HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hello, Last Podcast on the Left listeners. God, you're lucky to be here. My name is Henry Zebrowski. I'm sitting here with Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
How you doing, buddy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm doing great because we have a very important person here today. I'm nervous.
ED LARSON
No, it's definitely... When I woke up this morning I was like oh yeah, that's right. This is gonna be intense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is gonna be intense. But this is a good guy. I heard tell 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.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah, my pleasure. 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have covered, like there's Bonin, there's a couple other guys that have been labeled as trucker killers. Like why is it its own genre? What is it about it that makes it its own thing?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah, that became kind of apparent to me as I dug into this, even going out and 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 Terri Turner, who in my eyes is a hero, starts 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 8 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so fascinating to me because I thought of this as a phenomenon that largely lived in the 60s and the 70s when things were kind of uncharted. How would do these crimes continue on now that we have so much more surveillance inside of the trucks? Aren't they all like monitored now? Don't they have cameras in the inside and their stops are measured?
ED LARSON
Not just that, the rest areas are more monitored now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And the travel centers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So what, is it just the idea that if you want to do it, you can do it no matter what?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Pretty much. So you're right about the history. Remember the old CB radio days and 10-4, good buddy.
ED LARSON
Cowboy! Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah. I mean there were hit songs in popular culture about the highway and 18 wheeler and a song by Alabama, the country group, and Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason. All of them-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Became 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 to advertise their services. And there was a whole coded language that I've got in the book. So how do we get from that to today? And why is killing still continuing? So I got on my investigator hat and my hard hat and I hit the road. I did 2000 miles-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeez.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
In a big rig with a long haul driver. I rode flatbed across the country and that's a story in itself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
But I wanted to get into that subculture as well as two other subcultures, trafficking victims and crime analysts. So if you're into that kind of studying a subculture, what's it like on the road? What's it like to be a crime analyst 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 were all familiar with, JB 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-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeez.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Or 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?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It can't be. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Right. It has to be someone who owns their own rig.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 federal mandatory downtime of 36 hours every week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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 Corll, like they were connected to some networks together using child pornography, stuff like that. Is this kind of like... Do you think that in this world, like they communicate? That literally you're looking at a community of murderers in many ways? That they operate as a group or like a gang almost?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
It's rare and there's been not enough exploration of that concept. I like the thread though but the evidence 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?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh what is it? Can I ask what that answer is? Like what would you say? What's the breakdown of the trucker mentalities?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I love truckers. I still do the beep the horn at truckers. Does that mean I... Should I stop that?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
No, they like that. But they like that with about a 6 year old kid. So just a little bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Well I just pretend to be a Make-A-Wish man. I wrap like a bandana around so I look like I'm dying. Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah. Hold up a sign, Make-A-Wish. Blow your 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 are 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-
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeez.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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. So 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, with your pickup site and hey, I need this put here, 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 spectrum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a lot of human interaction is kind of what you're saying.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of people seeing you, talking to you, dealing with you.
ED LARSON
Not just that, you gotta be strong to do that stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that helps them be a serial killer but we'll get there.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
You gotta have physical skills, you gotta have some soft people skills because if they haven't loaded your load right, you're gonna have to talk them into doing it again. A lot of that going on. The other end of the spectrum is the dry vanner. 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 and 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 caste system within trucking that I discovered. So at the top of the pay scale, for example-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There always is. Every world has it.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Right? Yeah. And even in the podcast world, I know you guys are at the very top echelon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There are more. There are higher.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm reminded every day. Don't worry.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I'm shocked. Shocked! I was told I was at the top of the podcast thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For when you're on it, sir.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When you're on it.
ED LARSON
We'll see if we can get SmartLess interested in this.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
So you look at... The guy I rode with is making six figures, good money. He's a top, he's one of the top drivers in his medium size company. If you want even higher pay scale, your hazmat and those tankers filled with god knows what.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they better be paying those guys.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yep. Heavy, heavy load and wide load, the ones that drive you crazy if you're behind them on the highway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
That literally has a pole on it because if it hits the underpass, the truck should stop because the truck's not gonna make it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So 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 him a percent?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
No. That's a good question but no. It tends to be individual pay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah. Then there's the low boys. You remember the low boys, the trailer rides about six inches off the ground-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Because the load is so incredibly tall. That's kind of, they call that the badass of the trucking industry, the guys like that. It's like a lowrider in LA or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 trucks are refrigerated trucks. And believe it or not, those drivers are highly engaged with their load because they're monitoring humidity and temperature and climate back there. And if the monitors are bad, like hey, my grapes are wilting, no pun intended-
ED LARSON
Yeah. They gotta know how to use HVAC and all that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. My grapes are wilting. I got nobody to be called. I have no one to call.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
There you go. So it's a whole culture. I get into those subcultures and theorize how we get those 450 suspects whittled down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fascinating.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I do this thing for the subculture of trafficking victims. Who amongst the traffic 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is just, I mean it's horrifying.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they do just kind of wander out. Because we were we were just doing a bunch of research on the toy box killer that had his own sort of... Like he had his own torture thing that he built out of a rig, like a trailer/thing that he used on his own. Which seems terrible. Because you'd think a refrigerator truck would be a great way to hide a body.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
The chiller killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Like that's happened several times. Right? Has that not happened several times? Wasn't that with the... Well we don't know if the Iceman was real.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 established in their rig a torture chamber. And one of the worst, I opened my book with this, is Robert Ben Rhoades. Perhaps the killer of all serial killer truckers. He's good for probably 50 murders, almost all of the women.
