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Off Record: Highway Serial Killings (with Frank Figliuzzi) · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

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  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
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  Speaker 2: The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of
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  Speaker 2: the speaker and do not necessarily represent the Knife or
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  Speaker 2: Exactly Right media.
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  Speaker 3: These killers serial killers, by definition and by studying, all
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  Speaker 3: of them are typically socially inept people. There are exceptions
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  Speaker 3: to the Ted Bundy, for example, but generally these are
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  Speaker 3: not your charmers.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Hannah Smith, I'm
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  Speaker 1: patia Eton, and today we have a little bit of
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  Speaker 1: a hybrid episode. I'm going to start with telling you
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  Speaker 1: a story, and then at the end we will play
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  Speaker 1: an interview that relates to the story that I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to talk about. This is my favorite kind of episode. Great,
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  Speaker 1: so buckle up sound effects. Okay, So kind of just
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  Speaker 1: to start it off and introduce to people, we did
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  Speaker 1: an interview with this retired FBI agent Frank Figliuzi, and
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  Speaker 1: he wrote this book called Long Haul, which is about
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  Speaker 1: an FBI initiative called the Highway Serial Killings Initiative or HSK.
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  Speaker 1: And I loved the book. I thought it was really interesting.
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  Speaker 1: I'd never heard of this initiative. It's an initiative that
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  Speaker 1: just investigates killings that happen along our nation's highways. So
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  Speaker 1: that's like very specific. And you know, if you're a
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  Speaker 1: true crime lover, you're probably familiar with the trope of
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  Speaker 1: the truck driver being a killer.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Like I can just picture in different like movies
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  Speaker 2: or TV shows, a dimly lit truck stop. You've got
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  Speaker 2: like a lady spoken a cigarette outside the gas station,
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  Speaker 2: and something bad as about to happen.
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  Speaker 1: But it turns out it's not just a trope. It's
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  Speaker 1: like actually a real thing. Obviously, not every trucker, not
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  Speaker 1: even the majority of truckers, are killers. They're very important
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  Speaker 1: people's central workers. Our nation would crumble without trucking. But
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  Speaker 1: this HSK initiative collects a bunch of data and essentially,
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  Speaker 1: like what Frank told us was that, yeah, there are
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  Speaker 1: a lot of serial killers who are attracted to the
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  Speaker 1: profession of long haul trucking for a specific reason.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I imagine it's like, if you're a serial killer,
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  Speaker 2: you have the outliers who are like the Ted Bundyes
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  Speaker 2: of the world, charming, charismatic, but mostly I would assume
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  Speaker 2: you're sort of like a lone wolf because the moment
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  Speaker 2: that people know who you really are. Your secret's going
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  Speaker 2: to get out. That's not like a secret someone's going.
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  Speaker 3: To keep for you. Right.
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  Speaker 1: So this transient lifestyle of always being on the road,
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  Speaker 1: and we do talk to Frank about that. He talks
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  Speaker 1: about profiling long haul truckers who are also serial killers,
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  Speaker 1: which I think is a really interesting part of the
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  Speaker 1: episode that you will hear later in the interview. He
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  Speaker 1: talks about, you know, the loaner and what kind of
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  Speaker 1: trucker position is most attractive to someone who might be
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  Speaker 1: looking for the opportunity to kill people. I mean, it's
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  Speaker 1: crazy to talk about, but it's real, and it's something
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  Speaker 1: the FBI is tracking.
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  Speaker 2: Like there was enough serial killer truck drivers that the
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  Speaker 2: FBI said, we need a team on this.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we need a special initiative for this. Wow, so
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  Speaker 1: very fascinating. We did the interview. We didn't talk about
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  Speaker 1: any specific case in detail with Frank, but this interview
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  Speaker 1: led me down this rabbit hole of research and I
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  Speaker 1: started looking into some of the cases that sort of
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  Speaker 1: led to the creation of this initiative, And specifically, I
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  Speaker 1: want to talk to you about a group of murders
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  Speaker 1: that all happened along Interstate four in and near Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
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  Speaker 1: where I'm from Hannah's home state. That's right, So I'm
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  Speaker 1: calling them the Oklahoma I forty murders I.
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  Speaker 2: Forty okay, yeah, hearing that Ella Langley song, what's the
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  Speaker 2: song choose in Texas? I'm not going to try to
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  Speaker 2: sing it, that's horrific.
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  Speaker 1: But do they talk about I forty?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if it's called the Bridge or
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  Speaker 2: what it's that after the last chorus she comes in
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  Speaker 2: with I forty gets lonelier with every mile.
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  Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, that's a great line. Maybe we'll play
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  Speaker 1: something from the song. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to
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  Speaker 1: be really inexpensive. Yes, right, Okay, So I'm starting the
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  Speaker 1: story in Oklahoma. And in September of two thousand and three,
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  Speaker 1: Terry Turner was working for the Oklahoma State Bureau of
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  Speaker 1: Investigations OSBI as a crime analyst, and she got a
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  Speaker 1: call from a local police department in rural Oklahoma asking
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  Speaker 1: her to help identify a that was found along Eye
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  Speaker 1: forty in Oklahoma near Lake Ufalla, which is this like
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  Speaker 1: forested rural part of Oklahoma. So Terry looked into the case.
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  Speaker 1: What she found was Okay, it was a white female,
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  Speaker 1: she was nude, and she was found with duct tape
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  Speaker 1: on her body. These are important details because of what
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  Speaker 1: will come later. So as Terry started to look into
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  Speaker 1: this case, she started to pursue two different routes. First,
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  Speaker 1: she wanted to know who is this victim? We need
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  Speaker 1: to identify her, so she started working on that. Secondly,
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  Speaker 1: as analysts do, when she looked at everything with this case,
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  Speaker 1: you know, she analyzed the location, the manner of death,
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  Speaker 1: the victimology, and I don't know why. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: if it was unusual enough for what. But she started
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  Speaker 1: to wonder is this the only victim or are there
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  Speaker 1: other cases that are similar to this. The fact that
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  Speaker 1: she wondered this, the fact that she took this next
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  Speaker 1: step is like breaks everything wide open. Change is kind
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  Speaker 1: of like how we even investigate crimes next to highways
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  Speaker 1: in America.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I've never been a crime analyst,
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  Speaker 2: but you know, having worked in the true crime genre,
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  Speaker 2: it's like to me, and you know, I'm looking at
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  Speaker 2: it from this bird's eye view with all of this information,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not like on the ground zero of trying to
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  Speaker 2: figure out a crime. But you have a woman who
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  Speaker 2: is nude, who is has been duct taped. It's like,
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  Speaker 2: this is extreme. Yeah, so clearly a homicide. Clearly a homicide.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, to me, that's someone who's pretty confident
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  Speaker 2: by this point.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting for sure, And so she puts out like they
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  Speaker 1: actually said it was a teletype. It's like a teletype.
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  Speaker 1: I gotta bears with you. I I have no idea
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  Speaker 1: what that is. I think it's kind of like a fact,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, but too like surrounding jurisdictions and states with
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  Speaker 1: the information about this case, just asking hey, if anyone
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  Speaker 1: has another case that seems similar, like, let me know,
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  Speaker 1: and fairly immediately she gets responses about two cases that
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  Speaker 1: are eerily similar. So there were two other bodies, both
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  Speaker 1: found along Eye forty that were also nude, also found
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  Speaker 1: with duct tape, also women. And can you remind me
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  Speaker 1: when is this happening? Two thousand and three, two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and three, Okay, so it's September of two thousand and
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  Speaker 1: three when this first body is found, and then Terry
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  Speaker 1: sends out this teletype. I'm in tenth grade. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: you know, two more cases come back, and what's really
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  Speaker 1: noticeable or I guess of note about these is that
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  Speaker 1: one of them was from August of two thousand and three.
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  Speaker 1: One of these bodies was found in August of two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and three, one month prior, and the other one
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  Speaker 1: was found in July of two thousand and three. So
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  Speaker 1: it's almost like, is this happening once a month? What's
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  Speaker 1: going on?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? And they're all along this highway.
