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EXCLUSIVE: FBI hunting 500 serial killer truckers loose on America's roads: Their favorite highway for finding victims revealed - and inside their mobile 'rape and torture chambers'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13507513/fbi-serial-killer-truckers-loose-america-roads-favorite-highway.html

At a truck stop in Nashville, Tennessee, long-haul driver Bruce D. Mendenhall was seated in his cab when a homicide detective approached him.

Police were hunting a serial killer. Weeks earlier, the naked body of a 25-year-old woman, Samantha Winters, had been found in a dumpster. Winters was wrapped in plastic and duct tape, then shot in the back of the head with a .22 pistol.

Now another victim, Sara Nicole Hulbert – also 25 – had been found dead. She, too, was shrouded in plastic and shot in the head.

These victims were two of nearly 1,000 women who cops believed had been murdered by long-haul truck drivers. And, finally, they had a break in the hunt.

The detective from Nashville Metro Police Department asked Mendenhall simply: 'Are you the person we've been looking for?' Mendenhall shrugged. 'If you say so,' he replied.

What police found inside the 56-year-old's truck cab defied belief. Investigators called it 'a killing chamber'. The stash of torture implements included 'a rifle, a nightstick, tape, handcuffs, latex gloves, sex toys and a bag of bloody clothing,' according to the police report.

DNA on the clothing matched five murdered or missing women. One was Carma Purpura, a 31-year-old mother of two who was last seen at a truck stop in Indianapolis, Indiana – nearly 300 miles away. Also in the truck were Purpura's mobile phone and her bank card. Blood spatter in the cab suggested Mendenhall had killed her there – yet he refused to say where her body was hidden. Her remains were not found for another four years.

Mendenhall – from Illinois and married with two daughters – was arrested in 2007 and subsequently convicted of the murders of Winters and Hulbert. He has also been charged with the killing of Purpura – and is suspected of murdering at least five more women. Two, including sex-worker Robin Bishop and hitchhiker Belinda Cartwright, were likely run down by his truck.

But these deaths are not isolated, according to former Assistant Director of the FBI Frank Figliuzzi. He has spent years investigating the phenomenon of serial killers who use trucking as a disguise. In a new book – 'Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers' – Figliuzzi lays bare in forensic detail how hundreds of truckers trawl rest stops, motels and roadside restaurants for victims.

They kill and move on, all but untraceable. Most shocking, the FBI's 'Highway Serial Killings Initiative' (HSK) estimates that between 400 and 500 truckers could be implicated in a huge number of murders over the past 35 years.

As many as 850 women have disappeared or been found dead along the main interstate routes. And yet only a handful of killers have been caught. The HSK is led by Catherine DeVane, she specializes in the behavioral analysis of criminals. Her team match crimes to killers. Forensic evidence is crucial.

So too is identifying the 'modus operandi' – an individual killer's hallmark techniques. The hallmark of Robert Ben Rhoades, one of the first 'truck-stop killers' on record, was a sick fetish: He shaved the pubic hair of his victims.