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[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign garage wherever you are whatever you're
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doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that
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likes big trucks and he cannot lie ladies and gentlemen the captain big truck it's good to be seen and good to
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see you thanks for listening thanks for telling my friend [Music] today we are chilling and swilling some
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tropical beer hug from Goose Island this is a double dry hopped double IPA that grabs you like a big bear hug plus I
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love the notes of mango pineapple and Peach and like Christopher Cross said it's good for me good for you four out
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of five bottle caps and here are some folks deserving of a big beer hug themselves first up we have Aaliyah from
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Boston and the big cheers to Matthew in Floyd Virginia next up we have a cheers to John sitting somewhere on top of
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Merritt Island Florida and the big we like Egypt to Melissa in Lincoln Nebraska next up a big cheers to Pamela
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in Danville PA and last but certainly not least we have Olga that's Olga B and Parts Unknown everyone we just mentioned
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they helped us out with this week's beer run by going to our website and helping
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us out with this week's beer fun yeah bwr-u-n beer run thank you so much for supporting the show but if you need more
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True Crime garage for your earballs don't be a finger sniffer go to stitcherpremium.com and sign up or you
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can go to our website True Crime garage.com and click on the off the Record link and kernel Captain Colonel
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finger sniffer that is enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
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talk some true crime [Music] [Music] on True Crime garage yesterday we started off by talking about the still
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unsolved 2003 homicide of 22 year old Kristen Schmidt from California and then the creation of the FBI's Highway serial
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killer initiative is where we left off a lot of what we will be covering in today's show is information collected
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from and found on the FBI's website fbi.gov and we left off by talking about vulnerable victims living high-risk
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Lifestyles getting picked up and later found a great distance away and then discovered to be victim of a homicide
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the FBI website points out these types of cases are very difficult to investigate the U.S Interstate Highway
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System began in 1956 and incorporates 47 000 miles of roadway that's a lot of ground to cover the mobile nature of the
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offenders the unsafe lifestyles of the victims the significant distance in multiple jurisdictions involved and the
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scarcity of witnesses or forensic evidence can make these cases incredibly tough to solve a long-haul trucker can
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pick up a sex worker at a truck stop in Georgia rape and murder her and dump her
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body on the side of the road in Florida later that same day the victim has no connection to the area where she is
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found and there is no forensic evidence to collect because the crime scene is long gone the inside of the truck where
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she was killed if the trucker keeps the deceased victim with him for a day or two he can dump her literally 1 000
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miles or more from any place either of them were last seen as a long-haul trucker he may even be
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familiar with the most remote places to discard his prey ensuring he will never be found and his truck will be just one
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of thousands of anonymous big rigs passing by on interstates all over the country on any given day it will be
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nearly impossible to track further the victims are often transient and sometimes are not missed when they
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vanish because they aren't rooted to any one place many of them are drug addicted
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and are weary of law enforcement often they are disinclined to report violence inflicted on them so the culprits are
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even more difficult to catch while they're also trained to travel large distances the highway serial killer
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initiative website contains a fairly horrifying map of the United States this has red dots on it depicting where each
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of more than 750 murder victims have been found along U.S highways in every state but Hawaii
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the eastern half of the country has the most dots well that makes sense but the area where Kristen Schmidt was taken
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Portland Oregon has its own little cluster of red dots the website says that the FBI list of suspect truckers
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now numbers nearly 450. now this is really interesting quote the analysts also began to develop a detailed
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timeline on many of the suspects the information obtained from company logs gas station receipts and other records
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this would be some of the stuff that we talked about yesterday Captain such as the weigh station records and then we
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also have digital toll records such as easy pass as well will help pinpoint where a suspect was
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when murders were committed Christine Palazzolo elaborated quote it is not unusual for a driver to pass through
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five or even seven states in one day the amount of ground they cover and the lack
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of any connection to where they're passing through makes it difficult to tie the cases back
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to them end quote but of course that's exactly what makes tracking these guys so difficult as pointed out in a USA