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  Speaker 1: All along Eye forty, So I forty runs east on
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  Speaker 1: it runs almost the full length from coast to coast,
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  Speaker 1: doesn't run all the way to the coast in California,
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  Speaker 1: but from Barstow, California, all the way to Wilmington, North Carolina.
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  Speaker 1: And this section is like New Mexico, runs through the
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  Speaker 1: Texas Panhandle, through Oklahoma into Arkansas and Tennessee. And obviously
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  Speaker 1: it's a major thoroughfare. So there's enough similarities in this
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  Speaker 1: case that Terry's like, are these connected? Is it the
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  Speaker 1: same person who's killed them? She starts to look into it. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: all three bodies are identified, and I want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about them. I want to talk about the women. You know,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of the articles I found that are from
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and three two thousand and four don't name
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  Speaker 1: them and just call them prostitutes.
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  Speaker 2: That's yeah, terrible.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And while it's true that they were all involved in
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  Speaker 1: sex work in some capacity, you know, that doesn't mean
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  Speaker 1: that they don't deserve to be remembered by name. And
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  Speaker 1: so I had to do some digging actually to like
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  Speaker 1: find information about these women. So the first person is
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  Speaker 1: Sandra Beard. She was found in September of two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and three in Oklahoma, and Sandra Janelle Beard was last
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  Speaker 1: seen alive at a truck stop and this is from
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  Speaker 1: Oklahoma Coldcases dot Org. Sandra had been struggling with addiction
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  Speaker 1: to cocaine at the time of her murder, and she
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  Speaker 1: was involved in survival sex work, mostly at truck stops.
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  Speaker 1: She was also a devoted mother to her daughter. Sandra,
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  Speaker 1: who was sometimes known as Sandy, was born in Enid, Oklahoma,
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  Speaker 1: on July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty. She was forty three
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  Speaker 1: years old at the time of her murder. It says
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  Speaker 1: she was married and divorced and had three siblings. Her
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  Speaker 1: body was found in September of two thousand and three,
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  Speaker 1: and the cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation.
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  Speaker 1: The discovery of her body was the first thing that
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  Speaker 1: launched this investigation for Terry, and it's because she was
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  Speaker 1: found in Oklahoma, and so Terry was notified because she
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  Speaker 1: worked in Oklahoma. The other two cases, they were not
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  Speaker 1: found in Oklahoma. They were found a long eye of
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  Speaker 1: forty but in different states.
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  Speaker 2: And as we know, it's much harder to connect crimes
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  Speaker 2: that aren't committed in the same jurisdiction. Yeah, because those
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  Speaker 2: departments don't always communicate, right.
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  Speaker 1: And murder is not a federal crime, and so it's
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  Speaker 1: local police departments and investigators who are working those cases. So, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: a murder in Arkansas and a murder in Oklahoma would
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  Speaker 1: be very difficult for those.
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  Speaker 2: To be connected. Yeah. Wow.
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  Speaker 1: So then one month prior to that, in August two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and three, Jennifer Hyman's body was found in Tennessee,
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  Speaker 1: but she was from Oklahoma City and she was in
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  Speaker 1: school at the University of Central Oklahoma and edmund She
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  Speaker 1: studied photography before switching her major to public relations, and
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  Speaker 1: she was twenty four years old. She reportedly did really
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  Speaker 1: well in school, but her fellow students didn't know that
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  Speaker 1: she had started to work as an escort and then
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  Speaker 1: as a sex worker in the evenings to raise money
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  Speaker 1: and she had previously been arrested in Oklahoma on prostitution charges,
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  Speaker 1: which I think is how they initially connected this. And
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  Speaker 1: so she was found in Tennessee and then one month
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  Speaker 1: prior to that. So these, you know, are all one
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  Speaker 1: month apart. Margaret Holmes Gardner was her body was found
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  Speaker 1: in Tennessee.
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  Speaker 2: So we have Tennessee, Oklahoma, and.
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  Speaker 1: Sorry, her body was found in Arkansas, Okay, So we
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  Speaker 1: have Arkansas, Tennessee, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Yeah, three women bodies
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  Speaker 1: found one month apart from the other.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, all nude, all duct tapes.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: And Margaret was forty seven. But she was also a
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  Speaker 1: sex worker and she apparently advertised her services over the
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  Speaker 1: CEBE radio, So I don't know if that's how this
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  Speaker 1: person found her. But she was a West Memphis local,
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  Speaker 1: so she was likely picked up in Tennessee because she
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  Speaker 1: was last seen in a truck stop in Tennessee, but
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  Speaker 1: her body was found in Arkansas. So once Terry has
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  Speaker 1: this information, she's thinking that these desks are incredibly similar
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  Speaker 1: and likely connected, and the fact that they were all
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  Speaker 1: last seen at truck stops gave her a clue that
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  Speaker 1: this might be the work of a truck driver right,
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  Speaker 1: and all of them found along I forty. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: not like one hundred yards away from I forty, right
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  Speaker 1: off of I forty, like right on the side of
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  Speaker 1: the road on the on ramp. Basically, which is important.
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  Speaker 1: It was an important clue because it tells you that
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  Speaker 1: this is someone who doesn't want to leave EE forty
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  Speaker 1: for whatever reason. And if you imagine it's a truck driver,
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  Speaker 1: they have a route that they have to stick to,
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  Speaker 1: and then they have to, you know, give a reason
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  Speaker 1: for why they left or a delay in their delivery,
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  Speaker 1: and so that would be a compelling reason why they
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  Speaker 1: would literally dump a body like right on the side
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  Speaker 1: of the road.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's also I think to me, dumin
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  Speaker 2: Street's tremendous confidence in the idea of doing something like
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  Speaker 2: that unfathomable to most of us. But you have no
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  Speaker 2: fear of getting caught if you're doing it that frequently,
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  Speaker 2: or at least less fear than a rational person might have.
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  Speaker 2: But like if you're tossing a body out of a truck,
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  Speaker 2: you're hidden by your truck. You know, the average person
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  Speaker 2: speeding by on their car on a busy highway, they're
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  Speaker 2: not stopping to look at what you're doing. No, how
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  Speaker 2: many times have we all seen semis on the side
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  Speaker 2: of the road and never thought anything about it? Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: not a big deal, right, Yeah, And it definitely makes
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  Speaker 2: you think how long had this been going on? You know,
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  Speaker 2: the brazenness of it all. And what Terry Turner would
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  Speaker 2: go on to say later in the investigation is that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a semi truck could be looked at as
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  Speaker 2: a crime scene on wheels. It's in some way this
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  Speaker 2: perfect crime because you know, the driver has an alibi.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, it's not suspicious that they're driving across country.
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  Speaker 2: This is what they're supposed to be doing, so there's
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  Speaker 2: nothing suspicious about that. They also are able to pick
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  Speaker 2: up a victim in one state, potentially murder them in
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  Speaker 2: another state, and then dispose of their body in a
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  Speaker 2: third state. And so it's very difficult to connect the dots.
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  Speaker 2: And what comes to light is that this has been
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  Speaker 2: going on for a very long time, yet no one
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  Speaker 2: has connected the dots. Yeah. And in addition to that,
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  Speaker 2: I mean just in the language you're describing about the
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  Speaker 2: way they spoke of the victims called prostitutes, nameless prostitutes.
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  Speaker 2: You know how hard are these departments looking for these
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  Speaker 2: missing women and or girls. I don't know how many
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  Speaker 2: resources are going into finding these women who have gone missing,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, are their families even knowing to look
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  Speaker 2: if they're people who are maybe gone for extended periods
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  Speaker 2: of time.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely complicates it. Yeah, and again Terry Turner, I
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  Speaker 1: just love her. She's on it, she's on top of it.
