LONG HAUL-Frank Figliuzzi

his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. In many cases, the victims, often at risk women, are picked up at truck stops in one jurisdiction, sexually assaulted and murdered in another and dumped along a highway in a third place. The transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these

cases incredibly difficult to solve. Based on his own on the ground research and drawing on his twenty five year career as an FBI's special agent, Frank Figluozy investigates the most terrifying cases. He also rides in a big rig with a long haul trucker for thousands of miles, gaining an intimate understanding of the life and habits of drivers and their roadside culture. And he interviews the courageous traffic victims of these crimes and their inspiring efforts to now

help others avoid similar fates. Long Haul is a gripping exploration of a violent, disordered world hiding in plain sight and the heroes racing to end the horror. It will forever unsettle how you travel on the road. The book that we're featuring this evening is long Haul, Hunting the Highway serial Killers with my special guest, former FBI Assistant director and National Security contributor for him News and author Frank Figluzy. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much.

For this interview, Frank big Luesy.

And that's when he hears the screams of a young woman who is shackled in the back of the cab and naked except for a pair of fuzzy lion bedroom slippers and he realizes, you know, I've got a problem here, and that driver was Robert Ben Rhodes, who we later find out was a notorious killer who may have killed as many as fifty people, mostly women. This begins a massive investigation. Amongst Robert Ben Rhodes's victims was a fourteen year old girl whose body is found only later, much later,

in an abandoned Illinois farmhouse. This fourteen year old was hitchhiking boyfriend outside of Houston, Texas. He you know, the boyfriend and her were picked up by Rhodes. The boyfriend was quickly killed because he was a mere speed bump in the way, and then for the next weeks, Rhodes proceeds to rape and torture Regina Walters at his discretionion.

The cruelty of Rhodes is really mind blowing. At one point, he calls he actually anonymously calls Regina's father, who of course is distraught over where Regina may or may not be yes and he says, I've made some changes. I've cut her hair, and he hangs up. I tell the story of Regina in the book, because number one, it's ghastly. But the photos that Rhodes took up her just before

he killed her. Are seared into my brain because if you see the photos of Regina Walters, you're looking at a girl who's been tortured and raped, knows she may be killed and has been. Her hair's been cut into a short bob, she's been forced into a black dress and high heels, and the look on her face and the body language is someone who is really pleading to not be raped again. Her arms are outstretched, the look on her face is ghastly, and it's something that really sticks with you.

Initiative And I said what. She said, Yeah, we have an initiative involving at least eight hundred and fifty murders that we know of alongside our nation's roadways that we believe are committed by long haul truckers. And I said, okay, you got to tell me more, and she did. I had to learn more myself. That's the investigator in me. I had to dig deeply. The FBI can't talk about pending investigations, and so I knew that and I respected that, but now I had to know more. And this is

my journey. This book is really the story of my journey into three cultures. Long haul trucking, for which, by the way, I rode over two thousand miles with a long haul trucker on a flatbed across the country to try to get deep into the long haul trucking culture and understand it. Then second culture I dig into is trafficking, sex trafficking, because the vast majority of these victims eight hundred and fifty of them are indeed sex trafficking victims.

And then thirdly, of course, the crime analysis, the behavioral analysis of these crimes, and the people who work to connect the dots to stop the killer. So it's a book about three cultures focused around the most heinous killers, the most compelling victims. Really a deep dive into trafficking and crime analysis.

highway killings. And she starts connecting the dots. And yes, there are fils and ow algorithms, but quite honestly, also it is brain power. It is their knowledge and expertise that says this one looks like that one. And I get deep in the book into commonalities victims, something called victimology, of course, which is the study of how a victim comes to be the victim, what the crime scene looks like.

