Off Record: Highway Serial Killings

Hannah tells Patia a story about a Crime Analyst who spotted the most sinister connection between human remains found along a highway. And later, we hear from Frank Figliuzzi, a retired FBI Agent who breaks down the connection between long-haul trucking and some of America's most notorious serial killers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
the speaker and do not necessarily represent the Knife or
Exactly Right media.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
These killers serial killers, by definition and by studying, all
of them are typically socially inept people. There are exceptions
to the Ted Bundy, for example, but generally these are
not your charmers.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Hannah Smith, I'm
patia Eton, and today we have a little bit of
a hybrid episode. I'm going to start with telling you
a story, and then at the end we will play
an interview that relates to the story that I'm going
to talk about. This is my favorite kind of episode. Great,
so buckle up sound effects. Okay, So kind of just

(01:07):
to start it off and introduce to people, we did
an interview with this retired FBI agent Frank Figliuzi, and
he wrote this book called Long Haul, which is about
an FBI initiative called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative or HSK.
And I loved the book. I thought it was really interesting.
I'd never heard of this initiative. It's an initiative that

(01:31):
just investigates killings that happen along our nation's highways. So
that's like very specific. And you know, if you're a
true crime lover, you're probably familiar with the trope of
the truck driver being a killer.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Right, Like I can just picture in different like movies
or TV shows, a dimly lit truck stop. You've got
like a lady spoken a cigarette outside the gas station,
and something bad as about to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
But it turns out it's not just a trope. It's
like actually a real thing. Obviously, not every trucker, not
even the majority of truckers, are killers. They're very important
people's central workers. Our nation would crumble without trucking. But
this HSK initiative collects a bunch of data and essentially,

(02:23):
like what Frank told us was that, yeah, there are
a lot of serial killers who are attracted to the
profession of long haul trucking for a specific reason.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I mean, I imagine it's like, if you're a serial killer,
you have the outliers who are like the Ted Bundyes
of the world, charming, charismatic, but mostly I would assume
you're sort of like a lone wolf because the moment
that people know who you really are. Your secret's going
to get out. That's not like a secret someone's going.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
To keep for you. Right.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
So this transient lifestyle of always being on the road,
and we do talk to Frank about that. He talks
about profiling long haul truckers who are also serial killers,
which I think is a really interesting part of the
episode that you will hear later in the interview. He
talks about, you know, the loaner and what kind of
trucker position is most attractive to someone who might be

(03:20):
looking for the opportunity to kill people. I mean, it's
crazy to talk about, but it's real, and it's something
the FBI is tracking.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Like there was enough serial killer truck drivers that the
FBI said, we need a team on this.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, we need a special initiative for this. Wow, so
very fascinating. We did the interview. We didn't talk about
any specific case in detail with Frank, but this interview
led me down this rabbit hole of research and I
started looking into some of the cases that sort of
led to the creation of this initiative, And specifically, I

(03:55):
want to talk to you about a group of murders
that all happened along Interstate four in and near Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
where I'm from Hannah's home state. That's right, So I'm
calling them the Oklahoma I forty murders I.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Forty okay, yeah, hearing that Ella Langley song, what's the
song choose in Texas? I'm not going to try to
sing it, that's horrific.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
But do they talk about I forty?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, I don't know if it's called the Bridge or
what it's that after the last chorus she comes in
with I forty gets lonelier with every mile.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh wow, Yeah, that's a great line. Maybe we'll play
something from the song. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to
be really inexpensive. Yes, right, Okay, So I'm starting the
story in Oklahoma. And in September of two thousand and three,
Terry Turner was working for the Oklahoma State Bureau of
Investigations OSBI as a crime analyst, and she got a

(04:54):
call from a local police department in rural Oklahoma asking
her to help identify a that was found along Eye
forty in Oklahoma near Lake Ufalla, which is this like
forested rural part of Oklahoma. So Terry looked into the case.
What she found was Okay, it was a white female,
she was nude, and she was found with duct tape

(05:15):
on her body. These are important details because of what
will come later. So as Terry started to look into
this case, she started to pursue two different routes. First,
she wanted to know who is this victim? We need
to identify her, so she started working on that. Secondly,
as analysts do, when she looked at everything with this case,

(05:38):
you know, she analyzed the location, the manner of death,
the victimology, and I don't know why. I don't know
if it was unusual enough for what. But she started
to wonder is this the only victim or are there
other cases that are similar to this. The fact that
she wondered this, the fact that she took this next
step is like breaks everything wide open. Change is kind

(06:00):
of like how we even investigate crimes next to highways
in America.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, and you know, I've never been a crime analyst,
but you know, having worked in the true crime genre,
it's like to me, and you know, I'm looking at
it from this bird's eye view with all of this information,
I'm not like on the ground zero of trying to
figure out a crime. But you have a woman who
is nude, who is has been duct taped. It's like,

(06:27):
this is extreme. Yeah, so clearly a homicide. Clearly a homicide.
And you know, to me, that's someone who's pretty confident
by this point.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Interesting for sure, And so she puts out like they
actually said it was a teletype. It's like a teletype.
I gotta bears with you. I I have no idea
what that is. I think it's kind of like a fact,
I mean, but too like surrounding jurisdictions and states with
the information about this case, just asking hey, if anyone
has another case that seems similar, like, let me know,

(07:00):
and fairly immediately she gets responses about two cases that
are eerily similar. So there were two other bodies, both
found along Eye forty that were also nude, also found
with duct tape, also women. And can you remind me
when is this happening? Two thousand and three, two thousand
and three, Okay, so it's September of two thousand and

(07:22):
three when this first body is found, and then Terry
sends out this teletype. I'm in tenth grade. Yeah, and
you know, two more cases come back, and what's really
noticeable or I guess of note about these is that
one of them was from August of two thousand and three.
One of these bodies was found in August of two

(07:42):
thousand and three, one month prior, and the other one
was found in July of two thousand and three. So
it's almost like, is this happening once a month? What's
going on?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Oh? And they're all along this highway.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
All along Eye forty, So I forty runs east on
it runs almost the full length from coast to coast,
doesn't run all the way to the coast in California,
but from Barstow, California, all the way to Wilmington, North Carolina.
And this section is like New Mexico, runs through the
Texas Panhandle, through Oklahoma into Arkansas and Tennessee. And obviously

(08:18):
it's a major thoroughfare. So there's enough similarities in this
case that Terry's like, are these connected? Is it the
same person who's killed them? She starts to look into it. Eventually,
all three bodies are identified, and I want to talk
about them. I want to talk about the women. You know,
a lot of the articles I found that are from

(08:39):
two thousand and three two thousand and four don't name
them and just call them prostitutes.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
That's yeah, terrible.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
And while it's true that they were all involved in
sex work in some capacity, you know, that doesn't mean
that they don't deserve to be remembered by name. And
so I had to do some digging actually to like
find information about these women. So the first person is
Sandra Beard. She was found in September of two thousand
and three in Oklahoma, and Sandra Janelle Beard was last

(09:13):
seen alive at a truck stop and this is from
Oklahoma Coldcases dot Org. Sandra had been struggling with addiction
to cocaine at the time of her murder, and she
was involved in survival sex work, mostly at truck stops.
She was also a devoted mother to her daughter. Sandra,
who was sometimes known as Sandy, was born in Enid, Oklahoma,
on July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty. She was forty three

