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World's Most Evil Killers S04E03
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CreativityTranscript
00:06On the 1st of April 1990, Arizona State Trooper Michael Miller pulled to the side of Interstate
00:1410 in Casa Grande to inspect a parked truck. When he peered through the windows of the
00:21cab, he couldn't believe what he saw. The face of a petrified woman chained up like
00:28an animal. He immediately handcuffed the truck driver and put him into his patrol car.
00:35I think he was probably thinking, how am I going to get out of this one? What do I do
00:40now?
00:52Michael didn't know it yet, but he'd apprehended a cold-blooded serial killer.
00:58Robert Ben Rhodes.
01:00He is without doubt one of the most dangerous men ever to have stalked the American highway.
01:08For over a decade, Rhodes had been raping, torturing and killing vulnerable women across
01:15the country. But he'd remained completely undetected.
01:20I think that Robert Ben Rhodes is probably the most evil person I've ever met in my life.
01:24And I've met a lot of evil people.
01:27The police were only just discovering the gruesome crimes of Robert Ben Rhodes, one of the world's
01:34most evil killers.
01:55When 66-year-old Robert Ben Rhodes pleaded guilty to the murders of Douglas Siskowski and Patricia
02:04Walsh in March 2012, it took his official tally of victims to three. But investigators suspect
02:12he's killed dozens more. It's believed that the long-distance truck driver was active from the
02:19mid-1970s, preying upon vulnerable hitchhikers and sex workers across America.
02:26Rhodes' victims were people who would readily get into his truck. He wouldn't have to coerce
02:32them to do so. He's looking out for people who are vulnerable. He's looking out for people
02:37who need help from truck drivers and motorists. So, these are individuals where he already has
02:43the access and he already has the opportunity.
02:47It was a routine check of his parked trailer by an Arizona state trooper in April 1990 that led to
02:56Rhodes' dark secrets being revealed. The truck driver's horrific crimes may have been discovered
03:02accidentally, but it would take the ingenuity of three detectives across two states to help bring
03:09the serial killer to justice. Detective Michael Sheely first heard the name Robert Ben Rhodes
03:17while investigating a murder in Illinois.
03:21He had been a truck driver for a long time and gave him a great deal of opportunity to find
03:27victims
03:27at local truck stops along the interstate, hitchhikers, which we know were victims. So, he had a great deal
03:33of opportunity for such a predator as he was. And that's exactly the words that he is. He was a
03:39predator. FBI Special Agent Bob Lee worked with Michael to find out more about Rhodes.
03:46He not only kidnapped women, but he kept them and tortured them for as much as two or three weeks
03:54at a time. And that made him a special kind of evil as I saw him. A decade after Rhodes
04:05had been
04:05imprisoned for murder in Illinois, Texas Ranger Brooks Long uncovered two more victims of Rhodes.
04:14I would say that he had the ability to be Mr. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was able to
04:21coerce people to
04:22trust him and gain confidence in his good old boy laid back attitude. But once he had their trust and
04:29their guard was down, then you saw the real Robert Ben Rhodes come into play.
04:35The story of this transient killer begins in November 1945. Robert Rhodes was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
04:45He was mostly raised by his mother as his military father, Ben, spent a lot of time overseas.
04:53So there are periods of time when Rhodes' father is away from the family home. And I think there's a
05:00sense in which he perhaps misses him. There's a sense in which that the family feels incomplete and
05:06there's a longing for an attachment to his father. But when his father returns, he's quite brutal.
05:12He's quite violent towards him. So I think he did feel this conflict about his relationship with his
05:17father all the time. It was a relationship that soured further when Rhodes was a teenager.
05:25When Rhodes was 16, his father was convicted for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. So his father was
05:33essentially an abuser. And this behaviour was a reflection of a misogynistic value system that he had.
05:42That women and girls were there to be used and abused. That they served a function for them.
05:47And I think that was something that would have cemented itself in Rhodes' mind.
05:53Ben was an army veteran and a firefighter. He could hardly be a more upright member of the community.
05:59So imagine the shame that would have fallen upon him for his arrest for sexually lascivious behaviour.
