12 Terrifying Stories Of Truck Stop Murders That Are Still Unsolved

People travel every day, stopping, at times, in rest areas to take quick breaks. As anyone who has been on a road trip knows, some rest stops are creepier than others, and some travelers become the victims of unsolved rest stop murders. Their stories are so frightening that they read like horror movie plots... but no one knows the ending.

These rest stop killings that haven't been solved have stumped investigators and broken the hearts of victims' families, but it's the creepy details of these murders that will have you hesitant to stop off at a rest area ever again. Whether the rest stops in question were dumping grounds for serial killers, hunting grounds for victims, or places vagrants looked to take advantage of tourists, rest areas have been the unfortunate sites of untimely deaths, as these tragic stories show.

29-year-old Xavier Baligant was a divorced man from Belgium who took his children on a camping trip in France. The three were on their way home when Xavier needed to make a quick detour to use the bathroom at the Malvaux Rest Area in the French Alps at 2:00 am.

Xavier ran into the rest room while he left his sleeping children in the backseat of his vehicle. Some time went by before an employee from the Autoroutes Paris-Rhin-Rhône motorway company was on patrol of the highway and heard gunshots in the rest area. While trying to find the source of the noise, he discovered Xavier's body slumped on the floor in front of the toilets. He had been shot four times, and his hands were injured, indicating he fought with his murderer before he lost his life.

Police interviewed the drivers of the 24 trucks that were parked just across the street, but none of them claimed to have heard any shots. Their hands were tested for gunshot residue, and all of them came up clean. His killer has never been caught, and his case remains unsolved.

Coincidentally, one year later, a British tourist name Saad Al-Hilli was in his car on a deserted road in the French Alps with his wife, mother-in-law, and two children, just 100 miles away from where Xavier was murdered. Everyone in Saad's family was shot and killed, except for the children who were left to survive. Police don't know if the two crimes are related, but, like Xavier, the case hasn't had any leads, and no one has been arrested. Is it the work of a tourist hating serial killer? 

When it comes to tales about truckers and rest stops, the drivers aren't always shown in a positive light. Dwayne Allen McCorkendale, 28, however, was just trying to do his job. On November 12, 1988, McCorkendale was making his way from Detroit, Michigan, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, when he pulled into a rest stop near Chandler, Oklahoma, wanting to use a pay phone so that he could check in with his wife.

Police speculate that Dwayne called in his stop on the CB radio, and someone was listening, waiting to find their perfect victim. They believe that when Dwayne pulled in, his assailants were already waiting for him, and, as he approached the phone booth, he was ambushed and shot in the back as he pulled the coins out of his pocket. The thieves left with nothing more than Dwayne's keys and $25 out of his wallet. 

Following Dwayne's death, calls from truckers began to pour in from the area about a brown Ford Pinto, equipped with a CB radio, that was spotted driving erratically on the highway. The Pinto reportedly targeted truckers and would weave in and out of lanes, making driving difficult. The suspects in the car were described as a white male, a white female, and a black male. No one has ever been identified, and Dwayne's family laid him to rest hoping for decades that his murderers would be brought into custody.

After Dexter Stefonek's wife passed away, he wanted to leave his home in Wisconsin and visit his son in Oregon. As the first anniversary of losing his wife was just around the corner, Dexter became homesick and decided to make the long road trip home. He planned to sleep at rest stops and save money by not stopping at motels, and he headed out early in the morning on November 18, 1985.

The next morning, a call came into the sheriff's station regarding a car that was on fire at the Bad Route rest area in Montana. It didn't take long for investigators to find out that it was Dexter's vehicle, and, soon, a search ensued for the missing man. Employees at the rest stop said that they saw a tall man in his late 30s getting out of Fred's car, carrying large plastic containers, but that wasn't suspicious. It wasn't until four months later that a couple rummaging through a landfill 17 miles away from the rest area came across Fred's body under a mattress. Dexter's wallet with his I.D. was near the body. He'd been beaten violently and shot in the head, twice.