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  Speaker 1: She's not going to let this go. I love that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So she begins her investigation, and because of the Eye
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  Speaker 1: forty connection, she comes into contact with police departments along
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  Speaker 1: Eye forty this corridor and says, this is what I'm
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  Speaker 1: working on, and let's work together. If any other case
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  Speaker 1: is similar to this, come up, please let me know.
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  Speaker 1: And one thing to note is that she created those relationships.
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  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes there can be you know, jurisdictional like difficulties.
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  Speaker 1: People don't touch my case, I don't touch your case.
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  Speaker 1: But she's able to bring people together and work with
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  Speaker 1: people and create that line of communication which ended up
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  Speaker 1: being very vital.
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  Speaker 2: Right, It's like, let's help each other. Yeah. It's also, though,
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  Speaker 2: so alarming, just to think about being in a position
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  Speaker 2: in your job where you're almost waiting for another murder
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  Speaker 2: to help you solve the next one. Yeah, I mean
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  Speaker 2: that is that is gut wrenching.
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  Speaker 1: Totally, and that's the position she was in and it
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  Speaker 1: turns out to come true. So it's September of two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and three when she discovers you know, this is happening,
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  Speaker 1: and there's three bodies that they know of. From September
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  Speaker 1: of two thousand and three to January of two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and four, there were four more similar murders along Eye
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  Speaker 1: forty or wow, so in like months, four months? Yeah,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: woe a month, Okay, So if it's if it's the
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  Speaker 1: same person, it's like a killing spree that they're going
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  Speaker 1: on along Eye forty. Yeah, and then it becomes this
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  Speaker 1: race against the clock because one more month, one more body.
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  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So the four additional victims are Vicky Anderson, Sandra Richardson,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Patsy Leonard, and Casey Joe pipe Stem. So I want
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to spend a little time talking about Casey Joe pipe
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  Speaker 1: Stem because her case will end up helping to solve this,
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  Speaker 1: even though a lot of them are unsolved, but to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: bring some resolution to this in the end, and we
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: know more about her than some of the other victims.
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  Speaker 1: Because of that, I think the last time anyone saw
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  Speaker 1: Casey Joe pipe Stem alive was January twenty eighth, two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and four, at an Oklahoma City truck stop. She
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  Speaker 1: was just nineteen years old, and you know, three days
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  Speaker 1: passed with no sign of her, and then on January
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  Speaker 1: thirty first, her remains were found. Her body had been
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  Speaker 1: dumped from a bridge in Grapevine, Texas, almost three hundred
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  Speaker 1: miles south of Oklahoma City.
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  Speaker 2: Was her body found just by chance? Do you remember?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, someone stumbled upon it. I can't remember who, but
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  Speaker 1: it was found by chance. It was again right along
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  Speaker 1: the freeway. She was nude her body, her remains pointed
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  Speaker 1: to a violent death, is what I'll say. She was
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: originally from Oklahoma City. She was a member of the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Seminole Nation, and she lived with her grandmother until she
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was seven years old. But then her grandmother passed away,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: which sort of seemed like the beginning of sort of
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: some trauma in her life. She started moving around a lot,
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  Speaker 1: lived in various rural communities, and then her stepfather was murdered.
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  Speaker 1: So she had like a series of traumatic events happening
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  Speaker 1: in her life, and so she began using drugs and
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  Speaker 1: dropped out of school and then turned to sex work
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  Speaker 1: as a way to survive and make money. Her boyfriend,
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  Speaker 1: Kelvin Scott, was twenty five at the time she died,
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  Speaker 1: and he worked as a pimp, and he would actually
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  Speaker 1: later be convicted of sex trafficking over a dozen women,
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  Speaker 1: including Casey. So that is one aspect of this case
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  Speaker 1: that did get resolution, is that he was brought to justice.
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  Speaker 1: At first, he was a person of interest in her murder.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: He was questioned after her remains were discovered, but ultimately
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: it was determined that he wasn't involved, right.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Because if she's discovered in Great Mind, Texas, he's presumably
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: nowhere near there. Yeah, Yeah, I mean this notion of
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: like a prostitute, so why bother naming her? You know?
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: And then you hear about the backstory of a lot
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: of the women who are doing sex work. For some
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: of them maybe in a way it's partially a decision
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: they're making, but it's so often that they're struggling either
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: with you know, addiction or a traumatic upbringing a lot
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: of times both. Yeah, And to hear that Casey's boyfriend
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: was a pimp who played a part in her coming
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: into contact with whoever is responsible for her death. I mean,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: and it's terrible, Yeah, terrible.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: You know. Another aspect of the story is that Casey,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: along with some of the other victims, had at some
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: time previous to being murdered, been arrested and like charged
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: with prostitution charges. And that fact alone it just goes
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to show you how backwards it is that traditionally we've
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: viewed people in sex work from a law enforcement perspective.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: That there are these criminals, and it's so clear that
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: they're victims, and that every time that law enforcement came
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: into contact with them should have been a potential chance
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of offering help or offering a way out. Instead slap
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: you with the criminal charge. How is that going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: help you? Right, It's not going to help you at all.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: No.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's terrible. And she was nineteen nineteen, I mean,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: it's so young, so young. So investigators believed that whoever
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: killed Casey Joe Pipestem, was also responsible for killing you know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: these other women that I've talked about. All in all,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: there would be ten murders that they believed were all
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: connected and probably done by the same person.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: And that's the ten that they're finding.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: That's the ten they're finding. Exactly how many more?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And so in February of two thousand and four, Terry
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Turner basically organizes this massive meeting for law enforcement personnel
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to come to Oklahoma state and meet about this.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Imagine coordinating that one as a woman in a predominantly
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: male field, and two before zoom, I know, like, I
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about. You guys need to get
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: on a plane.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the logistics alone, Yeah, But a lot of people
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: showed up, including the FBI. They said there was about
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: sixty people. And it also caused significant interest from the press,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So there was a lot of press coverage there and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: then all these stories started to be written, Is it
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a serial killer? Are they a trucker? What's going on
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma? And one of the things that actually Frank
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: mentions in his book was that after this event and
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: after all the press coverage came out, these specific murders stopped.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: So someone's paying attention.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: You have to wonder was this guy reading the news
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: did he see, oh wow, they're actually on to me.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if he stopped killing, but he
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: changed up. They stopped finding bodies long eye forty in
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: this very same pattern.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, And I mean I imagine if the press
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: becomes aware of the meeting, they're becoming aware of where
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: they're zeroing in, right is on one highway and this
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: idea of a long haul trucker being responsible. Yeah, I mean,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: if I'm a long haul trucker in that day and age,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: I imagine people are talking about it at the truck stop. Yeah.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So he stops, which you know, we think he stops,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: but I wonder, I mean, it's like, Okay, that is
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent a good thing to not find another body.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: But I wonder if as just purely from an investigation standpoint,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: you're like, Okay, we know that now this search is
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: going to be more challenging because he's going to be
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: covering his tracks.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it sort of ends up going that way.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, Terry continues on the investigation. She starts getting
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: so many tips from the public, and it's sort of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: overwhelming that she actually reaches out to the FBI and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: asks them for assistance on this, and they agree, especially
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: because it crosses state lines. So they send an investigator
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: to work with her, and they work this case and
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: from this whole thing. The FBI's initiative, the Highway Serial
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Killings Initiative, basically is born out of this. Like they
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: end up saying, it's not just these ten women, it's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: actually endemic, like this is happening, we think all over
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the highways in America, which is like horrible, and this
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: is one example, one example, And so they start this
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: initiative to try to track down, you know, these killers,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and it's still going today. They have a computer database
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that is maintained by the FBI that local investigators can
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: you submit information to. When they find something they think
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: this could be, you know, or it's a killing alongside
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of a highway, you can submit it to their database.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And the numbers are pretty wild. I mean, obviously some
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: of these cases are older that have been submitted and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: are still trying to be solved, and a lot have
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: been solved since. But there are more than eight hundred
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: murders in their database, most of whom were killed a
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: long truck stops or motels. These are unsolved or solved.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many of these are solved. I
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: think this is current unsolved, but I'm not one hundred
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: percent on that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: But when you think about decades all over our country. Yeah,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: you know, not to mention, I don't know a lot
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: about long haul trucking, but like people who are going
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: across the border to Canada or to and from Mexico.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, wow, And they have a list of
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: nearly four hundred and fifty current suspects who are long
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: haul truckers current suspects today. Yeah, who's doing the background
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: checks at these trucking companies? Well, I mean that's a
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: whole other conversation that we talked to Frank about. Yeah, okay,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: So that sort of like leads to the FBI having
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: this initiative, which is great. It's nice to know that
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the FBI is aware of this, looking into this, that
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: there are resources going to try to stop this and
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: solve these cases. As far as the victims of the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I forty murders, most of those cases are technically still unsolved,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: although there is a suspect who law enforcement believes probably
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: did it. So it takes us back to Casey Joe
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Pipestem's case. So investigators are fairly sure that her killer
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: was a long haul trucker who was also a serial killer.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So in Grapevine, Texas, where her remains were found. There
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was a police lieutenant named Larry Hallmark who really took
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: on the case and worked tirelessly to try to solve it.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: He also worked with Terry Turner, like they connected shared information,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and they actually went on the road and did multiple
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: interviews together. They went to truck stops like trucking organization,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and they also spoke with a lot of sex workers.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: And I think that this is a really interesting part
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: because they had to create this trust because they're law
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: enforcement officers technically approaching sex workers at truck stops, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: of course the reaction is like fear and don't arrest me,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and so you know, they had a totally different approach
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and built this trust and said we're not arresting you,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: we don't think you're criminals. We actually want to warn
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: you that there are serial killers in the area and
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: you need to be very careful. And also if you
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: see anything weird, if you meet a trucker and you
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: just feel like there's something wrong with him or get
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that feeling, it doesn't matter what is, just tip us off,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: like let us know. And they had a lot of
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: success with this actually, and at one point they thought
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: that they found the killer. So Larry Hallmark ends up
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: getting a call from a woman at a truck stop who.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: You know, sex worker.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know that she was a sex worker. Actually,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I think that she cleaned big rigs, like she would
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: do different cleaning services, but she was often at truck stops,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: and so knew about these investigators. Knew about this tip line.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: That's an incredible like fly on the wall, person on
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: your side if your job is literally cleaning these trucks.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so she called in in two thousand and
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: four and had a raspy voice because she had been
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: attacked and choked. And essentially what she said was that
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: so she was a fifty one year old woman and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: she'd approached a man in a truck to try to
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: talk to him about payment for cleaning his wheels. He
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: told her to get on the truck, and she did,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and then he locked the door and attacked her and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: beat her and raped her, and she passed out. And
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: when she woke up, she was along the side of
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the freeway near Kansas, like way far away, like he
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: maybe thought she was dead. He thought that he had
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: killed her.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: And she survived, and she told investigators that she you know,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: he had talked to her, and he told her that
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: there had been others and basically admitted to her that
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: he had killed other women. And they ended up searching
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a trash can near where she woke up, where she
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you know, she was found, and they found some trash
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: from this truck driver and like some trucking logs. So
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: she was able to give them a name. She wasn't
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: able to give them a name, but she told them
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: like where she woke up, and they searched the area
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and found trash that this trucker, oh, some of his
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: trash that he had disposed of. They followed that lead
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and it ended up leading them to Carl Wayne Lawson,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: who was a trucker and he was arrested in two
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: thousand and four, nine days after the attack, and he
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: ended up getting sentenced to eleven years in prison.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: But you know, she was able to ident eleven years. Yeah,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: not enough.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Time, No, truly, she was able to identify him in
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a lineup. And I don't know if he ended up
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: confessing or how that went down, but he immediately became
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a person of interest in the I forty murders, and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: so they took his DNA and they were really hoping
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that this would be the guy, but ultimately it never
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: checked out and there was no evidence to connect him
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: to the I forty murders. So they had just found
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a different murderer who was a trucker because he's telling
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: her there were others before you. Yeah, unbelievable, I know.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So then the I forty murderers continued to go unsolved,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: finally kind of by lock. In June of two thousand
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: and five, America's Most Wanted told the story of Casey
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Pipestem's murder, and a ton of tips came in,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and one tipster pointed to this guy, John Robert Williams.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: He was already a convicted killer. He's already in prison.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: But our guy, the investigator, Larry Hallmark, went to go
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: visit him in prison, and he brought pictures of Casey.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: So John Robert Williams, you know, he didn't remember her,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: or at first he said he didn't, but then eventually
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: he looked at her and he said, oh, yeah, I
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: remember her. That's a little bit which might have been her,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the name she used, but her family confirmed
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: that she did go by little bit, and she had
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: a tattoo that said little bit. So it did seem
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: like John Robert Williams knew who she was and probably
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: killed her, which would indicate that he killed the rest
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: of the women who were found on I forty right.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: So he was already in prison at the time for
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: murdering another woman, Nikki Hill, and he is known as
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the Big Rig Killer. He was traveling with his girlfriend,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Rachel Humberland, who was an accomplice in the murders, and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: she was also in prison.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, It's like, it's hard enough to imagine
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: one person doing that, but two, it's like between the
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: two of you, not one. He's like not going to do.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: That, I know.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: So in two thousand and five, both Williams and Cumberland
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: were actually charged with kidnapping and murdering Jennifer Hyman, who
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was the twenty four year old college student from Oklahoma,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: but ultimately the charges were later dismissed due to lack
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of evidence. I think that he was a suspect in
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: like most of those murders, but ultimately, you know, there
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: just wasn't enough evidence to tie him to them. He
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: confessed to killing something like thirty women. But you know
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Jeelhouse confessions, you don't know. Yeah, at this point is
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: he just knows he's going to spend the rest of
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: his life in prison. So he's like, oh, yeah, I
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: murdered all these women.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And I don't know because in those conversations, at least
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: the way I've seen it play out. Sometimes not with
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: this one in particular, but maybe is okay, come in
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: and talk to us. So it's a break from their routine. Yeah,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: in jail every single day, it's like maybe they get coffee,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: maybe there's something there for them to do, and so
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: it's hard to take it seriously. Yeah, also if somebody
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: has nothing to lose, totally. So the only murder that
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: he ended up being charged with was Casey Joe Pipestems
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and twenty thirteen, almost ten years after her murder, John
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Robert Williams was charged with her murder. Okay, Now, I
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: don't believe that anything happened with those charges. I looked
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: and it's not like there was a trial or anything.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: So he hasn't been convicted. So her case is not
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: technically considered unsolved, although legally it's unresolved in court, right
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: because if he's already serving a life sentence, and it
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: would be hard to prove based on like the physical
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: evidence that they have. I mean, things are so different now,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: But how do you justify the resources? I think yeah,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: probably what they were asking. There's no silver lining in
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: a murder, But it sounds like the pattern of these
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: murders led to this initiative that's going to help solve
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: hundreds more and hopefully prevent others in the future because
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: now they know what to look for.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the things that we'll talk with
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Frank about is that with modern trucking as well, there's
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of automation and tracking of movement, right, and
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: so the hope is that that also makes it harder
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: for someone to commit murder.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this, you know, we talked a little bit
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: about this earlier on, but the perception of sex work
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: and how we view the people who are sex workers
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: and seeing people as victims, yeah, regardless of their life circumstances.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's definitely more understanding of that now, which is good.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: There's also cameras now, I mean so many cameras, Like
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: every story you go into you're seeing cameras outside of
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: it. And I'm sure these truck stops. I know, I feel
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: like we talk with Frank about that. I want to
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: give it away, but I was like, surely this isn't
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: happening anymore because of all the technology and all the cameras,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and he was kind of like, hmm, it's happenings still happening. Yeah,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: but you know there's a lot being done to try
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: to prevent it. And yeah, so we should get into
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: the conversation with Frank. He talks about his time on
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: the road with a trucker, all of his research. It's