06:07I think another important thing when we look at his father's conviction is his father's response to it.
06:13So he takes his own life shortly after he's convicted of this crime. And in this case,
06:19suicide is the ultimate act of control. It's the ultimate way of saying,
06:23I'm not going to take responsibility for my own actions. I'm going to decide to opt out of this whole
06:28thing altogether.
06:31Was it that that made the change to Rhodes' character?
06:37Was it that that flicked the switch?
06:41Rhodes was a college dropout who'd also failed in becoming a police officer.
06:46He went through numerous jobs and two failed marriages, never seeming to settle.
06:52By the late 1970s, though, he'd found a job that would define his murderous career.
07:00Eventually, Rhodes finds a job that suits him down to the ground.
07:03And that's the job of a long haul truck driver.
07:06So here, he has long periods of time when he's unsupervised, he's off the grid, he doesn't have to answer
07:14to anybody.
07:15And here, he gets the chance to spend long periods of time on his own, ruminating, fantasizing.
07:21And I think this is a very dangerous period in his life.
07:26At the age of 41, Rhodes married his third wife, Deborah.
07:31But his sexual perversions would eventually lead to their separation.
07:38Their relationship, she was disillusioned when the marriage went on because Rhodes wanted to go to a swinger club here
07:46in Houston.
07:47That was something that she didn't want to do, but he kept pushing the envelope and pushing the envelope.
07:54Rather than just accepting that and saying, OK, that's fine, he pointed to her and said,
07:59Well, clearly, there's a problem with you. You need to loosen up.
08:03So this is showing me that his relationships, if you'd call them that, with women,
08:08they weren't based on mutuality or respect or love or affection.
08:12They were simply a way of him getting what he wanted.
08:16Deborah admitted subsequently how badly she'd been abused by Rhodes.
08:22The man who thought nothing of handcuffing her to the bed or raping her so badly that she feared for
08:29her life.
08:29But it's undoubtedly true that that form of sexual abuse was the signature that was to develop throughout Rhodes' crimes.
08:46Rhodes had an uncontrollable sexual appetite.
08:50Working as a long-distance truck driver presented him with the perfect opportunity to act out his aggressive sexual perversions
08:59on strangers he would meet along the road, with or without their consent.
09:06I think it's important to emphasize here the term consent, because there are people who will consensually engage in this
09:13kind of behavior.
09:14But when it came to Rhodes, he didn't care whether people consented to it or not.
09:19He wanted to do this and whether or not people were happy with that was just completely disregarded.
09:25In February 1990, a distressed young woman flagged down passing motorists.
09:31She claimed she'd been abducted by a truck driver and kept hostage for two weeks.
09:37She was subject to torture, sexual assault and rape, and she actually had a leash around her neck when she
09:45was found by passing motorists.
09:47So this was a victim of Rhodes.
09:51This was somebody who had luckily managed to escape with her life.
09:56The police drove the young woman across Houston looking for Rhodes' truck.
10:04And they immediately started searching for it.
10:07And they found it, but when they brought Rhodes out to the car for her to look at him,
10:13she just looked down, would not identify him, said, that's not him.
10:20It was an opportunity to stop Rhodes that sadly wasn't taken.
10:26Later that day after they let him go, she told them that that was him, but she was too afraid
10:33to identify him,
10:35even though there were two police officers by her side.
10:38She had been completely terrorized and traumatized during the two-week ordeal.
10:44Rhodes is such a terrifying man that he puts literally the fear of God into this young woman.
10:50Now that must have even further confirmed Rhodes' absolute sense of invulnerability.
10:59It must have even further inflated his already overinflated ego.
11:06A chance to put Rhodes safely behind bars had been missed.
11:10For now he remained free to stalk the highways.
11:14By the spring of 1990, the 44-year-old had been living as a sexual predator and a murderer for
11:21over a decade,
11:22but nobody had any idea.
11:25His veneer of lies was about to come crashing down.
11:29On the 1st of April 1990, a state trooper named Michael Miller
11:34spied a truck on Interstate 10 in Casa Grande, Arizona.
11:39I observed a truck parked on the side of the road with his emergency lights on, but he had no
11:47triangles out.
