FBI Hunts Down Highway Serial Killers

A new database offers evidence that could connect cases around the country

All around the U.S., bodies of murder victims are dumped along the highway. Now, there is a way for investigators to share information from different parts of the country to help solve those cases.

In 2004, Oklahoma investigators noticed a crime pattern. Bodies of murdered women appeared along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.

That case and others like it spawned the FBI’s new Highway Serial Killing Initiative.

Agents have collected information into one database, including cases in San Diego, to help local law enforcement looking to solve similar patterns of highway killings.

Analysts have created a national matrix of more than 500 murder victims from along or near highways, as well as a list of some 200 potential suspects, agents announced in a press release Monday.

All this information including homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and unidentified human remains is available to investigators around the country over a secure Internet link.

As part of training offered for regional law enforcement, agents are asking officers and deputies across the U.S. to input their own data to help keep the files current.

So far, at least 10 suspects believed responsible for some 30 homicides have been placed in custody, the FBI said, including a trucker arrested in Tennessee charged with four murders and a trucker charged with one murder in Massachusetts and another in New Jersey.

As for the I-40 corridor killings, two people who were working together have been charged with some of the murders and the investigation to tie them to others continues, agents said.

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