Are they redheads? And I get deep into the well known series of murders called the Redhead murders along our nation's highways, committed by truckers. Are they shot? Are they strangled? Are they duct taped? If so rare? Are they found in a ditch, under a tree or in water? Is their own clothing used to strangle them or to gag them? Are they raped before they die or post mortem? All of this is discussed in the book because those are the details that matter, Those are the details that connect

one case to another. And then of course, even when you've connected cases because of those commonalities, well that's nice, but you then have to solve the case by finding the killer. And this initiative is based on the premise that law enforcement agencies will enter their data and allow

the FBI to make those connections. That's the key, and part of Catherine De Bane's job is getting out there on the road preaching the gospel of the HSK two police departments who often say, look, we were a small department, we're a sheriff's office. We don't have an analyst to

enter the data. You know, there's like two two hundred questions on these FBI forms that you've got to fill out about your victim, your crime scene, your location, your murder, and if you don't answer those questions that the FBI is really challenged. In fact, sometimes this unit at Quantico, Virginia will simply pick up a lead from reading the newspaper. They'll say, look, look at this. This happened in our Alabama and doesn't this look like the thing that happened

the murder that happened in Oklahoma. It's those kinds of connections that get made.

Sometimes they don't have detectives. If you've got to stay you know, a county sheriff's office, for example, whose job is road patrol, and they're stuck with this case. Somebody's got to do this, And in some cases, the IFI will help get a grant from DOJ to get that analytical resource. Sometimes, if you've got a serious of cases, they'll they'll fly out to you and say, look, we'll enter the data for you, but this is garbage and garbage out. We can't help you if we don't know about your case.

even know the name of a victim. DNA, by the way, no surprise, is now solving many of these cold cases where a detective says, well, I'll let me enter the DNA and see what happens, and bingo, now we get a connection to a killer or to DNA found on

another victim years ago. And that, by the way, that happened a couple of times while I was writing this book, I had to you know, I thought I had a comprehensive understanding of all the cases, and then I had set alerts on my on Google Alerts to alert me if another development occurred in any case involving truckers and killers and bingo. You know, I had a couple happened while I was writing the book and I had to insert them. So the story of the story of yeah,

so it's very much still happening. This is not a history book. It is, but it's also still very much at real time. So Mendenhall interesting story. And there's something really kind of spooky that happens to me personally I'll share with you. But he grabs a girl named Sarah Nicole Hulibert at a truck stop, and yes, she is a trafficking victim related to that. That truck stop, it's it's one of the rare truck stops that is in

a downtown area of a city. You don't usually see that, but the highway dumps you off quickly into Nashville, and this truck stop was there, and he grabs her. There. Now, a really sharp detective named Pat pestil Pastilione, Nashville, PD is work and gets assigned to that case, and he's, you know, occasionally he's surveilling that truck stop afterwards, just to get familiar with it. And sure enough he sees

this truck. It seems suspicious to him, him the way the driver's acting, and he decides he's going to walk up and talk to the driver. And he says something to Mendenhall, like are you the guy we're looking for? And Mendenhall shrugs his shoulders and says, if you say so. And in that truck Pasciglione finds basically a mobile crime scene. He's got blood from five different victims in there, He's got sex toys and knives and guns and pornography. It's

then that POSTIONI knows, of course, that he's got his man. Now, ironically, as I'm on the road researching this book, I happen to find myself riding through Nashville past Nashville, and I've spent a week with this particular driver who was gracious enough to have me sleep in his cabin, ride along with him for thousands of miles, and I go, look, you know, it is time for me to go home. We've got to find an airport that I can you know, I can get I can get to and get home.

And we realized the next big city coming up with an airport is Nashville. And I am, you know, as many people who spend time in a long time in a truck, I'm in need of a shower. And so he goes, look, we'll pull off at this in Nashville. We'll stop at this truck stop and you can take a shower at the truck stop and get and then

take an uber to the airport. And as I'm inside this truck stop and I'm showering, I start thinking about where I am, and I realize I am at the very same truck stop where Mendenhall killed Sarah Hulbert and where Mendenhall was arrested as well. That you know, there were coincidences throughout my trip, but this one really struck me.

I also asked the question which victims, which kinds of sex trafficked women and girls are more likely to be killed. This is the kind of thing that I'm trained to do as an FBI agent, and I wanted to kind of help my colleagues in law enforcement to focus more squarely. So, for example, when I asked the head of this FBI initiative, so, look, you've got about eight hundred and fifty killings that you

know of over the years. You're telling me that twenty five long haul truckers are already in prison for multiple merders. And yet you're telling me there's also about two hundred cases that are considered unsolved and active. How many suspects do you have right now that you're actively working in these unsolved cases? The answer staggered me. It was four hundred and fifty suspects right.