11:48So I went up alongside of the truck, pulled behind the truck, had my lights activated,
11:55to go up and check on the driver of the truck and see what his situation was.
12:00Armed with a flashlight, Michael took a look through the windows of the truck.
12:06I saw some lights in the back in the sleeper berth and appeared in the window of the driver's side
12:13of the truck.
12:14And when I showed my flashlight in, I heard a woman started screaming.
12:20And what I saw was a woman that looked like she had a horse spit in her mouth.
12:26Shocked to see a woman with a metal restraint strapped to her mouth,
12:30Michael was even more surprised when a man appeared out of the darkness of the cab.
12:36The driver came sliding out of the sleeper berth and then came on down to the pavement
12:42and put his hands up against the side of the truck.
12:45And he said, that's okay, officer, everything's fine.
12:49We are consenting to adults.
12:51And I still heard screaming coming from inside the truck.
12:56And he said, I've got a gun in my rear pocket.
13:00And I patted him down, felt it, took it out, put it in my pocket.
13:04And then handcuffed him, took him back to my patrol car.
13:08I think he was probably thinking, how am I going to get out of this one?
13:11What do I do now?
13:13With the man seemingly restrained, Michael headed back to the truck.
13:18And when I got back up there and looked inside, I saw a completely naked female.
13:24And I took a blanket that was there and covered her up.
13:28Told her that she was okay, that the police were taking care of it
13:32and that the driver would not bother her anymore.
13:36But had Michael waited a minute more, the man in his car, Robert Ben Rhodes,
13:42would have been free.
13:44I went back to my patrol car and Mr. Rhodes had gotten his handcuffs in front of him.
13:50And he was in the process of trying to get a key in his pocket to get his handcuffs off.
13:56If he'd have done that, he'd have been gone.
13:58He'd have fled the scene.
14:00Robert Ben Rhodes was arrested and taken to Casa Grande Police Department.
14:08He went back to the bed and brought me back.
14:13I think that's about as far as I really know.
14:17Detectives wanted to know more about the man whose home address was over a thousand miles away
14:22in Houston, Texas, under the jurisdiction of FBI agent Bob Lee.
14:28He'd been arrested the night before and they asked me to get some background information on Rhodes
14:35since he lived in Houston at the time.
14:38The young girl had been through a traumatic ordeal at the hands of Rhodes.
14:43When the victim was interviewed by the detective, she tells him that Rhodes agreed to give her a ride.
14:54She said that she fell asleep and when she woke up, he had her chained in the sleeper compartment
15:01and was starting to take her clothes off.
15:04He had his truck modified.
15:06He had put some anchors on both sides of the sleeper where he could put handcuffs attached to a chain
15:13on her feet
15:15and the same thing with her hands.
15:17But she also said that, you know, I was going to see the president.
15:21It makes you wonder what her grip on reality is.
15:27And then you take that back to the allegations she's made.
15:32And is that a credible statement?
15:39The mental state of the distressed woman meant there was a chance that Rhodes could walk free.
15:46I think Rhodes believed he was going to get away with this
15:49because he very deliberately chose victims who were vulnerable.
15:53This particular victim had some mental health issues.
15:56She experienced delusions.
15:58But the police were very good at their jobs here.
16:00And they observed that this woman's story never changed.
16:03It was consistent.
16:04And that was what mattered.
16:06Some of the things that helped corroborate her statement,
16:09she said that when Rhodes approached her, she was fighting, trying to get away from him.
16:16And said, I bit him on his shoulder.
16:19Hey, can you remove your shirt?
16:22Do I have it?
16:23I prefer not.
16:25And he had a bite mark on his shoulder.
16:27The case didn't go to trial.
16:29Rhodes agreed to enter a guilty plea on a plea bargain
16:34and got a reduced sentence on it.
16:37In December 1990, Rhodes was sentenced to six years
16:42for the kidnap and sexual assault of the young woman.
16:45While Rhodes was in custody, Bob had begun to unearth the past of the 45-year-old truck driver.
16:53Well, the first thing I did was check our national database for his criminal history.
16:59And I found he was a suspect in a previous kidnapping.
