3 months ago
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More than 500 hundred murders have been linked from California to Connecticut, all on interstates. The victims were all women.
Seven bodies have been found in Arkansas, two more right on the state's border.
The evidence is tremendous, which is why the FBI has started the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to try and link the clues together.
The FBI developed a tool to track highway serial killers. The agency kept the initiative from the public, until this year.
Conway County Sheriff Mike Smith used it for one of his toughest cases. "It's something I'll never forget. It was a horrific scene," says Smith.
It was August 2000, Smith then a deputy worked the murder of Kristin Laurite.
"This one in particular you knew it was a brutal, violent death," says Smith.
Nearly a decade later, Smith walked us through the overgrown trail that led to the crime scene.
"When we actually first found her she was laying half in the water," says Smith.
Laurite was driving from New Jersey to California, to start a teaching job. She parked at the Morrilton rest stop, off Interstate 40.
Her family put up billboards, a constant reminder of Laurite's murder. Still, the case went unsolved for years.
"I can honestly say this Kristin Laurite file never went to a filing cabinet, a filing box or anything else," says Smith.
Hoping for a break, investigators sent the details of the case to the FBI new Highway Serial Killings Initiative, HSK.
The FBI Serial Killings Initiative includes a database with more than 500 names of women whose bodies were dumped near rest stops, truck stops, motels, and near U.S. highways like I-40 here in Arkansas, since it started in 2004 the FBI says its helped police solve more than two dozen murders.
The program started after a mailman in Crittenden County found Margaret Gardner beaten to death in 2003. Police say she was known to work as a prostitute at truck stops along I-40.
A few months later Jennifer Hyman went missing from a West Memphis truck stop, someone found her dead off a highway in Mississippi. There were several others
The FBI started making connections between the killings.
FBI Special Agent Kimberly Brunell explains serial killers crisscross state lines and many avoid getting caught.
"It does appear that our suspects are committing crimes perhaps in one jurisdiction ah perhaps dumping the bodies in another and then have a transient lifestyle hence the name of the initiative," says Brunell.
The FBI credits the initiative to finding links between the murders of thirty women, leading police to arrest 10 people.
Most of the victims were prostitutes, runaways and drug addicts, the convicted, all truck drivers.
"We believe that in some incidents we may have a single perpetrator responsible for multiple crimes that fits the definition of a serial killer," says Burnell.
HSK depends on local police sharing information. Then, analysts try to connect the dots between murders.
However, the program didn't find Laurites' killer, in 2005 a DNA database did. Police say the DNA matched Ronald Ward, a serial killer already serving time in Montana.
HSK analysts likely didn't trace Ward because police say his victims and crimes varied. He's now serving multiple life sentences.
UALR's associate professor Stacy Moak PH.D. teaches her students patterns of serial killers.
"Its hard to put a pattern together especially when people are moving from one state to another," says Moak.
Moak says serial killers don't fit into boxes, agreeing with the FBI that serial killing truck drivers who used interstates to hunt victims are more of a coincidence, than the rule.
"Does a serial killer say 'I think trucking would be a great job for me to get?' probably not. Its' probably more along the lines of someone is predisposed to this sort of activity and then the opportunity arises," says Moak.
The rest stop where Kristin Laurite was murdered is now closed. While the HSK is wide open. It effort to help police find killers who seem to be one step ahead.
The FBI says murders are the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, so it won't disclose the specifics about the cases.
We do know seven body's fitting the HSK profile were found in Arkansas, while states like Texas, California, and Florida each have more than 30.
America's Most Wanted has also tracked this story, called The Killer of Lost Souls.
