Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
On the 1st of April 1990 ,Arizona state trooper michael miller , pulled to the side of interstate 10 in Casa Grande to inspect a park truck.
when he peered through the windows of the cab he couldn´t believe what he saw, the face of a petrified women chained up like an animal.he immediately handcuffed the truck driver and put him into his patrol car.
Michael didn’t know it yet but he’d apprehended a coldblooded serial killer Robert ben Rhoades for over a decade rhoades had been raping, torturing and killing vunerable women across the country.but he remained completely undetected.
The police were only just discovering the gruesome crimes of robert ben Rhoades on of the world´s most evil killers.
when 66 -years -old Robert Ben Rhoades pleaded guilty to the murders of Douglas Scott Zyskowski and Patricia Candace Walsh in marsh 2012, he took his official tally of victims to three but investigators he´s killed dozens more. its believed that the long -distance truck driver was active from the mid 1970s preying upon vulnerable hitchhikers and sex workers across america.
Rhoade’s victims were people who would readily get into his truck ,he wouldn’t have to coers them to do so , he´s looking out for people who are vulnerable, he´s looking out for people who need help from truck drivers and motorists, this are individuals where he already has the acess and he already has the opportunity.
It was a routine of his park trailer by an Arizona state trooper in april 1990 that led to rhoade’s dark secrets being revealed. the truck driver´s horrific crimes may have been discovered accidentally but it would take the ingenuity of three detectives across two states to help bring the serial killer to justice.
detective michael sheeley first heard the name Robert Ben Rhoades while investigatigng a murder in Illinois.
” he had been a truck driver for a long time , and give him a great deal of opportunity to find victims at local truck stops along the interstate,hitchhikers whitch we know were victims, so he had a great deal of opportunity for such a predator as he was and that’s the words that he is he was a preditator”
-michael sheeley
FBI special agent Bob Lee worked with michael to found out more about Rhoades.
” he not only kidnapped women but he kept them i and tortured them for as much as two or three weeks at a time and that made him a special kind of evil as i saw him “
– Bob Lee
a decade after Rhoades had been imprisoned for murder in Illinois, Texas Ranger brooks long uncovered two more victims of Rhoades .
” i would say that he had the ability to be mr dr jekyll and mr hyde , he was able to coerce people to trust him and gain confidence in his good old boy laidback attitude, nut once he had their trust and their guard was down ,then you saw the real robert ben rhoades come into play”
– Brooks long.
Robert Ben Rhoades
The story of this transient killer begins in november 1945 , robert was born in Council bluffs Iowa he was mostly raised by his mother as his military father ben spent a lot of time overseas.
so there was periods of time when Rhoade’s father is away from the family home and there’s a sense in which he perhaps misses him, there’s a sense inwhich that the family feels incomplete and there’s a longing for an attachment to his father.
But when his father returns, he’s quite brutal ,he’s quite violent towards him , so he did feel this conflict about his relationship with his father all the time.
It was a relationship that soured further when Rhoades was a teenager, when Rhoades was 16 his father was convicted for sexually assaulting a 12 year old girl, so his father was essentially an abuser and this behavior was a reflection of misogynistic value system that he had.
the women and girls were there to be used and abused that they served a function for men and that was something that would cemented itself in Rhoade’s mind.
Ben was a army veteram and a firefighter could hardly be a more upright member of the community, so imagine the shame that would have fallen upon on him for his arrest for sexually lascivious behavior.
another importent thin when we look at his father’s conviction is his father’s response to it , so he takes his own life shortly after he’s convivted of this crime and in this case suicide is the ultimate act of control,it’s the ultimate way of saying
” i’m not going to take responsibility for my own actions”
was it that , that made the change to Rhoade’s character ,was it that ,that flicked the switch?Rhoades wass a college dropout who’d also failed in becoming a police officer.he went through numerous jobs and two failed marriages , never seeming to settle.
By the late 1970s though he’d found the job that would define his murderous career. eventually Rhoades finds a job that suits him down to the ground and that ‘s the job of a truck driver ,so here he has long periods of time when he’s unsupervised, he’s off the grid, he doesn’t have to answer to any body and here he gets the chance to spend long periods of time of his own ruminating, fantasizing and this is a very dangerous period in his life.
