Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 355: Killer Truckers Everywhere

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

Alex and Mathas were just sitting around minding their own business, and Jesse just dumps on them there's hundreds of serial killer truckers out there operating on the road at this very moment? What are they supposed to make of that?CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same!Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPODThank you to our sponsors:If you're ready to finally sleep great and feel like yourself again, head to bioptimizers.com/chill and use exclusive code CHILL to get 15% off any order. Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/eikoiw62 #CashAppPod.Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBragginSources: Long Haul by Frank Figliuzzihttps://frankfigliuzzi.com/fbiway/long-haul/

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Jolumani podcast, episode 355. As always, I'm one of your host, Mike Barre, and join me my two wonderful co-host, none other than Alex and Jesse. Hey. Hey. How's it going, boys? How's your week been? Oh, great. We all have our problems.

We do. But here's the real truth. Right now, as we record, Scotland and Brazil are having their World Cup match. And for those of you who are aware, a famous psychic has repeated. Oh, my God. multiple times that during this match, aliens will show up. And so we'll keep you informed if while live on air, aliens arrive.

The real Disclosure Day episode might be this one. Who said this? In Miami. Hold on. I'll just literally, my entire timeline on social media is filled with it. That happened today? Yeah.

That'd be, dude, imagine. Imagine it happens while we're recording. That'd be fucking crazy. Disclosure day, dude. Disclosure day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, the Brazilian psychic,

um, I, Brazilian psychic Vaux, Voh by, Bahaina, sure. Um,

getting that behinda. Uh, it predicted multiple times, and apparently is a very good psychic according to the internet. It claims aliens will invade the field and abduct players during the Scotland, Brazil world cup game.

Why would it, why would they do that? Like, what, like, because they are fans. of both teams and they saw how both teams came out today in Miami looking awesome. I just want to say I was watching.

I went to get Mexican today for lunch. And I was watching, I was watching like the pre show. Yo, look, I know Americans are all about like ra, rah, America,

but watching Scotland and Brazil come out and just be like, no, we do patriotism. Like, we love, like them loving their country through soccer was a beautiful thing to see. It was great. But the aliens like that, I guess, and they're going to come take them away.

It's like the Monstars are back to do more like they need the best soccer players in the world. It's like, that makes no sense. If the aliens are fans of the soccer teams, why would you interrupt the match and abduct them? That's what I'm saying. Space match. All the things they could do. Humans be traumatized. They wouldn't want to play after that.

Abducting the players. It's like Alex was saying, it's pretty much, I'm sure, the plot of space jam. They're going to kidnap the players and force them to play a universe Cup dude. Yeah dude not the World Cup dude the universe cup Oh yeah the Galaxy Cup yeah that Still has a sponsorship with Airbnb though

Somehow it's crazy Yeah Imagine okay boys aliens Are revealed and it is revealed That aliens and space life Is just more capitalism How you feel I would be like yeah all right that makes sense

That checks out I would go to work the next day. I would jump out of a building. The good thing is, the good thing is, uh, like, I'm already,

I'm already like fully Cthulued out. You know what I mean? Like, I'm, I'm gone. Like, the only thing that can happen is like, good stuff makes things better,

right? Like, at this point, beyond that, like, throw, throw more capitalism at me. Ow.

Yeah, the Eldridge horror already got. Yeah, what are going to do? I've already, yeah. I've already looked into the void. I know the truth now.

I can't. be harmed any further. Yeah. My eyes burn yellow now. You're, yeah. All right. Well, this is exciting because it's a Jesse episode today, which was supposed to be last week, but we decided we're going to talk about Disclosure Day instead for two and a half

hours. For almost as long as the actual length of the film movie. Before we jump into that, hey, everybody, head over to the Yeti.com slash Chaluminaati because obviously the pre-order for the new shirt is up, which is sick. It is a manted riding a rocket. And she is thick. It's great. Shout out Mel for like just continually rising to the,

the further and further insane things that I am like telling her to draw at this point. She just crushes it every single time. It's great. But we've also sold out of another poster over the past a week or so. So there's only two different of two of our posters left, the Chupacabra and the pineapple pizza alien poster, which is great. We've sold that of our stickers, not our new stickers, but our old stickers and a few Oh, word.

So then get ready because we still are selling the new round of top secret stickers by Muddly. Yeah, we have Top Secret stickers, Volume 1 as well, but the sticker pack prior to that. Oh, the other,

oh, yeah, those are finally gone. Wow. Those are gone. You guys are really soaking it all up, making sure only we got the, the newest stuff at the at the show, man.

Everything's a mega sale. So go grab it. Shirts are 10, posters are $10. $0.50 for a poster. Go grab that shit. I've been teasing range for Harry this whole time for Mudsley's art. I'm going to tell you those stickers are all amazing.

If you want to see them, just go to our Patreon page. They're free to look at. It will reveal them. Just go look at a patreon.com slash too many pod. I don't have to tell you what else is there because there's a lot of other shit there. And it all rules. And it helps us make the show. It does.

You help us exist in this world. Period. Anyway, Jesse, what you got for us today? I know vaguely kind of what you said you wanted to talk about. So I'm interested. Oh, yes. Yeah. no, we're flowing, baby.

Sure, we had a little interruption last week, but if we hadn't decided at the last minutes to do that, this would have been the next episode. And hence, technically, it is kind of. We just got done with two episodes of the Boston Strangler. And the big takeaway from that, at least for me, is there are so many ways serial killers can get away with stuff, but also ways that people can copy them, ways that, you know, catching them is very difficult. but the interesting thing is that it all seems kind of in the past you know it all seems like things

that happened years ago when it was easy to be a serial killer which sounds like a crazy thing to say it was easier for sure like before my man rebranded from one awful dude to another awful dude and I'm curious what you're going to go to because a lot of serial killing still obviously serial killing still exists today maybe that you're going to talk about is like the how widespread it is But another thing that's upticked since technology is while serial killing continues to exist, spree killing has become bigger, which is instead of the longer period of like, you know, a serial killer, which usually does it for sexual satisfaction or some sort of inner reason, spree killers just kind of burst. They like, something makes them snap and they go fucking shoot up a place or whatever or spend two days killing a bunch of people or what have you. And like that has gone up as technology and surveillance has kind of also gone up. So anyway, continue.

It's a random true crime knowledge that's like in my brain from years of reading. Well, save it because we got true crime knowledge a lot. Today is crazy. I have been sitting on this one for a while. I figure this would be the best follow up to what we just did. And it is essentially this episode is going to be a look at the book Longhall by Frank Figgluse. I'm not going to obviously deep dive the whole book. but I am going to be a little bit of hypocrite here because we're just going to read the intro

because it's incredible. But Fagluzi is a former FBI assistant director of counterintelligence. And in his book, Longhall, he covers something that I'll be honest, I didn't even know was a thing. I didn't think about. It's not something I, it was even on my radar, right? We all know about serial killers. And we talked about them on the show about how, you know, in the past, what they did,

how they got away with it, all these different things like them, police fumbling the tech or, you know, not like having the killer, then letting them go, like all these ridiculous, or just not devoting the time and energy to solving a case because the people that were killed weren't deemed worthy enough to waste the time on. We've seen all these different things. But those cases were, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 120, whatever, years ago. Frank is tracking what is happening right now.

