaker 3: from your city. And that is what Terry Turner realized
Speaker 3: what was happening. She connected those dots and said this
Speaker 3: points to truckers. Tiger Mountain was a place where truckers.
Speaker 3: It was, there was a rest stop there. It was
Speaker 3: a logical place if you're traveling along in Ohio, but
Speaker 3: it was also really wooded, forested, remote and the victims,
Speaker 3: the trafficking victims knew that so that they would work
Speaker 3: that area, that rest up. The truckers knew where they
Speaker 3: could go to pay for sex. And without a doubt
Speaker 3: when somebody accidentally stumbled upon a body at Tiger Mountain
Speaker 3: that was helping to kick off Terry Turner's interest in
Speaker 3: this whole thing.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us about what happens in this initiative involving
Speaker 2: the study of sex worker advertisements, probably pimps or by
Speaker 2: those workers that work independently, but also what someone in
Speaker 2: this team discovered would be to utilize that same advertising
Speaker 2: to their advantage.
Speaker 3: Can you explain, Yeah, and specifically we're talking about Professor
Speaker 3: Dominique Roseepho Wits at Arizona State University. Again, the director
Speaker 3: of Starfish Place as well in Phoenix. So she got
Speaker 3: grant money. It's all about you know, it's all about
Speaker 3: people and governments saying look, we'll help, We'll get you
Speaker 3: the money to do this study, this research, and she
Speaker 3: was on the cutting edge of this and the application
Speaker 3: of actually technology and algorithms and filters to look at
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of a nice creative way to
Speaker 3: do this. She was particularly looking for underage trafficking, trafficking
Speaker 3: of juveniles, and she has helped police departments through this
Speaker 3: grant money. She's gotten to develop the use of technology
Speaker 3: to identify likely advertisements of minors for sex. So she's
Speaker 3: focused on keywords and phrases new young, first timer and
Speaker 3: a photo which may or may not be the actual victim,
Speaker 3: but a photo of a very young girl and all
Speaker 3: of this language, you know, points to the trafficking of
Speaker 3: someone who's underage. And she then did tests of different markets.
Speaker 3: It happened in a Super Bowl that was played at
Speaker 3: the Midlelands in Jersey one year. It's happened in Las Vegas. PD.
Speaker 3: METROPD has adopted this and used it and it was
Speaker 3: used to study the marketplace for underage trafficking and really
Speaker 3: the men who pay for this, and one of the
Speaker 3: things they did was focus on those so called johns,
Speaker 3: the men who pay for these services and do something different. First,
Speaker 3: we don't lolaw enforcement doesn't pay enough attention to holding
Speaker 3: the Johns accountable.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We see girls arrested, but we don't see a lot
Speaker 3: of arrests of men, which really is all about supply
Speaker 3: and demand. That you've got to attack the demand side
Speaker 3: if you're going to get around helping the supply side
Speaker 3: and mitigating that. So the police agreed in the Super
Speaker 3: Bowl situation in Phoenix and in Las Vegas, they said,
Speaker 3: you know what, we're going to do something different. We're
Speaker 3: going to tackle the men. What they would do is
Speaker 3: undercover type work. They'd set out these ads that they
Speaker 3: knew were typical of underage advertising, and they would if
Speaker 3: a guy called in or made contact online and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I want you at my hotel room tonight,
Speaker 3: the undercover officer would call and say, well, actually, there
Speaker 3: are two different ways to do this. Sometimes they were undercover,
Speaker 3: sometimes they were just at the police department. They would
Speaker 3: all the guy back and go, you just made contact
Speaker 3: with someone who is with law enforcement. And by the way,
Speaker 3: this ad advertises underage minors and if you understand something,
Speaker 3: if you do this again, you're going to prison. And
Speaker 3: this is fake this time, but if you do it
Speaker 3: for real, you're done. And to my amazement, some of
Speaker 3: these guys would say oh okay, yeah, sorry about that,
Speaker 3: and then pick up the phone and they'd make contact
Speaker 3: with another undercover ad duration. Then the police would show up,
Speaker 3: of course if they could identify this person. And it
Speaker 3: really has helped in real life. So it's on two things.
Speaker 3: You've got this kind of undercover thing that's attacking the
Speaker 3: demand side and then on the supply side for real ads,
Speaker 3: for real ads. The police would then agree that they're
Speaker 3: going to make contact with that real advertiser, that woman,
Speaker 3: and they're going to say come to my hotel. This
Speaker 3: happens a lot in Phoenix. And then when that young
Speaker 3: lady shows up, she realizes that this is about her,
Speaker 3: that the law enforcement isn't there to arrest her, but
Speaker 3: rather people like Professor Seppowitz and her social partners are
Speaker 3: going to offer medical services, mental health services, addiction services.