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Today article from 2010 stopping crime at the thousands of rest areas truck stops and travel plazas remains
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difficult in part that's because the responsibility for policing rest areas varies from state to state that often
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means no consistent records are kept about the rate of crimes and no single agency takes ownership for fighting it
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but these crimes also are difficult to stop because of the location of the rest areas along major roadways that makes
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getting away easy just jump onto an interstate and speed off well think about your own driving history I mean
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just to drive a state away can be a chore sometimes and and these individuals like she was saying can go
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three four five states away within a day no problem the other issue here is when we're not able to identify
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the victims yeah either they're not easily identifiable or we're just not able to identify them because there are
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several states away when they were picked up alive and well and Kristen Schmidt's case we got lucky that we have
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the eyewitness who sees the big rig but also we get lucky because they find an ID they find identification in her
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backpack in many of these other cases in fact many many of the other victims found along the nation's highways are
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found with no identifying papers or marks whatsoever well let's think about that for a second let's say we weren't
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able to identify Kristen as far as her family knows she's going to go visit her long distance boyfriend in Colorado this
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is she's found in a whole separate State chances are they wouldn't be able to put
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two and two together in that 2010 article from the USA Today where Michael Harrigan the special agent who oversaw
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this task force says that you know part of the problem here too for investigators is that they have at that
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time anyway more than 80 cases in which authorities couldn't identify the remains that are found or recovered only
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body parts in fact he references a Barstow case from 2010 February of 2010 where a woman's severed head was found
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in a backpack a few hundred yards from a truck stop just off of Interstate 15 not
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far from i-40. but police had no idea who she was Barstow Jane Doe remains unidentified to this day the main way in
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which they're helping with this task force is to be able to connect these cases with smaller departments well it's
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kind of the reverse of that they're helping smaller departments local smaller departments and agencies connect
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their case to a case somewhere else in the nation right so somewhere on the national level yeah because what they're
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thinking here if you follow the victimology as well as the modus operandi of this type of killer it would
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be generally believed that a local agency would recover a body find a homicide victim but then they have no
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clues to really even take their investigation any steps forward toward getting it
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solved and once the local agency can conclude that we don't have anything to follow up on here we don't really have
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any investigation because we don't know much about the victim where they're from
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or the crime scene we don't have anything to investigate well let's put this on the highway
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serial killer initiatives website on their database and let's look for similar types of
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crimes you know if you find something that's very specific that matches up with the victim you found well you might
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have a match here and if we can take that a step forward now we're going to go okay well
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who could have been let's say your your victim your crime seems to match up with
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15 other almost identical crimes throughout the United States right that you you locate
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them off of this database well then you're going to go there's only a certain number of people that
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could have been in all 15 of those locations given those dates and times when the bodies were recovered
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and now you have a pool of people a much smaller pool of people it could be 5 6 10 15 people to look at that even had
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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
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connected to a percentage of those crimes basically it's the idea of hoping to lead you to a suspect be the crime
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scene if in fact the victim was killed inside the truck the mobile crime scene so one thing that they can do the local
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law enforcement agencies the smaller agencies not only can they upload their information about their victim and put
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it on this database but also the website allows them to search for different things like for example
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manner of death circumstances whether the victim were sexually assaulted or not other
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specifics about the case yeah it's pretty fascinating we've referenced vicap on this show many times we've also
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mentioned the more local databases that exist like here in Ohio we have the Attorney General's website that lists
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Ohio Cold Case homicides unsolved homicides in the state of Ohio sadly there are many unsolved homicides
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in the state of Ohio that are missing from that database because in all of these situations with these databases it