(09:35):
years old at the time of her murder. It says
she was married and divorced and had three siblings. Her
body was found in September of two thousand and three,
and the cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation.
The discovery of her body was the first thing that
launched this investigation for Terry, and it's because she was
found in Oklahoma, and so Terry was notified because she

(09:58):
worked in Oklahoma. The other two cases, they were not
found in Oklahoma. They were found a long eye of
forty but in different states.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
And as we know, it's much harder to connect crimes
that aren't committed in the same jurisdiction. Yeah, because those
departments don't always communicate, right.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And murder is not a federal crime, and so it's
local police departments and investigators who are working those cases. So, yeah,
a murder in Arkansas and a murder in Oklahoma would
be very difficult for those.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
To be connected. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
So then one month prior to that, in August two
thousand and three, Jennifer Hyman's body was found in Tennessee,
but she was from Oklahoma City and she was in
school at the University of Central Oklahoma and edmund She
studied photography before switching her major to public relations, and
she was twenty four years old. She reportedly did really
well in school, but her fellow students didn't know that

(10:52):
she had started to work as an escort and then
as a sex worker in the evenings to raise money
and she had previously been arrested in Oklahoma on prostitution charges,
which I think is how they initially connected this. And
so she was found in Tennessee and then one month
prior to that. So these, you know, are all one
month apart. Margaret Holmes Gardner was her body was found

(11:14):
in Tennessee.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
So we have Tennessee, Oklahoma, and.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Sorry, her body was found in Arkansas, Okay, So we
have Arkansas, Tennessee, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Yeah, three women bodies
found one month apart from the other.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, all nude, all duct tapes.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
And Margaret was forty seven. But she was also a
sex worker and she apparently advertised her services over the
CEBE radio, So I don't know if that's how this
person found her. But she was a West Memphis local,
so she was likely picked up in Tennessee because she
was last seen in a truck stop in Tennessee, but
her body was found in Arkansas. So once Terry has

(11:57):
this information, she's thinking that these desks are incredibly similar
and likely connected, and the fact that they were all
last seen at truck stops gave her a clue that
this might be the work of a truck driver right,
and all of them found along I forty. Yeah, and
not like one hundred yards away from I forty, right

(12:20):
off of I forty, like right on the side of
the road on the on ramp. Basically, which is important.
It was an important clue because it tells you that
this is someone who doesn't want to leave EE forty
for whatever reason. And if you imagine it's a truck driver,
they have a route that they have to stick to,
and then they have to, you know, give a reason

(12:42):
for why they left or a delay in their delivery,
and so that would be a compelling reason why they
would literally dump a body like right on the side
of the road.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, I mean, it's also I think to me, dumin
Street's tremendous confidence in the idea of doing something like
that unfathomable to most of us. But you have no
fear of getting caught if you're doing it that frequently,
or at least less fear than a rational person might have.
But like if you're tossing a body out of a truck,

(13:16):
you're hidden by your truck. You know, the average person
speeding by on their car on a busy highway, they're
not stopping to look at what you're doing. No, how
many times have we all seen semis on the side
of the road and never thought anything about it? Yeah,
not a big deal, right, Yeah, And it definitely makes
you think how long had this been going on? You know,
the brazenness of it all. And what Terry Turner would

(13:39):
go on to say later in the investigation is that,
you know, a semi truck could be looked at as
a crime scene on wheels. It's in some way this
perfect crime because you know, the driver has an alibi.
Of course, it's not suspicious that they're driving across country.
This is what they're supposed to be doing, so there's

(14:00):
nothing suspicious about that. They also are able to pick
up a victim in one state, potentially murder them in
another state, and then dispose of their body in a
third state. And so it's very difficult to connect the dots.
And what comes to light is that this has been
going on for a very long time, yet no one
has connected the dots. Yeah. And in addition to that,

(14:23):
I mean just in the language you're describing about the
way they spoke of the victims called prostitutes, nameless prostitutes.
You know how hard are these departments looking for these
missing women and or girls. I don't know how many
resources are going into finding these women who have gone missing,

(14:43):
and you know, are their families even knowing to look
if they're people who are maybe gone for extended periods
of time.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, definitely complicates it. Yeah, and again Terry Turner, I
just love her. She's on it, she's on top of it.
She's not going to let this go. I love that.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
So she begins her investigation, and because of the Eye
forty connection, she comes into contact with police departments along
Eye forty this corridor and says, this is what I'm
working on, and let's work together. If any other case
is similar to this, come up, please let me know.
And one thing to note is that she created those relationships.

(15:29):
You know, sometimes there can be you know, jurisdictional like difficulties.
People don't touch my case, I don't touch your case.
But she's able to bring people together and work with
people and create that line of communication which ended up
being very vital.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Right, It's like, let's help each other. Yeah. It's also, though,
so alarming, just to think about being in a position
in your job where you're almost waiting for another murder
to help you solve the next one. Yeah, I mean
that is that is gut wrenching.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Totally, and that's the position she was in and it
turns out to come true. So it's September of two
thousand and three when she discovers you know, this is happening,
and there's three bodies that they know of. From September
of two thousand and three to January of two thousand
and four, there were four more similar murders along Eye
forty or wow, so in like months, four months? Yeah,

(16:25):
woe a month, Okay, So if it's if it's the
same person, it's like a killing spree that they're going
on along Eye forty. Yeah, and then it becomes this
race against the clock because one more month, one more body.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
So the four additional victims are Vicky Anderson, Sandra Richardson,
Patsy Leonard, and Casey Joe pipe Stem. So I want
to spend a little time talking about Casey Joe pipe
Stem because her case will end up helping to solve this,
even though a lot of them are unsolved, but to
bring some resolution to this in the end, and we

(17:00):
know more about her than some of the other victims.
Because of that, I think the last time anyone saw
Casey Joe pipe Stem alive was January twenty eighth, two
thousand and four, at an Oklahoma City truck stop. She
was just nineteen years old, and you know, three days
passed with no sign of her, and then on January
thirty first, her remains were found. Her body had been

(17:22):
dumped from a bridge in Grapevine, Texas, almost three hundred
miles south of Oklahoma City.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Was her body found just by chance? Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, someone stumbled upon it. I can't remember who, but
it was found by chance. It was again right along
the freeway. She was nude her body, her remains pointed
to a violent death, is what I'll say. She was
originally from Oklahoma City. She was a member of the
Seminole Nation, and she lived with her grandmother until she

(17:52):
was seven years old. But then her grandmother passed away,
which sort of seemed like the beginning of sort of
some trauma in her life. She started moving around a lot,
lived in various rural communities, and then her stepfather was murdered.
So she had like a series of traumatic events happening
in her life, and so she began using drugs and

(18:14):
dropped out of school and then turned to sex work
as a way to survive and make money. Her boyfriend,
Kelvin Scott, was twenty five at the time she died,
and he worked as a pimp, and he would actually
later be convicted of sex trafficking over a dozen women,
including Casey. So that is one aspect of this case