One or more active serial killers right now, as we discuss this again like i said i'm not going to spoil the book there's a lot going on in this book we're just going to like talk about it and what's happening but um please go read it go listen to it i think there's an audio book of it it is a hell of a read i was like on a plain and very uncomfortable while reading this like i must stress when i say we're going to read the intro because it's a really great setup i'm going to read you the intro to this book but it's going to get dark quick, like immediately dark, right? So just brace yourself, hold on to your butt, because again, we're talking serial killers, we're talking reality. This is not made up BS. So,

you know, brace yourself, prepare for what is about to come. My butt muscles tighter than ever before. Thank you so much to Cash App for sponsoring today's video. And let's get real talk for a second. The scams are out of control right now. If you're honest with you, like I got a 10. next last week swearing that a package couldn't be delivered until I quote unquote verified my card and well my mom nearly tapped one pretending to be her bank listen she just scams are genuinely everywhere now which is exactly why I care about the security side of wherever my money lives so here's a thing keeping your money safe from fraud deserves to be a priority and cash app treats it that way with secure lock cash app requires a successful face ID or biometric authentication to access your account it's like your money is protected by your own personal bodyguard in a weird way, even if your phone is lost or stolen. Plus, if you're about to send money to someone new and Cash App notices something looks a bit off or that you might be falling for a scam, it will send you a warning before the money is sent to confirm that everything looks right.

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Visit Cash App slash legal slash podcast for full disclosure. Thank you again to Cash App for sponsoring today's video. It was early morning, April Fool's Day, 1990, when Arizona State Trooper Mike Miller spotted a truck with its hazard lights blinking on the shoulder of I-10 and Casagronde. Miller donned his trooper hat, stepped out of his patrol car, strode up to the big rig and looked inside. That's when the lawman saw her.

A young woman shackled in a makeshift torture chamber in the rear of the cab. As soon as she saw him, she began screaming for help. The fuzzy lion slippers on her feet only magnified the fact that otherwise she was totally naked. The driver was the quintessential killer trucker. The cops, prosecutors, and media bestowed the well-known... The well-deserved moniker, truck stop killer on Robert Ben Rhodes. It was a name earned an evil. He was the one all other truck killers would be measured against.

For his volume of victims, the span of his murderous spree, and the sheer terror inflicted upon his prey. He worked as a long-haul trucker for almost 20 years, and for at least 15 of those, Rhodes' kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed, leaving as many as 50 suspected victims in his wake. Rhodes built a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his semi and hunted the highways for his next kill. Literally the dude from fucking X-Files. It's, we talked about it a little bit in the end of Boston Stranglish Part 2, but I'm getting away with it. Being a trucker and getting away with it for 15 years makes a lot of sense because if serial killers, move and they don't have a zone they work out of, they're incredibly hard to kill.

I meant to catch. Israel Keys, which is a guy will cover one day in the future, had murder kits around the country that he had hidden and buried places. And so he would just constantly move and the cops had no idea where he came from, how he operated. It's only when he slipped up at the end that it's the reason he got caught. Like many of the serial killers who do this, that's interrupt. It's so crazy that you could just like be sneaky and like get away with it before.

Now it's like, oh no, like if that is one thing I learned from Disclosure Day, I was like, God damn, they're just like tracking these people and it's not even hard. Like they're just like having a cell phone immediately means you have no privacy. You have no secrecy. Well, just wait because Faglusey goes into that. And it's insane where where this book leads. Rhodes was busted for kidnapping the screaming woman, the trooper found. But it was the discovery of his final murder victim, Regina Walters, that put Rhodes away for life.

Regina was only 14 when she and her boyfriend, Ricky, slipped out of their troubled family home in Pasadena, Texas, to hitchhike their way to their fantasy future. But the only thing in their future was darkness. In February 1990, near Houston, Rhodes offered the two teens a ride. Ricky didn't last long. He was merely a speed bump, slowing roads down briefly, but not. not stopping him from kidnapping Regina and raping her multiple times in places of his choosing. She endured endless weeks of barbaric pain. Her flesh was torn by fish hooks, and she was handcuffed to the ceiling of the tomb-like dungeon inside Rose's rig.

The demons consuming Rose's soul weren't sated by the mental and physical torture of Regina. They demanded more, so Rhodes extended his cruelty by calling Regina's father one month after she vanished, Without giving his name, Rhodes informed the anguished man, I made some changes. I cut her hair. Indeed, the last photos ever taken of Regina confirmed her Burnett hair had been roughly cut into a boyish bob. Yet for those who view the final grisly images of Regina, it's not her hair that forever seared into your consciousness. It's the horror on her face.

Those haunting displays depict Regina in the final minutes before she was strangled. to death. Her body left to decompose and an abandoned farmhouse in Illinois. In the photos, Regina forced into a black dress and high heels, stands in front of the camera, her face contorted, her eyes revealing

abject fear. The teen girl's arms are extended forward, her palms are raised as if she's imploring Rhodes demons, not to return, but return they did. FBI agent Mark Young said Regina's forensic report revealed something invaluable, he explained.

Her pubic hair had been shaved prior to death. This was the signature aspect of the killer I would be looking for. If only Rhodes were the last of the killer truckers for him to find. That would mean no more victims would suffer brutal deaths at the hands of highway barbarians. No more Rhodeses, no more Regina's. There would be no need for the FBI and the police to look for serial killer signatures. But that would be a fool's fantasy. Long haul began in 2021 when an FBI criminal and

analyst told me about the bureau's highway serial killings initiative, the HSK, which I was not aware was a thing. I didn't know they had a whole thing for this. Yeah. The analyst whose real name I will not use to protect her identity explained that over the years, multiple truckers had been convicted of serial murders. And today, the FBI believes, and this is, this is crazy. There are hundreds. Yes, hundreds of unsolved killings that were also would like to be. And this is crazy. This is crazy. There are hundreds. Yes, hundreds of unsolved killings that were also likely committed by truckers. The FBI analyst told me that the Bureau has compiled a list of an astonishing 850 murders believed to be linked to long haul truckers.

I was floored by these revelations. I decided I had to know more, to dig deeper, to comprehend what was happening. Just think of that. Yeah. Trucking is a dangerous. like for for when it's think about it the person who's doing the killing is transient just because they could do the nature of their job and a lot of the victims that they have are also transient not necessarily because they're truckers but they have maybe very little family things are very hard for them that you know there's a reason there's somewhere fucking so yeah in the middle and no one's also looking for them like it's the lesser dead situation meets the perfect killer and it's it's dangerous it's another reason why iileen warnos another murderer will cover one day. She got away with it for so long because she was,

do you know who Eileen Wernos is? The, like the chick from Monster. Like, yeah, you ever see the Monster movie for Shaleigh? Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, her. Like, she was a, she would pose as like a lot lizard essentially and would, you know, and if she perceived a particular trucker to treat her in a bad way, as well as the truckers who actively did try to harm her and kill her,

though there were victims that didn't try to do that. She would kill them. And like, she was hard for the cops to catch her because she was just fucking moving. Truck stop to truck stop across the fucking country. What are you going to? How? How do you track them? There's no cell phones at that time in the way that we have them now.

Like, what do you do? I will also say, like, if you're like a sociopath or like somebody who's just like extra violent or whatever is wrong with you that makes you want to murder people. Like, if you're, when you're driving and I, you know, I'm obviously not a trucker. So it's probably even crazier for them because they do it way more. Like solitude. When you drive like that, you cover so much distance. It's so like uniform for a lot of it, especially when you're on some of those like real long straight American roads that like just are just straight lines in the middle of nowhere.

Highway. And then you get to like an island in the middle of it that's like a gas station or something that's like a love station or whatever. And it's got like a movie theater and a shower and some shit or like an abandoned one. And there's still like 30 trucks. out there parked for some reason and you're like what are they doing over there it's one time we went to that buckies it was like a beautiful asis in the middle of nowhere yeah he's is crazy dude yeah he's fucking insane buckies is like finding like the brotherhood of steel and fall out like it's yeah yeah you're like oh wow these guys are uh dudes these these guys got something going on

talk to the CEO and he's like a hyper religious going to die like oh no just give me brisket get out of here brisket and your silly little squirrel man or beaver Anyway, hundreds of murders have been committed along our nation's highways. Many of those homicides are connected, but many are not. Those murders were committed by multiple, yes, multiple serial killers. Some of those homicides have been solved. Some of the killers apprehended, but many, far too many, have not. According to the FBI, in most cases of highway homicide, long-haul truckers are responsible.

long haul truckers exist for days or weeks at a time and a world of their own they speak their own language eat their own and their own establishments sleep in their own rigs part cowboy part fighter pilot part hermit long haul truckers glide along the edge of a certain seam in the fabric of our society the seam that separates their reality from ours can i stop you just for a minute did you quickly say that they eat their own young no they eat their own establishment They eat their first born. They eat their own children. I was like, what did I miss? Okay. Doctor Who episode about a sentient mind virus that murders by using the meme of a trucker serial killer from a movie. Not bad. Isn't there a movie about the actual trucks just being the killers?

Isn't that the, oh, what is that movie called? Isn't that a Stephen King where the truck kills people? Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure. Man, Stephen King was on.

I forget, like, that man was cranking shit out on so many drugs. A fucking car. One day I want to go through all of his books in order. I just want to do,

like there's a list that exists online. No, more like 400 day. More like 700 days. Yeah, that's true. You gotta start now, dude. Yeah, if you want to finish by the time you die, you got to start.

I'm reading, I'm like a fourth of the way through the book. It's taking me like three weeks. I've tried to start it a few times and I've just never succeeded. It's a great book. There's movies and TV shows. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

I for one would prefer to watch the movie version of Langoliers because that shit's hilarious. I will never not laugh at that movie. That's crazy movie. That's something that when I was a young person scared the shit out of me that like as an adult person, I'm like. Yeah, it's the goofiest thing I've ever seen. But man, is it great. Great.

Um, killer truckers exploit that little scene that, that little known long haul subculture that I clearly didn't know about the ones where we share the same roads, but with different realities. You know they got good breakfast though. You know they got good breakfast. Most of those places, those like along the road places got their breakfast. Their bacon must be like, you know, comparable to none. I mean, it's rough out there. You know what I mean? It's scary out there.

But that's all. But like, that's your. Like that's your thing. man. That's a little, your little tiny moment of joy. There's a second scene to this book, the one that separates the trucker's victims

from the justice they deserve. That line divides the drug addicted, truck stop female sex workers from their strange families, many of whom who don't know or don't care to know the women's whereabouts. It is the nature of those victims and their victimology

that keeps overworked, underpaid cops from prioritizing these cases. It's who those victims are and what they have been made to do to eke out an existence that keeps communities from becoming outraged or demanding answers to the murderers in their midst. These victims, many of them at least, live in their own roadside subculture, seen but unseen, known but unknown, same world, different reality. Then there's a third scene in which cops and crime analysts do their thing, mostly apart from the people they protect, the people they investigate and often one another.

This is the scene that separates one police jurisdiction from the one a mile away, 500 miles away, 2,000 miles away. It is the border between the state where a killer finds its female victims and the state where he murders those women and the state where the bodies are then dumped. It's in that scene where city cops, state investigators, county deputies, and FBI crime analysts all in different places try to connect the dots that they don't know exist among the murders they've never heard of. It's like the fucking open ocean.

It's like the fucking, it's like fucking Star Wars space. Yeah. Hyperlanes. It's fucking crazy. I mean, in this, for people who are not in the U.S., I always think it's interesting

to see people from overseas come to the United States and realize how big it actually is. Yeah, that was like one of the things of the world. One of the cool things of the World Cup is seeing a lot of like the people from other countries come here

and be like, oh my God. Like, this place is huge. somebody who like fell asleep driving through Texas and woke up still in Texas and they were very confused. It was like, yeah, welcome. Like, but America is much more of an empire than it is a country. It's an empire of little countries. Like every state is a little country, its own culture.

It's just like, yeah. I'll tell you what, that we got good breakfast though. I've heard that. I've heard that. Yeah. Those puzzle solvers also have their own subculture, their own language, their own way of moving through their world, a world inhabited by them, the truckers. and the trafficked.

For this book, I pulled on the threads of those three scenes to try and unravel the mystery of multiple murders. Along the way, I discovered something as intriguing as the murders themselves, maybe even more so. There are three fascinating, largely obscure subcultures, separate yet braided together that sometimes collide atop cold autopsy tables and county coroner's offices. Those subcultures of truckers, traffic victims, and investigators and their stories make this book less of a who done it and more of a who are they who are the truckers who transport the food

we eat the furniture we sit on the clothing we wear what makes them choose to ride the road solo for weeks or months on end when do they see their kids their spouses if they have any how much do they earn are serial killers drawn to this job or does the job cultivate a killer or is it both and who are the traffic victims we choose not to see the ones on the other side of the interstate restop the truck side. The women who advertise on the internet that they are trucker friendly, the ones with long sleeve shirts to hide their track marks, who are trying to earn some cash so they can make more track marks. How does this become their reality? Whose daughters are they? Whose mothers are they when they go missing? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? Why are the people who,

I'm sorry, who are the people who control them? Which law enforcement minds, which criminal analysts, in which jurisdictions figure into all of this. Who realizes that some of these murders are connected? And what is the FBI doing about it? Can they even stop it from continuing? Their pursuit of these mysteries and answers to them, I submerge myself in others, sometimes dark, sometimes desperate, sometimes murderous realities.

I heard it from them. I saw it for myself. And that's the intro to the book. Literally this guy is like, I'm going to go to the ground and figure the shit out. This is insane to me. This is actually like, the picture that I'm being painted is that there's like a subculture among truckers

that's like pretty widespread of just like dead ass murderers. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, pretty much. Yes. The thing I'm most, at this point, at this juncture,

the, the perspective I'm most interested in is like, what about the like ones that aren't killers? How much do they run into killers? That's, that's something. But I'm so. I don't think they,

I mean, I imagine they do, but they just don't know. That's exactly. How many, like as we covered killers in the past, so many of, so many of them have like a joy or it's a game to them to keep a frontward facing normalcy.

So that when the mask is pulled on their victim, they can like, you know, live in that surprise of just like, oh, you're not safe. I'm going to fucking like kill you or torture you. Like that one guy at the beginning,

clearly like a process killer. It's less about the killing and more about the fucking weeks of, torture and power that they lord over this person. Like, and certain jobs do, I think it's certain jobs to attract these kinds of people. Like, what percentage do you think of people are I can't imagine a lot, but it's, yeah, there's a lot of truckers, but I have to imagine that, you know, hundreds of murders is a lot of murders. Yeah. Oh, there's, I think, somewhere in the book, and I might have written that down as a note, I think it's like 450 potential killers. That's a lot. Cillars as truckers. That's a lot. I don't know. I don't know. I'm like,

based on what I'm like guessing, I'm guessing, I'm guessing I'm going to like throw out a number about how many truckers are on the road at one time in America and it's going to be like wrong by like a factor of like two. A lot like a lot because the country's so big and we don't fly it. And trains are slow. So it has to there's truckers at long haul truckers probably everywhere. And even now our infrastructure is pretty. crazy like yeah compared to a lot of because like yeah like a lot of other countries are able to have lots of stuff but like you guys just said we are very very large it's crazy you can get fresh seafood what what's your guess a day how many truckers on the road in the u.s a day 15 000 jesse

i'll say 45 000 3.5 million oh my god like 450 of them being is like what less than a But that's how you get, that's how they can get lost in it. Exactly. With that many truckers out there on the road, you one have to disduce a trucker kill this person and then two have to find them from 3.5 million. And that's crazy. And there's 13 million that are registered. There's 13 million truckers registered.

And there's three point five on the road. Yeah. And imagine. And imagine you're just like, like, okay, like this is what I think about whenever I'm driving, but like you go to a diner and you go have. like just like lunch or whatever like you're there for an hour and a half or whatever how many how many trucks do you think past you exactly in that in that period of time insane yeah you're brain you don't even know it's insane it's but it's you know he poses the question i i think his

question of like can we stop it is no because humans are always going to be born hold on now Go ahead. Go ahead. Because again, Frank like does. I was so impressed by this book. So to begin, Frank meets with the woman. He mentions that, you know, we're not going to give her name. Who leads the FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative program? It is a program that Bureau first made public in 2009.

And then he straight up asked her like, do you think, you know, all of these unsolved murders are by truck drivers? And she's like, you know, the data shows, yeah. The data shows, yeah, the entire focus of the HSK initiative is long haul truckers, like the entirety of it. Now, Frank, it goes out of his way to say, like, look, I'm not saying every long haul trucker is a serial killer or even involved in crimes. What I am saying is that the FBI says that of roadside murders, truckers are the ones committing most of them.

Just a numbers game. It's just a numbers game. There's a lot of truckers, right, out on the roads. So, of course, the most people that are killing people out on. the roads are going to be truckers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Logistics for the job make a perfect cover, right?

A driver can pull into a town, commit some terrible murder, immediately drive off, putting hundreds of miles between himself and the crime scene before anyone even discovered the body. And the crazy thing is, is that that doesn't seem weird. You know, like, if I went around killing people in L.A. and then Jesse Cox drove off, who would be like, well, why do you do that? Yeah, where's Jesse going? Yeah, as a guy

whose job is to drive, it's a perfect cover. And tragically, much like serial killers in the past that we talked about, like their targets are the most vulnerable people. Always. The ones that we literally avoid looking at and talking about because it makes us uncomfortable.

And so when they kill those people, we don't want to like, society as a whole is like, that's a shame. And it's just, the hammer hole too, like the series, it's also part, it's also because the serial killers are mediocre, pathetic nobodies

who take on the vulnerable because they know it's what they can get away with and it's what they handle. Like they are pathetic losers and every single case, I've never seen one serial killer case where I'm like, oh my God,

it's a monster. But what an artist. What an artist. No, never once was I, you know, what did, Muse doesn't exist in the world. We already, even if you look, if you look even at Zodiac,

the most baddest ass serial killer of all time. Like also, yeah, exactly. Like what you're going to say. Yeah. Just like if you look at them, it's like there's nothing there. It's just a big nothing burger. It's like a desperate person who wants to be noticed pretty much. Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, like I love what Figgluse he does here because he straight up just as like, okay, so I'm going to go meet a trucker named Frank. I'm sorry, named Mike. And this dude is like the way he describes Mike is he says he's a 28 year. old fire plug with feet. And I realized how old Frank was because I didn't realize a fire plug meant fire hydrant. That's like some, that's like what Fred Mertz would call a fire hydrant.

Yeah, yeah. It's a fire plug, Rick. Yeah. The best way I can picture it is like think of a bulldog. Like that's how they would describe bulldogs. Oh, I thought you were talking about Fred Mertz. I was like, yeah, that's perfect. But like low to the ground, heavy set, like stocky dude.

Like Crendor we'd call a meatball in Chicago, like that kind of guy. Yeah. But despite his rough exterior, Frank paints him as like, Like one of the coolest guys in the world completely stand up. He loves a challenge. He loves helping people. Basically, he originally was a culinary chef at the culinary Institute of America. And he was like top of his class.

The CIA. Good that he would like help other people who were struggling and failing classes. What do you like, truckers are like some of the coolest people you can meet. Like think about how much they've seen, like how much they've driven through. That's what I'm saying. Some listeners that are truckers. If you, you know, shout out to you. as hell. Huh?

To me, it's such a romantic job. I'm sure it's a fucking, yeah. I'm sure it's fucking rough sometimes. That's why people are attracted to it. I bet is the idea of, like, a little bit of freedom. I looked it up. 267 million adult Americans. So, three million truckers on one given day,

13 million registered out of 267 million total. That is a significant amount of the population. But just think about how much stuff we have to move. And like how big the country is and how I'm just saying it's a pretty big experience. It's like a pretty common experience. It's crazy because I, you know, I, I am such a city boy.

It's crazy. But like, it's just so, it's so nuts to think how many Americans are truckers. That's a lot. So much of this country's open roads with nothing in between. Yeah. You know, like it's like Han Solo simulator, bro. This dude, Mike apparently was like such a upstanding guy that when he left the food business and he went into trucking, he then became an instructor for new drivers.

And thus his innate willingness to be like, yeah, man, come on, Frank, you can tag along. So literally he lets him get with him in his big rig, his 18 wheeler and like, it's like, let's go on this road trip. And I'll show you with our life. I think that's awesome. No wonder so many people buy those fucking simulator games on Steam. Like, it's probably like, just like, you know, as big as flying an airplane. It's like it's a it's a big deal.

Yeah. Learning stuff. If you're wondering how a guy in the culinary field ended up driving a truck, essentially he You probably never opened a restaurant before. And so he couldn't stand on his feet all day. And so the restaurant. You know, while great, he couldn't do it. So he pivoted to the open road.

That's not usually what they mean when they say you open a restaurant and you can't stand on your two feet. But that's crazy. Yeah. According to Mike, breaking into the industry is shot. It only took him three weeks to get certified, and most of that time was just dealing with DMV paperwork. He actually learned to drive mostly how to dock, on dock, and unhook the trailer and hook it up. That was it.

The rest of it was paperwork and bureaucracy. Is it union work? No. Well, no. So it is, you don't, you're not automatically in a union. So like you just, if you're trying to get your, it's like Uber driver, you can just like get going. And then you, I mean, you have to find a job, right? But like after that, he had six weeks of on the job training before he was just cut

loose on his own. But he did mention that the guy who trained him would literally be like, today we're going to do ice road driving. So like we're going to go to a really cold ass place and you've got to learn. So we like really threw him in the fire, which I think is really neat. That's great. I guess that's how you got to do it. But damn.

Yeah. Mike explained that lifestyle breeds a very specific kind of isolation. A lot of the drivers don't have a home base. They have nowhere to go or any close ties to any community. He points out that the total lack of connection is probably why truckers are kind of rude or heckle each other over the CB because it's their only communication and they aren't really great at it. Yeah. So it's kind of like it reminds me a little bit of people who are chronically online and their only communications with people through the internet. They come off a little brash.

They're like super mean in real life like because they try to talk convention. Law as if. Yes. To keep from losing his mind, Mike intentionally has a home base. He intentionally has hobbies outside of work. He messes around with custom cars and motorcycles. But he notes a lot of guys out there have absolutely nothing else. And what he really wants to highlight is that it's like kind of a psychologically dangerous job.

He goes out of his way to have an outside life. But for many truckers, it's all. all they have. And again, it reminds me of the internet. Like the computer and the internet and the online spaces all some people have. Even to like, and I'm not saying this is like remotely comparable to a trucker's life. But there are some people in this industry that we have that we do in the internet who like by doing this job, be YouTube or whatever, they don't ever leave their home. Yeah. And they turn into like entertainment. Entertainter people. Yeah. That's kind of like, you know, I mean, there's a combination of factors that have led to the situation that I'm in now. But like compared to the way,

I used to conduct basically the same job before the pandemic. Oh, yeah. I am in this house. Like I'm in this house all the time. You have an office now, Jesse, but you used to be in the bigger communal office for a while. Oh, yeah. I was in a huge office.

And I literally only because, like, I left the office during the pandemic, but only because it was super cheap to get this office at the time. I got it. It is not cheap anymore. So I'm out of here. I believe this place immediately. The FBI, meanwhile, tracks dump sites, weapons, bodies.

Catherine, the alias of the woman who leads the behavioral analysis unit for the one that he visited in Quantico. The HSK team there helps agencies match commonalities, victims, and hopefully find killers. So they're trying to like navigate all 850 cases that are currently open in the HSK. all of which they believe long haul truckers have committed. And dealing with that and dealing with truckers' lives and trying to get into what's going on there is the whole point, right? We learn of a person named Bruce Mendel Hall. And he also had a killing chamber in his truck, which is a crazy thing to think of that that's like a thing that exists. Do they read about, is there like a magazine?

Is there like Kill Chamber Weekly? I mean, I guess like, again, it goes back to the idea. of the Boston Strangler. Like people get ideas from... Do you think they saw the X-Files episode first? Yeah, I mean, because the first guy with his kill chamber was in 1990. This is in 2007. Yeah.

So this is like a different piece. Like, well, another one will call the toy box killer. There's another one that had like a kill chamber. Yeah. He saw that shit online and he was right. People doing it in the truck is that like, it sounds crazy to say, but you have full control over what happens inside your rig. Because most truckers, if you watch online videos of,

truckers like that show you like what's it like to sleep in my truck in or whatever they have they do not let anyone in their trucks they don't like it is their sacred space compared to a car you can do whatever the hell you want especially people that don't have homes together is their home there's if you don't have a home to go to that is literally your house it's a lot of space compared to a car that's like a very like domicely especially those big ones if you get in the back there's like there's videos of dudes they got like uh gaming setups and like full beds and shit it's wild So this guy, Bruce Mendenhall, he has his kill chamber.

He's finally picked up by Nashville PD's Pat Pastiglone. And it was like he's in his vehicle at the truck stop. Like a verbal tick. I'm sorry. This is like, Pat walks up to Bruce and is like, are you the person we've been looking for? And Bruce goes, if you say so, that's how they arrested him. Mendehal was arrested at the same truck stop where he murdered 25 year old Sarah Nicole Herbert in 2007. Recovered in his cab, besides various torture devices and sex toys, were bags of clothes with DNA from five different women.

Apparently, when he was done with them, he would wrap them in a plastic bag with duct tape and shoot them in the head. After he was busted, he confessed to murders across multiple states. But crazy enough, when in prison, he paid inmates who were getting out to kill witnesses to prevent them from testifying. that's the kind of guy this dude was. Wasn't he in jail already for the murders that he committed? He was in jail and he was like, anyone is going to testify because he killed so many people they were finding new people. Most serial killers when they got arrested,

they start to inflate their numbers. They start to brag. They don't want to hide the fact that they've killed it. So the fact of this person was like, I don't want people to know I did even more is interesting because it's not the typical serial killer move, which is to be like, yep, I did it. And I did it this way.

And here's a bunch of others. and here's like 90 other people, I maybe differently didn't kill. I feel like that psychedelic element of being on the open road and everything being like PS2 game simplicity. Everything's like a little smaller. Everything you go to is like simpler and smaller

than everything in a city or even in a neighborhood. It's like, I don't know, maybe you're fucking like prey hunter instincts activate and you just start taking people out like a psycho. You know what I mean? I don't know. Like they said he was a lone wolf

and he kind of had this idea of like, I can, you know, I like run the show. He had that like, almost toxic Sigma dude vibe of like, I am a man, right? And anyway, he tried to do that and he got 30 more years taxed onto his life sentence. So fuck him. The thing that's interesting is that at that point in the early 2000s,

he was convicted of multiple murders, but he obviously couldn't be responsible for the hundreds of other unsolved cases. And so I just want to give you this. This is from the FBI.gov website. It is the 2016 map of highway killings, and you can see just how many dots there are. Holy shit. Yeah. This is the one year?

This is 2016 map of highway killings, April 2016. Now, I don't know if this is considered one year or if this is just killings that they have on record is unsolved when 2016 occurred. Well, I'll say this. It's a fucking lot. It is. It's like there's some in every state, and it's like, It could be like a population measuring thing, like based on like where all the killings are concentrated, right? Like it's like a population.

LA, San Francisco, on the long coast, but then also through Oklahoma City. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see they seem to cluster where a bunch of highways come together into a point. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Like Denver, Colorado. Yeah. So anyway, Frank looks at this and he sees something that I think is pretty noticeable that you probably see as well is.

Yeah. And most of this, there's small. stretches where there's murders. But he noticed that along, if you can, if you look at the map, along Interstate 40 from Wilmington, North Carolina, all the way to Barstow, California, that big one along the south there through Albuquerque and Oklahoma. Yeah. He's like, there is a ton along that line. That straight line. Mm-hmm. That very straight line. And he's like, that's what I want to investigate. I want to investigate that stretch of road. Most of these are female victims of opportunity close to the highway, often near rest stops, and then they're dumped close to the road

somewhere else. Catherine, again, the alias said, there are two types of people they're looking for. Those who control the cause of death, who mutilate and are slow and often their sexual abuse and they savor it. And then there's just the killers who kill quickly. And that's actually a problem too. They don't have really big MOs. They just like kill.

They want to be killing. Yeah. And that is, they're like, that's who we're looking for. And as far as the FBI is concerned, there are several killers, not just one, but multiple killers who have killed multiple people who are currently out there on the highways. When asked how many potential suspects the FBI has out there, this is where I got the number. They said 450. Like a real ass 450 serial killers on the highway right now.

450 serial killers? That's like nine per state. or whatever? What is that, right? What's crazy is I thought like, I thought, oh, that's kind of like a guesstimate or whatever, but literally the book is like, no, no, we know. We know this is what we're looking for. Yeah, it seems like such a hard, like, yeah, how do you trip away at that number? Like, they know this for sure. And they've have cases dating back to the 90s that they've been tracking, but it wasn't until after 9-11 that this all really took off the HSK. And, you know, when everything sort of reformed under Homeland Security. Frank tells another story of,

how there was a series of murders of red-haired women at truck stops, usually sex workers or strippers. And when they finally got like a guy they caught Jerry Johns, who they believed to be the killer, they could only link him to one murder and an attempted murder of another woman. Then months after his conviction, another redheaded woman escaped from a driver's rig, this time a guy named Thomas Lee Elkins. So there were multiple people who were killing redheaded women at the same time. Yeah, I mean, it ain't that original of a, of a special interest, right? Yeah.

That's so fucking interesting. That's so fucking weird. So it's like there's so many that there's like, there's like trends and fashion. Yeah. Like in the way that like outfits change and stuff. People are like, oh, you're doing the red head thing for a while? Oh my God, me too. Me too.

Totally. That's crazy. And that's why I really want to do this after we did Boston, Wrangler because it had that vibe of like, everyone's trying to get in on it. Yep. Which is crazy. Fucking crazy. The problem we discover here is that truckers killing women isn't really that unusual, right?

Red hair or no, it happens. And the question is, are any of these serial killings or are they just random guys killing random women? That's another thing they have to figure out. You know what I mean? Like, is it just a guy killed a random woman? Sometimes you just do one and you're good and then you're not a serial killer. Is that what you're saying?

How on earth do you tell the difference? Like, how do you tell the difference if you're in the FBI? That's why they're dudes who are like, well, the, my, the MO, this one guy is he shaved pubes. Like that's, that's all they have. Well, I know we got a pub guy on our hands. But that's what to look for, right? Like, that's, the shitty part is like, that's usually the line between passion killing

and like a serial killing is like a serial killing has like more ritualistic behavior to it, whether it be something simple is like shaving pubs where like a passion killing might be like, they strangled the person and that was it. And then that was it. And they never like, it could have been the he the moment or whatever. Usually serial killings has more to it, a pattern of behavior. Well, and that kind of thing. That's what's so dramatic.

So this, like he mentions another guy, Delmas, Delmus, Delmus, who was an interest, like, that is a slang lord. Don't you even. It really does. Lord Delmus. Apparently, this is crazy, by the way. He murdered nearly 50 women, mostly prostitutes, which, between 2004 and 2005.

Oh my God. That's crazy. But he killed for fun, he said. That's like two and a half people a month, three people a month. That's wild. He killed every other week. And what's even crazier is that he said one time he was on the phone with his mom while he was killing a woman. Like sometimes I like try to pretend like I'm not taking a shit when.

Yeah. Yes. Hey mom. Yeah. Oh. I really appreciated the pasta. Yeah. It's like sometimes I'm taking a shit.

I'm texting people, but you wouldn't know. Yes, and what's crazy about it is just like the previous guy we just talked about. I'm sorry, before the redheaded killings, the guy who tied people up with, you know, plastic and duct tape, he did the same thing. Plastic bags and duct tape, which again, sounds just like Bruce Mendenhall, the guy we just talked about. So Delmus Colvin and Bruce Mennelholl were roughly doing the same thing. But Colvin, what he would do is he knew interstate laws so he would dump bodies in non-death penalty states.

Oh, what the weird. But like, I feel like that wouldn't protect you because like if they could figure out the victim was from a different state, they can't charge you in the state that's some like half baked type shit. You can't get a husband and wife for the same crime, Michael. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I cannot stress it enough. This book is fascinating. Like it is genuine.

You're just like, it's on my read list at this point. Yeah. Honestly, it's a good read. He meets with Hannah Everett, who was a former lot lizard, right? One of the many women who wait around truck stops and gas stations for truckers, mostly traffic for sex and drugged the hell up. Now she works in an organization that helps women get off the street and get out of a life that can best be described as forced sex work, right?

Frank goes into the background of how some. could end up in that life. Basically, every messed up thing that can happen to a person probably happened. A lot of parents just being terrible, a lot of alcohol, a lot of drugs in the family. Yeah, just general trauma. The big takeaway, though, is that a lot of these messed up families from the outside seem like loving homes, which, you know, is, I think, like, going back to the serial killer thing, this idea of covering up the terrible things happening. And when like a young person, for example, goes out and is like, please someone help me because the facade is so like built up, a parent can just be like, they're acting out. Don't listen to them. It's also like,

part of it too, I think is that we are only now in an era where mental illness is taken seriously, right? And like growing up, especially in the 90s, 80s, 70s in a house that is completely unstable emotionally, you may be mentally ill because your parents are mentally ill, but they're not, Like there's so many things that could have happened that that lead to somebody being on the outs and ending up drug addicted and where they are. It's like there's still so many, there's still so many stigmas we stuff to shake to be able to like treat a lot of the issues that are at the cause of this. It's weird like how we design a job. It's kind of like a meme, right? Like trucker, for example, is like basically a meme.

Like when you say trucker, you start to imagine, especially if you imagine like an image. American trucker. You start to imagine like a type of guy. You start to talk a certain way. You start to eat a certain delicious breakfast. And then you like, instead of changing the job after you realize that it drives you insane, like a lighthouse keeper or something, you know, you just leave it the same because truckers are a thing and you can't like mess with that.

It's not, it's not cool anymore to be a trucker if you have to like rest or whatever. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Or hang out with people. on purpose just so you don't go insane. Yeah. I mean, like I will say this next little bit here. Just brace yourself, listener. Frank goes into the fact that like usually there's a lot of sexual violation that happens to these women. He does not go into detail, but he does talk to a woman who says that when she was 12, she was raped by a guy in her neighborhood one day after

her parents went out to run an errand. Like in a brief window of opportunity, he saw her and he took it, which I think goes to show how a lot of predators and shit work in the world. Like they hunt for windows to strike. They're always on. They're always activated. They're just looking for victims at all times and places. And the same thing for serial killer. Crazy.

Right. It's just like they're always activated and they're just watching and waiting. Her parents went to run an errand, dude. That's crazy. And this guy just like swooped in. Their entire life is set up around this, the truth of, of, of them being a predator. Even the outward appearance of normalcy plays into the whole,

like fantasy of them being a fucking killer and always look at it. Like, their whole life is that is it. And a lot of these people too don't feel fear. Like that's another thing is like the brain part of the brain that develops and feels fear doesn't exist for a lot of these serial killers as well, which is, uh,

you know, it's just so, this is why I like true crime so much. Not for the murder, like the murder aspect, but there's so much. much interesting psychology and like, uh, sociology involved with all of it. It's, it's, you could dig endlessly to like, yeah, to look at the human condition through this lens.

And I mean, it, the amount of sex traffic in this country is crazy. Uh, Frank says it's unquantifiable. Like, we literally just don't have the data. We've got no single method to capture it. We've gotten flashes of horrific truths peaking at us through some pretty crazy. trials and real world events. Dude, think up, it's still hard for me to wrap my brain around.

The Epstein files, that entire stick. Think about how long that was running without us ever knowing the actual details about it. Did you see there was just one? There was this Italian, like there's a big thing now

about an Italian model who went missing and was reported missing and they thought she was dead and no one knows what happened to this girl. And then her name shows up the Epstein files. Yeah. Like now I'm like,

they 100% killed that girl. Like exactly like that. There's shit like that. That exists. Now, now I'm in a position where I'm like, God, there's just no way for me to know. Like the thing that people say, how many rings are actually out there that's under our nose right there like playing in our faces all the whole time. You forget that like cliches are true. Right. Like we even, you even said it earlier, like the invisible people, the like forgotten people, right? Like we say it all the time. You know, we're talking about like sex workers and like waifs and streets.

great ghosts and just the people that are walking along the side of the road in the middle of fucking nowhere that just somehow are there. Like, what, what is to stop? We, we now see people doing craven things almost in public. So you know that these people were just doing this shit in private, in secret already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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when you use code chill. Make this the year you finally get your sleep, your energy and yourself back on track. Thank you again to buy optimizers for sponsoring today's video. Yeah. Yeah. Figgluzi talks to the deliver fund,

which is a nonprofit that helps train police on how to like counter human trafficking. And they estimate that it's around 300,000 people that are currently being trafficked annually. While another report from the University of Pennsylvania says between 100,000, and 300,000 annually. And while trafficking is down at truck stops,

mostly it's because they've moved to hotels, massage parlors, and more importantly, the internet. Hannah, the woman that he talks to, really gets into it, right? She says that, like, she's watched all the sex work go online, right?

There's a lot more signage warning about trafficking at truck stops and stuff like that. So no one wants to be associated with that. But it doesn't stop the trafficking. Instead, online discussions talk about going to hotels or meeting in a Walmart parking lot or using cash apps like Venmo and PayPal and stuff. As long as these men, women, children, etc. are outside of the law, right? When they're hurt and killed, it makes it really hard to figure out who did the crime. Like, because it's even more difficult when stuff's online now.

Yeah. Especially pre-CSI and like now you don't even like pre-CSI it was like you can just like say stuff and be like just lying and like lead people somewhere and they die and then nobody ever knows. And now it's like somehow we're back to that even though it's like just like we made like another digital place that's like rural. Like we like made like a like an internet version of a truck stop where you can like get taken out. It's like so weird. Yeah. I mean like by writing with Mike, his whole goal. It's kind of understand what's going on and how anyone can operate.

And essentially, he experiences like a grueling schedule, right? Talking to truckers, sleeping in tiny cramped cabs. It becomes very clear to him that the hours combined with the solitude, combined with the challenges of a modern life, could really make some people doing this job a bit more agro than the norm. In a 2020 Canadian study led by Jennifer K. Johnson at the University of Western Ontario, titled The Health Experiences of the Long Hall Truck Drivers and their relationship with their primary care provider, we see it is not a healthy lifestyle. A lot of it is sitting, unhealthy food, a lot of stress, isolation, things that sounds a lot like my job just so you know.

Well, I mean, like, take what I say next and think about like all the like sex stuff that happens with people in our job. What things like that allow people with a predatory inclination to exploit. Okay, I see what you mean. So like there's a lot of people who prey on fans and are. Oh God, yeah. Yeah, that's true. You're just any number of trucker passing through. You can pick your targets.

You can choose when to interact with them. You can take them from where you pick them up, kill them, leave their body somewhere else, and then move on, making it incredibly hard to track. And what makes it even more messed up is knowing that. many of the women forced into sex work who are maybe homeless or drug addicts or just afraid, see the freedom and the money these truckers have and fall victim to the like idea of what they could provide for them. So any chance they get to get a new guy to give them more money, they're going to leap at it.

Right. It isn't just about like, oh, I'm, you know, this guy's going to pay me. It's like, oh, it's another dude traveling through town. So, you know, a woman working a lot could have like 35 guys coming through and they're making money off all three. That's huge. If you have no money in your homeless. It's literally like no different from like the girls from like Jack the Ripper days. Oh, exactly correct. Exactly the same economy. Exactly same sort of like speed level efficiency levels required. Absolutely nuts that that was like however many years before. And not to mention mental health problems and undiagnosed issues and

all these things that again put them into what you guys are talking about, these forgotten people category. and it's the people that killers have mostly always targeted. The people police have a hard time identifying or sometimes even caring about. And again, we've talked about that with so many previous serial killer episodes. So there must be a way to prevent this from happening. And it must be said that in recent years, long haul trucking has become one of the most technologically advanced sectors in the global supply chain. There's AI that literally helps drive trucks now. there's satellites and monitors.

There's like a ton of ways to track supplies and shipments to make sure deliveries are on time to make travel so much easier. Like there are trucks now in the corporate sector and like the very big chains that use AI driver assistant cameras to basically drive the trucks themselves. They're like waymoing food around the country? Pretty much. And like while that certainly helps HSK still with the rise of online appointment, and the victims still being incredibly vulnerable,

like a trucker could park his cab at a truck stop, take a ride share to go then meet the victim off site of the truck stop. And then like, like, if I, for example, met Mathis at a hotel room by taking an Uber to get there and then murder him, the first place the cops are going to look when they find his body isn't the nearby truck stop. Right.

No. And that makes it really, really hard to track these guys down. And again, the vast majority of big tech in trucks is limited to huge corporate truckers. There are still those who have their own rig. They work for small businesses. They can modify their trucks however they want because it's their truck. And like that one dude from the beginning, building a torture chamber in his cap.

And sometimes guys driving for corporate trucks can get away with doing all sorts of stuff because as Frank finds out, a corporate driver can easily be on the road for months at a time before ever. having to bring his truck back to headquarters for routine maintenance or inspection. And that gives them a huge window of opportunity to kind of do whatever they want. That's fucking crazy months. It is kind of like being in the ocean. Yeah. Like an old school shipping guy.

Out in the wilds, you know, just kind of out there. They're like, hey, I just want to talk you about some of the modifications you requested for the back of your truck. Hook mounts. Iron Maiden. I'm just going to dry out. some beef in the bad. What's the deal with that? Oh, yeah. Oh, you're into

self-made jerky. You're like jerky. Oh, okay. Oh, oh, that makes so much sense. I have to have a hobby when I'm on the road, you know. Oh, okay. I'll, I'll assume that's what anybody who's doing this is doing when I see this, and I won't be weirded out by it at all. The big thing that Frank really understood was that there's a psychological overlap between people who are drawn to long-haul trucking and those who, you know, we already know with serial killers and whatever, which is basically antisocial behavior. Like, it all comes down to that, this idea of just, you know, I'm going against the grain

because I can. Yeah. That kind of vibe. And those serial killers. Solo book vibes. Yeah. Like those serial killers who drive trucks who have been caught and interviewed pretty much admit that they had violent tendencies and pick truck driving to get away from society.

and the result was it gave them the time to sit there and stew and plan all the crazy messed up things they wanted to do. That is a crazy outcome. But like thinking about whenever I'm in a car, I get like the best thinking. Like when I drive from like L.A. to Portland in one shop. I'm like singing. My mind palace is like. Great on the road songs of like driving down the road, like wind in my hair. And I'm just like living live.

It gets you in like a Like a peaceful mental state It's kind of like a shower vibe We're suddenly you have good ideas Not me baby You know what I have on loop on the radio Bum bum bum bada da da da da You're always being chased by giant balls

It's true And like every time we hang out We can only do it for like an hour Before something's after you Yeah everything he's Yeah it's always like the great escape With this guy like the mouth traps It's crazy

You hear the music in the distance For first as it gets louder A amount of cigar smoking for some reason. I don't know why that's part of it, but it feels like it is. Conveyor belts. It's weird. Yeah. Killer truckers remain a clear and present danger. In March, 2023, a long-haul trucker from Houston, Texas, Ramin, and boy, I'm going to butcher this name, but I'm going to try. Cota Karam Rizai, murdered podcast host, Zorre Sadeghi, and her husband, Muhammad Malad Nasiri.

Dude, when it's a podcast host, that makes it so much more real for me, dude. in a home invasion in Redmond Washington before fatally shooting himself. He had stalked her, called her more than a hundred times in a single day to the point she got a restraining order. And the only problem was because he's a trucker, he was on the road so much. Authorities couldn't pin down his location. It literally couldn't catch any court documents. Dude. That's crazy.

Like how do you not know his route? Isn't it like the whole point? Where do you find him along this route? I don't know. What jurisdiction has it? You know what I mean? Just post up. A route could be through 15 jurisdictions.

Like, who, so then at the same time in 2023, James William Grimsley was a long-haul trucker in Utah, who was arrested for allegedly. John William Grimsley. He allegedly murdered Terry Ladwig, a 28-year-old trans woman in her California apartment in December of 1994. Forensic evidence later directed to him in 2003.

Right. perfect, they got him in a nice, timely manner. That's what I'm saying. That's how long it took because he's on the road. One of the takeaways that Glouzi has at the end that I thought was fascinating because it's not really the point of the book, but it's like a big thing is there's a huge demand despite no one wanted to talk about it from mostly men for affordable, commercially, easily accessible sex.

And he's like, that's a big problem that we have. And no one's talking about it. Sex work is real work and it should be like federally regulated instead of outlawed. It would be so much better if most of the things that it's famous for is when people kill the people that do it. Yeah. It would be way cool if it was just like, yo, this chick was great. Imagine if truck stops had like a legal brothel like. Yes.

With like protection and like safety measures and all that stuff. And you put your driver's license down and. Exactly. But like it's all like that's what. listen, that's what we need, I think. I think that would help. Yeah, I mean, like, while he doesn't necessarily go in the direction that we're taking, like, you know, it does bring up the question if, like, weed, legalizing sex work

wouldn't prevent a lot of this shit like you guys were just talking about. Human trafficking is a thing because men are looking for sex and they're looking to pay for sex and there are dudes out there fulfilling the market demand. And it's fucked up because it's a market where the product is other people being forced to do it. But there is a market. Like, it's denying the fact that dudes are willing to pay for sex. Like, it's just the thing that exists. It's a reality.

Right. So why not just instead regulate it, legalize it, tax it, you know, make money off of it in that way. But also, like, it effectively helps to eliminate that black market of human trafficking. Will it annihilate it? No, you can never annihilate something completely. It's really hard. But, like, just like legalizing weed, it fucking, it really, it really, hinders like the the underground weed market when it becomes available and regulated and also

earns it creates a safe deep a safe place for people who want to do that kind of thing and again it's it's work you know it's like actual work like the it'll keep these it should be it should be respectable exactly it should just be respectable like it's it's yeah i mean you know what else here's alternate alternate solution Okay, you know, they have like Xboxes and some of these trucks and stuff, big flat screen TVs in the back. Uh-huh. What if standard in every truck, take a second machine. Down, easy.

Right in there. Why don't I know that's where you're going to go? Why did I? In my mind, it was like he's going to talk about those weird giant machines that have like the little nozzle. You know what? Hell yes. I mean, like, why not? Frank does mention the fact that like there's another problem that most police are

And like as men, they don't want to be involved in getting too much into like the sex worker world for whatever reason. Like Hannah mentioned that in her time at a truck stop, she saw one cop ever. It's like a weird brocode of like, I'm not going to ask what you're doing. It's like on the map when it's like, there's monsters out here. You just like, oh, we don't go out there. That's the, that's the, that's the free zone. That's where we would have to do our job. I don't want to do that.

Yeah, many truckers will say that police aren't really a presence at truck stops. Like it's a vibe of like we don't interfere in that world. Frank, when he was with Mike on the road, said he saw the police only once. And that was because they were involved in tracking down a potentially stolen car, not interfering with truckers. It's like when you play those like freelancer games and you see the different sectors and like some of them have like two police stars and like some of them have like one police star. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them just have one police star. That's just how it goes. Yeah, and Frank, to his credit, I love this actually.

He says that police need to stop arresting like the sex trafficked and instead see them as victims and like try to find the bad actors who are forcing them to do this stuff. That's the reason too that they get away with it because the women who like maybe not the obviously not the ones that are fucking killed, but the ones who are hurt or abused or taking advantage of they don't want to go to the cops because the cops are going to just fucking arrest them for being a sex worker. And does anybody really want them to have that penalty? Like, you know what I mean? Does anybody really want that to be the the quote unquote punishment, which is not really what penalties are supposed to be? You know what I mean? Yeah, like, again, Hannah says that it has to be a community effort.

Basically, cops need to do their thing. Social workers need to do their thing. Drug treatment centers need to do their thing. Like, it's really easy to turn a blind eye on these people when you feel kind of separated from them. and Frank talks to a bunch of professors and he sits down with them and asks like, okay, would legalizing prostitution help with this?

And they're like, probably not, actually. It might like cops focus on traffic kids since adults would have to fill out paperwork and there'd be sort of an agreement with the business or whatever. But right now, the big problem is like if you look at sex work in Nevada or whatever, right,

like legalized brothels. Many of the girls there are like either full. forced to work there because of pimps or boyfriends. And then the money doesn't go to them. It goes to the brothel and then to the dudes who are having them work there. So it needs reform as well. The car's like it, there's a lot of problems.

The industry is regulated. And it's yeah, it's not the women who are the problem. It's all these dudes who are abusing them. Okay. But if it was just a machine that sucked your dick that was in your car already. I mean, all right. Now we're thinking with portals. That's all I'm saying. Bad actors will always find a way to, you know, hide in the darkness and do things in places we choose to avoid or don't want to talk about. The worst thing that you can imagine is always going to happen. Every time some fucking craven person out there is going to come and do the most fucked up thing imaginable.

Yeah, yeah. And sometimes we can't imagine what they'll do. That's how messed up they are. Yeah. In fact, Enzo Yaxic, great name, another fantastic name. Dude, that guy's a pod racer. Yeah. Founder of the atypical homicide research group at Northeastern University adds a structural reason.

Serial killers often choose unremarkable blue-collar jobs. These jobs allowed them to fade into the background, perform routine tasks to save mental energy, and then reserve their emotional intelligence for learning how to exploit others. The big takeaway really is that as things change, People change. So as more and more tech is added to trucks, as more and more trucks are unmanned with AI, which is already happening, the need for human long haul truckers will decline. Citing an article in 2017 from leisure sciences, researcher DJ Williams, Jeremy Thomas, and Michael Arndfield say like serial killers are already transitioning. Instead of using the guys of their employment to stock victims, they're moving directly to the internet, using online leisure activities in digital spaces. for their new trolling ground.

The mentality of a serial killer or just a creep in general is always looking for the next way to get something over on someone. And they're never going to stop just because it becomes difficult. They will find a new way to do it. And we will still be talking about serial killers for years and decades and centuries to come because bad people, bad people will find bad ways to be bad always. Because unless we are in a surveillance state, which I don't think anyone wants, But it doesn't, it doesn't mean that like, but that doesn't mean the lesson is give up and don't do

anything. Oh, for sure. It means that, don't let good be the enemy of perfect, right? Right. Right. Like, that's why he's out there. He's literally out there. Like, I'm, please go read the book.

It's fat. Like, he's in the field. There are people in the FBI working daily to stop this shit to stop bad people from doing bad things. And it's just one of those things that I think a lot of time on the show or on shows where they talk about serial killers. It seems like in the past, this guy got away with these things. There's like dudes actively trying to be that now.

And I'm very thankful. There are people out there who are like after these dudes. Are you telling me there's an army of 400, like murderous truckers out there on the roads? That's what the stats say. There might be an active serial killer near where I live right now. There's been bodies that's been showing up in the bayou near Houston over the past year and a half. And the cops say there's not a serial killer. It's not a serial killer, but the bodies keep showing up in the same place.

It seems to be similar like victims. There may be one active near my vicinity as we speak. And like I said with those two guys, their MOs were the same. And the reason why it's because he just wraps them up plastic bags, duct tape and then, you know, dead. So it could be too. It could be a Boston strangler situation. Right. That's why it's so difficult.

And, you know, watching like a really smart investigator just get on the ground and do stuff. again fantastic book i cannot stress it enough this was a skim of what that book is about but i felt very apt after we did boston strangle and i really wanted to do this one because click the link you can read more it will be in the description do fugli rz right if you don't like reading audiobook it frankly literally i believe what am i think he reads his own book which is great ways to do chluminati research is like audiobook in the background while i'm doing something else that stuff blows me away that people are able to like read that way but I I respect it it is it is very I'll tell you what I really enjoyed the red wall audiobook some audio books are better than others

by a lot yeah it really depends yeah I like reading because I can get through it fast an audio book is as long as it takes the person to read yeah reading my eyes are like I like you know I can do most reading on a plane I'm vibe yeah yeah I usually read like him on my own as well but there are some books that are just like, I don't have to rush it. I'm not going to lie. I love Star Wars audiobooks because they do the sound effects and they have like all the voices like that. That's the kind of stuff I love.

So yeah, however you want to, again, just a book recommendation for you all out there if you want to deep dive this a little bit more because it's a modern take on serial killing. It's a thing that is certainly worth learning about. Yeah, ever evolving. Thanks, Jesse. That was super fun. I mean, I'm such a true. Absolutely terrifying.

I love talking about it. Absolutely. It's more fine, but like it's fascinating. Yeah. Especially like something I don't often look at is like where we are now in terms of like serial killing tracking. I think most people don't. Yeah.

I'm, I'm very much in the 60s to 90s era of knowledge, but that's it for us. That's what. We're off to go do a Minnesota or Patreon.com slash Lumini Pod. Thank you guys so much for listening. We appreciate your. We love you. We'll see you next week.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Anyway, anyway, me and my wife were sitting outside indulging on our porch one night. We're joined. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside, and after a few moments, I hear my wife go. Holy shit, get out. So I quickly dashed back outside. She's looking up in the sky.

I look up to you, and there's a perfect line of a dozen lights traveling across the sky.