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is up to the local authorities the local agency to submit the information that they have on their Cold Case or their
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unsolved homicide for whatever reason sometimes the agency just does not pass along that information they do not
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upload their information to these databases and I think that that's uh one it's a
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poopy thing it's a slight on the victims yeah it's I believe a miscarriage of Justice it's
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a goddamn shame well it's something small that they can do that takes very little time and effort and costs very
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little Manpower or dollars to do and look at what happened with the Sam little case
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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
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the time it's not even going to work a high percentage of the time but it does work
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and the thing a question that I'm often asked how do you put up with the captain
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Nick why were the serial killer numbers so much higher in the 60s and 70s and 80s rather than what we see today
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well the short answer is one serial killers are not racking up these types of numbers because of
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Technology this is part of it these monsters are being identified faster because of technology and communication
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much better communication between jurisdictions and all kinds of law enforcement agencies be it on the
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federal level state level county level City level what have you there's better communication today that catches and
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apprehends these guys faster it's not that we have less monsters out there it's just we're getting better from
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technology and communication and catching them faster so you don't have a Ted Bundy that goes out kills 15 or 20
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people instead you have a Ted Bundy that kills one or two women and then he's apprehended and he gets to spend the
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rest of his life in prison so what you're saying is there's still just as many pieces of [ __ ] there's piles and
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piles of [ __ ] but we're catching those people after their first crime or second crime faster we're
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getting we're getting to them faster than they can rack up victims all right calm down Colonel sassy pants well like
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you're saying this is a simple task that they could do and I go back to what you
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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
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to these agencies right who is the designated person that is supposed to upload this information or provide this
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information to these different databases in a lot of cases I'm guessing we don't
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have a chief of police or Sheriff that has delegated that responsibility to one individual or even gone as far to tell
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the lead investigator this is part of your investigation and so I'm I'm reaching out there to all
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the good lead investigators out there and asking them please please submit this information to these
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different databases it could very well help you on your case or think about this could help somebody
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else out one of your fellow women or boys in blue somewhere else in another jurisdiction solve one of their cases at
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the very least it gives the families some form of hope it's a different tool different tactic to use and it's the
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right thing to do for your victim now the highway serial killer initiative isn't just a data point collection
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website the crime Analyst at vicap continually monitor the site for new cases that they think might be the work
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of serial killer Truckers when they get one they reach out to the local agency working the case and connect them with
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others who have similar crimes in their areas then they assist the local agencies with trying to track suspects
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who should be looked at helping them obtain Trucking records and teaching them how to track certain suspects the
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FBI's website states that this initiative was supported by the trucking industry yeah and the thing here it's
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it's the FBI going out of its way as we did in yesterday's episode saying that we're not
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we didn't come up with this idea to just say all truckers are bad people all of them are serial killers no they couldn't
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be further from the truth now whether or not the it's a very very very very small
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percent incredibly small percentage whether or not the highway serial killer initiative is an insult to Truckers
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the program has allegedly helped solve a number of sexual assaults and murders attributed to truckers the website
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claims that the program has resulted in the arrest of 10 male long-haul truckers
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collectively responsible for 30 murders in its first four years of operation and
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it reports that at least 25 long-haul truckers are in prison in the U.S for serial murder but what about the initial
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investigation that kind of kicked this off with uh investigator Terry Turner yeah Terry Turner is the one that kind
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of discovered this series of women series of victims that she believed were connected this ultimately became the
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Genesis of this whole initiative the series of women and murders that she was investigating these were women that
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were dumped along Interstate 40. fast forward to today we know that the these crimes were solved and the killer was
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indeed a trucker John Robert Williams age 28 was arrested along with his girlfriend for the murder of a sex