(18:36):
that did get resolution, is that he was brought to justice.
At first, he was a person of interest in her murder.
He was questioned after her remains were discovered, but ultimately
it was determined that he wasn't involved, right.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Because if she's discovered in Great Mind, Texas, he's presumably
nowhere near there. Yeah, Yeah, I mean this notion of
like a prostitute, so why bother naming her? You know?
And then you hear about the backstory of a lot
of the women who are doing sex work. For some
of them maybe in a way it's partially a decision

(19:12):
they're making, but it's so often that they're struggling either
with you know, addiction or a traumatic upbringing a lot
of times both. Yeah, And to hear that Casey's boyfriend
was a pimp who played a part in her coming
into contact with whoever is responsible for her death. I mean,
and it's terrible, Yeah, terrible.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
You know. Another aspect of the story is that Casey,
along with some of the other victims, had at some
time previous to being murdered, been arrested and like charged
with prostitution charges. And that fact alone it just goes
to show you how backwards it is that traditionally we've

(19:54):
viewed people in sex work from a law enforcement perspective.
That there are these criminals, and it's so clear that
they're victims, and that every time that law enforcement came
into contact with them should have been a potential chance
of offering help or offering a way out. Instead slap
you with the criminal charge. How is that going to

(20:15):
help you? Right, It's not going to help you at all.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
No.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, that's terrible. And she was nineteen nineteen, I mean,
it's so young, so young. So investigators believed that whoever
killed Casey Joe Pipestem, was also responsible for killing you know,
these other women that I've talked about. All in all,
there would be ten murders that they believed were all
connected and probably done by the same person.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
And that's the ten that they're finding.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
That's the ten they're finding. Exactly how many more?

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (20:49):
And so in February of two thousand and four, Terry
Turner basically organizes this massive meeting for law enforcement personnel
to come to Oklahoma state and meet about this.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Imagine coordinating that one as a woman in a predominantly
male field, and two before zoom, I know, like, I
know what I'm talking about. You guys need to get
on a plane.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, the logistics alone, Yeah, But a lot of people
showed up, including the FBI. They said there was about
sixty people. And it also caused significant interest from the press,
So there was a lot of press coverage there and
then all these stories started to be written, Is it
a serial killer? Are they a trucker? What's going on

(21:35):
in Oklahoma? And one of the things that actually Frank
mentions in his book was that after this event and
after all the press coverage came out, these specific murders stopped.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
So someone's paying attention.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
You have to wonder was this guy reading the news
did he see, oh wow, they're actually on to me.
And I don't know if he stopped killing, but he
changed up. They stopped finding bodies long eye forty in
this very same pattern.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, Yeah, And I mean I imagine if the press
becomes aware of the meeting, they're becoming aware of where
they're zeroing in, right is on one highway and this
idea of a long haul trucker being responsible. Yeah, I mean,
if I'm a long haul trucker in that day and age,
I imagine people are talking about it at the truck stop. Yeah.

(22:25):
So he stops, which you know, we think he stops,
but I wonder, I mean, it's like, Okay, that is
one hundred percent a good thing to not find another body.
But I wonder if as just purely from an investigation standpoint,
you're like, Okay, we know that now this search is
going to be more challenging because he's going to be
covering his tracks.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, And it sort of ends up going that way.
I mean, Terry continues on the investigation. She starts getting
so many tips from the public, and it's sort of
overwhelming that she actually reaches out to the FBI and
asks them for assistance on this, and they agree, especially
because it crosses state lines. So they send an investigator

(23:05):
to work with her, and they work this case and
from this whole thing. The FBI's initiative, the Highway Serial
Killings Initiative, basically is born out of this. Like they
end up saying, it's not just these ten women, it's
actually endemic, like this is happening, we think all over

(23:27):
the highways in America, which is like horrible, and this
is one example, one example, And so they start this
initiative to try to track down, you know, these killers,
and it's still going today. They have a computer database
that is maintained by the FBI that local investigators can
you submit information to. When they find something they think

(23:49):
this could be, you know, or it's a killing alongside
of a highway, you can submit it to their database.
And the numbers are pretty wild. I mean, obviously some
of these cases are older that have been submitted and
are still trying to be solved, and a lot have
been solved since. But there are more than eight hundred
murders in their database, most of whom were killed a

(24:12):
long truck stops or motels. These are unsolved or solved.
I don't know how many of these are solved. I
think this is current unsolved, but I'm not one hundred
percent on that.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
But when you think about decades all over our country. Yeah,
you know, not to mention, I don't know a lot
about long haul trucking, but like people who are going
across the border to Canada or to and from Mexico.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
It's like, yeah, wow, And they have a list of
nearly four hundred and fifty current suspects who are long
haul truckers current suspects today. Yeah, who's doing the background
checks at these trucking companies? Well, I mean that's a
whole other conversation that we talked to Frank about. Yeah, okay,

(24:58):
So that sort of like leads to the FBI having
this initiative, which is great. It's nice to know that
the FBI is aware of this, looking into this, that
there are resources going to try to stop this and
solve these cases. As far as the victims of the
I forty murders, most of those cases are technically still unsolved,

(25:19):
although there is a suspect who law enforcement believes probably
did it. So it takes us back to Casey Joe
Pipestem's case. So investigators are fairly sure that her killer
was a long haul trucker who was also a serial killer.
So in Grapevine, Texas, where her remains were found. There

(25:40):
was a police lieutenant named Larry Hallmark who really took
on the case and worked tirelessly to try to solve it.
He also worked with Terry Turner, like they connected shared information,
and they actually went on the road and did multiple
interviews together. They went to truck stops like trucking organization,
and they also spoke with a lot of sex workers.

(26:04):
And I think that this is a really interesting part
because they had to create this trust because they're law
enforcement officers technically approaching sex workers at truck stops, and
of course the reaction is like fear and don't arrest me,
and so you know, they had a totally different approach
and built this trust and said we're not arresting you,

(26:25):
we don't think you're criminals. We actually want to warn
you that there are serial killers in the area and
you need to be very careful. And also if you
see anything weird, if you meet a trucker and you
just feel like there's something wrong with him or get
that feeling, it doesn't matter what is, just tip us off,
like let us know. And they had a lot of

(26:45):
success with this actually, and at one point they thought
that they found the killer. So Larry Hallmark ends up
getting a call from a woman at a truck stop who.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
You know, sex worker.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
I don't know that she was a sex worker. Actually,
I think that she cleaned big rigs, like she would
do different cleaning services, but she was often at truck stops,
and so knew about these investigators. Knew about this tip line.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's an incredible like fly on the wall, person on
your side if your job is literally cleaning these trucks.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, And so she called in in two thousand and
four and had a raspy voice because she had been
attacked and choked. And essentially what she said was that
so she was a fifty one year old woman and
she'd approached a man in a truck to try to
talk to him about payment for cleaning his wheels. He
told her to get on the truck, and she did,

(27:44):
and then he locked the door and attacked her and
beat her and raped her, and she passed out. And
when she woke up, she was along the side of
the freeway near Kansas, like way far away, like he
maybe thought she was dead. He thought that he had
killed her.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
And she survived, and she told investigators that she you know,
he had talked to her, and he told her that
there had been others and basically admitted to her that
he had killed other women. And they ended up searching
a trash can near where she woke up, where she

