Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (12 page)

But his hatred later built again, and he woke the sleeping teenager and violently raped her, telling her that she was worthless. He then forced an oversized dildo into her vagina and anus, becoming aroused again by her screams. When she had to urinate, he led her out onto a deserted exit lane on a dog’s collar and leash. The abused child was exacting a terrible revenge.

That night, he made Shana kneel on a chair with her back to him whilst he whipped her. The pain was terrible – but he told her that when he tired of administering it, he’d murder her and abduct another girl.

January ended and, rarely fed, Shana grew weaker. But on 1

February Robert Rhoades took her to his apartment where he allowed her to have a bath, fed her, then sodomised her again.

Afterwards she was cuffed, taken back to his truck and driven to a car park where he stopped to pick up a work consignment.

Luckily he’d forgotten to close one of the cuffs, and Shana seized her chance. The silver chain still dangling from her throat, she fled to a nearby work yard where a horrified workman phoned the police.

Moments later the police stopped Robert Rhoades and asked Shana if this was the man who had abducted her. She risked a sideways glance at his cold stare and remembered the endless days and nights when he’d chosen if she should eat, sleep or even urinate. He still seemed all-powerful, and she was too 99

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afraid to identify him so muttered that this wasn’t the man.

The police were suspicious but they reluctantly let Rhoades go after noting his name and address.

That evening they documented the girl’s many injuries – livid whip marks across her breasts and buttocks plus cuts on her mouth where the bridle had bitten into the corners. Her wrists and ankles were also bruised from the handcuffs and chains, and they found further bruises when they cut the padlocked choke chain from her neck.

Now that she felt safe, Shana shamefacedly told the police that Robert Rhoades was the man who had abducted and tortured her. They sympathised with her reactions, knowing that there had been instances of torture victims too terrified of even an absent attacker to risk making an escape.

Regina’s abduction and murder

Meanwhile, Rhoades drove on to Texas in search of another torture victim to replace Shana. On 3 February, he got talking to 14-year-old Regina Walters, who planned to hitch-hike to Mexico with her new boyfriend Ricky Lee Jones. It’s likely that Rhoades shot the young boy in order to have Regina to himself – Rhoades had written ‘Ricky is a dead man’ in Regina’s notebook and had drawn a gun and drops of blood. And Ricky was never seen again.

For the next few weeks, the 14-year-old girl suffered horribly at her captor’s hands. He whipped her, pierced her intimately, hurt her with an oversized dildo and raped her repeatedly. He photographed her out of doors dressed in sexually provocative clothing and shoes, and also photographed her shackled to the inside of the truck. There was a fetishistic element to many of these assaults, with him bringing her shoes, which had an especial significance for him. They most likely belonged to earlier victims whose abuse had given him the strongest erotic charge. Now he was experiencing a diminishing return, and, 100

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desperate for gratification, wound a wire around her neck and tightened it 14 times until she died.

Six weeks after abducting Regina, Robert Rhoades phoned her father and told him ‘I cut her hair’ and ‘She’s in a loft in a barn’. When the man asked if she was alive or dead, the killer ended the call. That night, Rhoades phoned Regina’s mother and suggested that she meet him, but he didn’t show up. He made several other similar calls to both parents, yet another sign of his sadism.

Another victim

By March, the sadist had found himself yet another victim, 27-year-old Katie Ford. He started talking to the mentally ill young woman at an Arizona truck stop and offered her a lift part of the way to Texas. Once isolated in his truck, her victimisation began.

He attacked her but she managed to bite him and scratch his face before he stripped her, put a collar around her neck, handcuffed her and chained her to the wall. He also whipped her breasts and legs numerous times, leaving long red welts.

Determined to make her suffer further, the sadist used nipple and labial clamps on her, saying matter of factly, ‘I’ve been doing this for 15 years.’

