America’s Highway Serial Killers /// Part 2 /// 591 | Forensic Files

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welcome to True crb garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me
as always is a man that likes big trucks and he cannot lie ladies and gentlemen the captain big truck it's good to be
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[Music] [Music] on True Crime garage yesterday we started off by talking about the still
unsolved 2003 homicide of 22-year-old Kristen Schmidt from California and then the creation of the FBI's Highway serial
killer initiative is where we left off a lot of what we will be covering in today's show is information collected
from and found on the FBI's website fbi.gov and we left off by talking about vulnerable victims living high-risk
Lifestyles getting picked up and later found a great distance away and then discovered to be victim of a homicide
the FBI website points out these types of cases are very difficult to investigate the US interstate highway
system began in 1956 it incorporates 47,000 mes of roadway that's a lot of ground to cover the mobile nature of the
offenders the unsafe lifestyles of the victims the significant distance and multiple jurisdictions involved and the
scarcity of witnesses referring forensic evidence can make these cases incredibly
tough to solve a long haul trucker can pick up a sex worker at a truck stop in Georgia rape and murder her and dump her
body on the side of the road in Florida later that same day the victim has no connection to the area where she is
found and there is no forensic evidence to collect because the crime scene is long gone the inside of the truck where
she was killed if the trucker keeps the deceased victim with him for a day or two he can dumper her literally 1,000
mil or more from any place either of them where last scene as a long haul trucker he may even be familiar with the
most remote places to discard his prey uring he will never be found and his truck will be just one of thousands of
anonymous big rigs passing by on interstates all over the country on any given day it will be nearly impossible
to track further the victims are often transient and sometimes are not missed when they vanish because they aren't
rooted to any one place many of them are drug addicted and are weary of law enforcement often they are disinclined
to report violence inflicted on them so the culprits are even more difficult to catch well they're also trained to
travel large distances the highway serial killer initiative website contains a fairly horrifying map of the
United States this has red dots on it depicting where each of more than 750 murder victims have been found along US
highways in every state but Hawaii the eastern half of the country has the most dots well that makes sense but the area
where Kristen Schmidt was taken Portland Oregon has its own little cluster of red
dots the website says that the FBI list of suspect truckers now numbers nearly 450 now this is really interesting quote
the analysts also began to develop a detailed timeline on many of the suspects the information obtained from
company logs gas station receipts and other records this would be some of the stuff that we talked about yesterday
Captain such as the way station records and then we also have digital toll records such as easy pass as well will
help pinpoint where a suspect was when murders were committed Christine palalo elaborated quote it is not unusual for a
driver to pass through five or even seven states in one day the amount of ground they cover and the lack of any
connection to where they're passing through makes it difficult to tie the cases back to them end quote but of
course that's exactly what makes tracking these guys so difficult as pointed out in a USA Today article from
2010 stopping crime at the thousands of rest areas truck stops and travel plazas
remains difficult in part that's because the responsibility for policing rest areas varies from state to state that
often means no consistent records are kept about the rate of crimes and no single agency takes ownership for
fighting it but these crimes also are difficult to stop because of the location of the rest areas along major
roadways that makes getting away easy just jump onto an interstate and speed off well think about your own driving
history I mean just to drive a state away can be a chore sometimes and and these individuals like she was saying
can go three four five states away within a day no problem the other issue here is when we're not able to identify
the victims yeah either they're not easily identifiable or we're just not able to identify them because they're
several states away when they were picked up alive and well and Kristen Schmid case we got lucky that we have
the eyewitness who sees the big rig but also we get lucky because they find an ID they find identification in her
backpack in many of these other cases in fact many many of the other victims found along the nation's highways are
found with no identifying papers or marks whatsoever well let's think about that for a second let's say we weren't
able to identify Kristen as far as her family knows she's going to go visit her long-distance boyfriend in Colorado this
is she's found in a whole separate State chances are they wouldn't be able to put
two and two together in that 2010 article from the USA Today where Michael herrian the special agent who oversaw
this task force says that you know part of the problem here too for investigators is that they have at that