(28:23):
you know, she was found, and they found some trash
from this truck driver and like some trucking logs. So
she was able to give them a name. She wasn't
able to give them a name, but she told them
like where she woke up, and they searched the area
and found trash that this trucker, oh, some of his
trash that he had disposed of. They followed that lead

(28:45):
and it ended up leading them to Carl Wayne Lawson,
who was a trucker and he was arrested in two
thousand and four, nine days after the attack, and he
ended up getting sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
But you know, she was able to ident eleven years. Yeah,
not enough.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Time, No, truly, she was able to identify him in
a lineup. And I don't know if he ended up
confessing or how that went down, but he immediately became
a person of interest in the I forty murders, and
so they took his DNA and they were really hoping
that this would be the guy, but ultimately it never
checked out and there was no evidence to connect him

(29:26):
to the I forty murders. So they had just found
a different murderer who was a trucker because he's telling
her there were others before you. Yeah, unbelievable, I know.
So then the I forty murderers continued to go unsolved,
finally kind of by lock. In June of two thousand
and five, America's Most Wanted told the story of Casey

(29:48):
Joe Pipestem's murder, and a ton of tips came in,
and one tipster pointed to this guy, John Robert Williams.
He was already a convicted killer. He's already in prison.
But our guy, the investigator, Larry Hallmark, went to go
visit him in prison, and he brought pictures of Casey.

(30:10):
So John Robert Williams, you know, he didn't remember her,
or at first he said he didn't, but then eventually
he looked at her and he said, oh, yeah, I
remember her. That's a little bit which might have been her,
you know, the name she used, but her family confirmed

(30:32):
that she did go by little bit, and she had
a tattoo that said little bit. So it did seem
like John Robert Williams knew who she was and probably
killed her, which would indicate that he killed the rest
of the women who were found on I forty right.
So he was already in prison at the time for
murdering another woman, Nikki Hill, and he is known as

(30:55):
the Big Rig Killer. He was traveling with his girlfriend,
Rachel Humberland, who was an accomplice in the murders, and
she was also in prison.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Oh my gosh, It's like, it's hard enough to imagine
one person doing that, but two, it's like between the
two of you, not one. He's like not going to do.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
That, I know.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
So in two thousand and five, both Williams and Cumberland
were actually charged with kidnapping and murdering Jennifer Hyman, who
was the twenty four year old college student from Oklahoma,
but ultimately the charges were later dismissed due to lack
of evidence. I think that he was a suspect in
like most of those murders, but ultimately, you know, there

(31:35):
just wasn't enough evidence to tie him to them. He
confessed to killing something like thirty women. But you know
Jeelhouse confessions, you don't know. Yeah, at this point is
he just knows he's going to spend the rest of
his life in prison. So he's like, oh, yeah, I
murdered all these women.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
And I don't know because in those conversations, at least
the way I've seen it play out. Sometimes not with
this one in particular, but maybe is okay, come in
and talk to us. So it's a break from their routine. Yeah,
in jail every single day, it's like maybe they get coffee,
maybe there's something there for them to do, and so
it's hard to take it seriously. Yeah, also if somebody

(32:14):
has nothing to lose, totally. So the only murder that
he ended up being charged with was Casey Joe Pipestems
and twenty thirteen, almost ten years after her murder, John
Robert Williams was charged with her murder. Okay, Now, I
don't believe that anything happened with those charges. I looked

(32:35):
and it's not like there was a trial or anything.
So he hasn't been convicted. So her case is not
technically considered unsolved, although legally it's unresolved in court, right
because if he's already serving a life sentence, and it
would be hard to prove based on like the physical

(32:56):
evidence that they have. I mean, things are so different now,
But how do you justify the resources? I think yeah,
probably what they were asking. There's no silver lining in
a murder, But it sounds like the pattern of these
murders led to this initiative that's going to help solve
hundreds more and hopefully prevent others in the future because

(33:18):
now they know what to look for.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, and one of the things that we'll talk with
Frank about is that with modern trucking as well, there's
a lot of automation and tracking of movement, right, and
so the hope is that that also makes it harder
for someone to commit murder.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, and this, you know, we talked a little bit
about this earlier on, but the perception of sex work
and how we view the people who are sex workers
and seeing people as victims, yeah, regardless of their life circumstances.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, there's definitely more understanding of that now, which is good.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
There's also cameras now, I mean so many cameras, Like
every story you go into you're seeing cameras outside of
it. And I'm sure these truck stops. I know, I feel
like we talk with Frank about that. I want to
give it away, but I was like, surely this isn't
happening anymore because of all the technology and all the cameras,
and he was kind of like, hmm, it's happenings still happening. Yeah,

(34:19):
but you know there's a lot being done to try
to prevent it. And yeah, so we should get into
the conversation with Frank. He talks about his time on
the road with a trucker, all of his research. It's
really interesting. Yeah, thanks for shining some light on that
for me going into the conversation.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, today we're talking with Frank Ficklucy, who's a former
assistant director for Counterintelligence at the FBI and an author
of multiple books. We're going to be talking about his

(34:59):
book Long Hall today mostly. Frank, Welcome to the Knife.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Thanks, I'm really happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah, we're so excited to talk to you today.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
So in your book Long Haul, you talk quite a
lot about the Highway Serial Killings Initiative it's also known
as HSK. In the book, you say something like there's
over eight hundred murders that they are looking into what
kind of cases do they specifically work on.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
It's limited to highway killings where or highway proximity killings
of largely women. And you suspect there's a trucker connection.
They're at least eight hundred and fifty murders of women
over the last several decades alongside our nation's highways. About

(35:49):
thirty thirty five long haul truckers already in prison for
multiple murders. When I asked the FBI now post retirement,
as I'm writing, as I write this book, how many
suspects do you have in these unsolved murders because they're
still going on, right, Yes they are. There's thirty five
long hall truckers in prison. They're still happening, and we haven't.

(36:10):
More importantly, we haven't solved the cases we already know about.
And I said, how many people are looking at in
the long haul community? Four hundred and fifty, four hundred
and fifty suspects. I've got to know more about this.
The initiative has two parts to it, the Highway Serial
Killings Initiative Database, which sits within the ViCAP database the

(36:33):
Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It's a database most detectives are
aware of. But here's the thing. Most detectives are not
aware that within YCAP there is a separate database for
the Highway Serial Killings initiative. So that's part one. What's
the second part. The incredible analysts, the crime analysts, no guns,

(36:54):
no badges, brain power, knowledge, experience based to go Virginia,
who then lay hands on what's in that database, scour
and scrub all the nation's newspapers, all the killings on
the nation sideways that are probably not in the database
because very few detects are aware that it exists. And

(37:18):
then the magic happens. And it's not magic, it's hard
work and brain power where they try to solve and
connect the dots to stop the next killing.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
In the book, you interview an FBI analyst, one of
these analysts who work on the HSK initiative, and one
of the things that emerged is this very clear pattern
of long haul truckers being the perpetrators and suspects. Obviously,
we want to say that that does not mean every

(37:48):
long haul trucker is the killer, not at all, but
there is a real prevalence of this happening. And another
person that you interviewed use this term crime scene on
wheels to ask you about that term, what does that
mean and why are these specific crimes so difficult to sump?

