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A newly released exposé by former FBI deputy director Frank Figliuzzi, claims that there are currently 850 serial killings attributed to truckers and that thus far, 200 of them remain unsolved.
Knewz.com has learned that these statistics were garnered over two decades and pertained to sex-trafficked women and children.
Leading up to the publishing of his book, LONG HAUL: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers, Figliuzzi traveled 2,000 miles with the driver of a flatbed truck in a bid to get a behind-the-curtain glimpse of the trucker culture.
According to a press release shared with Knewz.com, one of his primary observations was the level of skill needed to control these large heavy vehicles. He also noted that while there were many hardworking honest truckers in the industry, there was rampant substance abuse among working drivers.
He touched on the deaths connected to bad elements in the overland freight industry and mentioned the FBI’s attempt to curb them with its Highway Serial Killings Initiative (HSKI).
The HSKI is a database and resource for law-enforcement officers helping them understand the behavioral patterns of serial killers and by extension, preempt murders.
One particular pattern recorded by the data was in 2004 when an analyst noticed that 40 women’s bodies were dumped along Interstate 40 where it passed through Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
The analyst and a policeman from Texas who picked up on the trend forwarded the information to the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) where other analysts cross-referenced records and found matches with other highway deaths.
Another pattern noted by the HSKI is that the women who fell victim to these criminal tendencies often lived “high-risk, transient lifestyles” with drugs and prostitution involved.
The HSKI notes that these women were normally “picked up at truck stops or service stations and sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped along a highway.”
Despite the insights and information assimilated by the initiative, deaths connected to long-haul truck drivers continue to rise.
The exposé pointed out that serial killings stemming out of the industry could be divided into three “cultures”–namely: “Trucking, trafficking, and criminal analysis” which according to Figliuzzi, “collide on the autopsy table,” per the University of Arizona.
LONG HAUL refers to criminals like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who built a torture chamber in the back of his truck and is believed to have taken as many as 50 lives.
Another serial killer referenced by Figliuzzi is the “Interstate Strangler.” This miscreant killed twelve women and is said to have answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his victims, per Harper Collins.
Another series of deaths stemming from the trucking industry was the “Redhead Murders”–so named because each victim's hair had a reddish tinge to it.
The women were murdered and dumped along the side of Interstate 40 between Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
Figliuzzi’s book is one among many to allege a secret society among truckers, who see the world and people who are not in the industry, differently.