time anyway more than 80 cases in which authorities couldn't identify the remains that are found or recovered only
body parts in fact he references a barow case from 2010 February of 2010 where a woman's severed head was
found in a backpack a few hundred yards from a truck stop just off of Interstate
15 not far from I40 but police had no idea who she was Baro Jane Doe remains un identified to
this day the main way in which they're helping with this task force is to be able to connect these cases with smaller
departments well it it's kind of the reverse of that they're helping smaller departments local smaller departments
and agencies connect their case to a case somewhere else in the nation right so somewhere on the national level yeah
because what they're thinking here if you follow the victim ology as well as the modus operandi of this type of
killer it would be generally believed that a local agency would recover a body find a homicide victim but then they
have no clues to really even take their investigation any steps forward toward getting it solved and once the local
agency can conclude that well we don't have anything to follow up on here we don't really have any investigation
because we don't know much about the victim where they're from or the crime scene we don't have anything to
investigate well let's put this on the highway serial killer initiatives website on their
database and let's look for similar types of crimes you know if you find something that's very specific that
matches up with the victim you found well you might have a match here and if we can take that a step forward now
we're going to go okay well who could have been let's say your your victim your crime
seems to match up with 15 other almost identical crimes throughout the United States right that you you locate them
off of this database well then you're going to go there's only a certain number of people
that could have been in all 15 of those locations given those dates and times when the bodies were recovered and now
you have a pool of people a much smaller pool of people it could be five six 10 15 people to look at that even had the
possibility to be connected to all of those crimes then you can look at it on a smaller basis of well who could be
connected to a percentage of those crimes basically it's the idea of hoping to lead you to a a suspect B the crime
scene if in fact the victim was killed inside the truck the mobile crime scene so one thing that they can do the local
law enforcement agencies the smaller agencies not only can they upload their information about their victim and put
it on this database but also the website allows them to search for different things like for
example manner of death circumstances whether the victim were sexually assaulted or not other
specifics about the case yeah it's pretty fascinating we've referenced vicap on this show many times we've also
mentioned the more local databases that exist like here in Ohio we have the Attorney General's website that list
Ohio Cold Case homicides unsolved homicides in the state of Ohio sadly there are many unsolved homicides in the
state of Ohio that are missing from that database because in all of these situations with these databases it is up
to the local authorities the local agency to to submit the information that they have on their Cold Case or their
unsolved homicide for whatever reason sometimes the agency just does not pass along that information they do not
upload their information to these databases and I think that that's a one it's a poopy thing it's a slight on the
victims yeah it's I believe a miscarriage of Justice it's a godamn shame well it's something small that
they can do that takes very little time and effort and costs very little Manpower or dollars to do and look at
what happened with the Sam little case look at how many homicides were solved using this method word it's a tried and
true method it's not going to work all the time it's not even going to work a high percentage of the time but it does
work and the thing a question that I'm often asked how do you put up with the captain Nick why were the serial killer
numbers so much higher higher in the 60s and 70s and 80s rather than what we see
today well the short answer is one serial killers are not racking up these types of numbers because of Technology
this is part of it these monsters are being identified faster because of technology and communication much better
communication between jurisdictions and all kinds of uh law enforcement agencies
be it on the federal level state level county level City level what have you there's better communication today that
catches and apprehends these guys faster it's not that we have less monsters out
there it's just we're getting better from technology and communication at catching them faster so you don't have a
Ted Bundy that goes out kills 15 or 20 people M instead you have a Ted Bundy that kills one or two women and then
he's apprehended and he gets to spend the rest of his life in prison so all you're saying is the there's still just
as many pieces of [ __ ] there's piles and piles of [ __ ] but we're catching those
people after their first crime or second crime faster we're getting we're getting
to them faster than they can rack up victims all right calm down Colonel sassy pants well like you're saying this
is a simple task that they could do and I go back to what you like to say uh lazy or stupid seems like this falls
into the lazy category well part of it though too I think is unclear to these agencies right who is the designated
person that is supposed to upload this information or provide this information to these different databases in a lot of
cases I'm guessing we don't have a a chief of police or a sheriff that has delegated that responsibility to one
individual or even gone as far to tell the lead investigator this is part of your
investigation and so I'm I'm reaching out there to all the good lead investigators out there and asking them
please please submit this information to these different databases it could very
well help you on your case or think about this could help somebody else out one of your fellow women or boys and
blue somewhere else in another jurisdiction solve one of their cases at the very least it gives the families
some form of hope it's a different tool a different tactic to use and it's the right thing to do for your victim now
the highway serial killer initiative isn't just a data point collection website the crime Analyst at vicap
continually monitor the site for new cases that they think might be the work of serial killer Truckers when they get
one they reach out to the local agency working the case and connect them with others who have similar crimes in their
areas then they assist the local agencies with trying to track suspects who should be looked at helping them
obtain Trucking records and teaching them how to track certain suspects the FBI's website states that this
initiative was supported by the trucking industry yeah and the thing here it's it's the FBI going out of its way as we
did in yesterday's episode saying that we're not we didn't come up with this idea to just say all truckers are bad
people all of them are serial killers no that couldn't be further from the truth
now whether or not the it's a very very very very small percentage incredibly small
percentage whether or not the highway serial killer initiative is an insult to truckers the program has allegedly
helped solve a number of sexual assaults and murders attributed to truckers the website claims that the program has
resulted in the arrest of 10 male Long Haul truckers collectively responsible for 30 murders in its first four years
of operation and it reports that at least 25 Long Haul truckers are in prison in the US for serial murder well
what about the initial investigation that kind of kicked this off with uh investigator Terry Turner yeah Terry
Turner is the one that kind of discovered this series of women series of victims that she believed were
connected this ultimately became the Genesis of this whole initiative the series of women and murders that she was
investigating these were women that were dumped along Interstate 40 fast forward
to today we know that the these crimes were solved and the killer was indeed a trucker John Robert Williams age 28 was
arrested along with his girlfriend for the murder of a sex worker they kidnapped from a casino in Mississippi
Nikki Hill was the victim she was found dumped along a royal County Road Williams girlfriend was worried that
they had been seen leaving the casino with the victim so she called police and pretended that they had found the body
under interrogation the couple's story collapsed and Williams confessed to that murder and many other murders this is
from an article from the Toledo Blade dated August 11 2007 written by Robin herb it says from a sweltering
Mississippi prison earlier this week a long haul trucker admitted that he killed a for former Toledo woman and
more than 30 others authorities said John Robert Williams confirmed what any homicide detective knows all too well
truck stop prostitutes are easy to kill Captain Clark fine and Lieutenant Roger Co of Indiana's Hendrick County
Sheriff's Office interviewed Williams who is being held in a supermax unit of the Parchman Mississippi prison they
were investigating the death of Buffy Ray Broly a 27-year-old Toledo woman whose partially clothed body was found
March 24th 2004 in a desolate parking lot about 10 mil outside of Indianapolis her murder was particularly cruel duct
tape was pressed over her face and her killer bashed in her head and strangled her why the investigators asked the
answer was simple she tapped on the cab of a truck Lieutenant call said but the captain added the 31-year-old man
Williams knew details that only the killer might know like when Miss Broly died he remembered something else
without being asked Miss bry's Rose Tattoo with the name ebony over it it is the name of her daughter Williams was a
long-distance huler who had worked for several companies during the past three years his girlfriend Rachel Cumberland
rode along with him they were arrested and charged in August of 2004 with the fatal shooting of Nikki Hill of
Mississippi the couple met her at a casino once the couple were in custody the man Williams he confessed to
murdering more than a dozen women many of whom were the cases that Terry Turner was investigating and Williams the
killer he knew details such as whether they were strangled with a ligature or manually whether and how they were
sexually assaulted and whether that occurred before or after death so these are all things that your killer is going
to be the only one that knows the answer to these questions or his sidekick that's riding along with him in his big
rig now he is serving a life sentence plus 20 years in Mississippi for Hills murder Williams though however was as
free as a bird in roaming the country in his truck when Kristen Schmidt was killed scary enough to think that this
