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podcast [Music] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:02:11
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that loves the smell of diesel fuel in the morning
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ladies and gentlemen the captain what can I say I have expensive taste it's good to be seing good to see you thanks
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for listening thanks for telling a friend [Music] this week we are featuring tropical beer
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helps the show immensely and cronal that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair
00:03:47
grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] [Music] crime [Music] [Music] tell [Applause]
00:04:36
me tell me that you miss [Music] me tell [Music] me [Music] me [Music] the date June 26th
00:05:10
2003 the setting it's summertime at a state park designated campsites are full of
00:05:19
campers enjoying some outdoor RNR the lush green scenery is matched by the peace and Tranquility of the
00:05:28
environment for campers escaping their busy lives it is quiet and relaxing but then at the break of dawn
00:05:40
the peace and Tranquility of the campground is shattered the body of a woman lies at
00:05:46
the bottom of a rocky Ravine some kind of monster tossed her there like trash her corpse rolling and rolling
00:05:57
down the steep grade and till it comes to a stop for all to see this was no accidental death not an
00:06:07
overdose not a hit and run no this woman was the victim of a brutal homicide but how did she get there where
00:06:16
she was found one minute her killer was pushing her down the slope the next he was gone in the night the only clue to
00:06:26
his identity the big rig pulling away on the interstate above and as its lights disappeared into
00:06:34
the night so did any clues as to who killed this young [Music] woman this is the unsolved homicide case
00:06:44
of Kristen Alice Schmidt and the trucker murders warning there's a killer on the road and
00:06:53
this is true crime [Music] garage [Music] newspapers from L Grand Oregon blared that a body was found by a camper at
00:07:19
hillgard Junction State Park this was on June 26 2003 the location this park is right next to Interstate 84 where it
00:07:30
intersects with Highway 244 near the grand Rond River the area is about 250 Mi east of Portland a major city and
00:07:43
just 8 miles west of a small town called L Grand which has a population today of
00:07:48
about 12,500 people this is in Union County in the eastern part of the state the
00:07:55
campground features 18 campsites restrooms and and river access the female body was lying at the bottom of a
00:08:03
Shale slope near the campground's common area she had frizzy red hair and was clothed in a brown wool sweater and
00:08:12
black jeans the young woman was identified because found near the body was an olive colored backpack which
00:08:20
contained an ID bearing her name the backpack was thrown down the embankment as well just like her body the victim's
00:08:29
name was Kristen Alice Smidt she was just 22 years old an autopsy revealed that she had been strangled Union County
00:08:38
district attorney Martin Brin bomb said that they were able to determine this because of the subcutaneous bleeding in
00:08:45
her eyelids and cheeks bin bomb would only say that other parts of her body also bore scrapes scratches and bruising
00:08:55
he would not initially comment if Kristen had been sexually assaulted but by Late July police acknowledged that
00:09:04
she had been years later OS detective Greg Rutherford told the LA Grand Observer she had been sexually assaulted
00:09:14
and brutally beaten he also described her body as partially clothed now we know she was found in jeans and a
00:09:21
sweater but what aren't the police saying what items of clothing were missing that led investigators to
00:09:28
describe her as part partially clothed we asked the OSP the Oregon State police and they declined to answer because of
00:09:35
course Kristen's case is still considered an open and very active investigation district attorney Brin
00:09:42
bomb said that it appeared that Christen was strangled elsewhere and dumped where
00:09:48
she was eventually found Brin bomb told the East Oregonian it does appear that the body
00:09:55
was just dumped at hillguard and that she wasn't killed there so who was this young woman and how did
00:10:02
she end up at the bottom of a ravine off of an interstate in a place that many might call nowheresville Oregon Kristen
00:10:10
Alice Schmidt was born in St Louis Obispo in 1980 so this is her hometown which would be about 190 Mi Northwest of
00:10:21
LA and located on Highway 101 on the California coast its population is about 44,000
00:10:29
we really know next to nothing about Kristen she had been a student at SLO community school during the 1998 99
00:10:39
Academic Year then she began taking classes at another College in the fall of 1998 and and last attended during the
00:10:47
