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AP
This image provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows Robert B. Rhoades, a trucker who kept a torture dungeon in the cab of his long-haul rig.
A serial killer who set up a torture chamber in his truck and kidnapped mostly female hitchhikers across the United States has admitted murdering a newlywed couple in Texas, according to reports.
Robert Ben Rhoades -- already serving a life sentence for the death of a 14-year-old girl in Illinois -- this week pleaded guilty in West Texas to killing Patricia Candace Walsh and her husband Scott Zyskowski, both in their 20s, the Deseret News reported.
Prosecutors had agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for the pleas and Rhoades, 65, was given two life sentences, the News said.
The paper said Rhoades, a long-haul truck driver, was the subject of the book "Roadside Prey" by Alva Busch.
In his cab was "a type of dungeon with handcuffs on the ceiling," the News reported. In 1996, the Tucson Weekly, citing officials, said it was believed that Rhoades had been killing an average of three women a month by the early 1990s.
The Associated Press reported the couple, from Seattle, were hitchhiking to Georgia to preach the Christian gospel, when they took a ride from Rhoades near El Paso, Texas in early 1990.
FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said investigations concerning Rhoades were continuing.
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Well, at some point, if you are hitch-hiking and accept a ride from a guy who looks like that, then you have only yourself to blame.
Isn't that Obama's new Transportation Safety Czar ?
Bwaaahaaahaaahaaaa!! That is too funny.
If anybody deserves the death penalty, this guy does. What this case does is prove that the death penalty should be done away with. People who commit much less horrific crimes get the death penalty and this guy gets to live? What kind of justice is that?
Texas didn't have enough for a conviction (22 year old murder case), but they knew he did it, so took the death penalty off the table in exchange for the guilty plea. I assume it's one of those closure things and from the looks of him, he might not have made it to the execution chamber anyway.
Holy @#&* He looks like Popeye! He killed all those people and gets life? Unbelievable! Let's hope he gets shanked.
The slime should die....slowly and painfully. What the hell's wrong with our "justice" system?
My guess is the other prisoners walk on the other side of the hallway when this dude walks by.
Geez imagine the lucky guy who gets to be his cellmate. I mean most of the time they assign you a cell mate and if you complain you can add time to your sentence depending on how far you take it. I would guess that anyone picked with him either kills him the first night or ends up with a life sentence for complaing or refusing to sleep in the same area as one eye!!!!!
By the way some guy naamed David was posting until someone called him out for the REMF he was and he went away!!! Congratualtions. I hate it when REMFS post like they know what it is like to serve in a line unit or even a combat MOS!
Sometimes I wish I were in prison so I could choke guys like this to death.
Im sorry but that photo is hillarious! LOLS!
OMG. POPEYE was arrested!
Actually, the picture is an artist's rendering of Bruce Willis in 5 more years.
Our legal system must be guided by the devil because only a devil would allow this man one more minute of oxygen on this planet. This kind of thing is so much more commonplace today and becomes more common everyday. We KNOW this man did such unthinkable things to REAL LIVING PEOPLE! WE KNOW THAT!!!!! There's no f*cking doubt. He killed these women's boyfriends and husbands, brutally, coldly, then CHAINED the women INSIDE his truck cab, TORTURING AND RAPING THEM FOR A WEEK OR MORE! And then he shot them in the head MULTIPLE TIMES. Oh, but the 14 year old he STRANGLED WITH BAILING WIRE IN AN ABANDONED BARN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@!!!!
A FOURTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL!!!!!!!!!
Why the f*ck is this guy still alive? WHY?
The legal system, the American Bar Association and everyone else involved with it can shove their logic up their as$. It's so f*cking corrupt and perverted. It has no clue what justice is. The victims are write offs and it's just sick. It's f*cking sick.
Ted Bundy, our own local Seattle mass murderers key to success was his movie star good looks. This guy looks like a 'first hire' for one of the old TV shows like The Addams Family or The Munsters.
Your taxes are paying for this man's food and shelter. Whatever happened to public hangings?
Death penalty period
This guy just came off his 4th tour of duty aboard Blackbeards pirate ship.....then they give him a truck to drive?......Pirates do not know how to drive truck.
Would you people STOP with all of the killing of others! Geeezzzz!!!
Lord please forgive me for what I am about to write. If you are a human being. If you are a sentient being in an capacity at all. If there is one functioning brain cell involved with your existence on this earth: you do not get in the cab of a big rigg truck with a driver that looks like Jason Vorhees who just ate f@#!ing Popeye the sailor man! How deperate have we become that anyone would accept a ride from a man that looks like this? Leave immediately, run like hell, hoot and hollar, f@#!ing start river dancing, but do not get in the cab of that truck... damn. Lord have mercy on those poor souls, they surely were walking down the road with their eyes completely shut.
A plea agreement that keeps in him in jail for life when he is already there for life? A serial killer? OMG!!!! He will never be an asset to society ever again. Put these people to death, the same way he killed his victims. Hard to believe that people are willing to spend $40,000 or more for each inmate. This guy using up good air is too much. One appeal on a murder conviction. That is it. Put them to death.
Put Popeye, Sandusky and Zimmerman in one cell and let em have at it.
stop blaming the victims !!!!
lots of these kinds of people look like Jeffry D.
I showed this picture to my husband, and He couldn't stop laughing! eeeeeeeuuuuuuwww! Kill this ugly Bas*ard!!
I'll have to say it, too. Who would get in a truck with a guy that looks like that? Looks are not always deceiving!Gees!
I looked at his picture again and he actually looks like he has had a stroke and is paralized on one side of his face! Too bad it didn't kill him!
It's so funny watching all these comments from these idiotic fools in these replies about never judging a book by its cover... ok how about you and your children go take a chance and hitchhike with someone that looks like this I'll take my chances by not hitchhiking and instead trust more in people who actually look respectable, looks count whether you're trying to get a job or trying to find a mate or other areas of life, if you respect yourself enough to try to at least look respectable than chances are you try to be good in other areas of life.. all you liberals can go take your chances with ole Robert Ben Rhoades here on the road lol