At the age of 41 Rhoades married his third wife deborah.but his sexual perversions would eventually lead to their separations. their relationship, she was disillusion when the marriage went on because rhoades wanted to go to a swinger club in houston. that was something she didn’t wanted to do but he kept pushing and pushing. rather then just accepting that and saying ” okay” that’s fine, he pointed to her and said
” clearly there’s a problem with you , you need to loose up “
it show’s that his relationships , if you’d call them that with women , they weren’t based on mutuality or respect or love or affection, they were simply a way of him getting what he wanted
Deborah admitted subsequently how badly she’d been abused by Rhoades, the man who thought nothing of handcuffing her to the bed or raping her so badly that she feared for her life.but it’s undoubtedly true that , that form of sexual abuse was the signature that was to develop throughout Rhoades crime.
Rhoades had an uncontrollable sexual apetite ,working as a long distance truck driver presented with the perfect opportunity to act out his aggressive sexual perversions on strangers he would meet along the road with or without their consent.
It’s important to emphasize here the term consent because there are people who will consensually engage in this kind of behavior. but when it came to Rhoades ,he didn’t care where the people consented to it or not , he wanted to do this whether or not people were happy with that was just completely disregarded.
In february 1990 , a distressed young women flagged down passing motorists, she claims she’d been abducted by a truck driver and kept hostage for two weeks.
she was subject to torture sexual assault and rape and she actually had a leash around her neck when she was found by passing motorists, so this was a victim OF roads , this was somebody who had luckily managed to escape with her life.
The police drove the young women across houston looking for Rhoades truckand they immediately started searching for it and they found it but when they brought rhoades out to the car for her to look at him , she just looked down , would not identify him, said ;that’s not him
It was an opportunity to stop Rhoades that sadly wasn’t taken .later that day ,after they let him go , she told them that, that was him but she was too afraid to identify him,even though there were two police officedrs by her side. she had been completely terrorized and traumatized during the two week ordeal.
Rhoades is a such a terrifying man that he puts literally the fear of god into this young woman, that must have even further confermed Rhoades absolute sense of invulnerability it must have even further inflated his already over inflated ego.
A chance to put Rhoades safely behind bars had been missed,for now he remained free to stalk the highways.
by the spring of 1990 the 44 year old had been living as a sexual predator and a murderer for over a decade but nobody had any idea.
his veneer of lies was about to come crashing down .on the 1st april 1990, a state trooper named michel miller spied a truck on interstate 10 in Casa Gande Arizona.
” i observed a truck parked on the side of the rtoad with his emergency lights on, but he had no triangles,so i went up alongside of the truck . i pulled behind the truck had my lights activated to go up and check on the driver of the truck and see what his situation was.”
-michael miller.
Armed with a flashlight michael took a look from the windows of the truck
” i saw some lights in the back and peered in the window of the driver side of the truck and i show my flashlight in ,i heard a women started screaming and what i saw was a women ,it looked like she had a horse bit in her mouth”
-michael miller
shocked to see a women with a metal restraint strapped to her mouth,michael was even more suprised when a man appeared out of the darkness of the cab.
“the driver came sliding out of the sleeper birth and then came on down to the pavement and put his hands up against the side of the truck and said ” that´s okay officer,everything is fine, we are consenting adults . and i still heard screaming coming from inside the truck . and he said ” i’ve got a gun in my rear pocket and i patted himdown ,felt it , took it out put it in my pocket and handcuffed him, took him back to my patrol car.i think he was probably thinking” how am i going to get out of this one , what do i do now”
-michael miller
with the man seemingly restrained michael headed back to the truck and looked inside, he saw a completely naked femal. and he took a blanket that was there and covered her up. michael told her that she was okay , that the police were taking care of it and the driver would not bother her anymore.
but had michael waited a minute more, the man in his car Robert Ben Rhoades would have been free.michael went back to his patrol car and mr Rhoades had got his handcuffs infront of him and he was in the process of trying to get a key in his pocket to get his handcuffs off. if he had done that he’d have been gone , he´d have fled the scene.