serial killer is driving around looking for another victim and basically his mobile killing machine but he's not the
only one they suspect over hundreds of these monsters out there on the [Music] roads
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not only do the gas prices scare people but now we have to be afraid of all the trucks well before we get into some of
the Cal killers in the this episode and the coming episodes I wanted to show who
fit this modus operandi who fit into these serial killer truckers and review some of the ones that were apprehended
both before and after the creation of this highway serial killer initiative but before we get into the serial
killers let's talk a little bit about how the FBI was well slow yeah on the uptake on this one so this is not really
an idea that even though we we went through the Genesis of it and how this all started and came about through the
good work from Terry Turner and other colleagues of hers but this was always something that had been suspected or at
least much further back than the creation of this initiative and I remember a case that was on Unsolved
Mysteries when I was a kid that talked about these types of patterns and talked about this type of serial killer the
highway serial killer initiative started up in the mid 2000s right but the Pittsburgh Press started reporting on
the murder of truck stop sex workers back in April of 1987 we'll get into some of that stuff
here in a little bit later but the one that I remember from Unsolved Mysteries here Captain was an Ohio journalist also
covered CED the pattern in 1991 this is Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Barons who was doing a story for
our local paper The Columbus Dispatch doing a story on serial killers for The Columbus Dispatch when he's putting
together his story he noticed a pattern of murdered sex workers using news stories and police reports Barons found
similarities in the slayings of multiple women from 1985 to 1990 most were strangled or asphyxiated and suffer
blunt Fort trauma to the face and most of their bodies were dumped along in Interstate this is directly from the
dispatch article dated March 10th 1991 a serial killer may be trolling Ohio interstates and truck stops claiming at
least nine female victims who are linked in both life and death A dispatch investigation has revealed most of the
victims are known or suspected prostitutes part of a flourishing sex for sale industry centered on truck
stops and linked by freeways in citizens ban radios since 1985 bodies have been found scattered across four states six
have been discovered in Ohio the other three were found near interstates in Illinois Pennsylvania and New York three
of the Ohio victims worked from the Union 76 Truck Stop in Austin toown Ohio police record show the truck stop east
of akan and west of Youngstown is the state's largest eight victims were missing clothing mostly undergarments
and shoes FBI experts say serial killers often keep victims Trophies the victims
were all beaten strangled or suffocated all were killed someplace other than where they were found no weapons have
been found no Ohio law enforcement agency has comprehensively tracked the unsolved homicides FBI agent John Dunn a
spokesman for the Cleveland office said the bureau informally reviewed five of the slangs but is unaware of any
forensic evidence linking them but more Ohio investigators are now saying some of the slangs appear to be connected all
agree the Killer is most likely a truck driver who is believed to have used the names of Dr No Stargazer and dragon
while luring women to his cab using a citizen ban radio truckers often use fake names called handles when talking
on CBS well Colonel if I've said it once I'll say it a thousand times never trust
a man with a fake name but never ever trust a man named Dragon serial killer expert John Douglas of the FBI's
Behavioral Science unit who says for the article that serial killers often Escape
early detection when crisscrossing jurisdictions Douglas and other experts say a lack of communication between
police agencies is one of of a serial Killer's greatest advantages and Barons discovered that this use of a CB radio
for communication between sex worker and trucker was not exactly a secret one of
the victims went by the CB handle tongue teaser as described in his article the sex workers used the CB radio to put
their availability out there using a cute or alluring handle a sex worker looking for a John would get on the
radio and give her hand and a known catchphrase that she had developed and the trucker would answer
back and say yeah this is the blue Peter built in row three come meet me and she
goes off to the truck and then usually once they are done she'll use the trucker CB to radio to her next
potential customer at least two of the Dead women in Ohio from this article were seen getting into a black
Peterbuilt tractor trailer after the dis dispatch ran the story about all of the
victims in Ohio and the three nearby States all whom seem to be linked the Ohio attorney general and the sheriff's
Association formed a task force to figure this out they determined that the counties were not communicating about
the murders and so had not put the pieces together that they could be dealing with a trucker serial killer
pretty crazy when you think about it by March 15th 1991 the dispatch ran an article that reported quote detectives
from New York to Tennessee who are investigating the possible serial killings of 10 women plan to gather