Speaker 3 (38:06):
First, thank god, we're only talking about a tiny fraction
of long hall truckers who killed part of my research.
Over a year to write this book, I decided I
was going to ride over two thousand miles in a
big rick. I learned a lot of great things about
the trucking industry, it's impact on our economy. They are
essential workers. Many of them are just trying to put

(38:26):
food on their families table by putting food on our table. Right.
Grocery stores would run out of food in three days
if truckers stopped trucking. So the impact on the economy
is enormous, like over eight hundred billion dollars in gross
streight revenue every year with trucking. So I'm glad you
mentioned that a lot of these cases develop in very
remote areas. Right, It's where you dump a body, And

(38:49):
you mentioned you know this mobile crime scene on wheels.
It's almost the perfect way to do this. The truckers
in these cases are grabbing their victim. In one police
jurisdic they're killing her, almost always her in a second jurisdiction,
and they're dumping the remains in a third jurisdiction, often
very rural. So imagine that county sheriff. They find a

(39:13):
body near the highway, and there's often no idea on
these bodies, and they're either partially nude, or they're strangled,
or they're shut or they're stabbed. And now this sheriff's
apartment likely may not have any detectives. They do road
patrol let alone. Hey, where's your crime analyst who can
help load the data into the FBI's database. And we

(39:35):
don't have an analyst. You know, we patrol the highway
and we have a dead body. And so the victimology
is part of those two hundred questions that the FBI wants.
You know, it's helped us help you who the victim
is may tell you who the killer is.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, and that brings me to you. When on the
road with a long haul trucker named Mike, which I imagine
was such an experience. You know, I want to get
into the long haul trucker subculture. I also want to
kind of get into why this attracts killers. But first,
you know, I'm just so curious, like, what was that

(40:12):
experience like for you being on the road living as
a long haul trucker for a short period of time.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah, I always wondered, you know, I didn't have a
fascination with it, but yeah, you know when you're on
the highway and you wonder, well, who's in that truck,
what's their life like? And what I discovered was an
entirely new world for me. Anyway. I discovered a hierarchy,
a caste system within the trucking industry. Why was this

(40:42):
important because when you tell me you have the FBI
says they have four hundred and fifty suspects. That's too
much that can't happen. The investigator in me has to
narrow that number down. So one of the questions I
asked was which kind of trucker and which kind of
truck is more likely to kill? And I discovered a
caste system. There's different levels of respect within the trucking

(41:06):
community based on what kind of truck you drive. The
truck I rode in was a flatbed. Why is that
important because it's very physical and mentally engaging, because that's
a different trucker than the trucker who's what they call
a dry banner on the other end of the spectrum,

(41:26):
who literally hauls dry goods across the country, whether it's
a load of salsa today or a load of paper
towels tomorrow, and does nothing more than open and close
the back door for someone else to unload it and
load it. That's it. There's no physical interaction, human social
interaction necessary, really, and everything in between. But why does

(41:51):
it matter? Because I theorize in my attempt to get
the numbers down for the suspects, I theorize that the
trucker who's more physically and mentally, if you're mentally and
physically engaged with the load, you're less likely to be
that isolated hermit type killer. If you're driving for a
big corporation, like the big names we all know we

(42:11):
see on the side of the trucks, they're heavily monitored. Today,
trucking is high tech. That company knows where you are.
They have cameras looking in at you, looking out at
the traffic. They've got the geolocation, They know your speed.
The truck even breaks for you if you're going too fast.
All that is known electronic logs are kept and then

(42:32):
on the other end of the spectrum, maybe you're an
owner operator, maybe you're not tracked at all. So I
start theorizing about that. I do ask the question in
the book, who is attracted to these jobs? And do
people actually apply to be a long haul trucker because
they want to kill? I think the answer is like this.
These killers, serial killers, by definition and by studying all

(42:55):
of them, are typically socially inept people. There are exceptions
to that Ted Bundy, for example, but generally these are
not your charmers. Generally they've had traumatic childhoods, dysfunctional severely
sometimes dysfunctional childhoods, maybe abusive moms. Maybe they're acting out

(43:15):
against a female or mother figure. But when they're attracted
to that kind of isolated job, I can do this
all by myself. I just need to get from point
A to point B. I can lead live life like
I want to. They suddenly realized they could get away
with almost anything, and they can't. They can, And so

(43:36):
I talk about all of that, and I ask all
of those questions. Some people have asked me, is a
serial killer trucker then a non trucker serial killer? No?
Pretty much, serial killers are the same, But I will
tell you this, by far, the number one occupation of
a serial killer is trucking.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Wow, that is wild. I had no idea. I mean,
I had, of course heard. I think most people who
followed true crime, or maybe most people watching just like
the news, have heard of like a truck or also
being a serial killer in one case or another. But
I didn't know that that was such a common theme.

(44:16):
And I'm curious about truck stops because this idea of
like the truck is the crime scene. I mean, when
I think of long haul trucking, I picture rest stops.
I picture late at night. I picture all the trucks
parked in one area and all the people coming in
for gas, coming in and leaving in another area. And

(44:39):
I'm wondering what you can tell us about sort of
the scene that happens at truck stops where people are
gathering or maybe they're not gathering, where they're stopping with
their truck, Like, what happens there? What are they observing?

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, sure, it's a subculture. And yes, I've spent many
a night at truck steps. Did you know that your
truck idols twenty four to seven, That engine is on
all the time why heat and air conditioning and power.
So that rumble kind of set that scene, right, that

(45:15):
rumble that kind of almost becomes white noise for you
as you're going off to sleep. How about food, Well,
I don't like this rest stop for food. Let's order
grub Hub or let's order door dash to the truck, Yes,
to the truck. All of that is going on. You
mentioned kind of do they interact with each other or not?
Mostly not. I thought maybe that would happen. We had

(45:38):
one great, big restadant, amazing restaurant outside of Milwaukee. We
go upstairs to a bar area and it's big. This
is like they have a supermarket in this place. So
we go upstairs there's a bar and I thought, okay,
I'm gonna be interacting with truckers. We'll see them talking
to each other. No, you know, mostly they're on headsets

(45:59):
talking to family and friends. They're not talking to each
other very much. And also they're drinking. And I'm thinking,
this is a weeknight. These guys are going to be
up in the morning on the road. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
You talked a lot about drugs in the book Substances.
Can you talk about some of that statistics as far
as like drug and alcohol use among long haul truckers.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
There's a staggering amount of drivers who fail their random
drug tests. I was shocked at that. I don't have
the numbers right in front of me, but I think
it's as much as thirty percent will fail their drug
test at sometimes. And look having to get up at
the crack of dawn and drive alert all day, and

(46:41):
you better be alert. I can't tell you how many
near misses we had. I talk about this in the
book on the Highway. Oblivious drivers, car drivers who are
on the phone, texting, talking to their kids. I don't
know what they're doing, but we almost got killed several times. Yes,
truckers have to be alert and it was a real
lesson and for me as to break time. So, in