Speaker 3: They're going to say do you need a place to stay.
Speaker 3: All of that's going to happen right in that motel,
Speaker 3: right in that motel. It's been hugely successful. Very few
Speaker 3: of those young ladies go no thanks and walk away.
Speaker 2: You talk about the case of Casey Joe Pipestem and
Speaker 2: also America's Most Wanted, Can you tell us about this?
Speaker 3: And John Williams, Yeah, here's another Oklahoma case, Casey Joe
Speaker 3: Pipestone stem very young victim who happened to be from
Speaker 3: the Seminole Nation, a tribe in Oklahoma. She had been
Speaker 3: passed around family members after her parents were no longer
Speaker 3: in the picture. She ended up being trafficked and she
Speaker 3: indeed was missing and her body was found in grape Fine, Texas.
Speaker 3: And again another outstanding detective from the grape Fine Police
Speaker 3: Department who really took this case as his own and
Speaker 3: became passionate about finding Casey Joe Pipestem's killer. But again
Speaker 3: this was linked eventually to a Trucker serial killer. And
Speaker 3: as they worked this case, it was a rare case too,
Speaker 3: by the way, that involved a female partner who had
Speaker 3: not knowledge of the wrongdoing, had knowledge of the killings.
Speaker 3: That's very rare by the way in these cases. But
Speaker 3: long story short, has this remained unsolved. They decided to
Speaker 3: go to the old America's Most Wanted TV program with
Speaker 3: John Walsh, and he's come back now, by the way,
Speaker 3: he's now, he's now come back with his adult son
Speaker 3: and he's doing a similar They feature Casey Joe pipe
Speaker 3: Sim's case, and they get a phone call as a
Speaker 3: result of that episode. The phone call is from John
Speaker 3: Williams's aunt who says, Hey, I visit I visited my
Speaker 3: nephew in jail recently, and he said I just killed
Speaker 3: a little I killed a little Indian girl, and boy
Speaker 3: did that get some attention. Long story short, she was right,
Speaker 3: and he had killed He was in prison for another crime.
Speaker 3: But detectives then began lining up to interview Williams, all
Speaker 3: from different states because they all had unsolved cases. You
Speaker 3: know that they many believe that certainly Williams was the killer.
Speaker 3: But I think this illustrates another phenomenon, which is the
Speaker 3: kind of sense of hope when detectives hear that somebody's
Speaker 3: been grabbed, someone's in prison and he might be the
Speaker 3: one who killed my victims, and then the rush to
Speaker 3: get in line to do the interview for your case,
Speaker 3: only to find this is so common, Only to find
Speaker 3: that Nope, this guy has an alibi. He wasn't even
Speaker 3: in that part of the country. He wasn't in that
Speaker 3: place where your victim was killed. And of course it's
Speaker 3: a roller coaster of emotion when that happens. And that's
Speaker 3: why you know, this initiative is still alive and wealth
Speaker 3: because of you know, at least two hundred unsolved cases.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Getting back to doctor Sepowitz and what she learned from
Speaker 2: the ads and how to utilize those ads to her advantage.
Speaker 2: And you talk about Backpage being one of the and
Speaker 2: Craigslist being a place where these opportunists used those online
Speaker 2: services to lure women or young girls in fact, but
Speaker 2: you talk about also initiatives like Thorn with actors Ashton
Speaker 2: Kutcher and Demi Moore and to counter child sex trafficking,
Speaker 2: and also tell us about the McCain Institute, and also
Speaker 2: how the US Department of Defense even gets involved in DARPA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really got my attention because you know, a
Speaker 3: large part of my FBI career was in counterintelligence, were
Speaker 3: national security work and ultimately heading up the Counterintelligence Division
Speaker 3: of the FBI. So I knew of DARPA. These are
Speaker 3: really really bright people in the Department of Defense, scientists, researchers,
Speaker 3: engineers who do cutting edge often classified research for the
Speaker 3: United States. And when they saw what was happening at
Speaker 3: technology wise with Arizona State University research and then even
Speaker 3: the algorithms developed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to
Speaker 3: look at the to use technology for anti trafficking, and
Speaker 3: they came in and said, Okay, you've got you've got
Speaker 3: something here, and we've got something as well that we
Speaker 3: want to you know, use and they came with money.