What does that mean? It means you've got to have some knowledge of math and physics, weight distribution, strapping and chaining and tarping your load, meeting mandatory DOT requirements for points of securement based on the size and weight of your load. You've got to determine whether you can even get gas today because your load's too heavy or not. You're physically engaged with the load because you are the

one that is doing the chains and straps. You know what, One day we picked up and carried a what's called a suicide coil, which is an incredibly heavy roll of steel and that has to be chained and strapped and secured properly. And why is it called a suicide coil because if you do it wrong and it's not secured, it could roll right through the back of your cab. So you don't want that happening, so I go through.

You know, those people are paid well. But even more higher pay is for truckers who do the heavy loads that you see on the highway, you know with the follow car and the lead car hey load, heavy load. Or there's also something called low boys. Low boys are inches off the ground because their cargo, their load is extremely tall and requires the lower profile truck so it can fit under bridges and such. You've got hasmat people

who carry has mat. They're well paid. You've got reefer drivers that refers to refrigerated trucks where our nation's produce is transported. And then you have what's called the dry banners, the guys and gals who are carrying you know, dry goods, a load of Kleenex from California to North Carolina. That's the simplest form of driving. I'm not saying it's easy, but their physical engagement with the load consists of opening the back door when they drop off their load. So

I get into the psychology of that. Who does what and who's more likely to be the killer. I also talk about corporate drivers, you know, big names we all are familiar with. We see it on the side of the trailers, right JB. Hunt, Warner, et cetera. And the high tech monitoring that goes on in those companies making it a little less likely that that driver has the time to kill and the opportunity to kill. I talk about own owner operators who have a little more free

license and less monitoring. I do the same thing for the victim side and talk about the different kinds of sex trade and pimp controlled girls. And I say girls by the way, because some of them are literally not not women yet they're they're miners. Most start as miners in the trafficking world. And I get into you know, whether a pimp controlled girl or renegade or an outlaws these are different terminolog's a different terminology that describes trafficking

victims who's more likely to die. And some of the theories in the book I hope may help law enforcement.

to the point of sexual satisfaction. Often those people take their time killing. They like that feeling of prolonged power and control, and they they often will rape their victims, perhaps multiple times, as as Robert ben Rhodes did. And then there's the second kind of killer who dispatches with his victims very quickly because he's about killing. He just wants to kill, and it's not so much about sex.

Now he may again become aroused with the killing and thinking about it afterwards and take a souvenir, but he's going to kill very quickly. He's about the killing, often not interested in sex at all.

truckers would talk incessantly to other truckers. They talk about their kids and their family, where the good food was, and where the cheapest gas was, and hey, look out ahead because there's a traffic jam, bad weather's coming. All of that happened on the CB radio. But you know what else happened on the CB radio advertising for sex. And there's a whole language of that that I get into in the book and explain the coded language, you know, and truckers would say, who would pull into a truck

stop would say to the the would be a sexual partner. Yeah, I'm in the red house in the corner well, that's the red truck in the corner of the of the truck stop, and the advertising would happen there, and the communication would happen there. It's much and so a lot of that.

own there. A bottom is kind of the deputy, the deputy to the pimp, the assistant to the It's a girl, a woman who's been around and who the pimp trusts. She's she's worked her she's worked the business herself, and she's very close watching. That's a pimp controlled situation. And it happened. The whole thing is it happened in the truck and at the truck stop. Okay where I moved? Fast forward to today and much of this has gone online,

no surprise. The advertising usually occurs online even as I was traveling, I was checking out spots on the internet that cater to sex and truckers. You know, ads from women saying I'm trucker friendly, I'll come to you, or you can come to me. And a lot of this has gone to as the as the truck stop industry. Boy, is that a big industry. I get into that in

the book too. Man, we're talking, you know, billion dollar industry here and and by the way, they're buying each other up, so it's connected, you know, you know Ta t you know, the TA Travel America and and all of these loves and the other big ones they're they're kind of consolidating. And trucking companies actually get discounts by joining the club of one of those truck stops, so they gets the drivers get discounted gas, they get discounted