17:05I called the Houston police department and spoke to a detective in the sex crimes unit and obtained his report.
17:14The report told the story of the woman who was raped and kidnapped but refused to identify Rhodes in February
17:221990.
17:23Bob was now aware of two cases where women had slipped through the grasp of Robert Ben Rhodes.
17:29But he was certain that searching the trucker's apartment would uncover any darker secrets.
17:37I talked to the apartment manager.
17:41After she saw in the paper that he had been arrested,
17:46she went up to his apartment to take a look and told me that she saw women's garments all over
17:54the apartment.
17:56He also had chains and handcuffs.
18:00And there was a white towel that had a lot of blood on it.
18:04There were some racks where he could chain somebody to.
18:10The apartment bore all the hallmarks of a sexual predator.
18:15I found a stack of photographs.
18:18I think they were in his dresser drawer.
18:21And it showed a young girl who was in various stages of dress.
18:27He had a lot of nude pictures of her.
18:30He had pictures of her chained up.
18:32And I could tell that he had held her for a while.
18:35Because on some of the photographs she had some bruises.
18:39But over time the bruises were changing colour.
18:44So that told me that she had been captive for at least a week or so.
18:49So they knew that at very least he has definitely harmed other women and at worst killed them.
18:56But they didn't have any actual cases to connect this evidence to.
19:00So this was the beginning of a very long investigation.
19:04The pictures of the young girl preyed on Bob's mind.
19:08I tried to identify the girl.
19:12I carried a picture with me.
19:14And every time I went to a different police department.
19:17I'd show it to the officers to see if any of them recognised her.
19:24Did they have a missing person case or anything like that.
19:27In September 1990, over 800 miles away in Bond County, Illinois, reports of the discovery of a body landed on
19:37the desk of Detective Michael Sheely.
19:40So I went out to this rural community and met with the sheriff out there.
19:44And he had told me that a local farmer was going to donate this particular barn to the fire department
19:51to burn down.
19:52And he was making a last minute inspection and had found what he believed to be the remains of a
19:58human body.
19:58The badly decomposed body was found up in the hayloft, and it was clear the victim had been murdered.
20:07It was very apparent that there had been a wire Garrett made, a ligature, if you will, to place it
20:13around the victim's neck.
20:14And it's our belief that she was bound and handcuffed over a large beam that raised her hands up.
20:21And it's our belief that he placed a wire around her neck.
20:25Then he continued to squeeze that with this broken piece of board throughout and then strangled her to death.
20:31And he twisted this ligature at least 16 times, according to the medical examiner.
20:37So he would not only have enjoyed torturing her, but he would have enjoyed watching her die.
20:44A forensic anthropologist believed that the body had been in the barn for about six months.
20:50The other thing he did is that he gave us gender identification, said it was the body of a young
20:56girl.
20:56He gave us an age range between 14 and 16 years old.
21:00He gave us hair color, which we thought would assist in the identification early on.
21:05What was alarming is we had approximately 950 missing female girls that fit her profile and fit the time of
21:15death.
21:15So it became overwhelming initially.
21:17Michael sent out details of the victim to missing persons departments across the country.
21:25A detective in Pasadena, Texas, soon got back to him.
21:30And she contacted me and she said that her victim, a runaway identified as Regina K Walters,
21:36her family had received an anonymous telephone call after her disappearance saying that she had been left in a barn.
21:45Regina's father receives a call on his unlisted number.
21:49So this is a number that isn't publicly available.
21:51Regina's one of the few people who actually know it.
21:54And he doesn't recognize the caller, but the caller tells him that he knows where Regina is,
22:00that she's in a barn, that he's cut her hair.
22:03And when her father asks, is she still alive, the caller hangs up.
22:08So immediately, a lot of red flags that this really sounds like this could be our victim.
22:13And so I asked if she had dental records.
22:16The dental records confirmed that the body belonged to Regina Walters, who was just 14 years old.
22:25Detectives could finally put a name to the face on the shocking photographs that had been found in Rhodes' apartment.
22:33Well, the photographs to identify the young person would have been impossible for me from being out there.
22:40But the barn that she entered, I knew every square foot of that barn.
22:44I had seen that barn for days and days.