within 2 weeks in Ohio the meeting will be the first for a task force in Ohio that includes more than a dozen law
enforcement agencies looking into the slangs from 1985 to 1990 yeah law enforcement officials first began
speculating that a serial killer was loose on the interstates in 1987 the task force also undertook to
print and distribute 4,000 posters bearing images of five of the victims who have been identified and drawings of
three who were Jane Doe they handed them out and posted the Flyers at 130 truck stops in Ohio and
1,350 in nine other states as well as at 147 rest stops along highways in Ohio the flyer advertised a 10,000
reward for information about the murders and a tip line so let's think about some
of those numbers that they're saying here and big give big kudos to uh Barons who was writing that article for The
Columbus Dispatch and you know what we'll give give a little bragging rights here to say that looks like our state
was ahead of the curve here right oh uh we were on to this thing maybe a little faster than the rest of the country and
it seems like Pittsburgh as well so America yeah you're welcome that's right but we have the numbers in
there really point out how difficult these cases will be to investigate when they talk about Distributing these
posters that they created with images of five of the victims who were identified
and then we also have three unidentified Jane doees that were on these posters as
well they're handing them out to 130 truck stops just in Ohio alone 1,3 50 truck stops in nine other states
and that doesn't even include the 147 rest stops along highways in Ohio so this is a a a big undertaking yeah a
massive project to undertake but the reality is that means that there are so many victims that don't have Justice and
some of them aren't even identified it's pretty scary world that we are operating
in that it is another way of looking at it here captain is that there's some pretty scary people operating in the
world that we are living in now I don't want to jump around here A whole lot because there's a lot of directions that
we can go with this from here I think the the thing that makes the most sense is to stick in this General location and
start by finishing our story that we said started here with the newspaper of The Columbus Dispatch so we jump now to
another publication and this quote is taken from an article in CDL life which is a trucking industry newsletter and
the quote says news that a serial killer was attacking women in truck stops in Ohio was first reported in the early 90s
that again The Columbus Dispatch article that we've been referencing the Pittsburgh Press actually first covered
the murders in 1987 like we said it's April 5th 1987 article entitled killings of truck stop hookers baffle police
reports on a slew of murders that seem to form a pattern the article talks about the realities facing truck stop
sex workers with call signs like bad girl Twilight champagne butterfly and sex machine over the CB they flirt with
the truckers on the prow at truck stops like the one near Youngstown Ohio probably easy for these truck drivers to
figure out which places have surveillance and and they have so much ground to cover and such big stops that
if they just go a little bit further out it's like we just meet me down a little
further down the way so we're not around any of the cameras and when we're talking about the 80s and early 90s I'm
guessing that a lot of these truck stops have less surveillance if any compared to what we have now right the other
thing too is so many of these workers are using assumed names they're using aliases they're not so easily
identified these would be the would be potential victims for such monsters that I don't know that they have to worry
especially back then so much so as who sees who get into whose truck right because there's so much of this activity
going on that I don't know that many of the other truckers are paying a whole lot of attention to this and so that's
where everything gets very difficult to investigate these crimes yeah it'd probably be easier to find a needle on a
hay stack back to that CDL life newsletter it goes on to say that similarities in cases of murdered
women led many to believe it could be the work of one person it became apparent that one man was soliciting sex
workers over the CB channels and the sex workers were turning up all over Ohio dead but then it wasn't just Ohio this
particular trucker was believed to have been responsible for a string of murders
women that were killed and dumped near roadways in Ohio Illinois New York and Pennsylvania at least nine women and
then 10 in total were found in Ohio between 1981 and 2004 and then three more in other states
Jesus most of them were missing underwear and shoes several of the victims were associated with the largest
truck stop in Ohio the Union 76 truck stop that we mentioned in Austin town but who was this guy no one knew his
name the still living sex workers in the area did not like dealing with him they
were afraid of him and generally refused to get into his rig so they came up with
this term they termed him Dr No as some kind of code name like Dr no don't go with that man man right let's take a
look at some possible victims of this doctor no one of the earliest was a woman that was found in April of 1981 in
Miami County Ohio founded a ditch on greenle Road near State Route 55 approximately 5 miles west of
I75 this victim was known only as buck skin girl she was finally identified via forensic genealogy in 2018 as as Maria
