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By 1990 Keith's relationship with Peggy Jones was nearly over. “One night she came home and said she was pregnant and the baby was mine. Then I got a letter from a mutual friend telling me that she cheated on me every time my back was turned. The friend had evidence and phone numbers. When I told Peggy that I didn't want a damn thing to do with the baby unless she proved it was mine with blood tests, she got defensive.

“By then I'd had enough, so I moved in with a great cribbage player from Spokane. He was a retired military man with multiple sclerosis, and he lived his life in a wheelchair. A mutual friend told me that he needed help. Eldon introduced me to tournament cribbage. He had a little block of wood with an arrow to show whose crib it was. You had to shuffle the cards for him and put them in his hand. I'd even pick him up and put him on the toilet. For a while it made me feel good, made me feel I was on earth for a purpose.

“But after a few months I began to feel a little
too
sorry for him. During a crib game one night he began gasping and moaning. It took him an hour to recover. I figured he didn't have long on earth. What good was he to himself or anybody else? I could put a pillow over his face and put him out of his misery.

“I finally decided it was too dangerous. People knew I was living with him, and the cops would nail me fast. Otherwise, I'd have killed him for sure—a public service. I decided to go back to Peggy.”

 

After more unsettled months Keith's bedmate stopped returning to her mother's little house in Portland and seldom called unless she was out of money. When he dropped into local truck stops, he heard tales about her liaisons, past and current. Fellow drivers tried to set him straight. “Why follow that little piece of ass around?” “That whore takes your money and goes after every guy she sees.” “She'll work you for your last dime, man….”

A friend informed Keith that Peggy had consorted with men in Yakima and Spokane while they were living together. Not only had she cheated, but she'd done it openly, brazenly. It was the third time he'd heard the same message.

He still wasn't sure he was hearing the whole truth. Just because he was being true to Peggy didn't mean she was being true to him—that was obvious. But he'd never caught her in the act, so how could he be sure?
I can't confront her while she's on the road
, he told himself,
so why torture myself?

 

Temporarily unemployed because of his poor driving record, he spent his days watching TV, visiting bars, playing pool and reading. He'd had a job from the age of twelve, sometimes two or three. Working was as ingrained as breathing. Idleness gave him ideas, and drinking made him nasty and antisocial.

He was feeling restless when Sunday, January 21, 1990, arrived chilly and damp in the Rose City of Portland. Taunja Bennett was saying good-bye to her mother for the last time. Peggy Jones was somewhere in the East, trucking with her new partner.
It was the kind of winter day that always got me down—windy, gray, nothing happening. I was in a bad mood before I even rolled out of bed….

The morning after I killed Julie Winningham, my eighth victim, I drove to Vancouver, Washington, to get my driver's license renewed. My fortieth birthday was coming up, and I didn't want the license to expire. I called the office and got a load of lumber going to Pennsylvania from Corvallis, Oregon. I loaded at noon, got tarped by one o'clock, and headed east.

On my way I thought about moving Julie's body farther from the road, but I decided it was too much bother. I drove straight through to Baker City, Oregon, and played a little cribbage. I made a few bucks and hit on some of the women. I gave a couple of Julie's old coats to a cute girl from Boise. Not smart.

 

By Monday, March 13, three days after the killing, I was in Ogden, Utah. Late the next day I reached Pennsylvania, thanks to a couple boxes of NoDoz. I unloaded and picked up some stainless steel for a mine north of Deming, New Mexico.

Every time I crossed a state line or pulled into a rest stop I expected a swarm of cop cars with blue lights to order me out at gunpoint. But now that I'd been on the road for a few days, I began to relax. Maybe they weren't onto me yet. Each mile took me farther from Julie's body.

My little girl Carrie's twelfth birthday was March 17, and I called her from the parking lot at Jimmy Polen's dance club in Little Rock. She thanked me for the hundred dollars I sent her. I told her I loved her and wished her a happy birthday and hung up with both of us crying. That's the way it always was when I called home.

 

At Texarkana, the Arkansas-Texas border town, I began to feel on edge again. My gut told me that cops were around. I called my dispatch boss in Spokane and told him I was sick but would deliver to the mine in a day or so. When he told me to take my time, I wondered if something was up. That guy
never
told a trucker to take his time. It was always faster, faster,
faster
. I asked if anybody was looking for me and he said no. I had the feeling he was jerking me off.

I met two women in Texarkana, but I couldn't trust myself with them—they could be undercover cops, and I might give something away. I had a crazy idea that I should kill again for more fantasy material.

I met a female trucker named Karen, and we struck up a conversation about both of us wearing leather. I bought her coffee and walked her back to her semi. She reminded me of Peggy and I thought about keeping her, but we ended up saying good night. I laid back in my sleeper and listened to the CB radio—hookers and sluts arranging their dates. I thought about killing. When the urge got too strong, I climbed out and took a walk.

“Hey!” a male voice shouted.

I turned and saw the truck-stop security guy beckoning. I stopped and waited for him to say, “You're under arrest!” But he just turned out to be a lonely old dude who wanted to talk.

I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies I planned to tell when I was arrested. I took myself back to when I killed Taunja and tried to figure out what made me cross the line into murder. Was it the things I read about in the detective magazines—arson, animal abuse?
⁶
Did I kill to make up for a wasted life, for my own fuckups? Was it Dad's fault, my brothers', my mother's? It was too easy to blame the rest of the family. Maybe I was just a no-good son of a bitch that got off on killing women. Maybe it was my nature. I decided to stop thinking about it and kill another one before they put me away for good.

