Featured Image Credit: Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Topics: News, US News, True crime, Crime
Callum Jones
Topics: News, US News, True crime, Crime
A hitchhiker who managed to escape serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades has recalled her harrowing brush with death, including the one chilling action he made when they were face to face.
Rhoades was a truck driver while conducting his murderous ways, turning his vehicle into a torture chamber and reportedly killing as many as 50 women between 1975 and 1990.
He became known as the ‘Truck Stop Killer’, with his victims often being hitchhikers, sex workers or young women who were alone at truck stops.
Back in the summer of 1985, author Vanessa Veselka had a chilling encounter with the serial killer while she was hitchhiking in the US as a teenager.
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Writing for GQ, the now 56-year-old said she had been at a truck stop riding with another individual when the body of a young teenage hitchhiker was pulled from a truck stop dumpster she was at.
Several days later, Veselka was picked up by Rhoades, as she recalled: "Several days later, though, heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, I got picked up by another trucker who was not fine.
“I don't remember much about him except that he was taller and leaner than most truckers and didn't wear jeans or T-shirts. He wore a cotton button-down with the sleeves rolled neatly up over his biceps and had the cleanest cab I ever saw.”
Before escaping, Veselka recalled how the serial killer conducted one chilling action as he 'stopped responding to my questions'.
"He grew taller in his seat, and his face muscles relaxed into something both arrogant and blank," Veselka explained.
Things took an even darker turn as Rhoades brought up the topic of the deceased girl, before pulling over a few minutes later and whipping out a hunting knife.
Remarkably, Veselka managed to escape from the serial killer despite seemingly being seconds away from death.
"[He] told me to get into the back of the cab. I began talking, saying the same things over and over. I said I knew he didn't want to do it. I said it was his choice. I said he could do it in a few minutes," she explained.
"I said I wouldn't go to the cops if nothing happened to me, but it was his choice—until he looked at me and I went still."
Terrifyingly, Veselka said the killer simply said one word to her: 'Run', as she sprinted for the woods and waited for Rhoades' truck to depart.
In April 1990, Rhoades was detained by police in Arizona and was charged with aggravated assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment.
He would be found guilty of a killing 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and was sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.