Robert ben Rhoades was arrested and taken to Casa Grande police departement. detectives wanted to know more about the man whose home address was over a thousand miles away in houston, Texas ,under the jurisdiction of FBI agent bob lee.
he had been arrested the night before and they asked agent bob lee to get some background information on Rhoades since he lived in houston at the time.
the young girl had been through a traumatic ordeal at the hands of Rhoades. when the victim was interviewed by the detective, she tells him that Rhoades agreed to give her a ride and she said she said that she fell asleep and when she woke up , he had her chained in the sleeper compartement and was starting to taking her clothes off.
he had his truck modified ,he had put some anchors on both sides of the sleeper, where he could put handcuffs attached to a chain on her feet and same thing with her hands. she also said that she was going to see the president , it makes you wonder what her grip on reality is. and then you take that back to the allegation she’s made and is that a credible statement.
The mental state of the distressed women meant there was a chance that Rhoades could walk free. Rhoades believed he was going to get away with this ,because he very deliberately chose victims who were vulnerable , particular victim had some mental health issues, she experience delusions but the police were very good at their jobs here. they observed that this women’s story never changed , it was consistent and that was what mattered.
some of the things that helped corroborate her statement, she said that when Rhoades approached her she was fighting trying to get away from him and said ” i bite him on his shoulder”
and he had a bit mark on his shoulder.
the case didn’t go to trial, Rhoades agreed to enter a guilty plea on a plea bargain and got a reduce sentence on it.
In December 1990 Rhoades was sentenced to 6 years for the kidnap and sexual assault of the young women .
While Rhoades was in custody,bob had began to unearth the past of the 45 year old truck driver . the first thing was check national databas for his criminal history and bob found robert was a suspect in a previous kidnapping. Bob called the houston police departement and spoke to a detective in the sex crimes unit and obtained his report .
The report told the story of the women who was raped and kidnapped but refused to identify Rhoades in february 1990. Bob was now aware of two cases where women had slipped through the grasp of Robert Ben Rhoades.
But he was certain that searching the trucker’s apartment would uncover any darker secrets.Bob talked to the apartment manager , after she saw in the paper that he had been arrested, she went up to his apartment to take a look . and told bob that she women’s garments all over the apartment
he also had chains and handcuffs and there was a white towel that had a lot of blood on it.there was some racks where he could chain somebody too.
The apartment bore alll the hallmarks of a sexual preditor
bob found a stack of photographs,they were in his dresser drawer and it showed a young girl who was in various stages of dress, he had a lot of nude pictures of her , he had pictures of her chained up and bob could tell that robert had held her for a while because on some of the photographs she had some bruises, but over time the bruises were changing color.so that told bob that she had been been captive for at least a week or so .
so they knew that at very least he has definitely harmed other women and at worst killed them, but they didn’t have any actual cases to connect this evidence to so this was the beginning of a very long investigation
pictures of the youing girl prayed on Bob’s mind.He tried to identify the girl, he carried a picture with him and every time he went to different police departement he´d show it to the officers to see if any of them recoginzed or did they have a missing person case or anything like that .
In september 1990
over 800 miles away in Bond county illinois reports of the discovery of a body landed on the desk of detective michael cheeley . he went to this rural community and met with the sheriff out there and told him that a local farmer was going to donate this particular barn to the fire departement to burn down, and he was making a last minute inspection and had found what he believed to be remains of a human body.
The badly decomposed body was found up in the hay loft and it was clear the victim gad been murdered.It was very apparent that there had been a wire, garrett made a ligature if you will to place it around the victim’s neck and its detective’s belief that she was bound and handcuffed over a large beam that raised her hands up and its´detective’s belief that he placed a wire around her neck then continued to squeeze that with this broken piece of board throughout and strangeld her to death.
and he twisted this ligature at least 16 times according to the medical examiner so he would not only have enjoyed torturing her but he would have enjoyed watching her die.
a forensic anthropologist believed that the body had been in the barn for about 6 months. the other thing he did is that he gave detectives gender dentification, said it was the body of a young girl, he gave detectives an age range between 14 and 16 years old,he gave detec hair color which we thought would assist in the identification earliy on.
what was alarming us detectives had approximately 950 missing female girls that fit her profile and fit the the time of death so it become overwhelming.
initially michael sent out details of the victim to missing persons departments across the country. a detective i pasadena Texas soon got back to him.
and she contacted him and said that her victim a runaway identified as regina K wallters, her family had received an anonymous telephone call after her disappearence saying that she had been left in in a barn .