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worker they kidnapped from a casino in Mississippi Nikki Hill was the victim she was found
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dumped along a rural County Road William's girlfriend was worried that they had been seen leaving the casino
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with the victim so she called police and pretended that they had found the body under interrogation the couple's story
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collapsed and Williams confessed to that murder and many other murders this is from an article from the Toledo Blade
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dated August 11 2007 written by Robin herb it says from a sweltering Mississippi prison earlier this week a
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long-haul trucker admitted that he killed a former Toledo woman and more than 30 others authorities said John
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Robert Williams confirmed what any homicide detective knows all too well truck stop prostitutes are easy to kill
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Captain Clark fine and Lieutenant Roger call of Indiana's Hendricks County Sheriff's Office interviewed Williams
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who is being held in a super max unit of the Parchman Mississippi prison they were investigating the death of Buffy
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Ray Brawley a 27 year old Toledo woman who's partially clothed body was found March 24 2000 4 and a desolate parking
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lot about 10 miles outside of Indianapolis her murder was particularly cruel duct tape was pressed over her face and
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her killer bashed in her head and strangled her why the investigators asked the answer was simple
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she tapped on the cab of a truck Lieutenant call said but the captain added the 31 year old man Williams knew
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details that only the killer might know like when Miss Brawley died he remembered something else without being
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asked Miss brawley's Rose Tattoo with the name ebony over it it is the name of her daughter Williams was a long
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distance hauler who had worked for several companies during the past three years his girlfriend Rachel Cumberland
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rode along with him they were arrested and charged in August of 2004 with the fatal shooting of Nikki Hill
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of Mississippi the couple met her at a casino once the couple were in custody the man Williams he confessed to
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murdering more than a dozen women many of whom were the cases that Terry Turner was investigating and Williams the
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killer he knew details such as whether they were strangled with a ligature or manually whether and how they were
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sexually assaulted and whether that occurred before or after death so these are all things that your killer is going
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to be the only one that knows the answer to these questions or his sidekick that's riding along with him in his big
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rig now he is serving a life sentence plus 20 years in Mississippi for Hills murder Williams though however was as
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free as a bird in roaming the country in his truck when Kristen Schmidt was killed scary enough to think that this
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serial killer is driving around looking for another victim and basically his mobile killing
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machine but he's not the only one they suspect over hundreds of these monsters out
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00:24:34
cheers mates tall cans in the air not only do the gas prices scare people but now
00:24:40
we have to be afraid of all the trucks well before we get into some of the serial killers in the this episode and
00:24:50
the coming episodes I wanted to show who fit this modus operandi who fit into these serial killer truckers and review
00:25:02
some of the ones that were apprehended both before and after the creation of this
00:25:08
Highway serial killer initiative but before we get into the serial killers let's talk a little bit about how the
00:25:14
FBI was well slow yeah on the uptake on this one so this is not really an idea that even
00:25:23
though we we went through the Genesis of it and how this all started and came about through the good work from Terry
00:25:29
Turner and other colleagues of hers but this was always something that had been suspected or at least much further back
00:25:38
than the creation of this initiative and I remember a case that was on Unsolved Mysteries when I was a kid that talked
00:25:48
about these types of patterns and talked about this type of serial killer the highway serial killer initiative started
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up in the mid-2000s right but the Pittsburgh Press started reporting on the murder of truck stop sex workers
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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
00:26:12
Unsolved Mysteries here Captain was an Ohio journalist also covered the pattern in 1991. this is Pulitzer Prize winner
00:26:21
Michael Barons who was doing a story for our local paper The Columbus Dispatch doing a story on serial killers for The
00:26:30
Columbus Dispatch when he's putting together his story he noticed a pattern of murdered sex workers using news
00:26:37
stories and police reports Barons found similarities in the slayings of multiple
00:26:41
women from 1985 to 1990. most were strangled or asphyxiated and suffered blunt for trauma to the face and most of
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their bodies were dumped along an interstate this is directly from the dispatch article dated March 10 1991. a
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serial killer may be trolling Ohio interstates and truck stops claiming at least nine female victims who are linked
00:27:06
in both life and death A dispatch investigation has revealed most of the victims are known or suspected
00:27:13
prostitutes part of a flourishing sex for sale industry centered on truck stops and linked by freeways in citizens
00:27:21
banned radios since 1985 bodies have been found scattered across four states six have
00:27:28
been discovered in Ohio the other three were found near interstates in Illinois Pennsylvania and New York three of the
00:27:35
Ohio victims worked from the Union 76 Truck Stop in Austintown Ohio police records show the truck stop east of
00:27:44
Akron and west of Youngstown is the state's largest eight victims were missing clothing mostly undergarments
00:27:52
and shoes FBI experts say serial killers often keep victims Trophies the victims were
00:27:58