Spring of 2002 during that semester it's unclear what she did in 2002 and three but she had applied to take classes
00:10:56
again at the community college in the fall of 20 2003 Kristen was reportedly a good student now the LR Observer
00:11:04
newspaper had no luck connecting with her family and I could not find any interviews with them but that
00:11:12
publication reports that her mom and grandma both lived in San Louis Obispo and Kristen had been staying at her
00:11:20
mom's place before she left town on a trip to visit her longdistance boyfriend of course her mom was heartbroken at the
00:11:29
news of her daughter's death let's get into the investigation and try to put together some kind of timeline here for
00:11:37
our victim the Oregon State Police took control of this investigation lead investigator Pat Montgomery headed up a
00:11:45
team of nine investigators this from the OSP the lran police and the Union County
00:11:52
Sheriff's Office all working in unison together on this investigation Montgomery was quoted in the local news
00:11:59
is saying the investigation would be a long and slow process they were really going to need to try to figure out a key
00:12:07
part of Kristen's timeline that would require investigators to reconstruct Kristen's movements and figure out how
00:12:14
she went from St Louis Obispo to a rocky Ravine in Central Oregon well this case
00:12:21
is very difficult because we don't know much about her and then this boyfriend that she was seeing this longdistance
00:12:28
boyfriend which would be a lot harder to have a long-distance relationship back then because you'd be riding to them and
00:12:36
and longdistance calls cost a lot of money back then depending on how far away they were and so we don't even know
00:12:45
where this individual was located at yeah again it just goes back to stating that we don't know much about Kristen's
00:12:51
personal life other than her stating to family that she was leaving to visit a long-distance boyfriend friend so the
00:13:01
police and the investigators from the state police as well as the Sheriff's Office what they discovered they they
00:13:08
discovered and were able to put together that on June 16th 2003 Kristen left home telling friends
00:13:16
and family she was going to Colorado to visit her boyfriend we don't know whether she was traveling alone but it
00:13:23
seems that she was it's also not clear what her exact travel plans were or if she was just going to kind of make them
00:13:31
up as she went along hoping to find herself in Colorado but police discovered she had boarded an Amtrak
00:13:38
train in St Louis oiso and arrived in Portland Oregon on the same day this is about a 13-hour drive so it's a fairly
00:13:48
long trip Kristen reportedly stayed with a friend in Portland for a few days now
00:13:54
who this person is or was has never been released a week after Kristen's body was found
00:14:02
investigators said that it was still unknown whether she was traveling alone they were working on establishing a
00:14:09
timeline of Kristen's movements and when they did it would tell them quite a bit
00:14:14
well they're going to get some information from some of the Campers at this park yeah so where her body is
00:14:21
found these campers they tell investigators that they were awakened sometime around 3:00 a.m. by noises that
00:14:28
sounded like someone emptying garbage now it's not clear whether this was like metal trash can sounds or or Oscar the
00:14:35
Grouch talking something being dumped or dumpsters being dumped kind of sounds they don't really go into any real
00:14:43
description other than couple of campers say it sounded like someone was emptying
00:14:48
garbage somewhere but that's an interesting and hopeful lead in their investigation now later we end up
00:14:58
learning that Joan Don that's her real name was sleeping at the campground with her husband Charles she says that she
00:15:06
had to get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom this would be about
00:15:10
3:00 a.m. and she says that she left their trailer around this time and in the dim light she says that she saw a
00:15:18
big rig a semi pulled over on the side of the highway up above and something that
00:15:25
looked like a large bag being thrown out of the truck and down into the Ravine she said that she yelled in this
00:15:34
direction but the truck drove off immediately Joan could not see much in the darkness and she assumed that
00:15:40
someone was dumping garbage down the 50-ft embankment now just to be perfectly clear here Captain some of these
00:15:48
articles say that this would have been about 3:15 a.m. Janes says that she then went back to her campsite and tossed and
00:15:56
turned and had trouble going back back to sleep well the sun comes up and now she's saying around 6:00 a.m. her
00:16:03
Curiosity has gotten the best of her she wants to go out and see what caused that
00:16:09
noise waking her up in the middle of the night be careful for what you wish for she walked in the direction of the noise
00:16:16
and found the woman's body so she's the first person to discover Kristen's body she ran back to her campsite and her
