Most serial killers have very defined geographic areas of operation. They conduct their killings within comfort zones that are often defined by an anchor point (e.g. place of residence, employment, or residence of a relative). Serial murderers will, at times, spiral their activities outside of their comfort zone, when their confidence has grown through experience or to avoid detection. Very few serial murderers travel interstate to kill.
The few serial killers who do travel interstate to kill fall into a few categories:

• Itinerant individuals who move from place to place.
• Homeless individuals who are transients.
• Individuals whose employment lends itself to interstate or transnational travel, such as truck drivers or those in military service.

The difference between these types of offenders and other serial murderers is the nature of their traveling lifestyle, which provides them with many zones of comfort in which to operate. (Notice that they say ‘the few serial killers who do travel interstate’.)

Most of the victims noted in the 500 female body count found at truck stops, motels and highways were prostitutes as are a vast number of other victims, along with hitch hikers, of serial killers. The Green River Killer targeted prostitutes as did Jack the Ripper et al. Prostitutes due to the nature of their work are easy targets for serial killers, but not only truckers avail themselves of a prostitute’s service even at truck stops. As we have all seen while parked in the truck stops where prostitutes work, they will go with anyone in any type of vehicle and some will work out of any motel or hotel near the truck stop. Many hitchhike from place to place, at times using a driver’s radio to find rides, or wait outside of a truck stop asking for rides…from anyone.

Looking at the disposal of murder victims logically, dumping bodies in dark places makes sense; why would anyone dump a body where it would be easily found or one could be seen doing it. Because of many victims being killed in a murderer’s home or vehicle, it would follow that disposing of the body would involve a vehicle. Vehicles parked on shoulders of any highway or road are not uncommon and usually go un-remarked. Many murder victims are found in culverts, dumpsters, in ditches along all sorts of highways, interstates and country roads. Some, such as the torso found just west of St Louis MO at the 198 mile marker a couple of years ago are put in the woods and underbrush of rest areas. Though initially, a trucker was thought to have killed the woman, it was later determined that a van was seen parked near where the body was found thus, they decided that it was not a trucker after all. Furthermore, many murder victims are found in waterways, because the killer wants to have the water wash away trace evidence, and in out of the way wooded areas; would it follow that hunters and people who fish are therefore possible serial killers?

Serial killers come from all walks of life. We have heard of the BTK killer from Kansas that was the president of his church congregation and a minor government official. Christine Laverne Falling was a baby sitter who killed 6 children over several years while in her care. Robert Yates killed 17 prostitutes in the 1990s in the Spokane, Washington area. He was a decorated U.S. Army National Guard helicopter pilot. Dr. Michael Swango, a former U.S. Marine, ambulance worker, and physician, was a health care employee. He was convicted of only four murders in New York and Ohio, although he is suspected of having poisoned and killed 35 to 50 people throughout the United States and on the continent of Africa. Do we see a national database being set up for the serial killers in the medical field or any of the others, no, of course not.

The FBI states that they have targeted approximately 200 truckers as potential serial killers going back 30 years. Given that there are roughly 3.5 million truck drivers of various sorts, it would mean that there is approximately a .000057% chance that the driver next to you is a serial killer. From the statistics, one stands a better chance of being the victim of a serial killer located in one’s hometown than in a truck stop.

Truckers are once again unjustly singled out as evil people even though statistics show that there are only a very few who might be serial killers. One fact, that of victims being found along highways or places truckers frequent, added to the very few actual serial killer truckers that have been caught, has led to this newest attack. It makes me wonder what will be the next attack and where it will come from just because we truckers choose to be in service to the public’s needs and wants.

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