22:47And so the minute I saw the photographs of her entering the barn and going into the barn loft and
22:52the beams,
22:53it just gave you that eerie feeling that that's exactly what had to happen here.
22:58And so we were on to this case.
23:01Two photos of Regina in particular were difficult to look at.
23:07He had chronologically photographed her.
23:10The most telling for us was how he had taken photographs and staged her death
23:16and had staged them during the course right before he'd killed her.
23:20And looking in her eyes and looking at her face, you can tell that she's terrified.
23:26And at that point, she's just just minutes from being killed.
23:31When you see a photograph like that, you have to control your emotions.
23:37It's a piece of evidence that you're looking at.
23:41You have to realize what your goal is.
23:44Your goal is to take this piece of evidence, tie it to someone, and be able to put that person
23:50in jail.
23:51The story of how Regina Walters ended up in the truck of Robert Ben Rhodes is a tragic one.
24:00Regina had a boyfriend, Ricky Jones, and she and Ricky decided to run away one day.
24:07They were out on the highway hitchhiking, and Rhodes stopped his truck and picked him up.
24:15And took off with her, and that's the last that she was seeing.
24:22She's just really a beautiful, young, almost just totally normal 14-year-old girl with just a little rebellion streak.
24:30Unfortunately, she made the wrong decision.
24:34Rhodes kept Regina prisoner in the makeshift torture chamber of his truck for two weeks.
24:40It's widely believed that he disposed of her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky, almost immediately.
24:47He was never seen again.
24:49She was the prize, and the boyfriend was just surplus to requirements.
24:54While the investigation into Regina's murder continued, Rhodes remained in prison for kidnap and sexual assault.
25:02But by early 1992, he was due out on parole.
25:06So the clock was ticking for us to make a case against Rhodes.
25:11Detectives in Texas and Illinois had been working together to build the case against Rhodes.
25:17If they didn't charge him soon, the dangerous killer would be released.
25:22Finally, they had enough evidence.
25:26The district attorney in Bond County, Illinois issued an arrest warrant for Rhodes for the murder of Regina Walters just
25:37prior to him being released from prison in Arizona.
25:41And Detective Sheely flew out to the prison to serve him with the arrest warrant and to bring him back
25:50to Illinois to face the charges.
25:54Detective Michael Sheely remembers meeting Rhodes in the Arizona prison and confronting him with the evidence linking him to Regina.
26:05He was cold, he was calculated.
26:08He didn't have any trouble looking you square in the eye and saying he's not involved.
26:12We provided him with the arrest warrant for murder.
26:15There was still no reaction, nothing at all.
26:17And so I had an 8x10 photograph of Regina and I put it on the table in front of him
26:23and turned it around and I said, this is your victim.
26:26And it was the first time any emotion out of him.
26:29But it wasn't an emotion of sorrow or an emotion of something that he had done.
26:35It was, he was angry.
26:37And he got up and said that the interview was over, he wouldn't speak to us any longer.
26:41At a court hearing on the 11th of September, 1992, Rhodes agreed to a plea bargain.
26:49He admitted to murdering Regina Walters so he wouldn't have to face the death penalty.
26:55The courtroom was packed, a great deal of spectators.
26:58There had been a lot of interest in this case because there was now speculation that he was a serial
27:03killer.
27:04He didn't just plead guilty, he pled guilty with a smile.
27:07He was reveling in the trauma that he created.
27:11And for me, that shows that he was still very much the sexual sadist that he'd always been.
27:15This is somebody who hadn't changed whatsoever.
27:18And I think he enjoyed the opportunity to relive the details of these killings.
27:23Regina Walters' family couldn't travel all the way from Texas to Illinois to be in the courtroom.
27:29But Michael Sheely made sure he conveyed their feelings to the killer.
27:35As he was beginning to exit the courtroom, I just became overly aware, if you will, that there was no
27:41one there on behalf of Regina.
27:43And so I mentioned to him in a very small, faint voice as he began to pass me that it
27:48was certainly my pleasure that I was going to get to send him into prison for the rest of his
27:53life.
27:55And he was really upset at that comment and told me to get f***ed.