King the next three victims marshia Matthews who was found by a State Trooper in June of 1985 on i7 north of
Mansfield with her head smashed in she was this is crazy she was still alive when found but died two days later in
the hospital that's awful Shirley Dean Taylor was found July 1986 strangled and beaten at a rest stop on i71 near the I
76 interchange and April Barnett who in December of 1986 was strangled and dumped over a guard rail on the
southbound Lanes of i71 this is west of akan 3 miles north of US Route 30 they were all near or were last seen at this
Union 76 Truck Stop the next victim and Marie Patterson was discovered to have made an appointment at an Austin Town
truck stop VI CB radio with a client she did not like called Dr No her pimp overheard the CB exchange as quoted on
Mysterious Universe as no thank you I know this is what the pimp overheard her saying to the trucker that evening he
was calling but they wouldn't go to his truck for some reason the pimp later said they said he was trouble so so
they're being told that this guy's trouble but in fact an Marie had been arrested for solicitation earlier that
day had told an officer she had some sketchy information about who may have been responsible for killing three other
known prostitutes who frequented truck stops in the Youngstown area but an Marie was scared and didn't tell them
any helpful details the next day after the CB exchange overheard by her pimp an Marie went back to work
went back to work at the Venango County truck stop and never met up with her pimp as planned she was then found in
March of 1987 but she's found 250 mil away wrapped up in a sleeping bag this in a
ditch next to the I70 north of Cincinnati they're Travelers having been in a refrigerator for a
month she was found 5 months pregnant this is awful after hearing all this I'm going to have to up my prescription of
vodka but at least in this case we have an eyewitness yeah we have the pimp who ends up telling police that when she
spoke with this doctor no and then gets into a truck she's never seen alive again he's able to tell police that the
doctor no that she responded to drove a long-nosed dark colored Peterbilt Truck and drove forward North American
Van Lines so now we got a really good lead here in one of these cases yeah what a bad handle doctor no my handle
would be Dr Feelgood two weeks later the Pittsburgh Press came out with the article titled mysterious Dr No saw an
Ohio truck stop prostitute murder probe the article reported that anarie Patterson one of our victims had been
afraid of this air quotes Dr No and there were other truck stop sex workers that were afraid of him as well Dr No
was wanted for questioning and some believed he might be a serial killer a serial killer or the serial killer that
they're looking for yeah in relation to these cases that we're talking about what's interesting here Captain is at
least two of the four victims were last seen entering a dark blue or black Peterbuilt truck right that fits the
description we were given by the witness to one of the last victims and it may have been a
refrigerated trailer remember anarie Patterson's body had been refrigerated before being dumped the man called Dr No
was sought to have possibly used the CB radio handles Stargazer and dragon as a result of the
murders a multi-county task force was established to investigate the crimes and figure out whether they were were
dealing with one killer or several authorities from four different counties in Ohio where bodies were found
disagreed as to whether they had a serial killer trucker on their hands or not although there were no Witnesses
weapons or Os linking the crimes some were convinced there was a serial killer humming along the Ohio highways killing
and dumping women all along the interstates so the problem with these cases for a group of investigators to
just sit down and quickly review them and compare notes and say yeah I think we got one guy killing all these
women it got a little dicey because there were not there were similarities with some of the cases but there were
also great differences as well right some of them were killed in different manners some of them were found
obviously they're found in different locations one thing connecting them was their air quotes
occupation and the idea that they were were working these truck stops and some of them that one major truck stop there
in Ohio it's easy to see why somebody would think they're connected and why others would disagree the other problem
with this type of killer is truck drivers don't always own their vehicles so they could be getting a new vehicle
or driving a different style of vehicle every few weeks well and we talk about these four victims but while we have
this task force looking at this doctor no and how many murders he may or may not be connected to that number will
eventually grow to 10 victims in Ohio and three and other states so we quickly go from well he may be responsible for
one to four murders to well he may be responsible for 1 to 13 murders let's think about this for a second this task
force is saying there's probably about 400 of these types of serial killers okay 400 so we got 50 states that's
eight per state roughly probably more in some states Less in other states but if
the average Trucking serial killer has three victims well that's 1,200 victims if they have 10 that's 4,000 victims
that's insane well and watch The Killing season you know we had Joshua Zan on here feels like forever ago to talk
about The Killing season on we' been doing this a long time very long we had him on 1951 it was the summertime I