showers or free showers at those truck stops. But today it's gone offline, it's gone online, excuse me, And so it happens at massage parlors near the tr truck stop, or cheap motels near the truck stop, or the woman will show up after an online agreement at the truck stop. And I asked the question in the book, is that more or less dangerous than the physical plying of your

trade at the truck stop itself. You could argue that making that sex and money transaction happen at a truck stop might actually be safer in the sense that a victim can kick and scream and bang on the window of the truck and somebody's probably going to hear it, and a pimp or a bottom is watching nearby and could come to resk come to the rescue, as could other truckers. And maybe this is this is more dangerous now as a woman a victim is exposing herself in

a room alone at a cheap motel. I get into that as well.

part of the red head killings. But there's something between ten and fourteen, you know, that's where we're looking at. And these are historical. They're not happening anymore. Definitely, there's been one suspect that's good for several of them, but not necessarily all of them. So I consider the red head killings to be only partially solid. And again this

gets deep into the victimology. When you've got you know, it's very it's very interesting when you've got the same hair color happening, the same bill, the same age range. But that's what we have with the redhead killings, historically, red or auburn hair, fair skinned complexion. And without a doubt, the suspect and suspects I had a prefer this is a preferential killing. This, this person, this victim meets their their criteria in this case because of hair color. And

they weren't in just in one location. They were absolutely kind of most of them along Eye forty, which runs east to west across southern United States, all the way to California. That's where a lot of this happened Tennessee, Kentucky, particularly for the Redhead killings.

to someone, you know. So, two of the victims I spoke to, who, by the way, survived violent encounters with truckers. They truly are survivors. And these two women in particular, I consider thrivers. They'll tell you I am a i ami. I am no longer a victim. I am a thriver. I am a survivor and a thriver. In fact, both of these women are now associated with organizations that help other women get out of the trafficking trap. But my point on kind of breaking my bias about who falls

victim to this. One of these women was a preacher's kid from the Midwest. The other Hannah you're referring to, and that is a pseudonym for her. The other woman doesn't didn't request a pseudonym. Her name is Nancy Yarborough. She's got a great story. But Hannah came from the Midwest, had a year of college. She's white as blue eyes. This is not you know, this is not someone you think what this would have happened to the family, you know,

went to church. But as I talked to these women, in my mind, I started checking off the commonalities that I was taught by two of the top experts in the country on trafficking, and that those two extras they are they are kind of hands on on the street doing work that gets people out the help they need to get out of the trafficking trap. And so I

was very impressed. But they taught me the commonalities to look for, and sure enough, I, you know, I would talk to these these victims and survivors and in my mind, here we go. I've seen. I'm seeing the trauma at an early age. Often that means unwanted touching or sexual molestation. I'm seeing a tower of trauma, I call it. In their lives. Someone close to them dies, the family member dies, there's divorce, there's there's fighting, there's domestic incidents. Then there's

early drug use is very common to see. Then there's a series of bad boyfriends, and the drug use gets heavier and heavier, and mental health issues and drug abuse are freak found in these cases. And you know the other takeaway here and again the experts support this is again, if you think, well, this can't happen to someone in my family or my neighborhood, it does. It does this.

This kind of myth is out there from the movies and TV that we see a stranger abduction, a young girl is thrown into the back of a van, never to be seen again, trafficked international. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but that's rare. But what is far more common is that someone in their own circle, their own network of friends and relations, eventually grooms and convinces them to be trafficked. And if you were to ask them at that age, hey, are you Are you a trafficking victim?