00:16:24
husband called the police Joan would later describe the body she found as a young woman in her 20s who had clearly
00:16:32
been terribly beaten well think about the horror when she finds Kristen's body because they heard these noises at night
00:16:39
if they would have went and investigated more they could have been face to face with the killer or killer there was a
00:16:46
little question based on Jan's account that the driver of the 18-wheeler had been the person who dumped Kristen down
00:16:55
the embankment from the interstate highway so if Joan hadn't witnessed this dumping the nature of Kristen's killer
00:17:04
would be entirely theoretical right we would may have never come up with this possible lead but now investigators knew
00:17:13
that they should be looking for a trucker and looking for a truck we've said this several times on this show
00:17:20
vehicles are easier to find than people in most cases so I would start by looking for that truck the Ravine where
00:17:28
Chris was dumped was between the campground and the dayuse area it's unknown whether the trucker even knew
00:17:36
that there was a campground down there in the dark it may have just looked like a wooded area with no houses or people
00:17:43
around and could have seemed like the perfect place to anonymously dump a corpse and then get the hell out of
00:17:50
Dodge yeah initially investigators were cryptic when speaking with the public saying that they were looking looking
00:17:58
for a killer within a particular occupation that's the words they use particular occupation they clearly
00:18:07
didn't want to show their hand in case the trucker was local or in case someone were to come forward and have that
00:18:15
profession but unfortunately the pool of truckers using the nation's interstates
00:18:20
on any given day numbers in the hundreds of thousands and investigators learned that any number of truckers could have
00:18:29
had access to Kristen it becomes very difficult where you don't know where Kristen was heading to what was her
00:18:36
destination between point A B and C there's so many possibilities of where maybe she would have been abducted we do
00:18:45
learn a little bit more here though Captain so when Kristen left her friends in Portland she tells them that she was
00:18:52
heading to Troutdale to look for a ride what's what's Troutdale OR what's in trout Dale this is part of the Portland
00:19:00
Oregon metro area so it's about 15 miles outside of the city as I understand it the interesting thing here as it
00:19:08
pertains to our case and our lead that we're currently working on is there is a huge truck stop in Troutdale that has
00:19:17
parking for 2518 wheelers this is a location where people can get food there's a barber
00:19:25
shop a game room a pet area and so on so it's massive that's what she said initial reports said Kristen was last
00:19:33
seen hitchhiking in Troutdale on the evening of the 25th Union County DA burn bomb confirmed that the OSP they're
00:19:44
looking for a suspect among truckers as they believed Kristen was picked up by a
00:19:49
trucker in Troutdale years later it was confirmed by law enforcement that Kristen was
00:19:56
actually at the truck stop stop in Troutdale so beforehand we are told that she was seen hitchhiking in the
00:20:04
Troutdale area and then later as they released more information to the public we learned that it it was in fact at
00:20:11
that very large truck stop I love those super truck stops they were always my favorite to stop when I was touring
00:20:19
around playing with bands the confirmation we end up with your captain is that Kristen was actually at the
00:20:25
truck stop in Troutdale trying to hitchhike a ride or looking for a ride out of there this
00:20:33
would be on the night of June 25th so she had been seen there and heard and we'll get into that here in a
00:20:41
minute this is the day before her body was found remember she was found on June 26th this is June 25th well and she
00:20:49
wouldn't just be looking for a ride from a truck driver they also have you know gas pumps and stuff for regular Vehicles
00:20:57
this is from investigator Greg Rutherford he says quote she was there trying to pick up a ride as a hitchhiker
00:21:04
she wanted to go to Colorado to see her boyfriend it turned out that Kristen was
00:21:09
known to hitchhike and did not appear to consider the risk that could be involved
00:21:15
it's not a situation I would want to put myself in well and OSP pointed out saying that H hitchhiking is not only
00:21:23
dangerous but it's particularly dangerous when it involves truckers their words don't come at me uh truckers
00:21:30
investigators told this to the newspaper saying that she was definitely a victim
00:21:36
of her lifestyle saying if you are jumping in with truckers all the time it will eventually catch up with you
00:21:42
especially if you are a young single girl and detective Randy Crutcher who also worked the case for OSP said she
00:21:52
was the kind of person who wasn't afraid of hitchhiking that is what she did but
