The Killer Of Lost Souls

On June 4, 2005, America's Most Wanted aired the case of seven known truck-stop prostitutes whose murders had eerie similarities. Every year, cops say between 80 and 120 prostitutes are found murdered. And cops say, many of those murders are never solved. Cops from coast to coast have worked hard together in an attempt to link a lot of these cases, hoping to find justice for these lost souls. They look at victimology, they look at manner of death and other investigative similarities to track their killers. But the spotlight shined brightly on the Oklahoma City area as fear grew that a serial killer was working that area. 

In began on July 11, 2003 when a rural route postal worker was working in Crittenden County, Arkansas. His route ran close to the on-ramp for I-40 -- and he was cruising along the road when he noticed a woman's body in a rice field. She was a white female, nude except for a shirt. It appeared as though she'd been beaten to death. Cops were able to identify her as 47-year-old Margaret Holmes Gardner. Cops dug into her past and learned she'd worked as a truck-stop prostitute along I-40. Investigators figured she'd been abducted by a truck driver, killed, and dumped along the road with no effort made to conceal the body.

Then it happened again. On August 20, 2003, 24-year-old Jennifer Suzanne Hyman was found dumped from Tallahatchie River Bridge in Mississippi. And the names kept coming. Over the next five months, investigators found four more bodies. The last case was that of Casey Jo Pipestem, found on January 31, 2004 in Grapevine, Texas.

It was hard to ignore the similarities between the cases. All of these women were white prostitutes who worked truck stops. All but one of the victims had direct ties to Oklahoma City.  And cops believe the person who killed the seventh was headed that way.  Each of the women were murdered in one location and then dumped in another. And cops identified a common thread connecting all these women: they were either found dead or were known to work as prostitutes along Interstate 40. Investigators say in each case there was little or no evidence of a struggle. That means the victims initially entered the killer's vehicle willingly, lending credence to the thought that the driver may have killed them.

All signs point to a serial killer. But investigators have a different opinion. Detective Larry Hallmark of the Grapevine Police doubts there is one person committing these murders. 

"I've thought all along that we're dealing with more than one," Hallmark told AMW producers.

"When you start trying to pair these cases based on whether they were beaten or strangled, you get a couple of groups. But then you try to pair them in the way that the bodies were disposed of and you start pulling them from the two groups and mixing them again."

After the show aired, a very interesting tip came in.  The caller said that John Williams and his girlfriend, Rachel Cumberland were responsible for some of the killings.  They seemed like solid suspects:  they were both familiar with the truck driving world.  But most importantly, both were already sitting in a Mississippi jail charged with two separate murders.

Now, in a stunning proclamation, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety has announced that they've filed murder charges on John Robert Williams and Rachel Cumberland, charging them with the murder of Jennifer Hyman. When investigators interviewed Williams and Cumberland, it became apparent to cops that these two were responsible for more than just the two murders they'd been charged with. On July 8, 2005, after Williams pled guilty to one of the murders he'd been charged with, the dominoes began falling. Mississippi Department of Public Safety charged both Williams and Cumberland with the murder of Jennifer Hyman. This may not be all.