(47:03):
other words, how long it takes for this, you know,
eighty thousand pound vehicle to stop. And if you think,
as I did, I can cut this guy. I got
to get in front of this guy. This is slowing
me down. I'm going to go around and then I'm
going to slam on my brakes when I get in
front of him. You're taking your life in your hands.
It's because they can't stop and so all of that

(47:24):
goes into play the health of the drivers. There's a
Canadian study of the health of drivers, long haul drivers
that I have referenced in the book, and that's eye
opening too. They basically, if you don't suffer from clinical
depression at the start of your career, you may well
suffer from it by the end of your career. The isolation,
the sedentariness of it. I had the luxuries standing up

(47:46):
and getting behind the passenger seat and I just standing
or my legs. We're going to go numb, you know.
The driver doesn't have that luxury. So sedentary, unhealthy. You
walk into a truck stop shop and good luck finding
something healthy that's not processed, fried horrible. And so they

(48:08):
get overweight, they get heart conditions, they get depressed, and
we've got to do something more. We got to do
something better. There's a better way to do this, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
And there's a lot of use of like methinphetamine and
speed like drugs to keep them awake.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
You got to get up in the morning and stay
alured all day, and then you've got to go down.
You've got to go down and get your sleep, and
you turn off all of that alertness, and yes, they
started using substances.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
And so another subculture that you dive into and do
a lot of research about and are very thoughtful when
talking about is the victims, many of whom are very
vulnerable women and girls who you know are either victims
of sex trafficking or sex workers. And we're most of

(48:57):
the perpetrators finding their victims at truck stops.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
I spoke to I believe the two top experts on
street level sex trafficking in the country doctor Celia Williamson
at the University of Toledo and doctor Dominiquro Stepowitz at
Arizona State University. And they're not just academics. They are
on the street themselves, doing clinical work, making a difference,

(49:24):
helping to run recovery and resource centers as well, and
doing incredible research. They helped me immensely, and they said, Frank,
when you interview these sex trafficked women, you're going to
see some things that you should check off in your
head because you're going to see early childhood trauma. You're
going to see what I coined to phrase saying, a

(49:44):
tower of trauma. I saw. It's not just one thing,
it's a lot of things, and so sure enough I
start interviewing these victims, and any stereotype you have, oh
that only happens in certain kinds of families or certain places. No, no,
it does not. It does not. But the trauma is
often the commonality and strangely often the commonality among the

(50:07):
truck or killers as well, whether or not these victims
are being chosen on site at truck stops. So the
answer to that question actually is different depending on what
period of time you're asking about. In many cases, the
plying of the trade, the trafficking is moving and has

(50:28):
moved away from the physical truck stop, and that story
in itself of communities saying we've had enough of this,
and even you know, legal action against the big rest
stop companies, which, by the way, that's an industry, multi
billion dollar industry. You pass those every day on the
highway or at least on vacation trips right where you're

(50:48):
you're on the highway and you pass the Tha, the Loves,
and they're all combining. They're combining their powerful industry, but
they're cleaning up their act. In years past, they would
look the other way to trafficking happening there. They wanted
the truckers to come, and if the truckers wanted girls,
we're okay with that. We'll look the other way. Same

(51:11):
for police and sheriffs. They've got other things to do.
Answer nine to one one calls. We're not driving through
the truck stop every hour. That's not happening. So today
it's largely moved online. So like our whole lives have
moved online, so has the grooming and recruitment.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Yeah, I mean, so much of it is happening online.
And you know, you had also mentioned the technology has
changed so much in the tracking of these trucks and
the cameras and you know, knowing how fast they're going,
all of that that didn't exist in the eighties, right,
But the online grooming, you know, is very scary and
Hannah and I've heard a lot about this, but the

(51:51):
culmination of it is that in the worst of circumstances
that something comes to fruition where the person seeking to
like harm or exploit someone gets to see them in person.
I mean, I'm from King County, Washington, the Green River
Killer and this was like his uh, I don't even
know what to call it, but seeking out sex workers

(52:13):
and kind of banking on the fact that no one
would come looking for them, and that you know, Gary
Ridgeway ultimately caught in Many of these victims are found
in a similar location. But he wasn't a trucker driving
all the way across the country where they could be anywhere.
I have a question about, you know, if you were
driving even one of the smaller trucks that were picturing,

(52:37):
that's a very big rig. Let's say you are one
of these killers and you have committed a murder. Now
you need to dispose of the body. You know, you
can't like pull into a narrow driveway and sneak out.
I mean, you have a big freakin' truck, Like, how
is that happening?

Speaker 3 (52:56):
So often? The theory is that the bodies are discarded
at night, under cover of darkness, very isolated highways, very
few people on the road. The odds are with you
on not being discovered. And it's also a reason why
you see the bodies discovered very close to the highway,
so you know. Initially I was like, wait, how does

(53:17):
the FBI accept the case, you know, for the program
for the HSK initiative, And I said, because you don't know,
I mean a body could be found a mile from
the highway. Well they're not. They're not a mile from
the highway because the trucker is not going to stop
and expose this truck for very long and then drag
a body somewhere. It's rare, it happens, it's rare. So yeah,

(53:40):
it's done. And they get enoldened, they get in boldened.
I've done this before. They get addicted to the adrenaline
flow and they get brazen about it. Yeah, I'm going
to drag a body. Maybe it's in a tarp, maybe
it's not, but it's dark, no one's on this highway.
I'm going to drag it out and tossed it out. Literally.

(54:01):
I've got cases where the passenger door opens, bodies tossed
out the passenger.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Was there any case that either a victim that you
spoke with or one of the serial killers that you
read about that you know, stood out to you that
you want to kind of walk us through that case.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Well, I let's go with a victim, I think because
she typifies so many of these. I want to be
careful to say that you should never have a formulaic
approach to how someone falls into the trap of trafficking,
because each case is different, everyone's mind is different, everyone
responds to trauma differently. You may know people you know

(54:43):
who say, well, wait a minute, this friend of mine
was traumatized and even molested and or raped repeatedly and
had horrible things happening in the house. And you know,
she's not been trafficked. She survived and thrived, and so
I don't have an answer to why, but I can
tell you that a case that typifies this would be

(55:04):
the case I mentioned in the book Alias happens to
be Hannah and yeah, suicide in the family, divorce, domestic violence,
geographic moves. This is someone who has an uncle who's sheriffs.

(55:25):
You know, this is an upstanding family. Literally Grandpa helped
to build the local church with his bare hands. She
herself was an outstanding athlete, good student, very bright Midwest girl.
But the trauma stacks up, and there's some mental illness,

(55:48):
there's some drug used in the family, and there's some
bullying that goes on in school, elementary and later. The
fact is the community that she was in doesn't accept
back then that your parents were divorced. That's a bad thing,
you know, in that community. Back then there's a trouble
with the law in the family. So anyway, she goes

(56:11):
to college. But the boyfriend, that siren call of the boyfriend.
The boyfriend is my stability with all the chaos at home,
all the physical moves, the boyfriend is my rock. Well,
the boyfriend is not a rock, I can assure you.
The boyfriend is a mess and a crook. And she's

(56:32):
introduced to drug use. This is very common. By the way,
there's older siblings that introduce. She hangs out, so she's
kind of old for her age, meaning because of the
older siblings, she's hanging out with older people and those
older people are smoking dope and that's where she seems
that's where I fit in. And it's a very young

(56:53):
exposure to marijuana. Now we could get you know, it's funny.
I will tell you. We could do another hour on
what it's like to publish with a major publisher and
the editing process. But one of the things the editor
you know, had some heartburnt with was hey, Frank, are
you speaking ill of marijuana? And because you know it's legal,
if like thirty states said, you know, what's wrong with that?