all beaten strangled or suffocated all were killed someplace other than where they were found no weapons have been
00:28:05
found no Ohio law enforcement agency has comprehensively tracked the unsolved homicides FBI agent John Dunn a
00:28:14
spokesman for the Cleveland office said the bureau informally reviewed five of the slangs but is unaware of any
00:28:21
forensic evidence linking them but more Ohio investigators are now saying some of the slangs appear to be connected all
00:28:29
agree the Killer is most likely a truck driver who is believed to have used the names of Dr No Stargazer and dragon
00:28:38
while luring women to his cab using a Citizen band radio truckers often use fake names called
00:28:46
handles when talking on CBS well Colonel if I've said it once I say it a thousand
00:28:52
times never trust a man with a fake name but never ever trust a man named Dragon serial killer expert John
00:29:01
Douglas of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit says for the article that serial killers often Escape early detection
00:29:08
when crisscrossing jurisdictions Douglas and other experts say a lack of communication between police agencies is
00:29:16
one of a serial Killer's greatest advantages and Barons discovered that this use of a CB radio for communication
00:29:23
between sex worker and trucker was not exactly a secret one of the victims went by the CB handle tongue teaser as
00:29:33
described in his article the sex workers used the CB radio to put their availability out there using a cute or
00:29:40
alluring handle a sex worker looking for a John would get on the radio and give her handle and a known catchphrase that
00:29:49
she had developed and the trucker would answer back and say yeah this is the blue Peterbilt and Row three come meet
00:29:56
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
00:30:05
potential customer at least two of the Dead women in Ohio from this article were seen getting into a black Peterbilt
00:30:13
tractor trailer after the dispatch ran the story about all of the victims in Ohio and the three nearby States all
00:30:22
whom seem to be linked the Ohio attorney general and the sheriff's associate Nation formed a task force to figure
00:30:28
this out they determined that the counties were not communicating about the murders and so had not put the
00:30:36
pieces together that they could be dealing with a trucker serial killer pretty crazy when you think about it by
00:30:42
March 15 1991 the dispatch ran an article that reported quote detectives from New York to Tennessee who are
00:30:50
investigating the possible serial killings of 10 women plan to gather within two weeks in Ohio the meeting
00:30:57
will be the first for a task force in Ohio that includes more than a dozen law enforcement agencies looking into the
00:31:03
slangs from 1985 to 1990 yeah law enforcement officials first began speculating that a serial killer was
00:31:11
loose on the interstates in 1987. the task force also undertook to print and distribute 4 000 posters bearing images
00:31:21
of five of the victims who have been identified and drawings of three who where Jane does
00:31:28
they handed them out and posted the Flyers at 130 truck stops in Ohio and 1350 and nine other states as well as at
00:31:40
147 rest stops along highways in Ohio the flyer advertised a ten thousand dollar reward for information about the
00:31:48
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
00:31:55
Barons who was writing that article for The Columbus Dispatch and you know what we'll give give a little bragging rights
00:32:02
here to say that looks like our state was ahead of the curve here right we were on to this thing maybe a little
00:32:09
faster than the rest of the country and it seems like Pittsburgh as well so America
00:32:15
yeah you're welcome that's right but we have the numbers in there really point out how difficult these cases will be to
00:32:24
investigate when they talk about Distributing these posters that they created with images of five of the
00:32:32
victims who were identified and then we also have three I unidentified Jane does
00:32:37
that were on these posters as well they're handing them out to 130 truck stops just in Ohio Alone 1 350 truck
00:32:47
stops in nine other states and that doesn't even include the 147 rest stops along highways in Ohio so this is a a
00:32:55
big undertaking yeah a massive project to undertake but the reality is that means that there are so many victims
00:33:05
that don't have Justice and some of them aren't even identified it's pretty scary world that we are
00:33:12
operating in that it is another way of looking at it here Captain is that there's some pretty scary people
00:33:18
operating in the world that we are living in now I don't want to jump around here A whole lot because there's
00:33:26
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
00:33:34
this General location and start by finishing our story that we said started here with the newspaper of The Columbus
00:33:42
Dispatch so we jump now to another publication and this quote is taken from an article in CDL life which is a
00:33:50
trucking industry newsletter and the quote says news that a serial killer was attacking women and truck stops in Ohio
00:33:58
was first reported in the early 90s that again The Columbus Dispatch article that
00:34:04
we've been referencing the Pittsburgh Press actually first covered the murders in 1987 like we said
00:34:11
it's April 5th 1987 article entitled killings of truck stop hookers baffle police reports on a slew of murders that
00:34:21
seem to form a pattern the article talks about the realities facing truck stop sex workers with call signs like bad
00:34:31
girl Twilight champagne butterfly and sex machine over the CB they flirt with the truckers
00:34:39
on the prowl at truck stops like the one near Youngstown Ohio probably easy for these truck drivers to figure
00:34:47
out which places have surveillance and and they have so much ground to cover and such big stops that if they just go
00:34:55
a little bit further out it's like wait just beat me down a little further down the way so we're not around any of the
00:35:01
cameras and when we're talking about the 80s and early 90s I'm guessing that a lot of these truck stops have less
00:35:09
surveillance if any compared to what we have now right the other thing too is so
00:35:15
many of these workers are using assume names they're using aliases they're not so easily identified
00:35:22
these would be the would-be potential victims for such monsters that I don't know that they have to worry especially
00:35:29
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
00:35:39
don't know that many of the other truckers are paying a whole lot of attention to this and so that's where
00:35:46
everything gets very difficult to investigate these crimes yeah it'd probably be easier to find a needle in a
00:35:52
haystack back to that CDL life newsletter it goes on to say that similarities in cases of murdered women
00:36:00
led many to believe it could be the work of one person it became apparent that one man was soliciting sex workers over
00:36:08
the CB channels and the sex workers were turning up all over Ohio dead but then it wasn't just Ohio this particular
00:36:16
trucker was believed to have been responsible for a string of murders women that were killed and dumped near
00:36:24
roadways in Ohio Illinois New York and Pennsylvania at least nine women and then 10.