They would look at you and say, I don't know what you're talking about. My boyfriend has me, you know, in a business where I have sex for money, and okay, but only later do they wait a minute. I was travel and it gets worse from there as the drug addiction and the mental illness and trauma take over. And then there's your judgment simply flies out the window, and you're putting yourself literally in harm's way every day, multiple times a day.

course Terry Turner, Oklahoma crime analysts. So let's talk about some of the initiatives that some of the things you learned from doctor Celia Williamson and also the initiatives by Terry Turner.

between the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University. It's a residential program. I visited there myself. I had to see it for myself, see the young ladies. It's specifically for young women who have young children, and those women are want to come out of trafficking, and they get their own apartment on this campus, this facility and all

the help they need. The support system is there, the education opportunities are there, life awareness, life coaching, all of that's there to help them on their way, including in many cases of free, subsidized, free or subsidized housing. That is the key to getting them away from their pimp or their bad boyfriend relationship. And occasionally, you know, it's a very secure campus lockdown because sometimes those pimps will show up trying to get their girl back. But I

visited there. I was completely impressed. And doctor Stepowiz also is doing some amazing research. I mean, she was the first one that pointed out the trafficking that goes on, particularly of underage victims at major American events like the super Bowl. And she has received grants to study trafficking at the super Bowl, people with money traveling from all over the world to get those really expensive tickets to

watch the super Bowl. These are big players, right for some reason, they decide, you know, it's time also to to pay for sex, often of underage people. And she's done some amazing work in that area with the police. And she's also one of the people like doctor Williamson who says this nonsense about handcuffing trafficking victims and charging them with crimes. This has to stop. And she's really made the police departments in places like Phoenix and in

Las Vegas very much change their practice. It's also happened in Toledo with doctor Williamson in the Sheriff's department in Ohio that say, look, when they come upon a victim, they say, you're not getting arrested today. You are going to be asked what you need to get away from this lifestyle? I say lifestyle. It's a victimisition, is what it is. It's trafficking, but generally it's involuntary servitude. But this is very successful because here comes not just the police,

but the social services people partnering with the police. So if that young woman says, well, what I need is a roof over my head to get out of this situation, or what I need is a certificate so I can go cut hair for a living, or whatever it is they want to do. I need diapers for my baby. You know, how am I supposed to survive if I don't make this income? And they changed the dynamic. And

I'm very impressed by those two heroes. And then you mentioned Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation crime analyst Terry Turner, who retired right after I wrote the book. She is the mother of this HSKI. Why do I say that it was Terry Turner who many decades ago said we've

got a problem. And you know, you can imagine, say, forty years ago, a female crime analyst in Oklahoma who is kind of becoming a pest to her leadership by saying, hey, listen, to me, there are young ladies from Oklahoma missing, and they're turning up dead in other states. And I think that this is being done by truckers. Look at this one, look at that one. And she started in about a year or two, she started piling up victims. She calls

them her girls, quote unquote her girls. Where she eventually had ten victims from Oklahoma who were turning up dead, and she founded her fist on the desk. She demanded the FBI get involved. In fact, she called for a meeting. She sent out a teletype to nationally to homicide detectives and said, look, we're gonna have a meeting here in Oklahoma City. If you've got unsolved highway killings, please come to the meeting. We'll share notes. She thought maybe she'd

get ten or fifteen detectives show up. She had dozens show up and they all had similar cases. And the FBI showed up and went, holy cow, yes, you've met the criteria for serial killings case and we're going to help you. That was the birth of the FBI's Highway Serial Killings Initiative.

What does that mean. It means, well, you have an inordinately high number of long haul truckers passing through. It means that you have a very high percentage of trafficked women to so called service those truckers. And of course, in this book it means and in this business, it means you have an inordinately high percentage of victims coming from your city. And that is what Terry Turner realized what was happening. She connected those dots and said this

points to truckers. Tiger Mountain was a place where truckers. It was, there was a rest stop there. It was a logical place if you're traveling along in Ohio, but it was also really wooded, forested, remote and the victims, the trafficking victims knew that so that they would work that area, that rest up. The truckers knew where they

could go to pay for sex. And without a doubt when somebody accidentally stumbled upon a body at Tiger Mountain that was helping to kick off Terry Turner's interest in this whole thing.