Speaker 3: This is, like I said, a lot of this research
Speaker 3: in grant funding is about high profile funding and the
Speaker 3: big names of celebrities or prominent people in society like
Speaker 3: Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Senator John McCain,
Speaker 3: who has done a lot of good for America. Part
Speaker 3: of it has to do with her funding of certain
Speaker 3: anti trafficking initiatives, so that money was used to further
Speaker 3: hone and sharpen the technology to do anti trafficking work
Speaker 3: through the study of advertisements and also to kind of
Speaker 3: you know, doctor Suppwis has done a ton of interviews
Speaker 3: and her team have done a lot of interviews of
Speaker 3: victims and you come away, you know, when you crunch
Speaker 3: all that data and you put it in a computer system,
Speaker 3: you come away with some eye opening findings. So one
Speaker 3: of them, by the way, one of those findings was
Speaker 3: after interviewing, you know, hundreds of victims, was that many
Speaker 3: of those victims had somewhere in their early education life
Speaker 3: touched or been associated with special education. You know, whether
Speaker 3: they were deemed as a different learner, had learning issues, whatever,
Speaker 3: they had been in special ed. So what do you
Speaker 3: do with that? Well, what doctor Sepwoz has done is
Speaker 3: develop early intervention programs to educate teachers, to educate young
Speaker 3: kids in an age appropriate way that there are things
Speaker 3: that people may, you know, have you tried to do
Speaker 3: in life that aren't appropriate that you should tell someone
Speaker 3: you trust about. Maybe even you're tell your teacher, that's
Speaker 3: great program.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The other thing they found was that a lot of
Speaker 3: recruitment goes on in jail, so that in fact, in fact,
Speaker 3: Hannah who I talked to and describe in the book,
Speaker 3: she was recruited in part in part not only by boyfriends,
Speaker 3: but when she was arrested and thrown in to jail.
Speaker 3: One of her cellmates turned out to be a bottom,
Speaker 3: turned out to be part of a stable of prostitutes,
Speaker 3: and she said to Hannah, listen, when you get out,
Speaker 3: I'm getting out before you. When you get out, I'll
Speaker 3: have a place for you to stay. You can stay
Speaker 3: with me and my boyfriend will take care of you.
Speaker 3: In fact, I'll put money on your jail account so
Speaker 3: that you can buy some things, and you can call.
Speaker 3: I'll put money on your phone account. You call me
Speaker 3: when you know you're getting out, we'll pick you up
Speaker 3: and we'll take you in. Well, that was a recruitment.
Speaker 3: This was involuntary servitude that she ended up in. Literally,
Speaker 3: what did doctor Stepwis do with that? Well, prisons now,
Speaker 3: some prisons now monitor. Of course, they monitor your phone activity,
Speaker 3: but they'll also give laptops to female prisoners and monitor
Speaker 3: what's going on on the laptop, and they'll watch recruitment
Speaker 3: take place. So it's that kind of cutting edge intervention
Speaker 3: that's making a difference.
Speaker 2: You started, You said in the end of this book
Speaker 2: that this book started as an interest in the FBI's
Speaker 2: Highway Serial Killers initiative, but quickly became a quest to
Speaker 2: understand the cultures behind the killings. You said that the
Speaker 2: serial Killer initiative also cooperated with vice cops and also,
Speaker 2: more importantly, the trucking industry. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about the cooperation that the trucking industry offered this team
Speaker 2: in trying to solve this incredible problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is crucial. We talk a lot about partnerships
Speaker 3: in law enforcement and in social human services, and it's crucial.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the industry itself, the trucking industry.
Speaker 3: They want to help. No trucking company wants to be
Speaker 3: associated with a killer or with trafficking. And in the
Speaker 3: early days of Terry Turner's work, she not only partnered
Speaker 3: with various police departments, but they had to have the
Speaker 3: cooperation of major trucking companies because imagine, imagine the needle
Speaker 3: in the haystack. Aspect to solving one of these cases.
Speaker 3: You've got hundreds, if not thousands, of trucks passing through
Speaker 3: your truck stop where maybe this victim was last seen.
Speaker 3: How do you determine who was there, which trucker was
Speaker 3: there at that particular time, and what's your time frame?
Speaker 3: Is it you know she was last seen there? We
Speaker 3: think it was either Tuesday or Wednesday a month ago.
Speaker 3: I don't know, so imagine that that. You've got to
Speaker 3: then get if there's any cameras way back when at
Speaker 3: this truck stop. Okay, so what so you've got that.
Speaker 3: Now who who was there? You've got to go to
Speaker 3: all the trucking companies. You've got to say, I need
Speaker 3: to know who was at this truck stop Tuesday and company?