There was still money in Dexter's suitcase, so robbery was discarded as a motive. Graffiti inside of one of the rest stop bathrooms suggested that the murderer wanted to slyly brag about his crime because they included the expression: "HOT JOCK SHOT WAD FROM WISCONSIN 11/85 SATURDAY THE 3rd." Police believe that "Hot Jock" could be a trucker's CB handle, but Dexter's death remains a mystery. 

In 1979, just a week and a half after celebrating the coming of the new year, DeLand, Florida, couple Franklin Shumaker and Patricia Doyle were inside their motor home, parked at a rest stop near the town of Grant. Eventually, deputies became suspicious of the home because it hadn't moved, and it looked to be abandoned. What they found inside proved to be a far more unsettling reality.

Doyle was shot in the face and strangled to death. Her body was found underneath Shumaker who had been shot six times with two guns. Four of those bullets went into his head – one in the leg and one in the neck. According to witnesses and acquaintances, Shumaker kept with some shady characters and was known to be involved with drugs, but, for over 35 years, no one has been arrested for the slaying of the couple.

Jane Snow left her home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on May 15, 1979, to take a trip with her sons, aged 8 and 9, to visit her parents in Escanaba, Michigan. The family of three needed a bathroom break that evening and stopped off at the Loon Lake Rest Area near Gaylord, Michigan. While Jane hurried off to the ladies' room, the boys went in the opposite direction. They were the only car in the rest stop.

Minutes dragged on, so the the boys played in a grassy area near the women's restroom as they waited for their mother. One of the boys grew impatient so he went to check on his mom, and what he found was horrifying. There was Jane, sprawled out on the floor in a bathroom covered in blood. She had been stabbed 23 times. 

Her sons ran to the highway and flagged down the first vehicle they saw on the road, and the kind citizen drove the boys to a police station where they recalled their tragic discovery. The boys said they never saw another person in the area, and the murder weapon has never been found.

On Interstate 75 where the rest area is located, a state trooper picked up John McGawley for hitchhiking less than half a mile from the murder scene. The trooper noticed there were markings and scratches on McGawley's hands, but because the officer wasn't aware that a murder had occurred, he dropped McGawley off at his destination – but he did take down his information. After the murder, McGawley was questioned about Jane's death, and he claimed that on the evening of the crime, he was at a bar having a fight with his wife. He said he stormed off angry and left her there, and that's why he was hitchhiking down the road. A bloodstained shirt McGawley was wearing was tested, but the blood didn't match Jane's, and he was never arrested.

Jane's murder has be a cold case for over 35 years and remains one of the most controversial unsolved homicides in Michigan.

Gordon and Jackie McAllister from Lindsey, Ontario, were a typical elderly couple who wanted to enjoy their retirement by going on a road trip. On June 28, 1991, they parked their motor home at the deserted Blind River, Ontario, rest stop to catch their breath and re-energize before the next leg of their journey. Just minutes before one o' clock in the morning, the pair were in a deep sleep when they were awakened by a man claiming to be a police officer. He was pounding on their window violently while screaming that the couple needed to move their vehicle.

When Jackie opened the door to see what the commotion was all about, the stranger made his way into the motor home with a rifle and a shotgun, telling the pair that he wanted all their money and jewelry. Poor Jackie immediately began digging around her purse to find anything of value, but the impatient stranger shot her before she could give him anything. The assailant shot Gordon, as well, but he was able to escape and hide under the RV undetected. It was then that 29-year-old Bryan Major pulled up to the rest stop in his car completely unaware of what was happening just a few feet away. The stranger shot and killed him, too, before taking off.

Gordon was able to flag down a passing trucker, but, by that time, the murderer was gone, and two lives were lost. The grieving husband gave police a description of his attacker, but no one was ever apprehended. There were no new leads into the crime until 1999 when DNA testing linked a former police officer named Ronald Glenn West to two unrelated unsolved murders, and he became a suspect, though, never directly linked to the crime.