00:36:32
in total were found in Ohio between 1981 and 2004. and then three more in other states
00:36:39
Jesus most of them were missing underwear and shoes several of the victims were associated
00:36:45
with the largest truck stop in Ohio the Union 76 truck stop that we mentioned in
00:36:51
Austintown but who was this guy no one knew his name the still living sex workers in the area
00:36:59
did not like dealing with him they were afraid of him and generally refused to get into his rig so they came up with
00:37:08
this term they termed him Dr No as some kind of code name like Dr no don't go with that man right let's take a look at
00:37:17
some possible victims of this doctor now one of the earliest was a woman that was
00:37:23
found in April of 1981 in Miami County Ohio founded a ditch on Greenlee Road near State Route 55. approximately five
00:37:33
miles west of I-75 this victim was known only as Buckskin girl she was finally identified via forensic genealogy in
00:37:42
2018 as as Marcia King the next three victims Marcia Matthews who was found by a State Trooper in June of 1985 on I-70
00:37:53
north of Mansfield with her head smash cashed in she was this is crazy she was still
00:38:00
alive when found but died two days later in the hospital it's awful Shirley Dean Taylor was found
00:38:08
July 1986 strangled and beaten at a rest stop on I-71 near the I-76 interchange and
00:38:18
April Barnett who in December of 1986 was strangled and dumped over a guard rail on the
00:38:25
southbound Lanes of I-71 this is west of Akron three miles north of U.S Route 30.
00:38:31
they were all near or were last seen at this Union 76 Truck Stop the next victim
00:38:39
Ann Marie Patterson was discovered to have made an appointment at an Austintown truck stop via CB radio with
00:38:46
a client she did not like called Dr no her pimp overheard the CB exchange as quoted
00:38:56
on Mysterious Universe as no thank you I know this is what the pimp overheard her
00:39:04
saying to the trucker that evening he was calling but they wouldn't go to his truck for some reason
00:39:11
the pimp later said they said he was trouble so they're being told that this guy's trouble but in fact Anne-Marie had
00:39:19
been arrested for solicitation earlier that day had told an officer she had some sketchy information about who may
00:39:27
have been responsible for killing three other known prostitutes who frequented truck stops in the Youngstown area
00:39:34
but Anne-Marie was scared and didn't tell them any helpful details the next day after the CB exchange overheard by
00:39:42
her pimp Anne-Marie went back to work went back to work at the Venango County truck stop and never met up with her
00:39:51
pimp as planned she was then found in March of 1987. but she's found 250 miles away wrapped
00:40:00
up in a sleeping bag this in a ditch next to the I-70 north of Cincinnati they're Travelers having
00:40:07
been in a refrigerator for a month she was found five months pregnant this is awful after hearing all this I'm
00:40:15
gonna have to up my prescription of vodka but at least in this case we have an eyewitness yeah we have the pimp who
00:40:25
ends up telling police that when she spoke with this doctor no and then gets into a truck
00:40:31
she's never seen alive again he's able to tell police that the doctor know that she responded to drove a
00:40:39
long-nosed dark colored Peterbilt truck and drove for North American Van Lines so now we got a really good lead here in
00:40:50
one of these cases yeah what a bad handle doctor no my handle would be Dr Feel Good two weeks later the Pittsburgh
00:40:57
Press came out with the article titled mysterious doctor knows sought an Ohio truck stop prostitute murder probe
00:41:06
the article reported that Anne-Marie Patterson one of our victims have been afraid of this air quotes Dr No and
00:41:15
there were other truck stop sex workers that were afraid of him as well Dr No was wanted for questioning and some
00:41:22
believed he might be a serial killer a serial killer or the serial killer that they're looking for yeah in relation to
00:41:31
these cases that we're talking about what's interesting here Captain is at least two of the four victims were last
00:41:38
seen entering a dark blue or black Peterbilt truck right that fits the description we were given by the witness
00:41:46
to one of the last victims and it may have been a refrigerated trailer remember Anne-Marie Patterson's body had
00:41:55
been refrigerated before being dumped the man called Dr No was sought to have possibly used the CB radio handles
00:42:05
Stargazer and dragon as a result of the murders a multi-county task force was established to investigate the crimes
00:42:13
and figure out whether they were dealing with one killer or several authorities from four different counties in Ohio
00:42:20
where bodies were found disagreed as to whether they had a serial killer trucker
00:42:25
on their hands or not although there were no Witnesses weapons or ammos linking the crimes some were convinced
00:42:34
there was a serial killer humming along the Ohio highways killing and dumping women all along the interstates so the
00:42:43
problem with these cases for a group of investigators is just sit down and quickly review them and compare notes
00:42:50
and say yeah I think we got one guy killing all these women it got a little dicey because there were
00:42:57