remember it like it was yesterday um we had him on to discuss the Long Island serial killer case and that's because
his series The Killing season does speak about the Long Island serial killer case
on a couple of those episodes one thing that they explored during that series was these Long Haul trucker killers and
there was some thought that there could be a trucker involved in the list case as well so what everybody's going to
want to know right Captain was this doct no ever caught well a 2019 arrest put behind
bars the man that is widely believed to be Dr no yeah doct yes got him first a cus hit in
2005 showed that the same killer was responsible for two Highway murders so let's break this down a little bit we
have in Wood County the Frozen nude body of Victoria Collins was found December 20th 1996 found behind the Union 76
truck stop on Route 420 near exit 71 of the Ohio Turnpike in Lake Township the victim Collins was an exotic dancer from
Cleveland who had been out with some friends party she argued with her friends and was let out of a vehicle on
I90 near Cleveland she was last seen on December 16th or the early morning hours
of December 17th 1996 she was reported missing by a friend on the 18th then we have October 23rd 1997
Julia Kul was found strangled and dumped behind a centers truck stop in Lake County
Illinois cotus also contained DNA from an 1992 murder in Mahoning County Ohio which was a match to an unknown
perpetrator in the Collins and the cul case this was Sharon kaderi who was found dead at a truck stop near
Youngstown this victim Sharon she died from blunt force trauma she was found on April 9th 1992 near the edge of the
universal truck mall parking lot in Austin Town Ohio she had been deceased for approximately 20 24 hours and died
as a result of multiple blunt force injuries to the head face and upper chest what codus tells us here Captain
is the same man had killed three women right in 2019 the DNA from the unknown suspect in
the three truck stop murders was also matched to a rape in Madina County a familial DNA search resulted in the name
of a man who was the brother of a man who had been an original suspect in the rape case his name was Samuel leg in
1997 Long Haul trucker Samuel leg had been suspected of raping a 17-year-old female
hitchhiker in the Medina area he gets picked up after giving this teenage girl a ride to Cleveland and he
had drugged her and raped her in the cab of his truck and what happens is the case
somehow against leg falls apart a leg to stand on but they have the DNA on file good so now in 2019 they had a familial
DNA match to Samuel leg showing that he was the prop suspect in multiple unsolved cases so charges are filed and
Ohio investigators tracked Samuel leg down at a group home in Arizona arrested him and took a DNA sample it showed that
Samuel leg was the contributor of the DNA in all four cases right the three murders unsolved murders and that 1997
rape soon more murders would be attributed to him after he confessed well leg is going to be picked up in
February of 2019 and he's going to eventually confess to the crimes and even showing them demonstrating to law
enforcement how he choked and strangled the victims he admits that he picked them up he admits that he choked all
three of them and in 2019 he would have been 51 years old at that time so after he's picked up now we got to bring him
back to Ohio so he can stand trial but first he has to undergo a competency hearing or competency exam he fails this
exam the courts were given a year to rehabilitate him to the point that he could face his charges in court but
again psychiatric evalu ation showed that he was not competent to stand trial right he big diagnosed schizophrenic in
the past and he was not a Wellman based off of these reports in order to institutionalize him they had to show
that he was responsible for these crimes authorities in several jurisdictions filed charges to make sure that he
stayed locked up this brings us to 2020 when a Wood County grand jury did indict
Samuel A on two counts of aggravated murder and single counts of murder rape and kidnapping in connection with the
murder of one of the victims her named Victoria Collins he was also indicted for the murder of Sharon kazery piece of
[ __ ] in Illinois he was charged with two counts of first year murder for the death of 39-year-old Julie conl remember
she was pregnant at the time Samuel EG was also the prime suspect in the 1990 murder of his stepdaughter
which is 14-year-old Angela Hicks I guess he would have been about 21 at the time now Angela Hicks her skeletal body
her skeletal remains were found in a wooded area off of West River Road near Midway Mall in Lorraine County well law
enforcement believes they know who did this but they don't know how to prove it yes that is the case with the Angela
Hicks case but we saw some reports that say that there's DNA evidence linking leg to Angela's murder but her case was
reopened after Samuel leg was arrested and he was interviewed as part of the initial investigation way back in 1990
as well right we do know that Samuel Le was one of the last people to see Angela
Hicks alive prior to her death again back in 1990 they thought they knew who did it they couldn't prove it and then
after this after the death of his stepdaughter Samuel Le became an independent truck driver a position that
he held for nearly a decade Samuel Le had various arrests for failure to pay child support theft trespassing and
