0:00 [SPEAKER_04]: Language and content in this episode may not be appropriate for all listeners. 0:05 [SPEAKER_04]: Listen our discretion is strongly advised. 0:08 [SPEAKER_04]: Some voices may come from voice actors, but the words are accurate to the interview described. 0:29 [SPEAKER_09]: Don't black our way Take me home 0:46 [SPEAKER_04]: lot lizards. 0:48 [SPEAKER_04]: That's what they call them. 0:49 [SPEAKER_04]: They kind of prostitutes who work truckstops and trailer parks. 0:54 [SPEAKER_04]: These are not the high-end rent curls of Obby Dubai. 0:59 [SPEAKER_04]: These are blue collar minimum wage hustlers. 1:02 [SPEAKER_04]: closer to the Hollywood stereotype of the rust belt hooker. 1:07 [SPEAKER_04]: You know the one. 1:09 [SPEAKER_04]: She has a heart of gold and a drug problem. 1:12 [SPEAKER_04]: High heels, a leopard print skirt, and probably some red lipstick, and a C-section scar. 1:20 [SPEAKER_04]: The term law wizard was coined by a comedian in the 1970s and took off from 1:27 [SPEAKER_04]: Even if you take your fence at the sneering attitude of this label, you have to admit, it has a kind of ring to it, it might make you think of leathery old women prowling parking lots, past their sexual prime, and willing to do anything for a buck. 1:45 [SPEAKER_04]: More fundamentally, it evokes the image of a slimy predator lurking in the sunlight and looking to draw and suspecting flies into its mouth. 1:57 [SPEAKER_04]: But these women in sometimes men are less predator than prey. 2:03 [SPEAKER_03]: You know those rays of semi-trucks behind gas stations? 2:07 [SPEAKER_03]: Usually in low-lit parking lots about 50 yards from the pumps where you get your gas, 2:13 [SPEAKER_03]: those are the unofficial roadside motels of the trucking world. 2:18 [SPEAKER_03]: The cabs of some of these trucks are basically for runners of the tiny house movement. 2:23 [SPEAKER_03]: They have Murphy beds and sound systems, microwaves, fridges, TVs, pretty much everything, but a bathroom. 2:30 [SPEAKER_03]: And if you really want one, you can also have a bathroom installed. 2:34 [SPEAKER_03]: Those trucks look empty from the outside, but on the inside they are full of life or something like it. 2:41 [SPEAKER_03]: They're inhabited by tired and lonely men, far from home, often in marriages strained by the demands of their occupation. 2:50 [SPEAKER_03]: And because of this, mere feet away from police officers pumping gas, and children with slushies, and stay on that shows with gross orange gas station cheese. 3:01 [SPEAKER_03]: And all the colourful over-priced smorgas board of roadside convenient shops, another hidden economy looms. 3:09 [SPEAKER_03]: The most misleading part of the lot lizard, misnomer, is that lizards are often stationary. 3:15 [SPEAKER_03]: The mythical lizards of America's interstates are always moving. 3:20 [SPEAKER_03]: They are hustlers with a capital H. They go door to door. 3:25 [SPEAKER_03]: CB to CB, and for those truckers uninterested in their bodies and the drugs they often carry from local dealers, they can be difficult to escape. 3:34 [SPEAKER_03]: For these truckers, the more accurate image than that of the lizard is the cooling siren of Greek mythology who lured sea-weary sailors into drowning and shipwreck in Homer's Odyssey. 3:48 [SPEAKER_04]: Odysseus commands his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast because their song was irresistible. 3:58 [SPEAKER_04]: These seductive creatures are half-bird, half-women, and they woo with flattery and their promise of comfort and understanding. 4:09 [SPEAKER_04]: quote, come closer, famous Odysseus, a chaos pride and glory, more your ship on our coast so you can hear our song. 4:20 [SPEAKER_04]: Never has any sailor passed our shores in his blacked craft until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips. 4:29 [SPEAKER_04]: and we all know the pain that you have endured. 4:33 [SPEAKER_04]: And all that comes to pass on this fertile earth, we know it all. 4:39 [SPEAKER_04]: On the highways of America, the Siren Song sounds a little more like this. 4:45 [SPEAKER_09]: That was some free coffee. 4:47 [SPEAKER_08]: Three or two, three home cook mail, three showers. 4:52 [SPEAKER_08]: Have a chat about the data for daddy. 4:55 [SPEAKER_08]: On that, give me a smile in the face today. 4:59 [SPEAKER_04]: you don't have to go looking for sex on the interstate. 5:02 [SPEAKER_04]: It comes to you. 5:03 [SPEAKER_04]: It shows up on your CB and it shows up at your door and the night while you're pulled in to sleep. 5:10 [SPEAKER_04]: But a fair amount of recruiting happens over the radio. 5:14 [SPEAKER_04]: If you're unfamiliar with this scene, think of your typical radio ad. 5:19 [SPEAKER_04]: Except it's speaking directly to you. 5:22 [SPEAKER_04]: You're not hearing a regional campaign designed for the masses. 5:26 [SPEAKER_04]: This is for you. 5:29 [SPEAKER_04]: And these pitches are straight to the point. 5:33 [SPEAKER_09]: My asking for any kind of donations So I said I'm willing to work for my money. 5:39 [SPEAKER_09]: I'm trying to get a high tail worm over here This quality here or down there can like or tail. 5:47 [SPEAKER_09]: There you go, I'm not done. 5:48 [SPEAKER_09]: I got so leaf-brown hair blue eyes for the both double-deafs, and I'm a stiff girl right now Little skinny girl, where you gon' be able to pluck it and see where it goes, honey It's my mom and daddy says I got focus on what a push is but I ain't no fat girl even I don't fall for you, hi, let me get off there, fall for you, fall for you What was that, darling? 