not there were similarities with some of the cases but there were also great differences as well right some of them
00:43:04
were killed in different manners some of them were found obviously they're found
00:43:07
in different locations one thing connecting them was their air quotes occupation and the idea that they were
00:43:15
working these truck stops and some of them that one major truck stop there in Ohio
00:43:21
was easy to see why somebody would think they're connected and why others would disagree the other problem with this
00:43:29
type of killer is truck drivers don't always own their vehicles so they could be getting a new vehicle or driving a
00:43:38
different style of vehicle every few weeks well and we talk about these four victims but while we have this task
00:43:45
force looking at this doctor no and how many murders he may or may not be connected to that number will eventually
00:43:52
grow to 10 victims in Ohio and three in other states so we quickly go from well he may be responsible for one to four
00:44:03
murders to well he may be responsible for 1 to 13 murders let's think about this for a second this task force is
00:44:12
saying there's probably about 400 of these types of serial killers okay 400 so we got 50 states that's eighth per
00:44:21
state roughly probably more in some states less than other states but if the average Trucking serial killer has three
00:44:28
victims well that's 1200 victims if they have 10 that's 4 000 victims that's insane well and watch The Killing season
00:44:37
you know we had Joshua ziemann on here feels like forever ago to talk about The Killing season on a we've been doing
00:44:45
this a long time very long we had him on 1951 it was the summertime I remember it
00:44:51
like it was yesterday um we had him on to discuss the Long Island serial killer case and that's
00:44:58
because his series The Killing season does speak about the Long Island serial killer case on a couple of those
00:45:05
episodes one thing that they explored during that series was these long-haul trucker killers and there was some
00:45:15
thought that there could be a trucker involved in the list case as well so what everybody's going to want to know
00:45:22
right Captain was this doctor no ever caught well a 2019 arrest put behind bars the
00:45:31
man that is widely believed to be Dr no yeah doctor yes first a CODIS hit in 2005
00:45:41
showed that the same killer was responsible for two Highway murders so let's break this down a little bit we
00:45:48
have in Wood County the Frozen nude body of Victoria Collins was found December 20th 1996 found
00:45:57
behind the Union 76 truck stop on Route 420 near exit 71 of the Ohio Turnpike in
00:46:05
Lake Township the victim Collins was an exotic dancer from Cleveland who had been out with some friends partying she
00:46:13
argued with her friends and was let out of a vehicle on I-90 near Cleveland she was last seen on December 16th or the
00:46:21
early morning hours of December 17 1996 she was reported missing by a friend on the 18th
00:46:29
then we have October 23 1997. Julia concool was found strangled and dumped behind a center's truck stop in Lake
00:46:40
County Illinois CODIS also contained DNA from a 1992 murder in Mahoning County Ohio which was
00:46:48
a match to an unknown perpetrator in the Collins and the cocool case this was Sharon kudzerski who was found dead at a
00:46:57
truck stop near Youngstown this victim Sharon she died from blunt force trauma she was found on April 9 1992 near the
00:47:07
edge of the universal truck mall parking lot in Austintown Ohio she had been deceased for approximately 24 hours and
00:47:16
died as a result of multiple blunt force injuries to the head face and upper chest what CODIS tells us here Captain
00:47:24
is the same man had killed three women right in 2019 the DNA from the unknown suspect in the three truck stop murders
00:47:35
was also matched to a rape in Medina County a familial DNA search resulted in the name of a man who was the brother of
00:47:45
a man who had been an original suspect in the rape case his name was Samuel Legg in 1997 long-haul trucker Samuel
00:47:55
Legg had been suspected of raping a 17 year old female hitchhiker in the Medina area
00:48:02
he gets picked up after giving this teenage girl a ride to Cleveland and he had drugged her and raped her in the cab
00:48:10
of his truck and what happens is the case somehow against leg falls apart I like to stand
00:48:19
on but they have the DNA on file good so now in 2019 they had a familial DNA match to Samuel Legg showing that he was
00:48:30
the probable suspect in multiple unsolved cases so charges are filed and Ohio investigators tracked Samuel Legg down
00:48:38
at a group home in Arizona arrested him and took a DNA sample it showed that Samuel Legg was the contributor of the
00:48:47
DNA in all four cases right the three murders unsolved murders and that 1997 rape
00:48:55
soon more murders would be attributed to him after he confessed the leg is going
00:49:01
to be picked up in February of 2019 and he's going to eventually confess to the crimes and
00:49:08
even showing them demonstrating to law enforcement how he choked and strangled the victims he admits that he picked
00:49:14
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
00:49:24
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
00:49:31
hearing or competency exam he fails this exam the courts were given a year to rehabilitate him to the point