Regina’s father receives a call on his unlisted number ,so this is a number that isn’t publicly available, Regina is one of the few people who actually know it . and he doesn’t recognize the caller but the caller tells him that he knows where Regina is,that she’s in a barn ,thatt he’s cut her hair, and when her father asks is she still alive the caller hangs up .
so immediately a lot of red flags really sounds like this could be our victim, so michael asked if she had dental records.
the dental records confirm that the body belonged to Regina walters.who was just 14 years old detectives could finally put a name to the face on the shocking photographs that had been found in Rhoades apartment.
The photographs to identifiy the young person would have been impossible for michael from being out there but the barn she entered ,he knew every square foot of that barn . He had seen that barn for days and days
and so the minute michael saw the photographs of her entering the barn and going into the barn loft and the beams, it just gave you that eerie feeling that’s exactly what had to happen here and so detectives were on to this case.
Two photos of regina in particular were difficult to look at .he had chronologically photgraphed her . the most telling for the detectectives was how he had taken photographs and staged her death and that staged them during the course right before he killed her.
and looking in her eyes and looking at her face you can tell that she’s terrified and at that point she’s just minutes from being killed, when you see a photograph like that you gave to control your emotions,it’s a piece of evidence that you’re looking at,you have to realize what you goal is to take this piece of evidence tie it to someone and be able to put that person in jail.
The story of how Regina walters ended up in the truck of robert ben rhoades is a tragick one. Regina h hada boyfriend ricky jones and she and ricky decided to run away one day. they were out on the highway hitchhiking and Rhoades stopped his truck and pick them up. and took of with her and that the last she was seen.
This really a beautifull young almost just totally normal 14 years old girl just a little rebellion streak.unfortunately she made the wrong decision. Rhoades kept regina prison in the makeshift torture chamber of his truck for 2 weeks
it’s widely believed that he disposd of her 18 year old boyfriend ricky almost immediately. he was never seen again. she was the prize and the boyfriend was just surplus to requrements
while the investigation into Regina’s murder continued Rhoades remain in prison for kidnap and sexual assault.but by early 1992 he was due out on parole. so the cloclk was ticken for detectives to make a case against Rhoades. Detectives in Texas and Illinois had been working together to build the case against Rhoades ,
if they didn’t charge him soon ,the dangerous killer would be released, finally they had enough of evidence. the district attorney in county Illinois issued an arrest warrant for Rhoades for the murder of Regina walters just prior to him being released from prison in Arizona. and detective sheeley flew out to the prison to serve him with the arrest warrrant and to bring him back to Illinois to face the charges.
Detective michael sheeley remembers meeting Rhoades in the Arizona prison and confronting him with the evidence linking to him to Regina. he was cold ,calculated,he didn’t have any trouble looking detective square in the eye and saying he’s not involved. detective s provided with the arrest warrant for murder,still o reaction, nothing at all. and so mr sheeley had a 8 x10 photograph of Regina and mr sheeley and put it on the table in front him turned it around and said “this is your victim” and that was the first time any emotion out of him but it wasnt’ an emotion of sorrow or an emotion of something that he had done it was , he was angry and he got up and said that the interview was over. he wouldn’t speak to detectives any longer .
at a couirt hearing on 11th of september 1992 Rhoades agreed to a plea bargain ,he admitted to murdring Regina walters so he wouldn’t have to face the death penalty.
the courtroom was packed, a great deal of spectators there had been a lot interest in this case because there was now speculation that he was a serial killer.
He didn’t just plead guilty , he plead guilty with a smile,he was still very much the sexual sadist that he always been ,this is somebody who hadn’t changed whatsoever , he enjoyed the opportunity to relive the detals of these killings.
Reginas walters family couldn’t reavel all the way from Texas to Illinois to be in the courtroom. but michael shelley made sure he conveyed their feelings to the killer.
with Rhoades behind the bars ,investigators continued into possible victims of the killer, there were many missing pereson who fittid his MO.
Roades would target his victims ,general people that either had mental deficiencies or heavy drug useers that he picke up hitchhiking, her referred to them as lot lizards, these are as he described women that hang around truck stops to take care of the truckers or to swap sex from ride somewhere
he is so itinerant he litterarely crosses the state line after state line after state line, all over the United states , they arent’ to know it , but when they climb into the cab of Rhoades truck,their lives had change forever.