28:02And so maybe not as professional as I should have been, I returned and told him where he was going.
28:11I was hoping that that was going to happen to him.
28:13So that was my last real conversation with Robert Ben Rhodes.
28:17And looking back at it, I'm kind of glad that that's what I told him.
28:21With Rhodes behind bars, investigations continued into possible victims of the killer.
28:27There were many missing persons who fitted his M.O.
28:31Rhodes would target his victims, generally people that either had mental deficiencies or heavy drug users that he picked up
28:43hitchhiking.
28:44He referred to them as lot lizards.
28:47These are, as he described, women that hang around truck stops to take care of the truckers or to swap
28:57sex for rides somewhere.
28:59He is so itinerant.
29:01He literally crosses state line after state line after state line all over the United States.
29:08They aren't to know it, but when they climb into the cab of Rhodes' truck, their lives are to change
29:15forever.
29:18In 2003, 11 years after Rhodes had been imprisoned for the murder of Regina Walters,
29:24Texas Ranger Brooks Long began investigating the disappearance of two hitchhiking newlyweds,
29:32Douglas Zizkowski and Patricia Walsh, who'd been missing since January 1990.
29:38They were both from Seattle, Washington.
29:40They had basically given up their personal belongings and were traveling to the east coast of the United States, primarily
29:47for religious reasons.
29:49The family searched extensively for them, but then the remains of Douglas were located around 1990,
29:57but there was not a formal identification of it being Douglas Zizkowski until 1992 through dental records.
30:05So there wasn't much to go on. There was no witnesses.
30:08There were several suspects, but nobody was actually linked to the crime.
30:1328-year-old Douglas' remains had been discovered in Crockett County, Texas.
30:19Brooks wanted to look at the ballistic evidence that had been found at the scene.
30:24Mr. Zizkowski was shot multiple times in the head.
30:28He was shot with a Jennings J22 semi-automatic handgun.
30:32This information was obtained by not only the projectiles removed from his head,
30:37but also the casings that were left behind on the crime scene that were collected by law enforcement.
30:41So what was unique about the ballistic information was that the ammunition used in the murder of Mr. Zizkowski was
30:51very rare.
30:53This Tarzan-branded ammunition had a noticeable T on the casings.
30:58This fact had initially ruled Rhodes out as the potential killer.
31:03The reason he was eliminated at that time was simply because the ammunition that was seized from Robert Ben Rhodes
31:13was marketed under the name of Arms Corps.
31:17Brooks contacted the Casa Grande police to take a closer look at the ammunition that was found in Rhodes' truck
31:25when he was arrested for kidnap back in April 1990.
31:29And when he called me, I asked him to open the arms corps box and to describe the head stamp
31:36on the casing.
31:37And he said it's a T.
31:41So that was the first clue that this is the guy, most probably is the guy,
31:47and we need to put efforts and resources into this because that all matched.
31:52With a possible link between Rhodes and Douglas secured, Brooks gathered all the information he had on the killer
32:00and concentrated his efforts towards connecting Rhodes to Douglas' 24-year-old wife, Patricia Walsh.
32:07She's probably out there somewhere, and they may not even know who she is because Douglas had no identification.
32:15He had no clothing.
32:17Regina K. Walters didn't have any identification.
32:20She didn't have any clothing.
32:21So when you looked at those two situations, what I started doing was looking for a redheaded female in her
32:30mid-20s that was probably naked
32:32and would have been shot with a Jennings J22 handgun with toss and ammunition.
32:39Brooks received word of a possible unidentified body in Millard County, Utah.
32:45So after I obtained that information, I reached out to the Millard County Sheriff's Office and inquired as to the
32:55status of that case.
32:57And what I was told by their chief deputy was we haven't solved it and the skeletal remains are actually
33:07inside our evidence vault.
33:08So I was able to tell him I know who that victim is and I also know who killed her.
33:14Brooks was right.
33:16Dental records revealed that the remains belonged to Patricia Walsh.
33:21Millard County had projectiles and had casings that matched.
33:26The same gun killed Douglas Zaskowski, killed Patricia Candace Walsh.
33:31So that was linked.