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: really interesting. Yeah, thanks for shining some light on that
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: for me going into the conversation.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, today we're talking with Frank Ficklucy, who's a former
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: assistant director for Counterintelligence at the FBI and an author
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: of multiple books. We're going to be talking about his
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: book Long Hall today mostly. Frank, Welcome to the Knife.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Thanks, I'm really happy to be here.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're so excited to talk to you today.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: So in your book Long Haul, you talk quite a
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: lot about the Highway Serial Killings Initiative it's also known
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: as HSK. In the book, you say something like there's
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: over eight hundred murders that they are looking into what
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: kind of cases do they specifically work on.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: It's limited to highway killings where or highway proximity killings
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: of largely women. And you suspect there's a trucker connection.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: They're at least eight hundred and fifty murders of women
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: over the last several decades alongside our nation's highways. About
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: thirty thirty five long haul truckers already in prison for
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: multiple murders. When I asked the FBI now post retirement,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: as I'm writing, as I write this book, how many
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: suspects do you have in these unsolved murders because they're
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: still going on, right, Yes they are. There's thirty five
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: long hall truckers in prison. They're still happening, and we haven't.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: More importantly, we haven't solved the cases we already know about.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: And I said, how many people are looking at in
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: the long haul community? Four hundred and fifty, four hundred
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: and fifty suspects. I've got to know more about this.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: The initiative has two parts to it, the Highway Serial
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Killings Initiative Database, which sits within the ViCAP database the
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It's a database most detectives are
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: aware of. But here's the thing. Most detectives are not
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: aware that within YCAP there is a separate database for
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: the Highway Serial Killings initiative. So that's part one. What's
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: the second part. The incredible analysts, the crime analysts, no guns,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: no badges, brain power, knowledge, experience based to go Virginia,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: who then lay hands on what's in that database, scour
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: and scrub all the nation's newspapers, all the killings on
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: the nation sideways that are probably not in the database
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: because very few detects are aware that it exists. And
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: then the magic happens. And it's not magic, it's hard
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: work and brain power where they try to solve and
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: connect the dots to stop the next killing.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: In the book, you interview an FBI analyst, one of
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: these analysts who work on the HSK initiative, and one
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: of the things that emerged is this very clear pattern
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: of long haul truckers being the perpetrators and suspects. Obviously,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: we want to say that that does not mean every
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: long haul trucker is the killer, not at all, but
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: there is a real prevalence of this happening. And another
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: person that you interviewed use this term crime scene on
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: wheels to ask you about that term, what does that
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: mean and why are these specific crimes so difficult to sump?
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: First, thank god, we're only talking about a tiny fraction
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of long hall truckers who killed part of my research.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Over a year to write this book, I decided I
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: was going to ride over two thousand miles in a
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: big rick. I learned a lot of great things about
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: the trucking industry, it's impact on our economy. They are
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: essential workers. Many of them are just trying to put
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: food on their families table by putting food on our table. Right.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Grocery stores would run out of food in three days
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: if truckers stopped trucking. So the impact on the economy
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: is enormous, like over eight hundred billion dollars in gross
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: streight revenue every year with trucking. So I'm glad you
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: mentioned that a lot of these cases develop in very
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: remote areas. Right, It's where you dump a body, And
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: you mentioned you know this mobile crime scene on wheels.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: It's almost the perfect way to do this. The truckers
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: in these cases are grabbing their victim. In one police
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: jurisdic they're killing her, almost always her in a second jurisdiction,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: and they're dumping the remains in a third jurisdiction, often
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: very rural. So imagine that county sheriff. They find a
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: body near the highway, and there's often no idea on
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: these bodies, and they're either partially nude, or they're strangled,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: or they're shut or they're stabbed. And now this sheriff's
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: apartment likely may not have any detectives. They do road
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: patrol let alone. Hey, where's your crime analyst who can
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: help load the data into the FBI's database. And we
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: don't have an analyst. You know, we patrol the highway
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: and we have a dead body. And so the victimology
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: is part of those two hundred questions that the FBI wants.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: You know, it's helped us help you who the victim
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: is may tell you who the killer is.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that brings me to you. When on the
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: road with a long haul trucker named Mike, which I imagine
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: was such an experience. You know, I want to get
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: into the long haul trucker subculture. I also want to
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: kind of get into why this attracts killers. But first,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm just so curious, like, what was that
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: experience like for you being on the road living as
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: a long haul trucker for a short period of time.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I always wondered, you know, I didn't have a
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: fascination with it, but yeah, you know when you're on
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: the highway and you wonder, well, who's in that truck,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: what's their life like? And what I discovered was an
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: entirely new world for me. Anyway. I discovered a hierarchy,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: a caste system within the trucking industry. Why was this
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: important because when you tell me you have the FBI
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: says they have four hundred and fifty suspects. That's too
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: much that can't happen. The investigator in me has to
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: narrow that number down. So one of the questions I
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: asked was which kind of trucker and which kind of
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: truck is more likely to kill? And I discovered a
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: caste system. There's different levels of respect within the trucking
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: community based on what kind of truck you drive. The
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: truck I rode in was a flatbed. Why is that
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: important because it's very physical and mentally engaging, because that's
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: a different trucker than the trucker who's what they call
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: a dry banner on the other end of the spectrum,
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: who literally hauls dry goods across the country, whether it's
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: a load of salsa today or a load of paper
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: towels tomorrow, and does nothing more than open and close
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: the back door for someone else to unload it and
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: load it. That's it. There's no physical interaction, human social
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: interaction necessary, really, and everything in between. But why does
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: it matter? Because I theorize in my attempt to get
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: the numbers down for the suspects, I theorize that the
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: trucker who's more physically and mentally, if you're mentally and
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: physically engaged with the load, you're less likely to be
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: that isolated hermit type killer. If you're driving for a
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: big corporation, like the big names we all know we
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: see on the side of the trucks, they're heavily monitored. Today,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: trucking is high tech. That company knows where you are.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: They have cameras looking in at you, looking out at
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: the traffic. They've got the geolocation, They know your speed.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: The truck even breaks for you if you're going too fast.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: All that is known electronic logs are kept and then
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: on the other end of the spectrum, maybe you're an
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: owner operator, maybe you're not tracked at all. So I
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: start theorizing about that. I do ask the question in
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: the book, who is attracted to these jobs? And do
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: people actually apply to be a long haul trucker because
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: they want to kill? I think the answer is like this.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: These killers, serial killers, by definition and by studying all
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: of them, are typically socially inept people. There are exceptions
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: to that Ted Bundy, for example, but generally these are
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: not your charmers. Generally they've had traumatic childhoods, dysfunctional severely
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: sometimes dysfunctional childhoods, maybe abusive moms. Maybe they're acting out
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: against a female or mother figure. But when they're attracted
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: to that kind of isolated job, I can do this
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: all by myself. I just need to get from point
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: A to point B. I can lead live life like
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: I want to. They suddenly realized they could get away
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: with almost anything, and they can't. They can, And so
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: I talk about all of that, and I ask all
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: of those questions. Some people have asked me, is a
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: serial killer trucker then a non trucker serial killer? No?
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: Pretty much, serial killers are the same, But I will
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: tell you this, by far, the number one occupation of
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: a serial killer is trucking.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Wow, that is wild. I had no idea. I mean,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I had, of course heard. I think most people who
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: followed true crime, or maybe most people watching just like
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: the news, have heard of like a truck or also
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: being a serial killer in one case or another. But
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that that was such a common theme.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: And I'm curious about truck stops because this idea of
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: like the truck is the crime scene. I mean, when
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: I think of long haul trucking, I picture rest stops.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: I picture late at night. I picture all the trucks
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: parked in one area and all the people coming in
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: for gas, coming in and leaving in another area. And
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering what you can tell us about sort of
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: the scene that happens at truck stops where people are
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: gathering or maybe they're not gathering, where they're stopping with
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: their truck, Like, what happens there? What are they observing?