00:21:57
Christen wasn't just on the road or on the side of the road at the truck stop sticking her thumb out unfortunately she
00:22:04
did something even more dangerous she was sticking her toe out she put it out there to the whole Trucking community
00:22:10
that she was trying to get to Colorado and was looking for a free ride so she's heard By Truckers on a CB radio that day
00:22:20
asking for a ride from Troutdale to Colorado so it wasn't just bad luck for her that a bad guy came along and
00:22:29
grabbed the opportunity to give her a ride secretly intending to assault her she made a public request over the CB
00:22:38
which vastly expanded the pool of truckers learning about a young woman traveling alone willing to get into a
00:22:45
truck for a ride so ultimately she broadcast her vulnerability to a wide audience and anyone with nefarious
00:22:53
intentions who heard it and who was within a few hours drive could have zoomed over to Troutdale picked her up
00:23:01
she didn't just fall into his lap unfortunately in this case our victim jumped into
00:23:07
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[Music] 2023 all right we are back cheers everybody cheers to you Captain Kristen's exact
00:25:38
time of death has never been publicly revealed but here in the garage we like to figure these things out for ourselves
00:25:45
so we can extrapolate that it was sometime between the sighting of her hitchhiking at the truck stop and then
00:25:53
3:00 a.m. on the 26th so we're not dealing with a large large window of time here remember we have Joan Don who
00:26:03
is committed to the statement of it was roughly 3:00 a.m. maybe 3:15 a.m. when I
00:26:11
hear the noise and I see something being dumped down into the Ravine from this semi- truck but as far as the
00:26:19
Super Convenience Store truck stop right mhm we don't have well we believe she got here at 9 in the morning morning and
00:26:28
she left by noon those are fictitious times right right yeah we don't have an exact time of when she was cited and I
00:26:38
believe that police will have a pretty firm butto idea of what time that would have been because she would have been
00:26:46
seen by multiple people and as we said heard by dozens over the CB radio well and probably there would be some
00:26:54
surveillance there as well but the difficulty like you said you're putting yourself at
00:27:01
extreme risk of danger because you're broadcasting to CB radios hey I'm at this truck stop so even if it's way out
00:27:11
of somebody else's way way out of a trucker's way they hear all this young 22y old needs a
00:27:20
ride I don't even have to be going to Colorado if I'm thinking nefarious thoughts or to Portland or anything if
00:27:29
you can hear that invitation and you're a bad guy you're somebody that is into this sort of thing you can make your way
00:27:38
to Troutdale and pick her up especially all you really got to be concerned with is can I get there faster than the other
00:27:45
bad guy now again I want to before we go too deep into this because we're going to get really deep into these different
00:27:53
truckers and serial killers with inside that profession one be clear up front here we're not saying that truckers in
00:28:01
general are bad in fact we have a lot of truckers that listen to the show and we're very happy and proud of that now
00:28:08
but just with any profession there are a small percentage of the people that are
00:28:12
bad within side of that profession most truckers are great awesome nice wonderful people but it's it just goes
00:28:22
to show that it's really no different here Captain if she announces over CB radio for a ride or for a trucker to
00:28:31
come pick her up you announce over that CB radio anybody that has a CB that can hear that would be a potential suspect
00:28:40
that could have come and picked her up and if we lived in a world where everybody had CBS in their cars then
00:28:45
think of the hundreds and hundreds of people that may have heard her invitation for hey I'm seeking a ride
00:28:52
I'm alone I need to make it out to Colorado I'm not trying to evct them blame here I'm just pointing out the
00:28:59
vulnerability that one may put themselves into and possibly suggest that spend a few bucks and get a bus
00:29:05
ticket to where it is that you may need to go for a lot of these killers one of the hardest parts is to actually abduct
00:29:12
the person to get them into your vehicle so you can take them somewhere else Kristen's willing to do so so how will
00:29:20
investigators go about finding truckers who were on the road in this region where Kristen was picked up from and
00:29:28
found the SLO Tribune put out an article on September 9th 2003 that stated quote
00:29:36
to determine who was on the road when the murder occurred the investigator said they have been conducting
00:29:42
interviews in checking way stations and truckers travel logs they concentrated on way stations along I
00:29:52
84 but we have to say often when we drive by those way stations they are closed detective Crutcher also said that
00:30:02
