Overview
- Vanessa Veselka recounts that a trucker pulled off near woods, produced a hunting knife, then told her to “run,” allowing her to flee and hide.
- She says she stayed silent for years and only recognized Rhoades in 2012 after seeing media coverage and photos of him as a younger man.
- Reports describe Rhoades’ semi as a mobile torture chamber with ceiling-mounted handcuffs, and say he targeted hitchhikers, sex workers, and young women at truck stops.
- Rhoades was arrested on April 1, 1990, in Arizona after a state trooper found a woman chained in his sleeper cab, leading to assault and unlawful imprisonment charges.
- He was later convicted of murdering 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters and sentenced to life without parole, with reporting attributing to him as many as 50 killings and linking him to Patricia Candace Walsh and Douglas Scott Zyskowski.