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, it's a subculture. And yes, I've spent many
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: a night at truck steps. Did you know that your
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: truck idols twenty four to seven, That engine is on
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: all the time why heat and air conditioning and power.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: So that rumble kind of set that scene, right, that
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: rumble that kind of almost becomes white noise for you
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: as you're going off to sleep. How about food, Well,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: I don't like this rest stop for food. Let's order
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: grub Hub or let's order door dash to the truck, Yes,
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: to the truck. All of that is going on. You
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: mentioned kind of do they interact with each other or not?
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: Mostly not. I thought maybe that would happen. We had
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: one great, big restadant, amazing restaurant outside of Milwaukee. We
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: go upstairs to a bar area and it's big. This
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: is like they have a supermarket in this place. So
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: we go upstairs there's a bar and I thought, okay,
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna be interacting with truckers. We'll see them talking
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: to each other. No, you know, mostly they're on headsets
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: talking to family and friends. They're not talking to each
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: other very much. And also they're drinking. And I'm thinking,
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: this is a weeknight. These guys are going to be
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: up in the morning on the road. Interesting.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: You talked a lot about drugs in the book Substances.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about some of that statistics as far
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: as like drug and alcohol use among long haul truckers.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: There's a staggering amount of drivers who fail their random
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: drug tests. I was shocked at that. I don't have
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: the numbers right in front of me, but I think
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: it's as much as thirty percent will fail their drug
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: test at sometimes. And look having to get up at
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: the crack of dawn and drive alert all day, and
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: you better be alert. I can't tell you how many
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: near misses we had. I talk about this in the
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: book on the Highway. Oblivious drivers, car drivers who are
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: on the phone, texting, talking to their kids. I don't
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: know what they're doing, but we almost got killed several times. Yes,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: truckers have to be alert and it was a real
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: lesson and for me as to break time. So, in
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: other words, how long it takes for this, you know,
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: eighty thousand pound vehicle to stop. And if you think,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: as I did, I can cut this guy. I got
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: to get in front of this guy. This is slowing
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: me down. I'm going to go around and then I'm
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: going to slam on my brakes when I get in
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: front of him. You're taking your life in your hands.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: It's because they can't stop and so all of that
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: goes into play the health of the drivers. There's a
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: Canadian study of the health of drivers, long haul drivers
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: that I have referenced in the book, and that's eye
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: opening too. They basically, if you don't suffer from clinical
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: depression at the start of your career, you may well
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: suffer from it by the end of your career. The isolation,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: the sedentariness of it. I had the luxuries standing up
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: and getting behind the passenger seat and I just standing
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: or my legs. We're going to go numb, you know.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: The driver doesn't have that luxury. So sedentary, unhealthy. You
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: walk into a truck stop shop and good luck finding
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: something healthy that's not processed, fried horrible. And so they
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: get overweight, they get heart conditions, they get depressed, and
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: we've got to do something more. We got to do
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: something better. There's a better way to do this, I think. Yeah.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of use of like methinphetamine and
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: speed like drugs to keep them awake.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: You got to get up in the morning and stay
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: alured all day, and then you've got to go down.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: You've got to go down and get your sleep, and
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: you turn off all of that alertness, and yes, they
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: started using substances.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: And so another subculture that you dive into and do
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of research about and are very thoughtful when
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: talking about is the victims, many of whom are very
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: vulnerable women and girls who you know are either victims
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: of sex trafficking or sex workers. And we're most of
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: the perpetrators finding their victims at truck stops.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: I spoke to I believe the two top experts on
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: street level sex trafficking in the country doctor Celia Williamson
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: at the University of Toledo and doctor Dominiquro Stepowitz at
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: Arizona State University. And they're not just academics. They are
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: on the street themselves, doing clinical work, making a difference,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: helping to run recovery and resource centers as well, and
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: doing incredible research. They helped me immensely, and they said, Frank,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: when you interview these sex trafficked women, you're going to
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: see some things that you should check off in your
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: head because you're going to see early childhood trauma. You're
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: going to see what I coined to phrase saying, a
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: tower of trauma. I saw. It's not just one thing,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: it's a lot of things, and so sure enough I
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: start interviewing these victims, and any stereotype you have, oh
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: that only happens in certain kinds of families or certain places. No, no,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: it does not. It does not. But the trauma is
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: often the commonality and strangely often the commonality among the
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: truck or killers as well, whether or not these victims
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: are being chosen on site at truck stops. So the
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: answer to that question actually is different depending on what
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: period of time you're asking about. In many cases, the
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: plying of the trade, the trafficking is moving and has
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: moved away from the physical truck stop, and that story
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: in itself of communities saying we've had enough of this,
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: and even you know, legal action against the big rest
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: stop companies, which, by the way, that's an industry, multi
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: billion dollar industry. You pass those every day on the
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: highway or at least on vacation trips right where you're
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: you're on the highway and you pass the Tha, the Loves,
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: and they're all combining. They're combining their powerful industry, but
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: they're cleaning up their act. In years past, they would
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: look the other way to trafficking happening there. They wanted
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: the truckers to come, and if the truckers wanted girls,
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: we're okay with that. We'll look the other way. Same
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: for police and sheriffs. They've got other things to do.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Answer nine to one one calls. We're not driving through
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: the truck stop every hour. That's not happening. So today
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: it's largely moved online. So like our whole lives have
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: moved online, so has the grooming and recruitment.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so much of it is happening online.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And you know, you had also mentioned the technology has
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: changed so much in the tracking of these trucks and
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: the cameras and you know, knowing how fast they're going,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: all of that that didn't exist in the eighties, right,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: But the online grooming, you know, is very scary and
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Hannah and I've heard a lot about this, but the
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: culmination of it is that in the worst of circumstances
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: that something comes to fruition where the person seeking to
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: like harm or exploit someone gets to see them in person.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm from King County, Washington, the Green River
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Killer and this was like his uh, I don't even
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: know what to call it, but seeking out sex workers
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: and kind of banking on the fact that no one
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: would come looking for them, and that you know, Gary
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Ridgeway ultimately caught in Many of these victims are found
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: in a similar location. But he wasn't a trucker driving
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: all the way across the country where they could be anywhere.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: I have a question about, you know, if you were
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: driving even one of the smaller trucks that were picturing,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: that's a very big rig. Let's say you are one
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: of these killers and you have committed a murder. Now
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: you need to dispose of the body. You know, you
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: can't like pull into a narrow driveway and sneak out.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, you have a big freakin' truck, Like, how
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: is that happening?