admittedly some truckers run past A Way Station skipping it so the truck would not be on record but he said that those
00:30:10
truckers are usually caught it's not clear whether there are cameras recording the stations that would show
00:30:18
if a truck blew P without stopping or what in 2003 who knows the likelihood or the probability of that situation if
00:30:28
he's saying that they are usually caught then there must be some way of checking
00:30:35
on this situation yeah the OSP reportedly looked into over 1,000 truckers in the Kristen Schmidt case
00:30:45
these were rigs that had traveled the stretch of i84 near where Kristen was believed to have been picked up anytime
00:30:53
on both June 25th and 26th 20 3 think about that 1,000 truckers and I know that that's a a roundabout number but
00:31:02
they're saying over 1,000 truckers that is an almost incomprehensible amount of work if any of them were determined to
00:31:11
be potential Persons of Interest for whatever reason the investigators would have to track them down and speak with
00:31:20
them directly which would be very difficult to do because they're not confined to one area exactly now
00:31:26
Detective crer told the Observer that Kristen's case was the most extensive case he had ever worked on at that time
00:31:34
for the OSP in terms of Manpower he felt demoralized that the case was not solved he says quote it is
00:31:43
frustrating when you put that much effort into it you expect it to pay off but the investigators acknowledged that
00:31:52
they were up against a brick wall interestingly enough though Captain remember the early statements from
00:31:58
investigators that said that they believe that this would be a long a lengthy yeah investigation into figuring
00:32:05
out who killed her I'm guessing that based off of the sighting of the big rig from our person down below that they're
00:32:14
going well this very likely could be a stranger on Stranger crime and we know that those those are the most difficult
00:32:22
to investigate with all these eyewitnesses at the truck stop nobody sees Kristen get into a vehicle she's
00:32:30
seen hitching a ride I think that we might have a solved case if we saw her getting into an actual truck on that day
00:32:39
really when you think about it though the sighting of that big rig is huge for a number of reasons because if you have
00:32:49
a stranger on Stranger homicide we know how difficult those are to investigate how difficult it is to connect killer to
00:32:57
victim or victim to killer right but seeing that truck now eliminates a lot of people for you in your investigation
00:33:07
it really brings the number down the sheer number of people that you're going to have to look into at the initial
00:33:14
stages of your investigation yeah this is very difficult for law enforcement as you pointed out Captain it would be
00:33:21
incredibly wonderful for our investigation if somebody came forward that said they saw her getting into a
00:33:28
vehicle or knew more about the vehicle that she got into and from what we've seen and again OSP is not super willing
00:33:38
to discuss a lot of the details of her case because it is not just open but I'm happy to report I can I believe by their
00:33:47
statements that this is a very active investigation they may even be closing in on the individual responsible So
00:33:56
based off of what we know it doesn't seem like any of those things happened unless it did and we're just not being
00:34:02
told so and like you said her family is devastated by the loss of their loved one but they haven't really come out and
00:34:10
did a lot of interviews but maybe they just feel like that wouldn't help much of the situation I don't know that they
00:34:18
have a lot of information to provide right because everybody seems to agree investigators her family the newspapers
00:34:25
and so on that she had the road and was out of state when she was picked up by her killer the interesting thing to me
00:34:33
though is what I would really like to know from investigators and again they don't need to tell us anything but I
00:34:40
would like to know has any trucker come forward to say I was the one that allowed her to use my CB because she's
00:34:47
not walking up to that Troutdale truck stop with her own CB in hand and making these announcements out to other
00:34:54
truckers that's a excellent point Point according to the LR observer in October of 2003 news stations in St Louis Obispo
00:35:04
reported that Oregon State Police may be tracing a trucker's possible connection
00:35:11
to the death now if we're going to kind of parse out words here and try to figure out what this sentence means
00:35:18
because it's a little vague my question was does this mean that they were on to one specific trucker or using the word
00:35:26
truck ERS in generic terms we just don't know when you have a case like this where you're
00:35:33
basically in the dark right as far as investigation goes you can only do so much with the the little information you
00:35:41
have you want to start looking at other cases that are similar to Kristen's case