Rhoades parked his lorry in order to have a break at Casa Grande, Arizona. As he slept in his cab, a patrolman approached, intending to ask him to move to a safer area. But he heard a commotion in the back and hoisted himself up to look through the window. Horrified at the sight of a naked, screaming woman chained to the inside of the vehicle, he ordered the driver out of the truck.

Rhoades was completely calm as he was arrested, and he remained calm in custody – sociopaths often appear indifferent during such pivotal moments. He told officers that Katie wasn’t

‘playing with a full deck’, and tried to pass the incident off as 101

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a misunderstanding, but they could see that her nipples and labia had been punctured and that her breasts and back were brutally criss-crossed with the marks of a whip. And when they opened his briefcase they found a wide assortment of leashes, handcuffs, riding crops and clamps.

The police searched his apartment, finding women’s clothes, soiled underwear and jewellery, standard souvenirs kept by serial killers. There were Polaroid pictures of naked girls, one taken with the girl chained inside his truck. Even more alarmingly, a once white towel was scarlet with blood.

Later, the police identified some of the photos as being of 14-year-old Regina Walters. In one, Rhoades had shaved off her pubic hair. In others, he’d used sex toys on her and in yet others, he’d made her dress up in clothing that was too big for her. She looked terrified in many of the photographs and there were fading bruises on her breasts.

Body found

On 29 September 1990, a farmer found Regina Walters’ remains in his barn. Her skeletonised frame was naked and there was a wire garrotte twisted cruelly around her neck. Her hair had been cropped humiliatingly short.

Sentenced

That December, Rhoades was sentenced to six years in prison for Katie Ford’s abduction and assault. He was soon beaten up by other inmates and had to be moved to solitary confinement.

The police then charged him with Regina Walters murder, as a witness had come forward. The man, who was working on a loading dock eight feet above the ground, had seen Rhoades with a young girl with closely cropped hair. The girl had indicated with her eyes that she was frightened, but the foreman had decided not to get involved. Now his eyewitness 102

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testimony, alongside the photos of Regina found in Rhoades’

flat, were enough to convict.

Other murders

The police were convinced that Regina Walters wasn’t Robert Rhoades’ first murder victim and believed that towards the end of his torture spree, he was abducting three girls every month.

They’ve noted that he was in the vicinity of 50 other unsolved murders where skeletonised remains were found.

Quietly spoken and charismatic, he was able to lure vulnerable young girls – hitch-hikers, runaways and prostitutes – from quiet highway cafés. But as soon as he got them to a remote area, he showed his true sadistic desires. The sheer size and complexity of his torture kit, and of the bondage devices in his truck and home, showed how long he’d been perfecting the act of controlling and harming unfortunate girls.

The roots of sadism

The defence were convinced that Robert Rhoades had been sexually abused as a child by his paedophile father, but he refused to discuss his formative experiences. He pleaded guilty to Regina’s murder and was given life imprisonment.

One of the special agents sent to take Rhoades to prison told him, ‘You’re the one that’s going to get fucked,’ referring to the rape that is rife in many prisons. And when Rhoades was rumoured to have contracted cancer of the colon, his third wife said that she hoped he’d die in agony.

Rhoades didn’t die, but his incarceration photograph, taken at Pontiac Correctional Center, reflects his suffering. One of his eyes is almost closed, possibly due to a recent beating, and the other eye holds a manic expression. His head is shaved, his skin unhealthy and his always-lopsided mouth looks even more twisted than before. His right arm, right shoulder and 103

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abdomen are all deeply scarred and he looks older than his actual years. The beaten child became a merciless sadist and is probably a victim again.

And still the Rhoades story is ongoing, for, in 2003, he fought to avoid being extradited to Utah to face charges for the kidnap and murder of 24-year-old Patricia Candice Walsh. It’s alleged that the sadist encountered the 24-year-old and her 28-year-old husband Douglas Scott in 1990, as the couple travelled between Georgia and Seattle. He may have offered them a lift.