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: So often? The theory is that the bodies are discarded
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: at night, under cover of darkness, very isolated highways, very
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: few people on the road. The odds are with you
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: on not being discovered. And it's also a reason why
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: you see the bodies discovered very close to the highway,
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: so you know. Initially I was like, wait, how does
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: the FBI accept the case, you know, for the program
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: for the HSK initiative, And I said, because you don't know,
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: I mean a body could be found a mile from
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: the highway. Well they're not. They're not a mile from
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: the highway because the trucker is not going to stop
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: and expose this truck for very long and then drag
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: a body somewhere. It's rare, it happens, it's rare. So yeah,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: it's done. And they get enoldened, they get in boldened.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: I've done this before. They get addicted to the adrenaline
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: flow and they get brazen about it. Yeah, I'm going
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: to drag a body. Maybe it's in a tarp, maybe
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: it's not, but it's dark, no one's on this highway.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: I'm going to drag it out and tossed it out. Literally.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I've got cases where the passenger door opens, bodies tossed
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: out the passenger.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Was there any case that either a victim that you
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: spoke with or one of the serial killers that you
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: read about that you know, stood out to you that
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: you want to kind of walk us through that case.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I let's go with a victim, I think because
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: she typifies so many of these. I want to be
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: careful to say that you should never have a formulaic
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: approach to how someone falls into the trap of trafficking,
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: because each case is different, everyone's mind is different, everyone
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: responds to trauma differently. You may know people you know
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: who say, well, wait a minute, this friend of mine
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: was traumatized and even molested and or raped repeatedly and
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: had horrible things happening in the house. And you know,
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: she's not been trafficked. She survived and thrived, and so
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: I don't have an answer to why, but I can
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: tell you that a case that typifies this would be
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: the case I mentioned in the book Alias happens to
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: be Hannah and yeah, suicide in the family, divorce, domestic violence,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: geographic moves. This is someone who has an uncle who's sheriffs.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: You know, this is an upstanding family. Literally Grandpa helped
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: to build the local church with his bare hands. She
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: herself was an outstanding athlete, good student, very bright Midwest girl.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: But the trauma stacks up, and there's some mental illness,
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: there's some drug used in the family, and there's some
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: bullying that goes on in school, elementary and later. The
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: fact is the community that she was in doesn't accept
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: back then that your parents were divorced. That's a bad thing,
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: you know, in that community. Back then there's a trouble
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: with the law in the family. So anyway, she goes
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: to college. But the boyfriend, that siren call of the boyfriend.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: The boyfriend is my stability with all the chaos at home,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: all the physical moves, the boyfriend is my rock. Well,
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: the boyfriend is not a rock, I can assure you.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: The boyfriend is a mess and a crook. And she's
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: introduced to drug use. This is very common. By the way,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: there's older siblings that introduce. She hangs out, so she's
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: kind of old for her age, meaning because of the
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: older siblings, she's hanging out with older people and those
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: older people are smoking dope and that's where she seems
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: that's where I fit in. And it's a very young
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: exposure to marijuana. Now we could get you know, it's funny.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: I will tell you. We could do another hour on
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: what it's like to publish with a major publisher and
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: the editing process. But one of the things the editor
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: you know, had some heartburnt with was hey, Frank, are
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: you speaking ill of marijuana? And because you know it's legal,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: if like thirty states said, you know, what's wrong with that?
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: And I go, look, no, I no, actually, no, I
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: get it. I'm cool with that. But I am here
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: to tell you what the victims are telling me. Now
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: you want me to be an honest broker or not,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: because I've had multiple victims tell me that in their life.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: In their case, their gateway drug was marijuana. And if
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: you're smoking a lot of marijuana at eleven years old,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: you know, while your brain is developing, probably not a
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: good thing.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: And then the harder drugs and the boyfriend and living
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: for the boyfriend and the story what compelled me. I
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: interview this woman who now, thank god, is not only
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: a survivor but a thriver. She helps run a really
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: center for women who want to come out of trafficking. Right.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: And I don't cry easily, but we're sitting in a room,
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: I'm interviewing her in a conference room for days, and
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: she starts telling me things that she never even told
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: her therapist. We had to call time out, and she
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: called her therapist and said, I'm telling Frank things I
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: haven't even told you. And the therapists that keep going.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: You're having a breakthrough, keep going. And she's crying and
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: I'm tearing up, and it's like it really touched me
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: because the story. If you were to write a script
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: for this, for a movie for her life, Hollywood would
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: probably say, there's too much trauma here. You're making this
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: stuff up. It's dark stuff. And the journey of finally
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: hitting rock bottom. You hear that phrase over and over, right,
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: rock bottom. I had to hit rock bottom? You do
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: the experts tell me that getting out of that because
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: the drugs play a huge role, a huge role in
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: this heroin oxy oxy eighties, break it up, crushing your
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: oxy so they act faster, a huge role in trafficking.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: And then what happens. You have to steal to get
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: the money for the drugs, You have to sell yourself
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: to get the money for the drugs. You inevitably get
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: arrested for shoplifting or something like that, or even you know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: because this young lady was really smart, she got into
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: like credit card fraud, you know, some white collar embezzlement.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I remember, you know, you had flown out
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: and met her, and you know, it was a touching
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: part of the story, especially that she's doing well now.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: But was she the one that when she was in
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: jail for some of this fraud, she met someone and
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: was recruited. She didn't realize, but can you tell us,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: like what happened with that.
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought this up because you earlier asked
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: about recruitment and grument, right, and the level of recruitment
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: that goes on in jails, county jails is staggering. What
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: is that look like? So obviously because of theft, prostitution charges,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: whatever you're doing, you get caught and now you're in
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: the county jail or the lock up. You're doing six
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: months to a year. And the bottoms And that's a
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: phrase that I described in the book, which is kind
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: of think of that as a woman who's trusted by
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: the pimp within the stable of women he controls. Call
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: her a deputy pimp if you want to. But she
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: keeps the women in line. And now she's locked up
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: for whatever reason. Well, she keeps working. She's a saleswoman,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: so she's going to recruit you. Now you're you're in
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: for theft or shoplifting or something, and she says, you
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: got a place to go when you get out of here. No,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: I don't. And I'm embarrassed to tell my parents, and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: you know, I haven't talked to my mom and alah
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: blah blah, and I'm not going to tell them what
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: I you know, I'm in big trouble with the law.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: I tell you what she says. This is very common.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Here's my number when you get out. Look, I'll put
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: some money on your on your jail food account, your
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: own account. You come stay with us for a while,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: so you get back on your feet. Call me when
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: you get out. That's recruitment. In this young lady's case,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: she ended up absolutely in what the law calls indentured servitude.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: She was absolutely a slave, and they treated her right initially.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: You know, she was a naive. These people have a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: great house. This guy's giving me, you know, my friend's
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: boyfriend is giving me money for hair and nails, and
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: we're eating well, we're dining out. This is amazing. And
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: then within hours absolutely beaten and raped and basically enslaved.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: And her documents were taken, like her ID and everything
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: you talked about.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, your phone has taken your ID, your driver's license,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: your social security card. Go ahead, good luck. You try
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: to get out of here, and if you try to escape,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: we beat you again.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, horrible.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really like unimaginable and I'm trying to remember
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: how she escaped this well, I.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Maybe say things that aren't in the book, but how
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: she escaped was one day the pimps plural say, you
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: girls are going out to the shopping mall and you're
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: going to steal some shoes for us. They were into
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: high end sneakers. And here's why, how you're gonna do it.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: Where are you gonna do it? Here's the shoes we
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: you know we want you're stealing for us. By the way,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: this is a big thing. It's called trafficking adjacent crimes.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: So these women often commit crimes outside of just prostitution charges.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: They do it for the pimp, or they do it
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: for the drugs, but there's a lot of crime that
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: goes on around trafficking. This is her example. So she
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: and another girl get into a store. They're ripping off
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: the they're going to rob. It's pretty apparent they're not
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: very good at it. So security shows up, the police
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: show up. The pimp is in the area directing all
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of this theft. The police grab him. He's arrested, and
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: they find out there's a warrant for him out of Texas.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: They're going to send him back, he's done, and that
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: finally is the opportunity for Hannah to get out of this.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: And then now she is forever bidder because she completely confesses,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: so what's going on in the whole operation. She gives
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: to the police officer and seemingly he does nothing with
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: that information. Nothing at this point, now she's out, Is
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: she free free from her drug habit? Absolutely not.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the consequences of this are life long
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: for the victims, and you know, probably in ways for
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: their families who now have to watch them struggle like this.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: I'm curious if you've seen a shift in either the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: FBI's sort of perspective on sex workers or law enforcement,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: where in many cases they have been viewed as like
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: a problem or like look down upon. But I guess
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: what I'm trying to ask you is are they now
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: being seen more so as the victims that they they are.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy we're getting to this because I did
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: not want to be the guy who writes this very
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: dark book. You know, here's this horrible societal problem. Have
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: a nice day, please buy my book. I wanted to