In 2003 11 years after Rhoades had been imprisoned for the murder of Regina walters, Texas Ranger brooks long began to investigating the disaperance of Regina walters ,Texas Rangers brooks long began investigating of two hitchhiking newlyweds. Douglas Scott Zyskowski and patricia walsh who jad been missing since january 1990.
there they were both from seattle washington, they had basically given up their personal belongings and were traveling to the east cost of the united states primarily for religious reasons . the family searching extensively for them but the remains of douglas were located around 1990 but there was no a formal identification of it being douglas till 1992 through dental records. so there wasn’t much to go on ,there was no witnesses there, there were several suspect but noboydy was actually linked to the crime
28 years old douglas´s remains had been discovered in Crockett county Texas, brooks wanted to look at the ballistic evidence that had been found at the scene.mr Zyskowski was shot multiple times in the head ,he was shot with a Jennings J22 sdemi -automatic handgun, this information was obtained by not only the projectiles removed from his head but also the casings that were n behind the crime scene never collected by law enforcement.
so what was unique about the ballistic information was that ,the ammunition used in the murder of mr Zyskowski was very rare.
This tarson branded ammunition had a noticable T on the caseing , this had fact initially ruled Rhoades out as the potential killer.
the reason he was eliminated at that time was simply because the ammunition that was seized from Robert Ben Rhoades was marketed under the name of arms core.
Brooks contacted the Casa Grande police to take a closer at the ammunition that was found in Roade’s truck when he was arrested for kidnap back in April 1990. and when he called btooks. brooks asked him to open the arm score box and describe the head stamp on the casing and he said it’s a T- so that was the first clue that this is the guy most probably is the guy and detectives need to put efforts and resources into this, because that all matched.
where the possible link between rhoades and douglas secured, brooks gathered all the information he had on the killer and concentrated his efforts towards connecting Rhoades to dougla’s 24 year old wife. patricia walsh.
she probably out here somwhere and detective may not even know who she is because douglas had no identification , he had no clothing ,Regina K walthers didn’t have any identifications, she didnt have any clothing so when you look at those two situations,what detetive started doing was looking for a red headed female in her mid 20′ that was was probably naked and would have been shot with a Jenning J22 j jandgun with toss and ammunition
Brooks received word of a possible unidentified body in Millard county,Utah.
detective obtained that information he reach out to the Millard county sheriff’s and inquired as tothe status of that case.and what detective was told by their chief deputy ,was ” we haven’t solved it, and the skeleter remains are actually inside the evidence vault.
detective was able to tell him ” i know hwo that victim is. and i also know hwo killed her.”brooks was right , dental records revealed that the remains belonged to patricia walsh.
milard county had projectiles and had casings that matched, the same gun killed douglas ,killed patricia so that was linked, then the timline on the records detectives were able to determine that Rhoades was traveling westbound,so what made sense was is he eliminated douglas first.
douglas was essentially just a barrier, because patricia was what Rhoades wanted so he killed douglas ,he dumped this body very quickly but he kept patricia alive for seven days and tortured her and he raped her before he eventually killed her and disposed of her body .
in 2003 ,13 years after her remains have been found in Utah ,patricia walsh had been identfied another innocent victim of Robert Ben Rhoades.
patricia must have been absolutely terrified , during the days that she spent with Rhoades during this time she probably tried to plead with him and interact with him.
but there would be absolutely no reaction to that from Rhoades ,because this guys was essentially a killing machine , he wasn’t affected by other people’s trama or emotions. he got off on people’s fear and the more afraid patricia was the more he enjoyed it.
investigators still needed to find some hard evidence that link Rhoades to the Newlywed hitchhikers before they could prosecute him with their murders.
No became an analysis and comparison not only for DNA under douglas, now there was analysis to be done and comparisons relating to patricia and what had happened on that is eventually there was an a match that was located on a white towel that was seized from Robert Ben Rhoades’s truck that was matched to the DNA of patricia cancance walsh.so there was an affirmative link,the MO,the timeline, these things fit and Rhoades was in custody ,he was in jail in the state of illinois.
Regina walters
by march 2012 Rhoades had served 20 years for the murder of Regina walters. but he was due to be released.now investigators needed to convince a grand jury that he was guilty of two more slayings before Rhoades was freed, once again , the clock was ticking.