grant money. It's all about you know, it's all about people and governments saying look, we'll help, We'll get you the money to do this study, this research, and she was on the cutting edge of this and the application of actually technology and algorithms and filters to look at you know, it's kind of a nice creative way to do this. She was particularly looking for underage trafficking, trafficking of juveniles, and she has helped police departments through this

grant money. She's gotten to develop the use of technology to identify likely advertisements of minors for sex. So she's focused on keywords and phrases new young, first timer and a photo which may or may not be the actual victim, but a photo of a very young girl and all of this language, you know, points to the trafficking of someone who's underage. And she then did tests of different markets. It happened in a Super Bowl that was played at

the Midlelands in Jersey one year. It's happened in Las Vegas. PD. METROPD has adopted this and used it and it was used to study the marketplace for underage trafficking and really the men who pay for this, and one of the things they did was focus on those so called johns, the men who pay for these services and do something different. First, we don't lolaw enforcement doesn't pay enough attention to holding the Johns accountable.

undercover type work. They'd set out these ads that they knew were typical of underage advertising, and they would if a guy called in or made contact online and said, yeah, you know, I want you at my hotel room tonight, the undercover officer would call and say, well, actually, there are two different ways to do this. Sometimes they were undercover, sometimes they were just at the police department. They would all the guy back and go, you just made contact

with someone who is with law enforcement. And by the way, this ad advertises underage minors and if you understand something, if you do this again, you're going to prison. And this is fake this time, but if you do it for real, you're done. And to my amazement, some of these guys would say oh okay, yeah, sorry about that, and then pick up the phone and they'd make contact with another undercover ad duration. Then the police would show up, of course if they could identify this person. And it

really has helped in real life. So it's on two things. You've got this kind of undercover thing that's attacking the demand side and then on the supply side for real ads, for real ads. The police would then agree that they're going to make contact with that real advertiser, that woman, and they're going to say come to my hotel. This

happens a lot in Phoenix. And then when that young lady shows up, she realizes that this is about her, that the law enforcement isn't there to arrest her, but rather people like Professor Seppowitz and her social partners are going to offer medical services, mental health services, addiction services. They're going to say do you need a place to stay. All of that's going to happen right in that motel,

right in that motel. It's been hugely successful. Very few of those young ladies go no thanks and walk away.

became passionate about finding Casey Joe Pipestem's killer. But again this was linked eventually to a Trucker serial killer. And as they worked this case, it was a rare case too, by the way, that involved a female partner who had not knowledge of the wrongdoing, had knowledge of the killings. That's very rare by the way in these cases. But

long story short, has this remained unsolved. They decided to go to the old America's Most Wanted TV program with John Walsh, and he's come back now, by the way, he's now, he's now come back with his adult son and he's doing a similar They feature Casey Joe pipe Sim's case, and they get a phone call as a

result of that episode. The phone call is from John Williams's aunt who says, Hey, I visit I visited my nephew in jail recently, and he said I just killed a little I killed a little Indian girl, and boy did that get some attention. Long story short, she was right, and he had killed He was in prison for another crime. But detectives then began lining up to interview Williams, all

from different states because they all had unsolved cases. You know that they many believe that certainly Williams was the killer. But I think this illustrates another phenomenon, which is the kind of sense of hope when detectives hear that somebody's been grabbed, someone's in prison and he might be the one who killed my victims, and then the rush to get in line to do the interview for your case, only to find this is so common, Only to find that Nope, this guy has an alibi. He wasn't even

in that part of the country. He wasn't in that place where your victim was killed. And of course it's a roller coaster of emotion when that happens. And that's why you know, this initiative is still alive and wealth because of you know, at least two hundred unsolved cases.

And you talk about Backpage being one of the and Craigslist being a place where these opportunists used those online services to lure women or young girls in fact, but you talk about also initiatives like Thorn with actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore and to counter child sex trafficking, and also tell us about the McCain Institute, and also how the US Department of Defense even gets involved in DARPA.

United States. And when they saw what was happening at technology wise with Arizona State University research and then even the algorithms developed by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to look at the to use technology for anti trafficking, and they came in and said, Okay, you've got you've got something here, and we've got something as well that we want to you know, use and they came with money.