 

The next morning I had breakfast with Karen. She told me she had to visit her family. That saved her life. I found a woman wanting a ride to DeKalb, Texas. We spent the day drinking beer, playing stink-finger and necking. I figured I would kill her on the way to DeKalb, but she backed out of the trip. Two lucky girls.

In Dallas I stopped at the Petro Truck Stop and bought a gold necklace for sixty-five dollars. Maybe it would come in handy. I hung it around my neck even though I didn't wear ornaments.

I drove all night and pulled into a Unocal 76 Truck Stop in El Paso at 6:30
A.M
. I stood at the magazine rack reading a detective magazine with the story of Susan Smith in it. She was the woman who drowned her two sons in a lake and blamed it on a black carjacker. I thought about my own kids and felt a little sick. How could a mother be so cruel?

I had some money, but I shoplifted the magazine just to keep in practice. On the way out I tripped the exit sensor. I told them it must be defective and they let me go, but they knew damn well I had something I hadn't paid for.

Walking across the parking lot, I passed a couple of drivers from my trucking company. As soon as they saw me, they turned away. Normally they would want to buddy up and talk my ears off. Something was wrong.

I called my dispatcher and said I needed forty-four dollars for a permit to get the truck into New Mexico to deliver to the copper mine. I drank some coffee but didn't see any bitches in the restaurant. They were still sleeping off their drugs from the night before.

After I got the money for the permits, I drove on I-10 to the New Mexico port of entry. They looked over my paperwork, and one cop asked my full name. This had
never
happened before. I was sure I was being tracked. I thought about disappearing, walking off in the purple sage like Clint Eastwood. But how long would it take the law to find a guy my size? I had to brazen things out, act normal and hope to slip through the cracks somehow. What other choice did I have?

 

On two-lane Highway 22 between Deming and the mine, I spotted two white cars on a side road. I checked my mirrors and they didn't follow.

At the mine a crew bent over backwards to unload me and get me on my way. Another first! Their usual attitude is “Fuck you, man—we got other work ahead of you.” The desert wind was up and I couldn't fold my tarps in the open. I rolled them on the deck and strapped them down in the unfolded pile.

I called Dispatch and they told me to check in later for another load. As I drove toward town, two police cars pulled in behind. On the outskirts of town they passed me and slowed down. Then they drove out of sight.

 

At the truck stop in Deming I called my office again, and the dispatcher said he'd have something lined up for me the next day, March 22. He said, “Keith, don't go anywhere!”

That made no sense. They'd had three days to find a load for my truck. There was nothing a truck dispatcher hated more than downtime. So I knew he'd been reached by the cops. I still couldn't run. That would have been like signing a confession.

I dropped off to sleep thinking of
Little Cotto,
my grandpa Bellamy's fishing boat. In my mind I saw myself steering and my son Jason fishing. I don't think we caught anything.

After a few hours in my coffin, I decided to wash the old blue Pete while I was waiting to hear from the dispatch office. When I drove up to the truck wash, the “open” light blinked off. A red-and-black Ford Bronco four-by-four was parked to one side, and the driver was looking me over.

The wind was calm, so I folded up my tarps, strapped them down and called the truck stop on the CB radio. “Is the truck wash open?” I asked.

“It's always open,” they said. I didn't argue. I figured that the cops didn't want me washing evidence off the truck. Everything was hanging together. I was in a trap, and there was no way out. The whole damn world was onto me—that old feeling again. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Dispatch finally ordered me to pick up at the Las Cruces Fairgrounds. I asked what the load was and was told they didn't know.
Didn't know?
That was crazy. I asked again and they said it was possibly machinery and had to be loaded at noon.

 

I drove back to Las Cruces and parked at the hilltop truck stop a mile down the frontal roadway, east of the Fairgrounds. That gave me a good view of the pickup site. It looked deserted. What kind of a load could I be picking up? I waited till just before noon and put my rig in gear.

That same red-and-black Bronco pulled up to the front gate just as I arrived. A chunky guy in a black suit got out to meet me. He held his arms out from his sides like Matt Dillon getting ready to draw. He told me my load was at a dumpster next to a Quonset shed in the center of the grounds. He said he didn't have the keys to the front gate and told me to drive through the gate on the side. He said, “Do you think you can get through that opening?”

I took that as a challenge. “Sure,” I said.

I backed up and swung wide in an “S” pattern to thread the needle. Once I was inside, I noticed how cramped the space was for a tractor trailer seventy feet long. Did they really expect me to load there? I'd been in tough spots before—if I could drive into an area, I could drive out. I was a super trucker. I consistently outperformed everyone else.

I got out and followed the guy toward the Quonset. He led me around to the rear. I said, “Where's the load?”

Two suits stepped out from the wall and aimed guns at me. One said, “Face the wall! Spread 'em!” They patted me down for weapons.

I tried to act surprised and bluff it out. “Are you serious?” I said. “What's this all about?”

“You're wanted for questioning in an ongoing investigation,” they said. I'm thinking,
What kind of investigation? Arson? Killing?

They put me in a New Mexico county sheriff's car. I was relieved. I hadn't killed anybody in New Mexico. I'd set a few fires, yes, but that was chippy stuff.

They waited till we were almost to the sheriff's office in Las Cruces before one of them said, “We're investigating the death of your fiancée, Julie Winningham.”

I said, “Oh, really?” I tried to look shocked that she was dead.

“Yeah,” he said. “They found her body on March eleven. A Sunday.”

So she'd been found the day after I killed her. I realized that I should have acted on my gut feeling and dragged her body further away.

One of the detectives commented that I didn't seem surprised. I said, “Hey, nothing surprises me about Julie. She was into drugs and everything.”

“How come you didn't ask how she died?”

“Okay. How'd she die?”

“Strangulation.”

“Oh,” I said. “That's interesting.”