00:35:46
and there is another case which a body was found in Oregon that mirrored Kristen's case eerily this is Leah
00:35:54
Elizabeth schuber age 22 she's last seen at the gear Jammer truck stop in Idaho on June 9th
00:36:04
1987 she had been driving through the area when she had car trouble later her nude body was found on June 13th when
00:36:12
two motorists stopped to take a pee in the woods on the side of Interstate 84 this is just 12 miles east of lran so
00:36:23
we're in the same general area here the victim that they found she lay at the bottom of an embankment right off of
00:36:32
the highway she too had been strangled this from the lawyers update. co.in which states quote the Oregon
00:36:43
State Police learned that Leah had left Twin Falls for Boise on June 9th 1987 to
00:36:51
pick up her fiance from the airport where he was arriving after flying in from San Diego go but on her way to
00:36:59
Boise her car broke down so she calls a friend from the gear Jammer truck stop near Mountain Home Idaho along
00:37:07
Interstate 84 then she disappears so nobody hears from her again and she was reported missing that same evening there
00:37:18
is a suspect however in this case this is from a an article from September of 1987 it says quote the search for one of
00:37:28
the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives ended when authorities discovered the accused
00:37:33
killer was already in jail where he was serving time under an alias 4 months after his arrest for car theft his real
00:37:42
identity was finally discovered when his fingerprints were run against the National Database this suspect is Darren
00:37:50
O'Neal back then he was 27 he's a native of Albuquerque New Mexico facing a murder charge in the torture slaying of
00:37:59
a Washington woman and was wanted for questioning in five other killings in the Pacific Northwest this according to
00:38:08
FBI spokesman Cliff Anderson Well Neil was charged with first-degree murder in the 1987 case of Robin Smith he was also
00:38:18
wanted for questioning in The Disappearance of a 29-year-old woman from watcom County Washington whose body
00:38:26
has never been found this according to the FBI he also is charged with car theft in The Disappearance of Wendy
00:38:33
agahi 29 in Washington she was the last seen April 25th 1987 leaving Bellingham Washington this was a
00:38:43
restaurant where she spotted leaving with O'Neal Who reportedly was using the Alias of Mike Johnson back then that's
00:38:52
why they're not able to connect the dots right away he's on their 10 most wanted
00:38:57
list yet they find him already in jail four months later O'Neal also is sought for questioning in the strangulation
00:39:05
death of Leah subbert 22 of Twin Falls Idaho who we just discussed earlier there were some eyewitnesses who
00:39:13
reported to have seen a man fitting O'Neal's description near where Leah's car broke
00:39:20
down and then he popped up in Spokan Washington but he has never been charged with Leah's murder he remains in prison
00:39:30
for his other crimes and could not have been the trucker who killed Kristen in 2003 since he was in prison at the time
00:39:40
so let me just see if I'm picking up what you're putting down this guy is a real piece of [ __ ] yeah we're not really
00:39:49
certain how many murders he is responsible for but eily similar to Kristen case and one worth looking at so
00:39:59
since he was in prison we at the time of Kristen's murder we know that he didn't
00:40:05
he's not responsible for that but what we're saying is that there's individuals out there like this and they're not just
00:40:11
committing one crime they're committing multiple murders this truck driving serial killer you know it's not just a
00:40:19
theory that that law enforcement has these are actual individuals that's exactly right captain and we referenced
00:40:27
Leah's case saying it was eerily similar but even though he suspected the man that we just mentioned O'Neal is
00:40:35
suspected in that case Leah's case is unsolved eerily similar to Kristen's it stands to reason that possibly the
00:40:44
killers of one of those women are or one in or both of those women are one and the same I hope everybody out there
00:40:50
listening is familiar with the FBI's vicap program because we talked about it extensively in our recent coverage of
00:41:00
the Sam little murders and we've talked about it throughout the history of this show because it comes up so
00:41:07
often but a little refresher here or if you've not listened to the Sam little episodes the vicap program run by the
00:41:14
FBI this is where state and local law enforcement agencies upload specific information about certain kinds of cases
00:41:23
in their jurisdiction to the federal database viia cap is a federal database these are typically homicides sexual
00:41:31
assaults missing persons cases and John and Jane Doe cases the database allows for searching and comparison of cases
00:41:41
this facilitates the finding of similar crimes both to help solve serial crimes committed by the same killer and to
00:41:48