This is, like I said, a lot of this research in grant funding is about high profile funding and the big names of celebrities or prominent people in society like Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Senator John McCain,

who has done a lot of good for America. Part of it has to do with her funding of certain anti trafficking initiatives, so that money was used to further hone and sharpen the technology to do anti trafficking work through the study of advertisements and also to kind of you know, doctor Suppwis has done a ton of interviews and her team have done a lot of interviews of victims and you come away, you know, when you crunch all that data and you put it in a computer system,

you come away with some eye opening findings. So one of them, by the way, one of those findings was after interviewing, you know, hundreds of victims, was that many of those victims had somewhere in their early education life touched or been associated with special education. You know, whether they were deemed as a different learner, had learning issues, whatever, they had been in special ed. So what do you

do with that? Well, what doctor Sepwoz has done is develop early intervention programs to educate teachers, to educate young kids in an age appropriate way that there are things that people may, you know, have you tried to do in life that aren't appropriate that you should tell someone you trust about. Maybe even you're tell your teacher, that's great program.

have a place for you to stay. You can stay with me and my boyfriend will take care of you. In fact, I'll put money on your jail account so that you can buy some things, and you can call. I'll put money on your phone account. You call me when you know you're getting out, we'll pick you up and we'll take you in. Well, that was a recruitment. This was involuntary servitude that she ended up in. Literally, what did doctor Stepwis do with that? Well, prisons now,

some prisons now monitor. Of course, they monitor your phone activity, but they'll also give laptops to female prisoners and monitor what's going on on the laptop, and they'll watch recruitment take place. So it's that kind of cutting edge intervention that's making a difference.

in the haystack. Aspect to solving one of these cases. You've got hundreds, if not thousands, of trucks passing through your truck stop where maybe this victim was last seen. How do you determine who was there, which trucker was there at that particular time, and what's your time frame? Is it you know she was last seen there? We think it was either Tuesday or Wednesday a month ago. I don't know, so imagine that that. You've got to then get if there's any cameras way back when at

this truck stop. Okay, so what so you've got that. Now who who was there? You've got to go to all the trucking companies. You've got to say, I need to know who was at this truck stop Tuesday and company? And maybe that company has what thousands of drivers, thousands of trucks, so you you they want to help, but they've got to you know, you've got to give them a time frame and they'll give you the data now today,

you know. And I could relate to this from my from what what happened during my entire time in the FBI twenty five years. Early on, when I would approach hotels, businesses, airlines, it was like, yeah, we you know, they'd bend over backwards to help you and yes, what do you need? Yes, do do you have a guest who stayed here with this name? Do you you know? And they they they yeah, absolutely,

here you go. And then you could watch over the years, the lawyers took over liability right and the instruction was very clear to these employees, these these the leadership at these facilities. And it's true for the trucking companies. Hey, you got to get you got to have a search warner or subpoena. We want to help you. But you know, but in the early days and the help still happens. Don't get me wrong, but it's more applicated. But that

kind of data and then sifting through that. Okay, we've identified one hundred trucks that were at this truck stop Tuesday, a month ago. Okay, Now, who was driving the truck? Well, we think it was Joe. Yeah, it's Joe's truck. Yeah, unless you switched off with somebody, not sure, but it's probably Joe. Okay, two hundred Joe's Let's look at their backgrounds. Joe's got a history of domestic violence. Joe carries a gun. A gun wasn't used in this case. It was a knife. Okay.

You know, you've got to have the cooperation of the industry. It's essential.

And that's something your listeners can think about, which is you could submit your DNA to a company like ged match, knowing that the police use that company to try and

match and solve crime. So how does that work. Well, if they've got DNA from a crime scene and they submit that DNA to the ancestral genealogy company and then they get a report back saying, oh, you're you've got a second cousin that has this DNA, and now you've got a family connection right between the DNA found at a crime scene and the DNA of someone out there in this database. Now you can start doing some interviews

and that is solving cases. You know you then approach this maybe second cousin, and you go, you got anybody in your family who's a trucker? Well, I heard about I heard about an uncle George a few years ago, may have driven a truck. Okay, thank you. That's happening now with increasing frequency. The other thing that I think is on the horizon is the use of AI, artificial intelligence. You know, we talked a lot today about data and connection and advertising and keywords and phrases and who's more

likely to kill or not. I think AI is going to play a major role in the weeks, months, and years ahead.