00:49:40
that he could face his charges in court but again psychiatric evaluation showed that he was not competent to stand trial
00:49:47
right a big diagnosed schizophrenic in the past and he was not a well Man based off of these reports in order to
00:49:56
institutionalize him they had to show that he was responsible for these crimes authorities in several jurisdictions
00:50:04
filed charges to make sure that he stayed locked up this brings us to 2020 when a Wood County grand jury did indict
00:50:13
Samuel Legg on two counts of aggravated murder and single counts of murder rape and kidnapping in connection with the
00:50:22
murder of one of the victims her name Victoria Collins he was also indicted for the murder of Sharon kozersky piece
00:50:29
of [ __ ] in Illinois he was charged with two counts a first degree murder for the
00:50:33
death of 39 nine-year-old Julie conkle remember she was pregnant at the time Samuel Legg was also the prime suspect
00:50:41
in the 1990 murder of his stepdaughter which is 14 year old Angela Hicks I guess he would have been about 21 at the
00:50:51
time now Angela Hicks her skeletal body her skeletal remains were found in a wooded area off of West River Road near
00:50:59
Midway Mall in Lorraine County well law enforcement believes they know who did this but they don't know how to prove it
00:51:06
yes that is the case with the Angela Hicks case but we saw some reports that say that
00:51:14
there's DNA evidence linking leg to Angela's murder but her case was reopened after Samuel Legg was arrested
00:51:23
and he was interviewed as part of the initial investigation way back in 1990 as well right we do know that Samuel
00:51:32
Legg was one of the last people to see Angela Hicks alive prior to her death again back in 1990 they thought they
00:51:40
knew who did it they couldn't prove it and then after this after the death of his stepdaughter Samuel Lake became an
00:51:47
independent truck driver a position that he held for nearly a decade Samuel Legg
00:51:54
had various arrests for failure to pay child support theft trespassing and receiving stolen property he was
00:52:01
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
00:52:10
the mentally ill and Chandler Arizona after his mental state deteriorated and he became delusional right he often
00:52:18
heard voices that told him to escape and he would climb out windows ironically try to Hitch rides with truck drivers at
00:52:27
one point he succeeded in getting 100 miles away yeah Mr leg or doctor no whatever the hell you want to call him
00:52:35
he's a real piece of [ __ ] this takes us to News 5. News 5 says quote Ohio attorney general Dave Yost
00:52:43
that's our current attorney general said it is fair to consider leg a former truck driver a serial killer how many
00:52:51
cases a leg may be connected to remains unclear it's an open question at the moment there may be more than three in
00:52:59
Ohio Yost said because they had a living witness in the rape case they decided to use that one
00:53:08
as the means to ensure that we're going to lock up this Samuel leg but it wasn't
00:53:13
a traditional trial and he wasn't found technically guilty right Medina County Common Pleas judge Joyce krembler ruled
00:53:24
that Samuel Lake had committed the crime and ordered that he remain in Columbus's Twin Valley
00:53:31
Behavioral Health Care Facility so you're right Captain he's technically not found guilty and it's not a
00:53:38
traditional trial so rather the judge held it there was clear and convincing evidence
00:53:45
that Samuel Legg was responsible for the rape this was a sufficient finding justify and voluntary commitment to a
00:53:54
psychiatric facility so Samuel Legg or possibly AKA doctor no is currently housed at Twin Valley
00:54:03
Behavioral Health Center in Columbus Ohio which is a maximum security facility where he has been involuntarily
00:54:10
committed he will stay there for at least 10 years at which point they will find a way to keep him
00:54:17
from the Medina Gazette says ensuing rulings across listed jurisdictions have spelled an effective lifetime placement
00:54:25
in the Columbus mental health facility for Samuel Legg who's been diagnosed with schizophrenia it's also been
00:54:32
determined that his mental capacity cannot be restored to the point of the ability to stand trial so it seems like
00:54:40
leg doesn't have a leg to stand on the murders of Marsha Matthews Shirley Dean Taylor April Barnett Anne-Marie
00:54:48
Patterson and many others remain unsolved foreign [Music] you could be anywhere but you are here
00:55:11
with us and we appreciate it we love you and because we love you we have some recommended reading for you Colonel
00:55:18
that's right Captain this week we are recommending I the creation of a serial killer by the late great Jack Olson this
00:55:26
is based on access to interviews Diaries court records and the actual killer himself I the creation of a serial
00:55:35
killer is jesperson's Keith jesperson's chilling story it Chronicles his Evolution from angry child to
00:55:42
Psychopathic murderer from Tormentor of animals to torture of women check out I the creation of a serial killer you'll
00:55:52
find that recommendation and many others on our website truecrimegarage.com and like always
00:55:58
don't forget to tell a friend and until next week be good be kind and don't live
00:56:05
[Music] foreign [Music]