Speaker 3: And maybe that company has what thousands of drivers, thousands
Speaker 3: of trucks, so you you they want to help, but
Speaker 3: they've got to you know, you've got to give them
Speaker 3: a time frame and they'll give you the data now today,
Speaker 3: you know. And I could relate to this from my
Speaker 3: from what what happened during my entire time in the
Speaker 3: FBI twenty five years. Early on, when I would approach hotels, businesses, airlines,
Speaker 3: it was like, yeah, we you know, they'd bend over
Speaker 3: backwards to help you and yes, what do you need? Yes,
Speaker 3: do do you have a guest who stayed here with
Speaker 3: this name? Do you you know? And they they they yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: here you go. And then you could watch over the years,
Speaker 3: the lawyers took over liability right and the instruction was
Speaker 3: very clear to these employees, these these the leadership at
Speaker 3: these facilities. And it's true for the trucking companies. Hey,
Speaker 3: you got to get you got to have a search
Speaker 3: warner or subpoena. We want to help you. But you know,
Speaker 3: but in the early days and the help still happens.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, but it's more applicated. But that
Speaker 3: kind of data and then sifting through that. Okay, we've
Speaker 3: identified one hundred trucks that were at this truck stop Tuesday,
Speaker 3: a month ago. Okay, Now, who was driving the truck? Well,
Speaker 3: we think it was Joe. Yeah, it's Joe's truck. Yeah,
Speaker 3: unless you switched off with somebody, not sure, but it's
Speaker 3: probably Joe. Okay, two hundred Joe's Let's look at their backgrounds.
Speaker 3: Joe's got a history of domestic violence. Joe carries a gun.
Speaker 3: A gun wasn't used in this case. It was a knife. Okay.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got to have the cooperation of the industry.
Speaker 3: It's essential.
Speaker 2: You say that there have been some inroads, especially promising
Speaker 2: is and you cite a case in this incredible case
Speaker 2: in this book that was solved through genetic genealogy. But
Speaker 2: still you righte that there is an incredible long way
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the app solutely we are seeing the impact of
Speaker 3: genetic genealogy here, and so you know real quickly what's that.
Speaker 3: It's it's the law enforcement use of private genealogy databases
Speaker 3: where people have submitted their DNA. Many people have done
Speaker 3: this with big name companies, and however there's only a
Speaker 3: very small number of companies that will voluntarily give such
Speaker 3: data to law enforcement. There's one company, I think it's
Speaker 3: called ged match that actually exists to help law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And that's something your listeners can think about, which is
Speaker 3: you could submit your DNA to a company like ged match,
Speaker 3: knowing that the police use that company to try and
Speaker 3: match and solve crime. So how does that work. Well,
Speaker 3: if they've got DNA from a crime scene and they
Speaker 3: submit that DNA to the ancestral genealogy company and then
Speaker 3: they get a report back saying, oh, you're you've got
Speaker 3: a second cousin that has this DNA, and now you've
Speaker 3: got a family connection right between the DNA found at
Speaker 3: a crime scene and the DNA of someone out there
Speaker 3: in this database. Now you can start doing some interviews
Speaker 3: and that is solving cases. You know you then approach
Speaker 3: this maybe second cousin, and you go, you got anybody
Speaker 3: in your family who's a trucker? Well, I heard about
Speaker 3: I heard about an uncle George a few years ago,
Speaker 3: may have driven a truck. Okay, thank you. That's happening
Speaker 3: now with increasing frequency. The other thing that I think
Speaker 3: is on the horizon is the use of AI, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: You know, we talked a lot today about data and
Speaker 3: connection and advertising and keywords and phrases and who's more
Speaker 3: likely to kill or not. I think AI is going
Speaker 3: to play a major role in the weeks, months, and
Speaker 3: years ahead.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about your incredible journey to find out the
Speaker 2: truth about this entire subcultures that converge on with each
Speaker 2: other in this incredible book Long Haul Hunting the Highway
Speaker 2: serial Killers. For people that want to check out more
Speaker 2: about this book, to have a website or do any
Speaker 2: social media, oh for sure.
Speaker 3: I am on Twitter at Frank FIGLUOZI one I should say,
Speaker 3: I'm on X at Frank. I'm also on threads, I'm
Speaker 3: on Instagram and my website where you can get all
Speaker 3: the details not only about the book, but all my
Speaker 3: TV appearances as a National Security contributor for NBC News
Speaker 3: All my Parents is related to this book and my
Speaker 3: old podcast called the Bureau all about the FBI and
Speaker 3: interviews of active FBI employees. You can get all that
Speaker 3: on my website which is simply frankfigloosy dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Frank Figlouzy for hunting pardon me,
Speaker 2: long haul, hunting the highway serial killers. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for this interview, and you have a great evening,
Speaker 2: and good night.
Speaker 3: Good night to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.