6:08 [SPEAKER_09]: Fall for you, fall for you, fall for you, fall for you Okay, darling, just let me know what they call you 6:14 [SPEAKER_05]: in the 2016 documentary on truck stop prostitutes, which is actually just called lot lizard, one trucker described the routine. 6:41 [SPEAKER_09]: About verbally Sam will somebody have such 6:56 [SPEAKER_05]: Miltalk 30, Filthe 30, T each other, where they work out a deal, she'll go to his truck, and She will actually okay, he want this. 7:07 [SPEAKER_05]: This is how much it's gonna be And if you want that, this is how much it's gonna be and the driver will agree with this great a few degrees He'll turn his CB off and he'll pull his Cab curtain or his sleeper curtain and don't I just like if they were married 7:27 [SPEAKER_03]: But they're not married, and these women, big shocker, tend not to be. 7:32 [SPEAKER_03]: They do often have boyfriends, but marriage usually requires getting out of the business for good, and that's way harder than you might expect. 7:40 [SPEAKER_03]: On the lot they make $300 or so or night, and it's hard to leave that kind of money behind for a minimum wage job that takes a 40-hour week to hit that number. 7:51 [SPEAKER_03]: Truly coming clear is almost impossible without a devoted life partner who is willing to share the financial and emotional burden. 8:00 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a stereotype these women are kind of pretty, but not pretty enough. 8:04 [SPEAKER_03]: Kind of charming, but not charming enough for more conventional affection. 8:09 [SPEAKER_03]: They're kind of desirable, but not desirable enough to hang on to or desirable enough to love. 8:15 [SPEAKER_03]: You use them for an hour at a time or for a few minutes, depending on your budget and your stamina, and cut them loose to work the other side of the parking lot. 8:24 [SPEAKER_03]: You laugh with them and sometimes you tell them your secrets, but you'll never take them home to your parents or your friends. 8:31 [SPEAKER_03]: For some of this, these are real transactional partners in our unsatiable desire for the rest of us. 8:38 [SPEAKER_03]: There are kind of phantom-as-garic layer of subhumans on the fringes of society that we judge from afar. 8:45 [SPEAKER_03]: We want them and we hate them at the same time that job title has become a by-word for despicable, repulsive people. 8:53 [SPEAKER_03]: We want to humiliate any woman we call them a hall. 8:56 [SPEAKER_03]: Even within the world of underground prostitution, trucks stop workers have a reputation 9:02 [SPEAKER_03]: and to be fair, many truckers are not interested in what they offer. 9:07 [SPEAKER_03]: And for these truckers, these workers can be frankly rather exhausting with their aggressive salesmanship and relentless entrepreneurial spirit. 9:17 [SPEAKER_03]: Those drivers who are interested in what they offer, they're an invaluable part of life on the road. 9:22 [SPEAKER_03]: They provide a sense of connection and relief for their hungry libidoes, at least for a little while and provide enough of a distraction for them to forget they're in which it hurts a night or Jacksonville or whatever go for second place they'd rather not be. 9:38 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm fortunate in the video because I have a wife and two boys. 9:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm an unfortunate... 9:45 [SPEAKER_01]: individual in that I got to drive off the leap. 9:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Your heart just goes out to your family because you can't be there. 9:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Just to touch them. 9:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Hold hands with them, give them a hug. 9:59 [SPEAKER_01]: That kind of support that just people need. 10:03 [SPEAKER_01]: With the loneliness and the availability of the law ledgers. 10:16 [SPEAKER_04]: From a distance and even on the inside, the truck stops sexing and almost feel like a functional economy of sex, drugs, and desire. 10:27 [SPEAKER_04]: With people on both sides offering what they have in getting what they need. 10:33 [SPEAKER_07]: Man, you can get three of those girls in this truck right now. 10:36 [SPEAKER_07]: If you offer three of them money, after everyone would jump in a truck with you together right now. 10:41 [SPEAKER_07]: You know, you'll be surprised. 10:42 [SPEAKER_07]: Sometimes you come out here, you'll be surprised to see the girls that are out here. 10:46 [SPEAKER_06]: I know, I'm not looking for no company. 10:48 [SPEAKER_06]: Why are you trying to hurt me, showing out the goods like that? 10:51 [SPEAKER_08]: You've been away from your wife for two or three months on the road. 10:55 [SPEAKER_08]: You guys have some tree here to provide whatever these truck drivers mean, as long as we're protected and nobody's going to try to hurt us. 11:04 [SPEAKER_07]: And you know that, right? 