(57:14):
And I go, look, no, I no, actually, no, I
get it. I'm cool with that. But I am here
to tell you what the victims are telling me. Now
you want me to be an honest broker or not,
because I've had multiple victims tell me that in their life.
In their case, their gateway drug was marijuana. And if

(57:37):
you're smoking a lot of marijuana at eleven years old,
you know, while your brain is developing, probably not a
good thing.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
And then the harder drugs and the boyfriend and living
for the boyfriend and the story what compelled me. I
interview this woman who now, thank god, is not only
a survivor but a thriver. She helps run a really
center for women who want to come out of trafficking. Right.
And I don't cry easily, but we're sitting in a room,

(58:07):
I'm interviewing her in a conference room for days, and
she starts telling me things that she never even told
her therapist. We had to call time out, and she
called her therapist and said, I'm telling Frank things I
haven't even told you. And the therapists that keep going.
You're having a breakthrough, keep going. And she's crying and

(58:28):
I'm tearing up, and it's like it really touched me
because the story. If you were to write a script
for this, for a movie for her life, Hollywood would
probably say, there's too much trauma here. You're making this
stuff up. It's dark stuff. And the journey of finally
hitting rock bottom. You hear that phrase over and over, right,

(58:50):
rock bottom. I had to hit rock bottom? You do
the experts tell me that getting out of that because
the drugs play a huge role, a huge role in
this heroin oxy oxy eighties, break it up, crushing your
oxy so they act faster, a huge role in trafficking.
And then what happens. You have to steal to get

(59:13):
the money for the drugs, You have to sell yourself
to get the money for the drugs. You inevitably get
arrested for shoplifting or something like that, or even you know,
because this young lady was really smart, she got into
like credit card fraud, you know, some white collar embezzlement.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Yeah, because I remember, you know, you had flown out
and met her, and you know, it was a touching
part of the story, especially that she's doing well now.
But was she the one that when she was in
jail for some of this fraud, she met someone and
was recruited. She didn't realize, but can you tell us,
like what happened with that.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
I'm glad you brought this up because you earlier asked
about recruitment and grument, right, and the level of recruitment
that goes on in jails, county jails is staggering. What
is that look like? So obviously because of theft, prostitution charges,
whatever you're doing, you get caught and now you're in
the county jail or the lock up. You're doing six

(01:00:10):
months to a year. And the bottoms And that's a
phrase that I described in the book, which is kind
of think of that as a woman who's trusted by
the pimp within the stable of women he controls. Call
her a deputy pimp if you want to. But she
keeps the women in line. And now she's locked up
for whatever reason. Well, she keeps working. She's a saleswoman,

(01:00:32):
so she's going to recruit you. Now you're you're in
for theft or shoplifting or something, and she says, you
got a place to go when you get out of here. No,
I don't. And I'm embarrassed to tell my parents, and
you know, I haven't talked to my mom and alah
blah blah, and I'm not going to tell them what
I you know, I'm in big trouble with the law.
I tell you what she says. This is very common.

(01:00:53):
Here's my number when you get out. Look, I'll put
some money on your on your jail food account, your
own account. You come stay with us for a while,
so you get back on your feet. Call me when
you get out. That's recruitment. In this young lady's case,
she ended up absolutely in what the law calls indentured servitude.
She was absolutely a slave, and they treated her right initially.

(01:01:19):
You know, she was a naive. These people have a
great house. This guy's giving me, you know, my friend's
boyfriend is giving me money for hair and nails, and
we're eating well, we're dining out. This is amazing. And
then within hours absolutely beaten and raped and basically enslaved.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
And her documents were taken, like her ID and everything
you talked about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah, your phone has taken your ID, your driver's license,
your social security card. Go ahead, good luck. You try
to get out of here, and if you try to escape,
we beat you again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, it's really like unimaginable and I'm trying to remember
how she escaped this well, I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Maybe say things that aren't in the book, but how
she escaped was one day the pimps plural say, you
girls are going out to the shopping mall and you're
going to steal some shoes for us. They were into
high end sneakers. And here's why, how you're gonna do it.
Where are you gonna do it? Here's the shoes we
you know we want you're stealing for us. By the way,
this is a big thing. It's called trafficking adjacent crimes.

(01:02:22):
So these women often commit crimes outside of just prostitution charges.
They do it for the pimp, or they do it
for the drugs, but there's a lot of crime that
goes on around trafficking. This is her example. So she
and another girl get into a store. They're ripping off
the they're going to rob. It's pretty apparent they're not

(01:02:44):
very good at it. So security shows up, the police
show up. The pimp is in the area directing all
of this theft. The police grab him. He's arrested, and
they find out there's a warrant for him out of Texas.
They're going to send him back, he's done, and that
finally is the opportunity for Hannah to get out of this.

(01:03:07):
And then now she is forever bidder because she completely confesses,
so what's going on in the whole operation. She gives
to the police officer and seemingly he does nothing with
that information. Nothing at this point, now she's out, Is
she free free from her drug habit? Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Yeah. I mean, the consequences of this are life long
for the victims, and you know, probably in ways for
their families who now have to watch them struggle like this.
I'm curious if you've seen a shift in either the
FBI's sort of perspective on sex workers or law enforcement,

(01:03:47):
where in many cases they have been viewed as like
a problem or like look down upon. But I guess
what I'm trying to ask you is are they now
being seen more so as the victims that they they are.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
I'm so happy we're getting to this because I did
not want to be the guy who writes this very
dark book. You know, here's this horrible societal problem. Have
a nice day, please buy my book. I wanted to
offer solutions and insights, and so with regard to law enforcement, insights,
and answers. The good news is yes, law enforcement, often

(01:04:27):
at the urging of nonprofit groups and social work groups,
has changed their methodology in many places, and it works.
What works, Number one, we have to stop treating trafficking
victims as criminals and look at them as the victims
that they are. If you handcuff that young lady and

(01:04:51):
there's any indication of trafficking, and by the way, there's
almost always indication of trafficking, you say, well, wait a minute,
aren't there independent operators and high end escorts, five star hotels. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there are, but they're few and far between. I'm telling
you I learned, even from the experts. Even when you
go to those counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal

(01:05:13):
and it's controlled and it's within these legal probls, guess what,
very few of those women are independent operators. There's a
pimp somewhere in that picture, and they're sending that money
back home to the pimp. So anyway, what works. Stop arresting,
start inserting the local activist group, the social group, the

(01:05:35):
resource center. Almost always women. You can imagine the distrust
of male officers that these victims have because what happens
when you handcuff and you throw in jail for the night.
Guess who the savior is the pimp who shows up
as the savior and bails her out and she's on
the street in the morning, if not that same night.