pinpoint serial offenders based on their patterns and Mos the FBI's vicap website
00:41:55
contains a a page that says quote if there is such a thing as an ideal profession for a serial killer it may
00:42:04
well be as a long hul truck driver they go on to say the pattern the website says is unmistakable it attracted notice
00:42:14
when in 2004 a senior crime analyst from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation named Terry
00:42:22
Turner detected a crime pattern the bodies of murdered women were being dumped along the interstate 40 Corridor
00:42:30
in Oklahoma Texas Arkansas and Mississippi Turner was investigating seven cases in which truck stop sex
00:42:40
workers had been bound raped killed and dumped along I40 I know all these crimes
00:42:46
are taking place out west but when you look at the Long Island serial killer case people have had theories that the
00:42:56
killer could have been a truck driver that's exactly right now this is from a newspaper called the Oklahoman and it
00:43:03
says quote in a way the FBI's National Highway serial killings initiative originated with an Oklahoma man who
00:43:11
needed to take a restroom break they go on to say on September 18th 2003 a Tulsa
00:43:17
area pharmaceutical salesman was driving east on Interstate 40 when his bladder began to get the best of him realizing
00:43:26
couldn't make it to the next rest stop he exited at rural Tiger Mountain Road near Henrietta at the end of the ramp
00:43:34
dirt roads LED off in three directions the area was isolated and undeveloped High Grass Rose around out of ditches
00:43:44
and something smelled terrible at first the salesman didn't recognize the object
00:43:50
that he spotted in the ditch which was about 10 ft away later we're told quote she was buck naked and face down he said
00:43:59
he says your mind tells you it's a deer it's a goat it's anything but a human being my mind would not even allow me to
00:44:06
entertain that as reality until as I looked at her Limbs and followed her arm out to one of her hands I saw a ring on
00:44:17
her finger at that moment in that second it was undeniable and in my mind finally
00:44:24
I accepted that this was a human the salesman whose story was confirmed by law enforcement and who asked that his
00:44:32
name not be published well he found the body of 43-year-old Sandra beard she was
00:44:39
a truck stop sex worker with ties to Oklahoma City our investigator Terry Turner a crime analyst with the Oklahoma
00:44:50
State Bureau of Investigation sent out a teletype to other agencies looking for for similar types of crimes within 3
00:44:58
days this is when she learned of two women who died similar deaths mhm beard was the third sex worker to die in a
00:45:08
space of just three months so because of the time and the and the distance it's very possible it's committed by the same
00:45:19
person yes that's exactly right and the thing too it's not just you know time and distance but also the way that the
00:45:26
victims are found the similarities between the way that they suffered their their violent deaths this is really
00:45:35
truly the Genesis of the FBI's Highway serial killings initiative which is all focused on the occupation of Long Haul
00:45:47
truck drivers and serial killers working within that profession now back to the cases we were
00:45:55
talking about those sex worker cases from truck stops all in that 3-month time span mhm well by January 31st of
00:46:05
2004 four more women were killed so a task force was formed to investigate the deaths and information about each case
00:46:15
was then sent to the FBI's violent criminal apprehension program or vicap as we've been calling it well we have to
00:46:23
recognize Terry Turner for putting this all together hard work and diligence pieced this together
00:46:31
and I'll read a little something from the uh about the Oklahoma cases this is from a
00:46:38
2022 magazine expose that says when Turner began her investigation in 2003 the murders were seen as one-offs for
00:46:47
instance there was Vanilla a 47-year-old sex worker known for her honeyed voice from her advertisements that went out
00:46:57
over the CB radio she was born Margaret Holmes Garder she was a West Memphis local in July 2003 a USPS letter carrier
00:47:08
happened upon vanilla's body in shererville Arkansas left under an interstate freeway onramp she was discovered 15
00:47:17
miles from the West Memphis Flying Jay a month later the body of 24-year-old sex
00:47:25
worker Jennifer for Haymon of Oklahoma City turned up in the tahachi river just past Oxford Mississippi not long after
00:47:35
that another woman with ties to Oklahoma City was found dead the remains of 43-year-old sandre beard also a sex
00:47:42
worker who frequented truck stops was uncovered alongside I40 on the Eastern end of Oklahoma each of the women's
00:47:51
bodies showed evidence that their limbs had been bound before they were killed killed part of the pattern spotted by
00:47:58
Terry Turner over the next four months four more women Vicky Anderson sandre Richardson pany Leonard and Casey Joe
00:48:09