The sadist allegedly shot Mr Scott dead then tortured Ms Walsh for a week, keeping her chained inside his truck’s sleeper-compartment-turned-torture-chamber. He is then said to have shot her several times in the head and dumped her in central Utah, where her decomposing naked body was found by horrified deer hunters. For well over a decade, she remained just another Jane Doe and it was 2003 before her remains were identified, by which time new forensic tools allowed investigators to detect Rhoades’ DNA.

The charges against him have been sealed and the case has been postponed so details remain sketchy, but, if eventually convicted, he will face the death penalty.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

REX ALLAN KREBS

A sex offender from age 13, Krebs attempted to bind
and rape two women in separate incidents, crimes
which earned him a 20-year sentence. Paroled ten
years early, he abducted and murdered a woman in
1998 and another in 1999.

Formative experiences

Rex was born on 28 January 1966 to Connie and Allan Krebs.

He had a three-year-old half-sister whom his mother had given birth to when only 16, during her first marriage which only lasted three months. The family lived with Connie’s mother for a while then relocated to Allan’s father’s dairy farm in Idaho. The following year they moved again, this time to Washington.

Toddlers need stability, but little Rex was moved across the country at least annually as his labourer father couldn’t find a job which he could tolerate. Meanwhile, his parents’ relationship became increasingly violent and the children often saw their father beat their mother and once overheard a particularly vicious marital rape. Rex and his sister were hit, kicked and thrown across the room by their short-tempered father and would eventually fantasise about killing him.

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In 1970, Rex was presented with a new baby sister and yet another baby sister joined the household in 1971. Sadly, the latter ended up with severe brain damage due to a virus.

In 1971, Rex’s parents separated and Connie and the children began a new life with her boyfriend in Nevada. The six of them lived in one room above a pub, and the adults took refuge in the bar virtually every night. Soon the domestic violence started up again, and Rex had to listen to his mother being beaten and humiliated. He too was regularly beaten by his stepfather and lived in constant fear. There were also allegations that a close male relative sexually abused at least one of his sisters – and given his later obsession with anal sex, Rex himself may have been sexually abused.

Like many mistreated children, Rex began to soil himself.

His stepfather would then chastise him further. The man also made him sit on a potty and wear his excrement-encrusted underpants on his head.

At night, Rex and his siblings would sit, frozen, in the family car whilst their parents partied in the bar. The seven-year-old’s life was decidedly joyless. Social services investigated allegations of abuse but didn’t take the children away. Incredibly, the couple were even allowed to foster four girls, something which boosted the family budget considerably.

When Rex was ten, his biological father took him back and put him to work on his farm. The unkempt young boy had to get used to a new school where he was laughed at for his ill-fitting clothes and nervousness. He often came to school sporting bruises and even black eyes. He soon ran away and lived in the woods, but the authorities brought him back.

Feeling that his mother had let him down – both by failing to protect him from his abusive stepfather and for abandoning him to his violent father – Rex began to hate the female of the species, to fantasise about demeaning and torturing them.

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Rex Krebs

Early sex crimes

At 13 it became obvious how disturbed Rex really was. He broke into a schoolgirl’s house, put his knife at his feet and masturbated in her closet. The girl and her mother caught him in the act and were frightened and upset. But they were also understanding, telling police that they wouldn’t press charges if Rex would go into therapy. Unfortunately his father only took him for one counselling session, felt that he himself was being psychoanalysed and refused to go back. The following year, Rex began making obscene phone calls to women. His father found out and beat him again.

A few days after his fifteenth birthday, the troubled teenager upped the ante, breaking into a neighbour’s house and stealing a pistol. In the same time period, he dragged a piece of metal onto the railway track, derailing a train car, injuring the railway worker and badly frightening him. There have been similar cases throughout the years of sadists destroying forms of transport – and sometimes lives – in this way. Some flee from the railway line before the train is derailed, relying on their imagination and newspaper clippings of the carnage to enrich their diseased fantasies. Others mingle with the survivors, enjoying the sight of suffering and blood.