Texas Ranger brooks Long needed a jury to indict Rhoades based on the new facts he’d uncovered.
the crockett county grand jury returned two indictiments for capital murder on Robert Ben Rhoades for the murder of Douglas and patricia ,based on the evidence and the information that was presented,so essentially he was extradited and detained in the state of Texas and as detectives were preparing for trial he plead guilty to both cases and received multiple life sentence.
the killings of douglas and patricia took the number of Rhoades known cvictims toat least three. after working as a truck driver for over a decade he’d honed his method of murder.
that Robert Ben Rhoades prayed on people that coin the term later is disposable. he looked looked at people that had some checkered history people that he believed wouldn’t immediately be missed so he think he systematically profiled his victim if you will.
and he was really good at it and unfortunately there’s a lot of of those folks out there and Rhoades knew that he had an endless supply of people that he could pray on and he did .
as far as Rhoades uis concerned any women hitchhiking or working in a truck stop is fair game. and after all ,who’s going to miss them , it is a perfect combination if you were devise a fictional serie killer, Rhoades would be a very very good example
Brooks Long continued his search for victims of Rhoades, there was one obvious person to start with , ricky jones , the 18 year old boyfriend of Regina walters.
after the worl had been done to identifiy who the killer was relating to douglas and patricia then there was resources put into myself and trying to locate ricky lee jones because as broos long reviewed thefile and reached out to officers and witnesses in that case it was obvious that he had never been located, his remains had never been found
ricky had been missing since early 1990, evidence found in Rhoades trcuck when he was arrested in Arizona just weeks after that , suggested that he could be the killer.during the search that was done by the FBI , there was a notebook that was found a very alarming notebook where Rhoades had kept information,
in that information , in that notebook was phone numbers and family names, thaere was even a notation with a drawing of a knife with appeared to be like blood drops and it’s said Ricky’s dead.Ricky jones is dead.
Brooks sent out information to police departements, he was desparate to locate ricky,detectives didnt’ get anything back from these agencies but as brook on his own started searching unsolved homicides and looking at various databas online he essentially came across a young white male ‘s remains that were found in missisippi, brooks then reached out to law enforcement and it was unfortunate,
because detectives were able to obtaine some teeth from the remains in mississipi and detectives were able to obatain samples, biological samples from Rickyy lee jones biological mother and those were compared and they were matched.so detectives knew that they had located ricky lee jones. the bad part oabut that was that the remains could not all be located soRobert Ben Rhoades has never stood trial for the abduction and murder of ricky lee jones simply because there was a lack of evidence.
despite not being able to link Rhoades to the crime it is widely believed that he did kill the 18 year old, before murdering ricky’s girlfriend regina ealters.Investigators believe Rhoade’s is responsible for the death of many more innocent people
This is a case that is unresolved,it’s a case that’s incomplete, there are going to be many, many families across America missing relatives who ‘ve been murdered by this individual and they deserve justice.
during the course of the investigation initially ,brooks and detectives believe that it was probably in the neighborhood of probably 10 to 15 but as the investigation grew the FBI and brook spent a lot of time with it the behavioral science unit spent a great deal of time and effort, and they had actually linked him up to approximately 45 homicides through out the United States, that not only fit his profile but fit his timeline as well as a truck driver.
there’s any doubt, there’s other victims and there’s other crimes that can be linked to Robert Ben Rhoadesscience and the ability to link potential suspect through DNA are somewhat limited in this case ,because of his MO and what he would do with those victims.
but as other agencies become aware of Robert Ben Rhoades, hnopefully some of this information will get back to the right investigator office or even family member that might be able to listen and say “hey” why dont you look at this guy.
whatever the true number of victims,there could have been many more had it not been for a chance encounter, on the side of the I 10 in Casa Grande ,Arizona in april 1090
the most striking moment in the case is that wonderful Arizona highway patrol officer coming upon this rig with its hazard lights flashing climbing up looking through the window and seeing a young woman trapped in the car who starts screaming that was the moment in which finally Rhoade’s extraordinary run of killing came to an end.and had that officer not gone to check on that truck he could well be killing people right now.
Robert Ben Rhoades remains safely behind bars at the minard correctional center in Illinois. he will never be released from prison.