33:34Then the timeline on the records, we were able to determine that Rhodes was traveling westbound.
33:40So what made sense was, is he eliminated Douglas Zaskowski first.
33:46Douglas was essentially just a barrier because Patricia was what Rhodes wanted.
33:52So he killed Douglas, he dumped his body very quickly, but he kept Patricia alive for seven days and he
33:59tortured her and he raped her before he eventually killed her and disposed of her body.
34:04In 2003, 13 years after her remains had been found in Utah, Patricia Walsh had been identified, another innocent victim
34:15of Robert Ben Rhodes.
34:19Patricia must have been absolutely terrified during the days that she spent with Rhodes.
34:25And I think during this time she probably tried to placate him.
34:28She probably tried to plead with him and interact with him.
34:31But there would be absolutely no reaction to that from Rhodes because this guy was essentially a killing machine.
34:39He wasn't affected by other people's trauma or emotion.
34:44He got off on people's fear.
34:46And I think the more afraid that Patricia was, the more he enjoyed it.
34:51Investigators still needed to find some hard evidence that linked Rhodes to the newlywed hitchhikers before they could prosecute him
34:59with their murders.
35:00So now became an analysis and comparison, not only for DNA under Douglas Zaskowski.
35:08Now there was analysis to be done in comparisons relating to Patricia Candace Walsh.
35:14And what had happened on that is eventually there was a match that was located on a white towel that
35:22was seized from Robert Ben Rhodes' truck that was matched to the DNA of Patricia Candace Walsh.
35:30So there was an affirmative link.
35:32The M.O., the timeline, these things fit.
35:38And Rhodes was in custody.
35:40He was in jail in the state of Illinois.
35:42By March 2012, Rhodes had served 20 years for the murder of Regina Walters, but he was due to be
35:49released.
35:50Now investigators needed to convince a grand jury that he was guilty of two more slayings before Rhodes was freed.
35:59Once again, the clock was ticking.
36:02Texas Ranger Brooks Long needed a jury to indict Rhodes based on the new facts he'd uncovered.
36:11The Crockett County grand jury returned two indictments for capital murder on Robert Ben Rhodes for the murder of Douglas
36:19Scott Zaskowski and Patricia Candace Walsh based on the evidence and the information that was presented.
36:25So essentially he was extradited and detained in the state of Texas.
36:30And as we were preparing for trial, he pled guilty to both cases and received multiple life sentences.
36:37The killings of Douglas and Patricia took the number of Rhodes known victims to at least three.
36:45After working as a truck driver for over a decade, he'd honed his method of murder.
36:51I think that Robert Ben Rhodes preyed on people that I think we coined the term later as disposable.
36:58He looked at people that had some checkered history, people that that he believed wouldn't immediately be missed.
37:07And so I think he systematically profiled his victim, if you will.
37:11And I think he was very good at it.
37:13And unfortunately, there's a lot of those folks out there.
37:16And Rhodes knew that he had an endless supply of people that he could prey on.
37:20And he did.
37:22As far as Rhodes is concerned, any woman hitchhiking or working in a truck stop is fair game.
37:31And after all, who's going to miss them?
37:34It is a perfect combination.
37:37If you were to devise a fictional serial killer, Rhodes would be a very, very good example.
37:45Brooks Long continued his search for victims of Rhodes.
37:50There was one obvious person to start with.
37:53Ricky Jones, the 18-year-old boyfriend of Regina Walters.
37:58After the work had been done to identify who the killer was relating to Douglas Zaskowski and Patricia Walsh,
38:08then there was resources put into myself in trying to locate Ricky Lee Jones.
38:14Because as I reviewed the file and reached out to officers and witnesses in that case,
38:20it was obvious that he had never been located.
38:24His remains had never been found.
38:26Ricky had been missing since early 1990.
38:30Evidence found in Rhodes' truck when he was arrested in Arizona just weeks after that suggested that he could be
38:37the killer.
38:38During the course of the search that was done by the FBI, there was a notebook that was found.
38:43A very, very alarming notebook where Rhodes had kept information.
38:49In that information, in that notebook, was phone numbers and family names.
38:54There was even a notation with a drawing of a knife with what appeared to be like blood drops.
39:02And it said, Ricky's dead. Ricky Jones is dead.
39:07Brook sent out information to police departments.
39:10He was desperate to locate Ricky.
39:13We didn't get anything back from these agencies.
39:17But as I, on my own, started searching unsolved homicides and looking at various databases online,
39:25I essentially came across a young white male's remains that were found in Mississippi.
39:33I then reached out to law enforcement.
39:35And it was unfortunate because we were able to obtain some teeth from the remains in Mississippi.
39:43And we were able to obtain samples, biological samples, from Ricky Lee Jones' biological mother.
39:51And those were compared and they were matched.
39:53So we knew that we had located Ricky Lee Jones.
39:56The bad part about that was that the remains could not all be located.
40:04So Robert Ben Rhodes has never stood trial for the abduction and murder of Ricky Lee Jones,
40:11simply because there was a lack of evidence.
40:14Despite not being able to link Rhodes to the crime,
40:17it is widely believed that he did kill the 18-year-old
40:21before murdering Ricky's girlfriend, Regina Walters.
40:26Investigators believe Rhodes is responsible for the deaths of many more innocent people.
40:31This is a case that is unresolved. It's a case that's incomplete.
40:36There are going to be many, many families across America missing relatives
40:41who've been murdered by this individual and they deserve justice.
40:45I think during the course of the investigation, initially, we believed that it was probably in the neighborhood of probably
40:5210 to 15.
40:54But as the investigation grew and the FBI spent a lot of time with it,
40:59the behavioral science unit spent a great deal of time and effort.
41:02And they had actually linked him up to approximately 45 homicides throughout the United States that not only fit his
41:10profile,
41:11but fit his timeline as well as a truck driver.
41:14I don't think there's any doubt that there's other victims and there's other crimes that can be linked to Robert
41:23Ben Rhodes.
41:23I think that science and the ability to link potential suspects through DNA are somewhat limited in this case because
41:36of his M.O. and what he would do with those victims.
41:41But as other agencies become aware of Robert Ben Rhodes, hopefully some of this information will get back to the
41:48right investigator or officer or even family member that might be able to listen and say,
41:54hey, why don't you look at this guy?
41:57Whatever the true number of victims, there could have been many more had it not been for a chance encounter
42:05on the side of the I-10 in Casagrande, Arizona, in April 1990.
42:11The most striking moment in the case is that wonderful Arizona Highway Patrol officer coming upon this rig with its
42:22hazard lights flashing,
42:23climbing up, climbing up, looking through the window and seeing a young woman trapped in the cab who starts screaming.
42:30That was the moment in which finally, Rhodes' extraordinary run of killing came to an end.
42:41And had that officer not gone to check on that truck, he could well be killing people right now.
42:47I had a phone call from her many, many, many years ago, and she thanked me for saving her life.
42:56I said, well, hey, you're just doing my job. You enjoy your life and have a good one. I'm glad
43:02you have a life to have.
43:04Robert Ben Rhodes remains safely behind bars at the Minard Correctional Center in Illinois.
43:11He will never be released from prison.
43:14I think that Robert Ben Rhodes is probably the most evil person I've ever met in my life.
43:19And I've met a lot of evil people.
43:22I hesitate and always have hesitated to use the word monster, but Rhodes certainly deserves to be called a monster.
43:28I dealt with many murderers, but of all of those, the one that stands out as far as the lack
43:34of emotion, the lack of remorse, he wins the prize by far.
43:40There is no feeling to this man. There is no inkling of remorse. There is no inkling of anything. The
43:49only regret he has is that he got caught.
43:52Robert Ben Rhodes is a cold-blooded sexual predator who preyed upon vulnerable women for his own self-gratification.
44:01He would chain his victims in his truck and torture them before disposing of their lifeless bodies in the most
44:08callous manner.
44:09Only Rhodes knows exactly how many people he has killed, and his reluctance to give closure to the loved ones
44:17of his victims undoubtedly makes him one of the world's most evil killers.
44:50We'll see you next time.
44:51We'll see you next time.
44:52We'll see you next time.
44:55We'll see you next time.
45:04Bye.