(01:05:56):
So what do you do. I've seen it work in
my own FBI in Ohio, in Toledo, partnership with those
local groups and organizations, and you ask the question, what
do you need to get out right now? What do
you need to get out of this trap you're in
right now tonight? Well maybe tomorrow, No, no, no, tonight.

(01:06:18):
Well I need a roof over my head. My pimp's
going to kill me. Okay, we have that for you tonight.
We have it, all of these, all the grant money,
all of the volunteers in the business owners people say,
I've got money for you. What do you want to
do with your life. I've always wanted to be a paralegal.
I want to learn how to cut hair. We can
get you those certificates in that training. Come with us tonight.

(01:06:40):
I have a baby. I need diaper money. We'll come
with us. We'll help you tonight. We've got an apartment
for you or in the case of Arizona State University
and doctor Seppowitz. We have a place for you to
live on campus with us with your child, so that works.
So people are changing their tune toward this. And guess
what if you really want to make an impact, because

(01:07:01):
it's kind of lazy and easy for the officer to say, yeah,
another prostitution to ask I put that on my record,
I got another arrest. You want to take down the
whole ring of trafficking. How about the intelligence you develop
when you develop a rapport and trust with that young
victim and she eventually gives up the whole operation. I've

(01:07:26):
seen that happen. We took down a national trafficking ring
out of Toledo, Ohio that way.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Yeah, I'm so glad to hear. That is definitely a
bright spot in the book of this evolution of thinking
when it comes to victims in that way. You know,
I know we're wrapping up here, but I had a
question I want to ask you, and I'm curious what
you have to say about it, just because I feel
like this has sort of come up in conversation get
togethers or whatever, especially when people hear that I work

(01:07:56):
in true crime the question I get a lot that
I've never really been able to answer but been curious about,
is people want to know, and there's the sense that
serial killers are somewhat a thing of the past. That
the positive part of technology, the fact that everyone has
a phone on them at all times, a tracking device

(01:08:16):
at all times, the fact that you know, even as
you wrote about in your book, the newer, the big
corporation trucks are monitored all the time. You have a
button that says I'm driving, you have a button that
says I'm off duty and where I am, And that
it's so much harder to just grab someone who's car
is broken down off the side of the road and

(01:08:36):
no one knows where they are, or at a truck
stop someone being trafficked and then no one knows where
that person was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Is that true?

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Has this activity become more difficult and thus less prevalent.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
It's a valid question, it really is. And I don't
think enough data is being captured to help us with
conclusions here. It's my gut feeling that some of the
numbers are coming down. We know this, We know societally
from FBI crime reports that are captured from police departments.
That homicide rates are going down in major cities and

(01:09:13):
have been for the last several years. We know that
that's really good news. How much of that is serial
killers not killing. Here's my problem with rushing to a
conclusion there. I don't believe that serial killers are going
to go away. I don't think that personality and mindset
and trauma is going to dissipate to the point where

(01:09:37):
serial killers become diminished or obsolete. I would actually counter
argue that our highly technical society and being online constantly
creates further isolation and antisocialism that often is the characteristic
of a serial killer. You could also argue that the

(01:09:58):
move onto online grooming and recruitment the move to advertise.
As I drove through the country with this trucker, I
made a point of checking out the ads on various
platforms sex for money to see, Hey, in this little
community where we're betting down for the night at this
little mom and pop truck stop, could we actually get

(01:10:20):
sex for money here? The answer is yes, And so
if it's online, you are now moving from that physical
truck stop transaction to the nearby shady motel or massage
parlor where it's going to happen, and now I think
it's less likely to be discovered and solvable in many

(01:10:42):
ways because the universe of people who could have killed
this woman is actually greater outside of the truck stop.
So that mindset is not going away. So what are
we going to see? Well, ever, since everything is moving
online in our lives, I think the killing moves online,
meaning what are we seeing people answering ads for weird,

(01:11:05):
weird sex stuff and you show up and it's a killer.
They never see these people again. I think the killers
will move online, just like the victims, the trafficked, the
prostitutes move online for their advertising. They are now saying,
i'd here, come get me if you're the killer.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Yeah, and then that also means the investigators need to
move online as well.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Oh absolutely, it's reminding me of that. I mean, it's
not so related to this, but just the online piece
of it all and how hard it is to track
those things is the I don't know if you have
any familiarity with this, but there was a case in Arizona.
I wish I remembered how many years ago, but like
a long time ago. I think maybe like four to
five years ago. Now, this fourteen year old girl Alicia

(01:11:55):
Navarro went missing. She left a note said I'm sorry mom,
I'll be back promise. She left a note left in
the middle of the night, and they couldn't find her,
like nothing. And then on her eighteenth birthday, she walks
into a small town police station in Montana and says, hey,
this is my name. I want to be taken off
the missing person's list. And of course they're like, well, hey,

(01:12:16):
wait a minute, like, where have you been? What's going on?
Fast forward? Now we know and they always suspected that
she met someone online, and now they know that she
did meet someone online. None of the details have been released,
but this person they eventually raided the apartment that he
had been living in with Alicia. And I think he

(01:12:37):
was just sentenced to like two hundred years or he
got some wildly long and just and fair sentence for
child sex abuse material. And this is the person that
she had been living with. Now she's back with her
family and thankfully she's alive. But it was you know,
we have a lot of technology now, and no one

(01:12:58):
knew where she was.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
I think this is a great example because of the
night mirror of being a parent. These days of young
people is this online scenario. I can't tell you, even
in my FBI days, how many cases we had where
the young lady was reported missing or a runaway. And
the first thing, what's the first thing the FAI is
going to do. They're going to check her devices, They're

(01:13:22):
going to grab her computer, the laptop, and what do
we find. Absolutely has fallen in love with some guy,
usually an adult. Many stays away, and the problem with
that is the FBI and law enforcement generally shuts off
at that point number when the parents are shocked, shocked,

(01:13:43):
they had no idea, and then law enforcement goes, hey, look,
we got a hundred other things to do, and your
daughter has fallen for this person. Well, who is he?
Well we don't know quite honestly, because he's faking. He's
using an alias. Well, no, he could be a fifty
year old guy, don't well. And so it's a whole
that we're falling into. And I truly, you know, I

(01:14:06):
have grandchildren now, so I've stopped worrying about my kids
and now I'm worrying about my grandchildren.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Yeah, it is a very strange time, certainly so different.
I mean, like I feel like I'm in the last
age group that grew up without full access to internet,
cell phones, computers, like we had one computer and it
faced out so you could everyone can see the screen
dial in.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Yes, Well, what I mean the equivalent right now is
I tell parents, Look, I know you think it's an
invasion privacy, but go ahead and do it. Buy the
software and know what your child is doing online. And
by the way, delay delay, delay the purchase of that
first device.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
Yeah, that's my game plan. Well, thank you so much
for listening. That is our episode for this week. We'll
be back next week. If you have a story for us,
we would love to hear it. Our email is The
Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com, or you can follow
us on Instagram at the Knife Podcast or a Blue
Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has been an Exactly

(01:15:07):
Right production hosted and produced by me Hannah Smith and
me paysha Eten.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Artwork fi Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.