Robert Ben Rhoades

What the record shows

Robert Ben Rhoades is an American long-haul truck driver convicted of three murders committed in 1990: the killing of 14-year-old Regina Walters in Illinois and the killings of Seattle newlyweds Patricia Candace Walsh and Douglas Scott Zyskowski, who were picked up in West Texas. He was arrested in Arizona on April 1, 1990, after a state trooper found a captive woman in the cab of his truck. He pleaded guilty in Illinois to Walters' murder and received life without parole, and in March 2012 he pleaded guilty in Texas to two counts of capital murder and received further life sentences. He is serving life in Illinois. Investigators have said they believe there were more victims, but no further charges have been brought.

Rhoades was born on November 22, 1945, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to the Wikipedia article, and by the late 1980s was living in Houston and driving a tractor-trailer on interstate routes. A 1996 Tucson Weekly investigation reported that his job assignments took him to Tucson or nearby cities 36 times in late 1989 and early 1990. In the early morning of April 1, 1990, Arizona State Trooper Mike Miller stopped to check a Peterbilt rig parked with its hazard lights on beside Interstate 10 at Casa Grande. Inside the cab he found a naked woman chained and shackled, who told investigators she had been whipped and tortured. Rhoades was booked on charges of aggravated assault, sexual assault and unlawful imprisonment. He was convicted in Arizona, and the Tucson Weekly reported a six-year sentence for that kidnapping.

The Arizona arrest led investigators to Houston, where police found another woman who said she had escaped from Rhoades after being held and tortured, the Associated Press reported in 2012. On April 6, 1990, FBI agents searched his Houston apartment and seized restraints, women's clothing and photographs, according to the Tucson Weekly. Among the photographs were images of a bound teenage girl at a barn. She was later identified as Regina Walters, a 14-year-old runaway from Pasadena, Texas, who had disappeared in February 1990 with her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky Lee Jones. Walters' body was found in a barn loft at an abandoned farm near Greenville, Illinois; the Wikipedia article dates the discovery to September 29, 1990. Investigators said she had been strangled with baling wire attached to a piece of lumber.

Prosecutors in Bond County, Illinois, charged Rhoades with Walters' murder as his Arizona sentence neared its end. The Tucson Weekly reported that in September 1992, after his court-appointed lawyers reviewed the evidence with him, he pleaded guilty to her killing and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Wikipedia article instead dates the Illinois conviction to 1994; the record available to us does not settle the year. Jones was never charged as a victim in any case. The 2012 Associated Press and Deseret News reports said his body had never been found, while the Wikipedia article says partial skeletal remains found near Harleton, Texas, in May 1990 were later attributed to him. His death is attributed to Rhoades only as a suspicion.

The case of Walsh, 24, and Zyskowski took years longer. The couple had left Seattle in November 1989 to hitchhike to Georgia to preach, and accepted a ride from Rhoades near El Paso, according to the Associated Press. Zyskowski's age is given as 25 by the Deseret News and 28 by the AP. He was shot, and his body was found in January 1990 along Interstate 10 east of Ozona, Texas, but was not identified until 1992. Deer hunters found Walsh's remains in October 1990 about 22 miles south of Fillmore, Utah. They lay unidentified in the basement of the Millard County Sheriff's Office for 13 years until dental records identified her in 2003. Investigators believe Rhoades held her captive for about a week before shooting her several times.

In 2005, Utah charged Rhoades with murder and aggravated kidnapping in Millard County and sought his extradition from Illinois. The Deseret News reported that Utah later dropped its charge and, at the families' request, allowed Texas to prosecute both killings, since authorities there said the kidnappings had occurred in Texas. Prosecutors in Ozona said they would seek the death penalty, but the trial was repeatedly delayed after 2009. On March 26, 2012, as the trial was due to begin, Rhoades pleaded guilty in Sutton County to two counts of capital murder. In exchange, prosecutors did not seek death; he received life sentences and waived his rights to appeal and to parole.

The full extent of Rhoades' crimes is unknown. The Tucson Weekly quoted FBI Special Agent Mark Young as saying he believed Rhoades had escalated to about three abductions a month by early 1990, and reported that the woman found in his truck said he told her he had been doing this for 15 years. The Wikipedia article says he is suspected in the deaths of more than 50 women between 1975 and 1990, but that figure reflects suspicion, not charges. Steve Smith of the 112th District Attorney's office told ABC News in 2012 that Rhoades would die in prison, and that if he were ever released in Illinois he would return to Texas custody. The Wikipedia article lists him at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois.