Last Podcast On The Left - Long Haul | Hunting the Highway Serial Killers: An Interview with Frank Figliuzzi

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Please enjoy a taste of our Patreon with this bonus interview from July! For More Interviews and Exclusive Content join today!Henry & Eddie sit down with former assistant director of the FBI Frank Figliuzzi to discuss his new book Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers, breaking down the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for the long-haul truckers behind hundreds of murders. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

Hello, last podcast in the left listeners. God, you're lucky to be here. My name is Henry Zabrowski. I'm sitting here with Ed Larsen. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing great because we have a very important person here today. I'm nervous. No, it's it's it's definitely when I woke up this morning, I was like, Oh yeah, that's right. This is gonna be intense. This can be intense. This is a good guy. I he's a good guy and I can't wait to talk about this stuff. This is very very interesting Guys, we're sitting with former assistant director of the FBI and author of long-haul hunting the highway serial killers Frank Figliuzzi. Thank you so much, sir. Yeah, my pleasure. I I'm looking forward to the discussion and Getting the word out about this kind of horror that's

still playing out on our highways. You know, I, we have covered, like, you know, there's bone in, there's a couple other guys that have been labeled as trucker killers. Like why is it its own genre? Like what is it about it that makes it its own thing? Yeah, that became kind of apparent to me as I dug into this, even going out, you know, putting my investigator hat back on after 25 years in the FBI.

And here's the deal. The experts tell us that the number one profession for serial killers is long haul trucker. And there's a reason for that and a reason for why no other profession comes even close. Look, we're talking about a highly isolated job. You're on open expanses of highway. And what's happening with these killers is they are grabbing their victim in one jurisdiction. They're raping and murdering her. It's almost always her, in a second jurisdiction, and they're dumping the

body in a third jurisdiction. So you literally have a moving crime scene, and it makes for chaos in the law enforcement community, not knowing even the identity of the dead body, let alone the identity of the trucker. So back in about 2003, a crime analyst in Oklahoma, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, a woman named Terry Turner, who in my eyes is a hero, starts, you know, figuratively pounding her fist on the desk saying, hold on, guys, we now have 10 young ladies in just a few months missing from Oklahoma and found dead in other states. They're often trafficking victims, and the proximity to the highway of their bodies and last known sightings indicates they might be killed by truckers. And she starts really

demanding some action. She calls a meeting across the country of any detective who has a similar highway proximity case, young lady killed. She thinks maybe eight or 10 detectives will show up, dozens show up from around the country. She demands the FBI show up too. And the FBI hears this and the data and says, you do have serial killers, we're in. And that is the birth of the FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative and only publicly acknowledged in 2009. It's so fascinating to me because I thought of this as a phenomena that largely lived in the 60s and the 70s when things were kind of uncharted.

How do these crimes continue on now that we have so much more surveillance inside of the trucks? Don't they all like monitored now? Don't they have cameras in the inside and their stops are measured? Not just that, the rest areas are more monitored now and the travel centers. So is it just the idea that if you wanna do it, you can do it no matter what.

Pretty much. So you're right about the history. You know, this member of the old CB radio days and 10 four good buddy and, and, oh boy. Yeah. I mean, there's, there were hit songs in popular culture about, you know, the highway and 18 wheeler song by Alabama, the highway and 18 Wheeler and the song by Alabama, the country group and Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason. All of that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Gave a part of our culture. And the CB radios are not used widely today, certainly not as much as they used to, but even CB radios used to be used by the women who to, to, to, you know, advertise their services. And there was a whole coded language that I've got, you know, in, in the book. So how do we get from that to today and why is killing still continuing? So I got on my, my investigator hat and my hard hat and I hit the road.

I did 2000 miles, you know, in a big rig with a with a long haul driver. I wrote flatbed across the country and that's a story in itself. Yes. I wanted to get into that subculture as well as two other subcultures, trafficking victims and crime analysts. So if you're into that, you know, kind of studying a subculture, what's it like on the road? What's it like to be a crime? And I was connecting dots to stop the killing. Or you're wondering how on earth does a young lady fall into the trap of trafficking, then this book is for you. But today, yes, high-tech trucking, modern trucking is high-tech. You've got electronic logs, you've got GPS navigation, the big corporate companies, the names we're all familiar with, J with JV Hunt, Werner, they've

got their names emblazoned on the sides of the trailers. They know where their drivers are almost all the time. They do have the cameras trained inside the cab and outside the windshield, but yet it's still happening. So even as I theorize in the book that okay, the FBI says there's 450 current suspects they're looking at. Geez. For 200 pending cases. So there's 850 total murders along our highway of women in the past few decades. 200 of them are pending and unsolved and 450 suspects being looked at. So I start theorizing, okay, okay, so it's high tech, it can't be the big corporate driver. It can't, right? It can't be, yeah.

It has to be someone who owns their own rig. But just as I come to that conclusion, I find cases where the corporate driver has parked his rig at the truck stop for his mandatory federal mandatory downtime of 36 hours every week. Yeah. He parks his rig. He gets in an Uber or a rental car. And he goes out and does his killing.

So do they know where he is? Well, they know where his rig is. But they don't know where he is on his mandated downtime. So yes, is it more likely to not be the corporate driver? Okay, but I'm telling you, the corporate drivers do it too. There is a little thing inside of me. I think the more and more I research about serial murder,

I find that there are more connections between disparate killers than I want there to be. Like, we're starting to see there's some connections between John Wayne Gacy, Dean Coral. Like, they were connected to some networks together using child pornography, stuff like that. Is this kind of like, you think that in this world, like, they communicate that literally you're looking

at a community of murderers in many ways that use a, that they operate as a group or like a gang almost. It's it's rare and there's been not enough exploration of that concept. I like, I like the thread though, but the evidence is, is not there. You're largely talking about total isolated hermits that absolutely pursue certain types of trucking. And I get into the different types of trucking,

even to ask the question, what kind of trucker in what kind of truck is more likely to kill? But the- Oh, what is it? Can I ask what that answer is? Like, what would you say, what's the breakdown of the trucker mentalities? Because I love truckers. I still do the beep the horn. Should

I stop that? No, they like that. But they like that with about a six year old kid. So just for... I just pretend to be a make a wish man. I mean meant to be able to feel like I wrap like a bandana around so it looked like I'm dying. Yeah. Yeah. Hold up, hold up a sign, make a wish. Yeah. Well, you're horn.

Yeah. So look, different kinds of trucking. I rode flatbed. What does that mean? We were very physically engaged with the load every day. Different loads every day. Like our first day, we went to a gypsum factory and picked up 47,000 pounds of drywall. We were part of the economy. We had to know weight

distribution. Do I have weight evenly distributed over the axles or not? Can we gas up today fully or will that put us overweight? Do we chain the load, strap the load? Do we have to tarp it today? And we're doing all that largely ourselves once the crane puts down 47,000 pounds of drywall and stacks it. Now we're strapping, we're tarping. The tarps weigh 100 pounds folded and we're tossing them up onto the flatbed,

then up on the top of the load and unfurling them. You've got to know mandated points of securement per how long and wide your load is. Say all that's happening with a flatbedder. Why am I telling you that? There's mental and physical engagement with the load. Lots of talking goes on with your pickup site and, you know, hey, I need this put here on the, I need this,

you got too much weight on this axle. And then at the delivery site. So there's that. Now let's go to the opposite street. That's a lot of human interaction is kind of what you're saying. It's a lot of people seeing you, talking to you, dealing with you.

Not just that, you know, you gotta be strong to do that stuff. Well, that helps them be a serial killer, but we'll get there. You got to have physical skills. You got to have some soft people skills because if they haven't loaded your, your load, right, you're going to have them talk them into doing it again. A lot of that going on. The other end of the spectrum is the drive banner.

This is the guy or gal who's carrying a load of paper towels across the United States, right? There's no physical engagement with the load. He's not loading the truck. His physical exercise consists of opening and closing the back door of his trailer. He doesn't literally have to talk to anybody at all any time. He just has to show up somewhere on time.

And so I'm theorizing, and it's been the case with many of the serial killers I looked at that they tend to be on the dry van side. Now there's a whole hierarchy and cast system within trucking that I discovered. So, you know, at the top of the pay scale, for example, there always is every world has it. Right, right. Yeah. And even in the podcast world, you know, I know you guys are at the very top echelon. There are more. There are higher. I'm reminded every day. I'm don't worry. I was told I was at the top of the podcast. When you're on it, sir. Yeah. When you're on it. Well, we'll see if

we can get smart listen to interesting. You look at, you know, the guy I rode with is making six figures. Good money. He's a top, he's one of the top drivers in his, in his medium sized company. Um, if you want, you know, even higher pay scale, your hazmat and those tankers filled with God knows what. Oh yeah. They better be paying those guys. Yep. Heavy, heavy load and wide load that, you know, the ones that drive you crazy. If you're, if you're behind them on the highway and you can't pass and there's a follow car and there's flags and all of that and a lead car or what they call a pole car.

You know what the pole car is for, right? No. That literally has a pole on it because if it hits, if it hits the, if it hits the underpass, the truck should stop because the truck's not going to make it. Does he break off a piece to the pole guy or is it everybody getting paid individually? And like honestly, is it like a caddy or like your manager or something where you gotta give them a percent? That's a good question, but no, it tends to be individual payment. Yeah.

Then there's the low boys. Remember the low boys that ride, the trailer rides about six inches off the ground because the load is so incredibly tall. That's kind of the, they call that the badass of the trucking industry. The guys like that. It's like a low rider in LA or something. But that's a really tall load that has to fit under underpasses. So you've got this kind of rank. You got reefers, reefer, reefer trucks, or refrigerated trucks.

And believe it or not, those drivers are highly engaged with their load because they're, they're monitoring, uh, humidity and temperature and climate back there. And if the monitors are bad, like, hey, my grapes are wilting. No pun intended. Yeah. They got to know to use HVAC and all that. My grapes are wilting. I got nobody to call. I have no one to call. There you go. So it's a whole culture. I get into that, those subcultures and theorize how we get those 450 suspects whittled down. Fascinating. I do this thing for the subculture of trafficking victims.

Who amongst the trafficked victims, based on the work style they have, are they pimp controlled or not? Do they have a gorilla pimp or a finesse pimp? Are they a renegade or an outlaw? Which one of them is more likely to be killed by a trucker? And I explore that as well. That is just that. I mean, it's, it's horrifying. Yeah. You know, cause they do just kind of wander out. Cause we were, um, we were just doing a bunch of research on the toy box killer that his, his own sort of re like he had his own torture thing

that he built out of a rig, like a trailer slash thing that he used on his own sort of, like he had his own torture thing that he built out of a rig, like a trailer slash thing that he used on his own, which seems terrible. Cause you'd think a refrigerator truck would be a great way to hide a body. The chiller killer. Yeah. Like that's happened several times, right? Has that not, but then that happened several times with Matt with the wall. We don't know if the Iceman was real.

There's been a trucker that was hitting fast food establishments at closing time for the purpose of herding the employees into the walk-in freezer and killing them all. And of course, no one would be discovered until the morning. So he's long gone after that. That's a kind of different MO. But I get into some of the most horrific, you mentioned kind of a torture chamber, several of the truckers I looked at absolutely had had established in their in their rig a torture chamber and one of the worst, I opened my book with this,

is Robert Ben Rhodes, perhaps the killer of all serial killer truckers. He's good for probably 50 murders, almost all of the women. Can't believe his last name's Rhodes. Yeah. Yeah, with an H. He is finally caught by accident when a Arizona state trooper sees his rig with hazard lights on flashing along I-10 in Casa Grande between Phoenix and Tucson.

The trooper strolls up to the rig and starts hearing a woman screaming from inside. And he looks inside and this woman is shackled to the ceiling and the floor. She's naked and she's out of her mind screaming and that begins the unraveling of Robert Ben Rhodes and his killing spree over years and one of the most heinous photographs I've ever seen it. I have seen some horrible crime scenes in my life, but Robert Ben Rhodes, that woman, by the way, was gonna be his next murder victim, undoubtedly. But during his killing sprees,

he grabbed a 14-year-old hitchhiker named Regina Walters, who was hitchhiking outside of Houston, Texas. Her boyfriend was with her. He picks them up. He quickly kills the boyfriend who's simply a speed bump in his way. And over the course of several weeks across the country, he proceeds to rape and torture 14-year-old Regina,

shackles her into a torture chamber in his truck. Finally, they get to an abandoned farmhouse in Illinois where we see the last image ever taken of Regina Walters alive. And that is taken by Robert Ben Rhodes. She is this is not gruesome because of its content. It's not bloody, but rather because of its context. You know this is her last photo alive, and she knows it too. And she is dressed in a black dress that he bought and forced her to wear, black high heels that he

made her wear, and he has cut her hair short into a bob, and she knows what's coming. And her arms are outstretched and her hands are outstretched in front of her, and she has a look of abject horror on her face. She's clearly pleading for her life. And the FBI agent who worked that scene, she was found decomposing in this farmhouse, he said he finally found the signature that he was looking for of this killer. And it was that Regina's cubic hair had been shaved just prior to death. That was a signature of Robert Ben Rhodes that linked him across a number of killings. Geez. Speaking of signatures, like how does that, because you are dealing with what you said,

transitory murderer, transitory victim. They are also a lot of times they're moving around too. How do you put together what is a series of murders versus what are like one-offs here and there? And do people use it, like do killers know, hey, I've heard that there's a bunch of girls missing in this area, I know that I can dump somebody over here and that it'll be attributed to somebody else, but like, how do they do that? Do they are they aware of it? Or like,

how do you guys pull that together? Like decide what to who's a serial killer and who's not? So interesting question. That has happened where you have a copycat who is somewhat familiar with the crime scene and therefore feels like he can get away with it, but it's relatively rare. And I'll tell you, the law enforcement's ability, particularly a crime analyst at the FBI and other state agencies, have become very adept at seeing what looks like a copycat trying to look like another killer, because they can never get it precisely right. And then of course, you know, if they're indeed sexually assaulting their victim, there's going to be forensics and DNA that tells us,

this is a different killer. But the bottom line is serial killers tend to go with what they know. They're creatures of habit just like we are. So for example, if they use the victim's clothing to choke them, they tear it apart, they tear their t-shirt up, they make a knot, they gag and or strangle her with it. That knot is what they know and how they make a knot. And that's going to be studied and looked for at other locations

as is using the victim's clothing, as is whether they are naked or partially naked. What's naked, the top or the bottom? Have they been mutilated? Is it a knife killing, a strangulation, or a gunshot that's killed them? How are they mutilated? Are they found in water, under a tree,

face down, face up? All of that factors into the kind of crime scene forensics that absolutely are part of the FBI's database. And here's where the police departments kind of complain because you need to answer about 200 questions on a very bureaucratic looking FBI form. And it asks you all the questions I just went through, right? Where'd you find the body? How long before it was discovered?

White girl, black girl, Hispanic. There's a series of murders I talk about in the book that are called the redhead killings, which I believe are not yet fully solved. And so, you know, that's all entered in, it's garbage in, garbage out. So if you do that, the FBI works really well to make some magic

with algorithms and computer matches and tell you you've got a killing that we think is the same killer halfway across the country, or even better, we've identified this killer in another killing and we've got him in custody. That's a good day. But increasingly, it's genealogical DNA that even decades after a body is discovered is finally putting a name with a body.

Because now we have the 23andMe kind of revolution towards, how do you feel about that? Like, obviously as cops, it's great, it's a great resource, because a lot of people openly gave their DNA into a private company, but how do you feel about all the weird stuff about like private company releasing our DNA, but I also feel fine if it's a catch and a serial killer,

like fuck them. Exactly. You know, like I don't give a fuck, but it's like, I don't know if I haven't seen the Henry clone that they promised. I've heard that the government's making clones. I'd love the Henry clone. I'd love for him to work because then I can go home. Right there you go. Yeah but 23andMe really did stuff like this that really

blow a lot of this open? So it's interesting. The biggest names in that industry, Ancestry.com, 23andMe, don't fully cooperate with law enforcement unless they are ordered to via subpoena or search warrant. Okay. So they're not an open book. And so, you know, if you're concerned about your own privacy, and by the way, the big companies have been hacked. It was one in the news recently where somebody on the dark web started posting everybody's DNA situation, including a seeming focus on people with Ashkenazi Jewish backgrounds, kind of scary stuff that was. That was being targeted. But I'm a huge fan of two companies that actually even exist to help law enforcement so that when you submit your DNA,

you know, and you're signing off saying, yes, I'm trying to help law enforcement. So somewhat in your distant relatives, in your distant past could be that DNA match that shows that this is a victim who's a relative of yours, or that there's a killer who's a relative of yours. And those two companies are DNA Solve and GED Match.

G-E-D Match. Interesting. Because of these, you know, because it takes place in the highway and it's a very transient problem, the FBI kind of has to take this, right? Or is it, or is it like state troopers a little bit? But how do you deal with the police? I feel like that's always seems to be when we read about true crime cases, one of the

worst parts sometimes is some, you know, not to be too gotcha here or whatever, but like there's a bad communication Sometimes between various departments in order to figure out like, you know, cuz some people are like no This is my case like this is Snarlington County the sheriff handles things here, you know Snarlington County Yeah, we got to take a good look at Snarlington. Yeah, honestly, it, it seems like something with that name needs to be looked at twice. So here's the deal. To try for police departments across the country to try to do this themselves would literally take going through NCIC, VICAP,

another criminal system owned by the FBI. And literally looking for the red truck, the redhead girl, the girl that's found half naked, the girl that's raped after death, combing through all of those cases and hoping that you find something similar. Or you could use the FBI's database, enter your data, and have some of that magic happen

and have the FBI crime analysts start assisting you with matching to other killers and even calling in the behavioral profilers from Quantico, Virginia. That's where this initiative is based at the FBI Academy in the behavioral analysis units. And for those criminal minds, people and your viewers who watch the FBI shows, and they know their stuff, boy, do they know their stuff. This is BA you for behavioral analysis unit for that does all this for you. And very seldom would a police department go. We don't want to solve our cold case. So we really don't want the FBI here. Yeah, the problem, you know, the problem with those independent police purposes, they'll never find that connection, you know, between Alabama and California.

They're just not, it's just not going to happen. It would be, it would almost be an accident to trip over a case. That's like yours. So it's welcome. The FBI is in the marketing business on this. They go out and preach the gospel of the HSK database. They'll train the analysts out there to enter the data in emergency cases. They'll come in and help you load the data. They'll get you grant money for an analyst if you don't have one. Because some of these rural,

imagine some of these rural county sheriff's departments, all they do is road patrol. Oh, yeah. They don't have detectives, let alone a criminal analyst. Rodgers Warriner Yeah. Mark Svazic So it's welcome help, but it is garbage in, garbage out. Sometimes the FBI analysts back at Quantico will literally read the morning paper and they'll go, whoa, that murder in New Jersey, that dead body, that sounds an awful lot like something we've seen before and they'll open a support case right away.

That's very, wow, that's great. I mean, that's great. I do find that how accurate are some of their personality breakdowns? Like how would you say like across the board, like how well do they do like nailing the guy? Yeah. I say say guy, it's mostly guy, but sometimes lady. Well, I tell you, I've always been impressed by the profilers, which is a different job role in this unit, in these various units at Quantico. Those profilers are special agents, gun and badge carrying special agents,

because they want profilers to have street time. They want them to understand how a case is made. And a lot of the profiling job is visiting police departments and talking cop talk, right? So those are agents. When they're called in, because the crime analysts think there would be some benefit, I've always been impressed about the accuracy of what they do. Now, some folks will roll their eyes in law enforcement because they think this is like voodoo. Like, you know, this is but it's a 40 to 60 year old male, you know, it's a white man. It's well, sure, because the data says that serial killers are often in a certain age group and often white males, blah, blah, blah. But I've seen it much more precise in my own cases in my career. I had a case. I was working

a serial bomber case and the serial bomb, the serial bomber had killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney and, um, with mail box was a mail bomb. And, um, he kept sending sending mail mail box and it's gotta be so hard to eat. How do you even get away with that at all? Like, how do you get away with? Yeah, you just do it. You just figured it's astounding. So they predicted his age, which was older than we thought. They said it's a white guy. This is from reading. This is an area called psycholinguistics. They're reading his letters that we've pieced together from the bomb. He always included a letter.

And the letter indicated to the psycholinguistic folks that this is a white male, older, like 50, 60 in there. He's spent a lot of time around black people and in church. That is all from his writing. And then the data about the male bombers largely being white males, that was on the money. It's up to you as the investigator to take that and run with it and look at your suspects more closely. I saw while we were working that case, I've got a top profiler in this is a guy who who talked to Ted Bundy for days. He's sitting next to me in the command post and he's reading

the local newspaper and drinking some coffee. And he turns to me and he goes, hey, Frank, and drinking some coffee. And he turns to me and he goes, hey, Frank, this article here in this town where they found this guy with like 37 cats hanging on his property skinned, they found cats in his freezer, you know, mutilated. I go, yes, sir. And he says, can you get me that police department on the phone? And I said, I can. Why? And, you know, it's a guy killing cats. He says, if this town has any unsolved rapes, this is the guy. And what he was looking at was that these were old cat killings. This has happened a while ago. And his theory was that in this world of profiling, felines are viewed as symbolic of females. And because he had done this a while back, he had progressed, the theory goes, to now acting out against real women. So I'm listening to his phone call with a detective.

I'm listening in and the detective goes, hell yes, we have a series of unsolved rapes. And he goes, yeah, it's this guy on page seven of the newspaper. And he was right. He was right. Jeez. Yeah, you're just like, Oh my God.

You don't let him, hopefully he doesn't have a daughter and he's got the new boyfriends coming in and deal with Robert De Niro. That's a good plug for buying newspapers. It really is. It really is. But you've ever gotten to do the fun, like this, the FBI scene now, everybody back off is the FBI scene. Yeah.

This is not my investigation. Get out of here. All right. Get the hell out of here. I's the FBI scene. Yeah. This is not my investigation. Get out of here. Oh yeah. All right. Get the hell out of here. I hate you. I hate you. Keep him. I like him. I hate that guy. I've certainly come close to those words, but I certainly, I haven't tossed police officers out of a crime scene, but you get out of here. I hate you. You smell bad. You get out of here, I hate you. You smell bad. Yeah. Smell. I got-

I've been there. Where do, now going back to the highway killings, where do way stations come in? Are they helpful or is it just, it doesn't matter? I'll tell you a story. So we pick, I told you about picking up our first load, which was gypsum pressed into drywall. Yeah. And the driver I'm with, who's really good, he's talking to me and he goes,

you see how they're loading this with the forklift? I'm concerned that this is too forward on our trailer and it's going to put too much weight on the front axle. So he chats with the guy on the forklift who quite frankly wasn't a rocket scientist. And the guy's like annoyed, like I do it all. I do it all the way. It's fine. And by the way, you're underweight anyway. It's only 45,000 pounds, blah, blah, blah. So off we go. And we stop at a way station We stop at a way station that's about an hour away. And God darn it, if we aren't overweight, particularly on the front axles. And we try all the tricks in the book. I described this in the book.

I mean, there's things you can do. You can fill up with gas and hope that you're weighing down the back of the truck more. Well, nothing worked. So we had to bring it back. But I tell you, he called the owner of the company and said, what do you want us to do? This man had integrity. This guy said, you've got to go back, keep that way station ticket in case a trooper pulls you over and tell them you're going back to get it right. But you know how many owners of companies would tell their driver, screw it, just keep going.

And we'd have an unsafe overweight rig on the road. I'm convinced that there's lots of that. Yeah. Lots of that happening. The other thing I've experienced for the first time in my life, I never paid attention to the green light on the road sign

that says the way station is open. Yeah. You know, or not. So what next time if you have if you have the opportunity to watch a big rig as it's passing by a way station sign, because what what happens is they're all nervous about it. God forbid you get you get a citation for being overweight, but you can also easily get inspected because the DOT inspectors hang out at way station so they could pull you over and go, Hey, you know, full inspection. And yeah, you might as well, you know, go to a proctologist if you're getting a full inspection. It's unbelievable. Yeah. So we, we are overweight on our way back to get it fixed and

Sure enough. There's a way station coming up and you can hear the drive the driver goes. Oh shit and now I'm going oh shit and This what happens is in a split second. It's pretty cool. There's a Transponder on the truck that's read by a receiver on this way station sign They immediately know the your truck's history your company's history And that makes a split second decision as to whether you're going to go in the way station or not How do you know you get a green light inside your truck? That's it You're good to go or the dreaded red light

I'd say you're good to go or the dreaded red light that says you are pulling into the way station. And thank God we got a green light that day and we kept going. God. Wow. What's the most recent guy we got? Like is like of this iteration of killer. Like what's the, who's the last guy we got

that accounts for some of these? Yeah, as I was writing this book over the course of the last two years, I set a Google alert for myself for any notice of a trucker. You put keywords into Google alert. Oh yeah. You know, trucker, killer. Yeah, mine's Henry Zabrowski sex appeal. And I just look to see what pops up.

Wow. Does anything ever pop up there? A lot of guys from prison. Yeah. They love me. Hopefully not the 25 truckers that are in prison right now. I'm anti trucker now. So the alert goes off.

The alert goes off a couple of times while I'm writing the book and I have to stop what I'm doing. Right. Yeah. This is like, of course, yes, I got to put this in the book if it's happening. I got to be up to date. Right. So 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20,. Yeah. You know, this is like, of course. Yeah. It's like, I got to put this in the book if it's happening. I great. Got to be up to date. Right. So 20, uh, 2022, 2023, absolutely. Um, we've had more killings, but also, uh, some pretty cool developments in old cases happened through genealogy and DNA while I was writing the book that solved old cases. And then while I'm writing, there's two, you mentioned the possibility of people working together.

Yeah. Like, okay, so there's two guys that the FBI finds, they've been hunting for them. This is in the book. They're out of Memphis, Tennessee. And by the way, Tennessee, whoo, loaded with killings, long haul killings that are mentioned in my book, it's interstate 40 across the country from the Carolinas through Tennessee. And you know, you Kentucky, just because of the mountains, it's like easy to hide. It's hard. You've got some you've got some really remote areas, you know, there's bodies that we found in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, all the way to California, Oklahoma, I-40 is a problem.

And so anyway, these two guys were kidnapping young girls, holding them in the truck and trying to pimp them out. And some for fear for their life, some were pimped out, but many fought, struggled. Said no way, no how, you can beat me, you can kill me. And when that happened, these two knuckleheads would call the girl's father or family and demand ransom for their return. And the FBI finally caught up with these two guys. And I'm sure the investigation continues to see if they're good for any murders.