receiving stolen property he was divorced from at least four wives that we could find then in 2016 to
2019 he was required to live at a group home for the mentally ill in Chandler Arizona after his mental state deter
deteriorated and he became delusional right he often heard voices that told him to escape and he would climb out
windows ironically tried to Hitch rides with truck drivers at one point he succeeded in getting 100 miles away yeah
Mr leg or Dr No whatever the hell you want to call him he's a real piece of [ __ ] this takes us to News 5 News 5 says
quote Ohio attorney general Dave Yos that's our current attorney general said it is fair to consider leg a former
truck driver a serial killer how many cases leg may be connected to remains unclear it's an open question at the
moment there may be more than three in Ohio yoast said because they had a living witness in the rape case they
decided to use that one as the means to ensure that we're going to lock up this Samuel leg but it wasn't a tradition IAL
trial and he wasn't found technically guilty right Madina County Common Polie judge Joyce kimbler ruled that Samuel
Lake had committed the crime and ordered that he remain in Columbus's Twin Valley
Behavioral Health Care Facility so you're right Captain he's technically not found guilty and it's not a
traditional trial so rather the judge held that there was clear and convincing evidence that Samuel leg was responsible
for the rape this was a sufficient finding justify involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility so Samuel leg
or possibly AKA Dr No is currently housed at Twin Valley Behavioral Health Center in Columbus Ohio which is a
maximum security facility where he has been involuntarily committed he will stay there for at least 10 years years
at which point they will find a way to keep him from the Medina Gazette says ensuing rulings across listed
jurisdictions have spelled an effective lifetime placement in the Columbus mental health facility for Samuel Le
who's been diagnosed with schizophrenia it's also been determined that his mental capacity cannot be restored to
the point of the ability to stand trial so it seems like leg doesn't have a leg to stand on the murders of Marsha
Matthews Shirley Dean Taylor April Barnett an Marie Patterson and many others remain
[Music] unsolved me me me you could be anywhere but you are here with us and we appreciate it we
love you and because we love you we have some recommended reading for you Colonel
that's right Captain this week we are recommending I the creation of a serial killer by the late great Jack olon this
is based on access to interviews Diaries court records and the actual killer himself I the creation of a serial
killer is jesperson's Keith jesperson's chilling story it Chronicles his Evolution from angry child to
Psychopathic murder from Tormentor of animals to torturer of women check out I the creation of a
serial killer you'll find that recommendation and many others on our website true Crim garage.com and like
always don't forget to tell a friend and until next week be good be kind and don't
[Music] litter [Music] is it possible to predict the unpredictable could surgeons use a
patient's own Anatomy to create 3D printed life-size organ models to map out challenges ahead of time making
surgery more precise efficient and less invasive is it possible it already is because every day we're doing what's
never been done learn more at mayoclinic.org Sloss mayoclinic you know where to go

America’s Highway Serial Killers /// Part 2 /// 591

Part 2 of 4

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This week we start off by looking at an unsolved homicide of a young woman from California. Twenty two year old Kristin Alice Schmidt’s body was recovered from a State Park in Oregon. She was killed elsewhere and her body dumped and discovered by campers. As we started to look at Kristin’s still very active case investigation we learned that something larger may be at hand. Something so much larger than any one investigation. Something larger than an Oregon state investigation. America has a problem that was first identified back in the 1980’s. In April of 2009 the F.B.I. announced their Highway Serial Killings Initiative to raise awareness among law enforcement agencies and the general public about this issue and the F.B.I.’s offered assistance in these cases.

Beer of the Week - Tropical Beer Hug from Goose Island Beer Company

Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 bottle caps

Recommended Reading - “ I ” The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Kristen Schmidt's unsolved murder and the FBI's initiative to track serial killer truckers across the U.S.

Key points

The Case of Kristen Schmidt. Exploring the unsolved homicide of Kristen Schmidt and its implications.
Highway Serial Killer Initiative. The FBI's initiative aims to track and solve murders linked to truckers.
John Robert Williams Confession. Long haul trucker John Robert Williams confessed to multiple murders.
The Holiday Blues. This time of year can bring sadness and anxiety, but therapy can help.
Serial Killer Truckers. A task force investigates a potential serial killer targeting sex workers at truck stops.
The Mysterious Dr. No. A truck stop sex worker feared a man known as Dr. No, believed to be a killer.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's good for me, good for you.

Christopher Cross quote about beer.

2:21WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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