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: offer solutions and insights, and so with regard to law enforcement, insights,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: and answers. The good news is yes, law enforcement, often
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: at the urging of nonprofit groups and social work groups,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: has changed their methodology in many places, and it works.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: What works, Number one, we have to stop treating trafficking
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: victims as criminals and look at them as the victims
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: that they are. If you handcuff that young lady and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: there's any indication of trafficking, and by the way, there's
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: almost always indication of trafficking, you say, well, wait a minute,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: aren't there independent operators and high end escorts, five star hotels. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: there are, but they're few and far between. I'm telling
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: you I learned, even from the experts. Even when you
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: go to those counties in Nevada where prostitution is legal
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: and it's controlled and it's within these legal probls, guess what,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: very few of those women are independent operators. There's a
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: pimp somewhere in that picture, and they're sending that money
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: back home to the pimp. So anyway, what works. Stop arresting,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: start inserting the local activist group, the social group, the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: resource center. Almost always women. You can imagine the distrust
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: of male officers that these victims have because what happens
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: when you handcuff and you throw in jail for the night.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Guess who the savior is the pimp who shows up
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: as the savior and bails her out and she's on
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the street in the morning, if not that same night.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: So what do you do. I've seen it work in
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: my own FBI in Ohio, in Toledo, partnership with those
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: local groups and organizations, and you ask the question, what
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: do you need to get out right now? What do
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: you need to get out of this trap you're in
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: right now tonight? Well maybe tomorrow, No, no, no, tonight.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Well I need a roof over my head. My pimp's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: going to kill me. Okay, we have that for you tonight.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: We have it, all of these, all the grant money,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: all of the volunteers in the business owners people say,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: I've got money for you. What do you want to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: do with your life. I've always wanted to be a paralegal.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: I want to learn how to cut hair. We can
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: get you those certificates in that training. Come with us tonight.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: I have a baby. I need diaper money. We'll come
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: with us. We'll help you tonight. We've got an apartment
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: for you or in the case of Arizona State University
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: and doctor Seppowitz. We have a place for you to
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: live on campus with us with your child, so that works.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: So people are changing their tune toward this. And guess
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: what if you really want to make an impact, because
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: it's kind of lazy and easy for the officer to say, yeah,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: another prostitution to ask I put that on my record,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: I got another arrest. You want to take down the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: whole ring of trafficking. How about the intelligence you develop
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: when you develop a rapport and trust with that young
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: victim and she eventually gives up the whole operation. I've
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: seen that happen. We took down a national trafficking ring
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: out of Toledo, Ohio that way.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so glad to hear. That is definitely a
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: bright spot in the book of this evolution of thinking
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: when it comes to victims in that way. You know,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: I know we're wrapping up here, but I had a
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: question I want to ask you, and I'm curious what
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: you have to say about it, just because I feel
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: like this has sort of come up in conversation get
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: togethers or whatever, especially when people hear that I work
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: in true crime the question I get a lot that
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I've never really been able to answer but been curious about,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: is people want to know, and there's the sense that
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: serial killers are somewhat a thing of the past. That
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: the positive part of technology, the fact that everyone has
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: a phone on them at all times, a tracking device
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: at all times, the fact that you know, even as
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: you wrote about in your book, the newer, the big
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: corporation trucks are monitored all the time. You have a
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: button that says I'm driving, you have a button that
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: says I'm off duty and where I am, And that
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: it's so much harder to just grab someone who's car
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: is broken down off the side of the road and
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: no one knows where they are, or at a truck
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: stop someone being trafficked and then no one knows where
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: that person was.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: Is that true?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Has this activity become more difficult and thus less prevalent.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: It's a valid question, it really is. And I don't
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: think enough data is being captured to help us with
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: conclusions here. It's my gut feeling that some of the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: numbers are coming down. We know this, We know societally
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: from FBI crime reports that are captured from police departments.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: That homicide rates are going down in major cities and
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: have been for the last several years. We know that
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: that's really good news. How much of that is serial
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: killers not killing. Here's my problem with rushing to a
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: conclusion there. I don't believe that serial killers are going
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: to go away. I don't think that personality and mindset
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: and trauma is going to dissipate to the point where
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: serial killers become diminished or obsolete. I would actually counter
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: argue that our highly technical society and being online constantly
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: creates further isolation and antisocialism that often is the characteristic
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: of a serial killer. You could also argue that the
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: move onto online grooming and recruitment the move to advertise.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: As I drove through the country with this trucker, I
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: made a point of checking out the ads on various
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: platforms sex for money to see, Hey, in this little
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: community where we're betting down for the night at this
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: little mom and pop truck stop, could we actually get
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: sex for money here? The answer is yes, And so
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: if it's online, you are now moving from that physical
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: truck stop transaction to the nearby shady motel or massage
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: parlor where it's going to happen, and now I think
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: it's less likely to be discovered and solvable in many
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: ways because the universe of people who could have killed
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: this woman is actually greater outside of the truck stop.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: So that mindset is not going away. So what are
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: we going to see? Well, ever, since everything is moving
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: online in our lives, I think the killing moves online,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: meaning what are we seeing people answering ads for weird,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: weird sex stuff and you show up and it's a killer.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: They never see these people again. I think the killers
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: will move online, just like the victims, the trafficked, the
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: prostitutes move online for their advertising. They are now saying,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: i'd here, come get me if you're the killer.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then that also means the investigators need to
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: move online as well.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it's reminding me of that. I mean, it's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: not so related to this, but just the online piece
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: of it all and how hard it is to track
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: those things is the I don't know if you have
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: any familiarity with this, but there was a case in Arizona.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: I wish I remembered how many years ago, but like
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: a long time ago. I think maybe like four to
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: five years ago. Now, this fourteen year old girl Alicia
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Navarro went missing. She left a note said I'm sorry mom,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: I'll be back promise. She left a note left in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night, and they couldn't find her,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: like nothing. And then on her eighteenth birthday, she walks
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: into a small town police station in Montana and says, hey,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: this is my name. I want to be taken off
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: the missing person's list. And of course they're like, well, hey,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, like, where have you been? What's going on?
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: Fast forward? Now we know and they always suspected that
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: she met someone online, and now they know that she
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: did meet someone online. None of the details have been released,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: but this person they eventually raided the apartment that he
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: had been living in with Alicia. And I think he
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: was just sentenced to like two hundred years or he
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: got some wildly long and just and fair sentence for
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: child sex abuse material. And this is the person that
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: she had been living with. Now she's back with her
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: family and thankfully she's alive. But it was you know,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of technology now, and no one
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: knew where she was.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: I think this is a great example because of the
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: night mirror of being a parent. These days of young
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: people is this online scenario. I can't tell you, even
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: in my FBI days, how many cases we had where
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: the young lady was reported missing or a runaway. And
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: the first thing, what's the first thing the FAI is
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: going to do. They're going to check her devices, They're
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: going to grab her computer, the laptop, and what do
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: we find. Absolutely has fallen in love with some guy,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: usually an adult. Many stays away, and the problem with
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: that is the FBI and law enforcement generally shuts off
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: at that point number when the parents are shocked, shocked,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: they had no idea, and then law enforcement goes, hey, look,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: we got a hundred other things to do, and your
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: daughter has fallen for this person. Well, who is he?
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: Well we don't know quite honestly, because he's faking. He's
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: using an alias. Well, no, he could be a fifty
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: year old guy, don't well. And so it's a whole
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: that we're falling into. And I truly, you know, I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: have grandchildren now, so I've stopped worrying about my kids
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: and now I'm worrying about my grandchildren.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a very strange time, certainly so different.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I feel like I'm in the last
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: age group that grew up without full access to internet,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: cell phones, computers, like we had one computer and it
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: faced out so you could everyone can see the screen
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: dial in.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, Well, what I mean the equivalent right now is
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: I tell parents, Look, I know you think it's an
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: invasion privacy, but go ahead and do it. Buy the
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: software and know what your child is doing online. And
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: by the way, delay delay, delay the purchase of that
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: first device.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my game plan. Well, thank you so much
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: for listening. That is our episode for this week. We'll
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: be back next week. If you have a story for us,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: we would love to hear it. Our email is The
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com, or you can follow
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: us on Instagram at the Knife Podcast or a Blue
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  Speaker 1: Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has been an Exactly
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  Speaker 1: Right production hosted and produced by me Hannah Smith and
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  Speaker 1: me paysha Eten.
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  Speaker 2: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
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  Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
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  Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
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  Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.
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  Speaker 2: Artwork fi Vanessa Lilac.
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  Speaker 1: Executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.