Pipestem were found dead from all the evidence Terry Turner reasoned that the suspect must be a l Haul truck driver
00:48:18
she believed he also wasn't the only truck driving serial killer operating on America's interstate highways and
00:48:25
they're picking victims that a lot of times their family members don't know their whereabouts so it's hard to report
00:48:33
them missing or to figure out who they're connected to or where they came from yeah and being dumped so
00:48:40
far away from where they're being picked up and something else that's key to this
00:48:43
modus operandi of this type of killer something you had suggested and hit on earlier these are victims that are
00:48:51
willing to get into the vehicle with the wouldbe killer they don't have to go too
00:48:56
far to look for them or to grab them off of the side of the road so going back to
00:49:01
Kristen's case though we we believe that she was badly beaten she was bound so it's a very good chance
00:49:11
that her her killer took her somewhere almost to torture her and then and then dump her out in this in the woods
00:49:21
possibly what I think happened here Captain is a situation where the CRI scene we're looking for is this guy's
00:49:28
truck right I think whatever happened to her and again we don't have a great description I I can't say 100% that she
00:49:35
was tied up or bound all I can say is that she was found partially clothed she was beaten she was strangled and she was
00:49:44
dumped what he likely thought was out in the middle of nowhere but it roll unfortunately the the corpse one she or
00:49:53
fortunately I guess if you want to look at it from glass half full perspective is fortunately this caused enough noise
00:50:00
and her body rolled far enough down this Ravine to be discovered a short time later which then leads us to this
00:50:08
breadcrumb trail of well maybe Kristen's killer is a truck driver and we can start there by looking at truck drivers
00:50:18
in the area the whole thing though is really interesting to me because she's found in 200 three it's really in 2004
00:50:28
when this whole longdistance truck driver serial killer initiative gets put together so relatively quickly here and
00:50:38
now we have what's going to start to be detectives FBI and people coming together and putting together what will
00:50:47
be a list and a map of potential victims that fall within this category that we believe the likely perpetrator to be a
00:50:57
long haul trucker in a weird way it's very much similar to what was happening in the Sam little investigation where
00:51:07
somebody spotted a pattern decided that it must be a part of a much bigger picture now we need to reach out to
00:51:15
everybody out there cast a wide net and we need to start to be able to see some of those other pieces of that
00:51:24
puzzle some other pieces of that bigger picture I mean it's crazy to think that there's roughly what 4 million active
00:51:34
drivers out there active truck drivers and that they think that there could be 300 of them plus that are active serial
00:51:44
killers well it's for all those reasons that I just stated there Captain and the
00:51:48
good work of Terry Turner along with a colleague from Texas that notified vicap and viap analysts took a look at all of
00:51:58
these similar cases on a national level and they realized that there were hundreds of these types of cases for
00:52:07
that reason it was in 2004 that the FBI launched the highway serial killer initiative a separate database separate
00:52:16
from vicap to document hundreds of bodies found and sexual assaults occurring on the sides of roadways near
00:52:24
truck stops and in or near motels along major Trucking routes all across the country
00:52:32
and to attempt to track the movements of possible suspects the FBI notes that the
00:52:39
majority of the victims were women living high-risk Lifestyles such as drug addicted transients sex workers all who
00:52:47
frequented truck stops or gas stations along major highways the suspects were naturally
00:52:55
truckers because of where the victims are being picked up Christine palalo an FBI crime analyst who worked on the
00:53:03
highway serial killer initiative also was instrumental in identifying Samuel little and his victims is quoted on the
00:53:12
website as saying quote we had an inordinate number of victims and offenders from this rather specific
00:53:20
population pool obviously referring to sex workers and Truckers resp effectively Michael harrian who
00:53:28
originally oversaw the highway seral killings initiative said in 2009 that the victims were generally drawn from a
00:53:35
vulnerable population saying quote we don't want to scare the public and make it seem like every time you stop for gas
00:53:43
you should be looking over your shoulder many of these victims made poor choices
00:53:48
but that doesn't mean that they deserve to die end [Music] quote [Music] so much more to get to and we'll get to
00:54:04
that tomorrow same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind and don't
00:54:11
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