A hitchhiker who narrowly escaped serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades has recounted her terrifying encounter with him, highlighting one particularly chilling action he made when they were face to face.
Rhoades, a truck driver, committed his crimes on the road, transforming his vehicle into a mobile torture chamber. He is suspected of murdering up to 50 women between 1975 and 1990.
He earned the moniker ‘Truck Stop Killer’, as his victims were often hitchhikers, sex workers, or young women alone at truck stops.
In the summer of 1985, author Vanessa Veselka had a terrifying encounter with Rhoades while hitchhiking as a teenager in the US.
Writing for GQ, Veselka, now 56, described being at a truck stop with another individual when the body of a young teenage hitchhiker was discovered in a dumpster at the same location.
Days later, Veselka was picked up by Rhoades. She remembered, “Several days later, though, heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, I got picked up by another trucker who was not fine.”
“I don’t remember much about him except that he was taller and leaner than most truckers and didn’t wear jeans or T-shirts. He wore a cotton button-down with the sleeves rolled neatly up over his biceps and had the cleanest cab I ever saw.”
Before she managed to escape, Veselka recalled a chilling change in Rhoades as he ‘stopped responding to my questions’.
“He grew taller in his seat, and his face muscles relaxed into something both arrogant and blank,” she described.
The situation became even more menacing when Rhoades mentioned the dead girl and shortly after, pulled over and revealed a hunting knife.
Incredibly, Veselka was able to escape from Rhoades, even though it seemed she was only moments from death.
“[He] told me to get into the back of the cab. I began talking, saying the same things over and over. I said I knew he didn’t want to do it. I said it was his choice. I said he could do it in a few minutes,” she recounted.
“I said I wouldn’t go to the cops if nothing happened to me, but it was his choice—until he looked at me and I went still.”
In a terrifying moment, Veselka recalled the killer uttering a single word: ‘Run’, prompting her to dash into the woods and wait until Rhoades’ truck left.
In April 1990, Rhoades was apprehended by police in Arizona and charged with aggravated assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment.
He was convicted of murdering 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.