Oh yeah. Wow. God, what a, what a harrowing story. I, I got one last question. Yes, please. Yes. How safe is it for me to just crash sleep at a rest area in my car for like four hours? This is just because he has issues with his wife. He's just looking for a way to safely sleep outside of his home. I got you. The proverbial dog house on the hill. Yes, but it is a long distance dog house.

It's called rest area. Right, you're resting. So look, I don't recommend it. I really don't. And it's pretty, you're probably better off in that red roof or Motel 6. And here's why. It's not just truckers that are out there resting on these rest stops, but it's some pretty bad folks that are up. And as cops say, nothing good happens at 2 a.m. in the morning. And the only people out there are cops and robbers. And so I don't recommend it.

I do give some advice to those who, particularly women traveling long distances on the highway, particularly at night. I know there's a lot of concern out there and some of the just simple observations. If your gut, do not pull over and sleep for the night at a rest area. But if your guts telling you that somebody's following you, this truck has been with me for way too long. It stops when I stop, it starts when I start again. The guy's looking at me when he passes and then he falls behind me. Trust your gut, know where you are.

That's something you can train yourself to do. I'm on mile marker 112 on I-75 North, right? Yeah. Call 911 and tell them where you are and the description of that truck or car because your gut's probably right. The other thing is don't run out of gas. Always be vigilant about where your fuel tank is and do not, unless you absolutely have to, do not pull in to a truck stop to gas up, but rather pull into a regular rest stop

I think you'll be safer and even when you get out of the car to pump your gas Take that key fob with you put it in your pocket because worst-case scenario somebody jumps in your car to carjacket They're not gonna have that fob and they might get in but it's to take them a while to get the car unlocked. Yeah, situational awareness is essential. That's kind of what I was told once, was the idea is that your observation and your presence, like you being present in the moment and knowing your environment probably saves you more than anything else. Oh, yeah. And you got to trust it. Don't don't say no.

Don't don't think I'm going to make a fool of myself if I call 911 or tell somebody. You know, the simple act of finding a place to lay your head at night as a trucker was astounding to me about how difficult that is, because if you know the driver I was with, he wanted to go, go, go, go, go, because because time is money. And he would wait till the very last minute. You know, it was getting dark Not a lot of truckers like to drive in the dark some do And he starts looking for a place to lay our head at a at a truck stop And once if you haven't found a spot by 8 pm at night, you're screwed

Because there's not enough spots at truck stops and they need more. So this is why you say you can see that there are trucks parked on exit and entrance ramps. There are trucks parked on the driveway of a rest stop. This is why they they you know, you said, well, it's a rest stop. That's how they feel. It's a god darn rest stop. And so, you know, I'm not going to endanger people, but the nice spot where you can go in and shower and get a meal. Good luck with that after 8 p.m. And we did sleep in some pretty scary places, including an inner city location of a major

city where I was more concerned about getting robbed that night than than anything else Well to the good truckers out there. It's your job to police you got to go out there You got to police your own all right because it's out that you got to go and because don't be afraid to snitch All right, because I know it's hard. It's hard to snitch, right? No one likes it. No one likes it. No one likes it. But for murder, it's okay. I just want to tell our truck drivers for murder, it's all right.

All right. Real quick, real quick. There's an organic private organization called truckers against trafficking. Tap. They train, they train long haul truckers every year to be the eyes and ears of the anti trafficking movement. They train long haul truckers every year to be the eyes and ears of the anti-trafficking movement and every year long haul truckers rescue people from trafficking and they get awards as hero truckers every year.

Yeah, and there's nothing that a trucker hates more than traffic. Yeah. And I think it's important that they took care of it. Thank you so much for being here. This is great. I'm fascinated. I can't wait to read the book. Long haul hunting the highway serial killers. This is former assistant director of the FBI, Frank

Figliuzzi. Thank you so much. It's great to meet you, Frank. Thank you for everything. Stay safe out there. I'm going to do my best. You stay safe. Yeah. Thank you. I will. Take care. Bye. Thank you.