ED LARSON
I can't believe his last name is Rhoades.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah, with an H. He is finally caught by accident when an 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 Rhoades and his killing spree over years. And one of the most heinous photographs I've ever seen and I have seen some horrible crime scenes in my life. But Robert Ben Rhoades... That woman by the way was going to be his next murder victim undoubtedly.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 Rhoades. 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 pubic hair had been shaved just prior to death. That was a signature of Robert Ben Rhoades that linked him across a number of killings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeez. 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 vs what are like one offs here and there? And do people use it? Like do killers know? Like 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? Are they aware of it or how do you guys pull that together, like decide who's a serial killer and who's not?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 crime analysts 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 if they're indeed sexually assaulting their victim, there's going to be forensics and DNA that tells us that this is a different killer. But the bottom line is serial killers tend to go with what they know. They are 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 a 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 gonna 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 did 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 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because now we have the 23andMe kind of revolution towards... How do you feel about that? Like obviously as cops 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? I also feel fine if it's catching a serial killer, like fuck them.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't give a fuck. But I don't know, 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.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
There you go. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But 23andMe really did stuff like this, did that really blow a lot of this open?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
So it's interesting, the biggest names in that industry, Ancestry.com, 23andMe, don't fully cooperated with law enforcement unless they are ordered to via subpoena or search warrant. Okay? So they're not an open book. And so if you're concerned about your own privacy... And by the way the big companies have been hacked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
There 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got it.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
And so someone 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 Solves and GEDMatch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
ED LARSON
Now because it takes place on the highway and it's a very transient problem, the FBI kind of has to take this, right? Or is it like state troopers a little bit but once you go to the next state-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, how do you deal with the... I feel like that always seems to be, when we read about true crime cases, one of the worst parts sometimes is, not to be too gotcha here or whatever, but there's a bad communication sometimes between various departments in order to figure out like... Because some people are like no, this is my case. Like this is Snarlingon County, the sheriff handles things here.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Snarlington County.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah, we gotta take a good look at Snarlington.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly it seems like it. Yeah, something with that name needs to be looked at twice.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
So here's the deal. 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 and 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 BAU 4, Behavioral Analysis Unit 4 that does all this for you. And very seldom would a police department go nah, no, thanks, we don't want to solve our cold case. We really don't want the FBI here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
The problem with those independent police departments is they'll never find that connection between Alabama and California. It's just not gonna happen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
They don't have detectives let alone a criminal analyst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very... Wow, that's great. I mean that's great. 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?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I say say guy, it's mostly guy but sometimes lady.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 profiler 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?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
But it's a 40-60 year old male, it's a white man. 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 bomber had killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney.
ED LARSON
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
And with mail bombs, it was a mail bomb. And he kept sending mail bombs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gotta be so hard to even... How do you even get away with that at all? Like how do you get away with... Yeah, you just do it. You just do it.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
It's astounding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 psycholinguistics folks that this is a white male, older, like 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 mail bombers largely being white males, kind of older.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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. While we were working that case, I've got a top profiler and this is a guy 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, 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 mutilated. I go yes, sir? And he says can you get me that police department on the phone? And I said I can, why? It's a guy killing cats.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 un unsolved rapes. And he goes yeah, it's this guy on page seven of the newspaper.
ED LARSON
Wow.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
And he was right! He was right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeez.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, oh my god. Hopefully he doesn't have a daughter and he's got the new boyfriend coming in. Gonna deal with Robert De Niro.
