Featured Image Credit: EUGENE GARCIA/Getty
Topics: Crime, Police, True crime, US News
Liv Bridge
There's one job that hundreds of serial killers could be doing to fly under the radar, according to recent data.
True crime TV shows might have given us a rough idea of the red flags to look out for in a possible serial killer - like someone who shows no empathy could be a bit of a giveaway that they're a straight up psychopath.
Problem is, it's not always that easy to spot, and psychotic mass murders have different 'motivations' for murder and can turn on the charm to mask their psychopathic tendencies.
Still, cops consider the typical profile of a serial killer is most likely a white male, between the age of 25 to 34, 'charismatic, charming, intelligent and mobile', according to a Federal Probation study.
Advert
Now, a new best-selling book has unearthed some invaluable data on the matter, finding serial killers in one particular job could be going undetected.
Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director who led some disturbing investigations over the two decades he worked as an agent, published his well-researched novel Long Haul last year with some alarming insight into a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American highways.
His research, based on FBI data, reveals there could be hundreds of homicidal killers that have evaded capture - because they work as long-haul truck drivers.
The data, which compiles several cold cases across the US' roads, reveals that although the percentage of truckers who become killers is small, many of the states' notorious murderers have roamed across Nevada, reports 8NewsNow.
Possible victims include Patrick Carnes, 86, of Reno, who vanished after driving in tandem with a long-haul truck along 'The Big Lonely' Interstate 80 in 2011, while Judith Casida, 62, had disappeared from the area five years earlier. Both their vehicles were found in the same field.
Detectives have not ruled out the possibility that homicidal truck drivers were picking off their victims along the I-80.
According to data fro the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative and Figliuzzi's research, young women, either sex workers or hitchhikers, are considered the typical target of serial killer truckers, of which there could be 450 killers yet to be caught for their crimes.
“I’ve seen some gruesome things in 25 years as an FBI agent,” Figliuzzi said. “Really gory crime scenes.”
As part of his research, he spoke to vulnerable women who populate truck stops who had survived such attacks.
He found many of the women have drug addictions or move around a lot, so their family are less likely to report them missing in such an event.
Describing the different types of serial killers, he explained further: "One indeed likes to control the outcome and loves the power and will prolong [the] torture, rape, and other horrors. The other kind of serial killer simply wants to kill. He enjoys [the] power of life and death, and he kills quickly.”
One such grim example is Robert Ben Rhodes who went so far as to build a torture chamber in his truck where he murdered two hitchhiking couples, in Utah and Texas, and has been suspected to be behind dozens of other cases.
“Rhodes… picked up a 14-year-old girl hitchhiking [and] hooked her up to fish hooks inside his torture chamber in his rig,” Figliuzzi added. “Over the course of several weeks across many states, he raped and tortured her, leaving her for dead in an abandoned farmhouse.”
In the UK, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, was a lorry driver who targeted prostitutes between 1975 and 1980.
The author now hopes his novel will prove an educational tool, adding: "If I have one message to any law enforcement officer listening, it’s [to] get your unsolved cases, especially involving roadside killings, into the FBI database."