11:05 [SPEAKER_07]: You know, truck drivers out here look out for you. 11:08 [SPEAKER_07]: You know some of them, yes, some of them. 11:10 [SPEAKER_08]: No, some of them. 11:10 [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, most of them, some of them are, you know, bad. 11:13 [SPEAKER_07]: Some of them give you all a hard time. 11:15 [SPEAKER_08]: But try to take our money, try to get free pussy. 11:18 [SPEAKER_07]: Well, you know that's the only thing you need. 11:20 [SPEAKER_07]: You gotta try to get free. 11:21 [SPEAKER_07]: You can't even say where you guys try to take home. 11:23 [SPEAKER_07]: It might be some time. 11:25 [SPEAKER_07]: If it's a good night, you guys are willing to deal. 11:28 [SPEAKER_07]: If it's a bad night, you guys try to squeeze. 11:30 [SPEAKER_08]: That's the only thing you're giving me. 11:31 [SPEAKER_08]: But I won't, I don't give a fuck. 11:34 [SPEAKER_07]: which is my baby. 11:36 [SPEAKER_08]: 46 the age. 11:40 [SPEAKER_04]: She's referring to 40 for oral sex, 60 for penetration, and 80 for everything. 11:48 [SPEAKER_02]: This is a common mantra among law lizards, though the numbers change for woman to woman, and night tonight. 12:05 [SPEAKER_04]: The truck stop scene is a complicated dance with victims on both sides, but without a doubt the lizards get the worst of it. 12:13 [SPEAKER_04]: It can sometimes feel like a common mall marketplace where mutual need assures a relatively even balance of power, and sometimes it is, until it isn't. 12:25 [SPEAKER_04]: The lotlers are documentary offers a sobering piece of road stop trivia, female truck stop sex workers, having mortality rate more than 40 times a national average. 12:40 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't always let them go. 12:41 [SPEAKER_03]: And when you think about it, the truck stop is a perfect scene for the perfect crime. 12:47 [SPEAKER_03]: There's no need to find a gateway car and no need to clean up the crime scene. 12:52 [SPEAKER_03]: You just drive it away. 12:54 [SPEAKER_03]: You carry it with you. 12:56 [SPEAKER_03]: Even a primitive sleeper compartment has room for a few bodies, and the women you might put there already go missing for days at a time as a matter of routine. 13:05 [SPEAKER_03]: This was especially true in the days before cell phones, and of course as a driver you can disappear yourself in fact that's your job. 13:14 [SPEAKER_03]: Wherever you are, you'll pay to be somewhere else the following afternoon, and that's somewhere 13:23 [SPEAKER_03]: On a cool morning in Kentucky, April the 14th, 1985, the driver in a red, flat-nosed truck trainer, picked up a woman outside a union 76 truck stop, and he never let her go. 13:36 [SPEAKER_03]: A few years ago, while recording the first season of foul play, Shane spoke with him last person, apart from her murderer, to see her alive. 13:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I was the one who saw her at the restaurant. 13:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Here at the truck stop. 13:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Then I saw her getting into the cab of a truck in the parking lot. 14:00 [SPEAKER_04]: This is Bruce Jenkins. 14:02 [SPEAKER_04]: In April 1985, Bruce was working as a shift manager at King's truck stop in Kentucky. 14:08 [SPEAKER_04]: The red headed woman we are discussing is known as the Knox County Jane Doe. 14:12 [SPEAKER_04]: And he was the last person who saw her alive. 14:16 [SPEAKER_04]: When you saw her, I know this was a long time ago, and I know that it's working on memory. 14:20 [SPEAKER_04]: But when you saw her, did you notice that maybe she was on drugs or did she look scared? 14:25 [SPEAKER_04]: What were your impressions? 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: To be honest, I was managing the truck stop at the time. 14:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And the waitress came over saying, we've got a lot lizard over here. 14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So I asked, what is she wearing and everything? 14:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And she told me. 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So I went outside, stood there and looked through the window to watch. 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: She was sitting at a table by herself. 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: She was talking to other drivers. 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: One guy got up, walked over, laid some money on the table and then he left. 14:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, roughly about five minutes went by. 14:55 [SPEAKER_00]: She got up, grabbed the money, and headed toward the front. 14:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought, OK, she's fixing to make her move. 15:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I went around to the side door, waiting on her, but she went out the front, I noticed the back of a cab over truck sitting there facing the road. 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember the license plate, because they always had the license plates on the front. 15:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It was maroonish-looking. 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't tell you what make it was or anything. 15:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I think she had some clothes in it. 15:25 [SPEAKER_00]: She opened the door, threw that in, climbed up in the truck, closed the door and left the lot, turning left headed towards Barbaraville. 15:33 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the last time I seen her. 15:35 [SPEAKER_04]: The vehicle that you're describing is on a truck? 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. 15:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Back then, they had what was called trailer-length clearance. 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: You can only be so long out there on the road. 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That's why they had the cabovers. 15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: They had just come out with a 48-foot trailer, and to be under that limit, lengthwise, they had the cabovers. 15:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was a couple of years later they finally done away with those. 15:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They made those long nose trucks. 15:58 [SPEAKER_04]: Did you guys get any type of description from the man that was seen giving her the money? 16:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He was non-descript. 16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The best I can remember, I think he had black hair. 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He had on it, denim jacket with blue jeans. 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't tell you if he had boots or anything. 16:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone wanted me to tell that it was boots. 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The shirt was kind of brownish in color. 16:18 [SPEAKER_04]: Part of what makes this hard for Bruce to remember. 16:22 [SPEAKER_04]: was that it was such a common occurrence. 16:24 [SPEAKER_04]: If you work in a truck stop in certain regions of the country, navigating the world of roadside sex and solicitation, it's just part of what you do. 16:35 [SPEAKER_04]: How often do you guys coming to contact with prostitutes at that place? 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: About every night. 16:40 [SPEAKER_04]: It was a common occurrence? 16:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they would come into the restaurant and the waitresses knew what they were. 16:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd have to go over and tell them, hey, we don't care if you're sitting here eating, but don't be trying to hassle the drivers. 16:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them just wanna come in here, eat and leave. 16:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Others, I had to go out on a lot and get. 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a 300-pound truck driver sitting there at 2 o'clock in the morning, telling me to either get her or he's going to kill her, I got to get out there, find her and get her, and take her across the road. 17:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Sit her in a pile and say, you can go wherever you want, just not over there, because you're aggravating the drivers. 17:17 [SPEAKER_03]: The nondescript man in a kind of brownish shirt and possibly blue jeans and cowboy boots that purchased the company of Jane Doe went and waited for her in his truck, at which point Bruce Jenkins expect to see her again in a couple of days. 17:34 [SPEAKER_03]: But the next time anyone saw her, apart from the nondescript man, was inside a refrigerator in a local ravine. 17:42 [SPEAKER_03]: It was an older model, one of those D-pad moral phrases that has white slightly rounded a namore exterior, and a long-cramed handle on the front. 17:51 [SPEAKER_03]: The many found her were looking to salvage it for scrap metal. 17:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Inside the door, packed in the bedley of this outmodeled appliance, they found a naked woman wearing any two necklaces and a pair of white tube socks. 18:05 [SPEAKER_03]: She was in the fetal position, but then knees up against her chest and her hands folded up in between them. 18:12 [SPEAKER_03]: She had reddish shoulder length hair, hazel eyes and freckles. 18:18 [SPEAKER_03]: There was a small mole on the right side of her neck, and a birthmark, a little larger than a silver doll on her calf, about three inches above her ankle. 18:27 [SPEAKER_03]: The coroner determined she'd been dead for less than seven hours, and she had not been 18:34 [SPEAKER_03]: the bruising old gunshot winds. 18:37 [SPEAKER_03]: She was five foot five inches tall and somewhere between 25 and 32 years old. 18:45 [SPEAKER_04]: How did you find out that she was in the fridge and how did that whole thing come about? 18:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, when the state trooper approached me in the parking lot two nights later, he was dressed in plain clothes, and he'd come walking up. 18:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He asked me, do you remember a red-headed girl that was here two nights ago? 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I said, yeah, and it was about the time that he pulled his badge out and identified himself as a state police officer. 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What his name was, I couldn't tell you, but he started pulling up pictures. 19:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, is this the girl? 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: She was lying on the table already dead. 19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I said, yeah, that's her. 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I seen gettin' into the truck. 19:21 [SPEAKER_04]: How shocked were you that had happened? 19:23 [SPEAKER_04]: Was it common for prostitutes to be hurt at the truck stop later on? 19:27 [SPEAKER_04]: Was that something that you heard about? 19:29 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I left like a year so after that. 19:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I moved to Georgia to work down there. 19:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So if anything happened after I left, I couldn't answer that for you, honestly. 19:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I know that during the time I was there, the only time prostitutes got hurt was whenever they would fight each other in the parking lot. 19:45 [SPEAKER_04]: For that interaction with the police officer, that was the only interaction you had, is that correct? 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. 19:51 [SPEAKER_04]: How far away would you see Barbara Villas from that truck stop? 19:54 [SPEAKER_00]: between 11 to 15 miles, where she was found from the truck stop was like eight miles. 20:00 [SPEAKER_04]: So it was pretty quick to get to. 20:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it was halfway between Portland and Barberville. 20:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It was where she was found. 20:06 [SPEAKER_00]: What it was was a pull off that the state makes off the roadways. 20:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say they're gonna do some work in that area. 20:12 [SPEAKER_00]: They got a place where they can pull their equipment off. 20:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not getting into the woods or anything. 20:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They're just pulling off a little bit. 20:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It's notorious around here. 20:21 [SPEAKER_00]: People take refrigerators and stuff and just find a place to dump them. 20:25 [SPEAKER_04]: You think that he just happened to find that fridge down there, or do you think he had it with him? 20:30 [SPEAKER_00]: No, from my understanding, it was apparently a larger refrigerator. 20:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd say that somebody had thrown it out. 20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He just happened to find it. 20:38 [SPEAKER_04]: I think that I share that theory as well. 20:40 [SPEAKER_04]: If you would have cut her off in the beginning, I know that you thought that she was going to go off a side door and she ended up going out the front. 20:46 [SPEAKER_04]: What would be your normal reaction? 20:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I would have talked to her. 20:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, is this what you're doing? 20:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would have asked her several questions as to what she was doing there at the truck stop talking to drivers. 21:01 [SPEAKER_00]: There were comments by people there that she was hitchhiking. 21:05 [SPEAKER_00]: If I had stopped her, and that's what she was doing to try to find a ride out of there, I would have done nothing else. 21:11 [SPEAKER_00]: If she had told me she was working, I would have asked her if she cared to go across the street. 21:16 [SPEAKER_04]: So maybe that interaction could have saved her life. 21:19 [SPEAKER_04]: If she went out the side door, 21:21 [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, but this interaction never happened and it's possible that Jane Doe never exited that maroon is truck cab alive. 21:31 [SPEAKER_04]: It was only six hours from the time that Bruce saw her entered the truck, roughly 2am, that her body was discovered in this local dumping ground, just after 8. 21:43 [SPEAKER_04]: I spent weeks talking to people like Bruce, and reviewing the specific case, without noticing the most important thing. 21:51 [SPEAKER_04]: below her freckles and hazel eyes and above the silver dollar and her calf, there were stretch marks on both sides of her belly. 22:01 [SPEAKER_04]: She was a mother and this didn't occur to me through some bolt of insight or through the gift of my sometimes average reading comprehension. 22:11 [SPEAKER_04]: I got a message one morning out of the blue about another woman who was also a mother. 22:18 [SPEAKER_04]: She was proud to be a mom, but had been forced to figure out that part of her life on her own, because her own mother had left while she was still in diapers. 22:28 [SPEAKER_04]: She'd only ever seen her in family albums until a few mornings earlier while she was scrolling through Facebook. 22:36 [SPEAKER_04]: Her aunt sent her a link to a page of police sketches of Jane Does. 22:46 [SPEAKER_04]: Her name is Elizabeth, and we'll be talking to her in the next episode, and recovering the name of the Barbaraville, Jane Doe. 23:17 [SPEAKER_05]: Take me home
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