ED LARSON
Wow. That's a good plug for buying newspapers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is. It really is. But have you ever got to do the fun like this is the FBI's scene now. Hey, everybody back off, this is the FBI's scene.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is now my investigation, get out of here. Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get the hell outta here. I hate you, I hate you. Keep him, I like him. I hate that guy.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I've certainly come close to those words but I haven't tossed police officers out of a crime scene.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You get outta here, I hate you. You smell bad.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I've been there.
ED LARSON
Now going back to the highway killings. Where do weigh stations come in? Are they helpful or is it just it doesn't matter?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I'll tell you a story. So I told you about picking up our first load which was Gypsum pressed into drywall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 gonna 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 the way, so 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 stopped at a weigh 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 describe 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 weigh station ticket in case a trooper pulls you over and tell him 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?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
And we'd have an unsafe, overweight rig on the road. I'm convinced that there's lots of that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 weigh station is open.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Or not. So next time if you have the opportunity, watch a big rig as it's passing by a weigh station sign. Because what what happens is they're all nervous about it. God forbid you get a citation for being overweight. But you can also easily get inspected because the DOT inspectors hang out at weigh stations so they could pull you over.
ED LARSON
Forever.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
No, no, full inspection and yeah, you might as well go to a proctologist if you're getting a full inspection, it's unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
So we are overweight, on our way back to get it fixed and sure enough there's a weigh station coming up and you could hear the driver, the driver goes oh shit. And now I'm going oh shit. And 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 weigh station sign. They immediately know your truck's history, your company's history, and they that makes a split second decision as to whether you're gonna go in the weigh station or not. How do you know? You get a green light inside your truck.
ED LARSON
Oh!
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
That says you're good to go. Or the dreaded red light that says you are pulling into the weigh station. And thank god we got a green light that day and we kept going.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's the most recent guy we got? Like of this iteration of killer. Who's the last guy we got that accounts for some of these?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Trucker, killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Mine's Henry Zebrowski sex appeal. And I just look to see what pops up.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Oh. Does anything ever pop up there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of guys from prison. They love me. Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Hopefully not the 25 truckers that are in prison right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm anti trucker now.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
So the alert goes off a couple of times while I'm writing the book and I have to stop what I'm doing, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Of course, yeah. It's like I gotta put this in the book if it's happening. Great.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I gotta be up to date, right? So 2022-2023, absolutely we've had more killings. But also 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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, whew, loaded with killings, long haul killings that are mentioned in my book. It's Interstate 40 across the country from the Carolinas through Tennessee, Kentucky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it just because of the mountains? It's easy to hide?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
You've got some really remote areas, there's bodies that we found in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, all the way to California.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
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 and struggled said no way, no how. You can beat me, you can kill me. And then 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God. What a harrowing story.
ED LARSON
I got one last question if that's all right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, please. Yes.
ED LARSON
How safe is it for me to just crash, sleep at a rest area in my car for like four hours?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is just because if he has issues with his wife. He's just looking for a way to safely sleep outside of his home.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
I got you. The proverbial doghouse on wheels.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, it is a long distance doghouse.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's called rest area.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
That's right, you're resting. So look, I don't recommend it. I really don't. And 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 am in the morning. And the only people out there are 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... So do not pull over and sleep for the night at a rest area. But if your gut is telling you that somebody is 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 is 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?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Call 911 and tell them where you are and the description of that truck or car because your gut is probably right. The other thing is don't run out of gas, always be vigilant about where your fuel tank is and 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 even when you get out of the car to pump your gas, take that key fob with you, put it in your pocket. Because the worst case scenario, somebody jumps in your car to carjack it, they're not gonna have that fob and they might get in but it's gonna take them a while to get the car unlocked. Yeah. Situational awareness is essential.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
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.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Oh yeah. And you got to trust it. Don't say no, don't think I'm gonna make a fool of myself if I call 911 or tell somebody. 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 the driver I was with, he wanted to go, go, go, go, go because time is money. And he would wait til the very last minute, 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 truck stop. And 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 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. You said well it's a rest stop, that's how they feel.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
It's a god darn rest stop.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
And so 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 pm. 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 anything else.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well to the good truckers out there, it's your job to police. You gotta go out there, you gotta police your own. All right? Because it's out there. 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.
ED LARSON
No one likes it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one likes it.
ED LARSON
But the FBI likes it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But for murder it's okay. I just want to tell our truck drivers for murder it's all right. All right?
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Real quick, there's a private organization called Truckers Against Trafficking, TAT. 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.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And there's nothing that a trucker hates more than traffic.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think it's important that they took care of it. Thank you so much for being here. I'm fascinated. I can't read 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.
ED LARSON
It's great to meet you, Frank. Thank you for everything.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Stay safe out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna do my best.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You stay safe!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI
Thank you, I will. Take care. Bye.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you!