A crew was working in Wright City, Missouri, in June of 2004 – trimming bushes at a rest area off of Interstate 70 – when they made a gruesome discovery. When they made their way around to the back entrance, they came across the torso of a body in an area used by travelers as a place to picnic. There is a small circular driveway where cars and vans can access, and it looked as if someone pulled around, threw the torso out of their vehicle, and kept driving. Police don't believe the victim, who was later determined to be a woman, was killed at the rest area.

What makes this story so much more creepy is that the coroner determined that the woman was killed just hours before her torso was placed in the rest area, and her remains were only there for 12 hours. These facts led authorities to conclude that she was killed within a 50- to 100-mile radius of where she was found, but the rest of her body parts have never been located. 

The woman remained a mystery for 12 years until authorities identified her as Deanna Denise Howland, a prostitute and drug user known in the area; however, her killer remains at large.

St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, New Mexico, received a call in August of 1982 from a man saying that he needed a priest to come and administer his last rites. Father Patrick Gerard took the call but told the man that he wasn't available to leave – or talk – at that very moment. The Father asked the man to call again in 15 minutes, and, the next time, it was Father Renaldo Rivera who answered the phone. The man on the phone called himself Michael Carmello and repeated his request; this time, however, he wouldn't take no for an answer. 

Carmello told Father Rivera that he was at a rest stop in Waldo, New Mexico, and needed a priest immediately. Father Rivera left to meet the man. Three days later, Rivera's body was found on isolated road just a few miles from the rest area. He had been shot; however, where his body was found wasn't where he was murdered. 

Investigators pieced together that the "Carmello" character was sitting in a blue pickup truck at the rest stop waiting for Father Rivera to arrive, possibly with other assailants. Police say that after killing Father Rivera, the murderer returned to the rest stop and drove his car to another rest area about two hours away, where it was wiped clean of any physical evidence and abandoned. Father Rivera's last rites kit was stolen, but nothing else was, and authorities believe the killers just wanted to murder a priest, no matter who it was.

Kimyala Henson was planning a trip with her daughters, two-year-old Shaina and four-month-old Shausha, to British Columbia, but, first, she needed to stop off in Sacramento, California, to pick up her birth certificate. Not wanting her friend to make the long trip alone with two baby girls, Henson's friend Christina Mayer said that she and her husband, Curtis, would keep the family company.

The group left on April 4, 2001, and successfully picked up Kimyala's birth certificate. Later, the mother checked her family into a motel in nearby Redding, California. That was the last time the Hensons were seen alive. 

16 days later on April 20 at a rest stop in Collier County, Florida, Curtis and Christina Mayer were found shot to death. Investigators determined that Curtis killed Christina before he shot himself. Police searched the trash cans in the rest stop for clues and came across Kimyala's birth certificate. Her wallet and credit cards were found inside the Mayer's car, along with a blood-stained hatchet. The blood matched that of Kimyala.

Thousands of miles away in a desert near Reno, Nevada, a week after the Mayers were discovered, police found the half-buried body of Kimyala Henson. Little Shaina and baby Shausha were nowhere to be found. Their car seats and birth certificates were also missing, leaving authorities to believe that they were murdered, left to die, given over to someone as orphans, or sold.

Investigators pieced together as much information as they could. The man everyone knew as Curtis Mayer was really Frank Oehring, a fugitive who was wanted in Missouri for the attempted murder of his first wife. It's believed that the Mayers saw an opportunity to steal Kimyala's birth certificate, so that Christina could later take over her identity. What the criminal couple did from California to Florida can only be speculated about, and the two baby girls are still missing.

In August of 2005, police believe that a woman was dragged and left beside a remote rest area in Rockwood, Ontario. By the time her remains were found, she had been out there for a month, unnoticed. She had been covered with a sleeping bag and didn't have any visible recent injuries that gave investigators any clues as to how she died. 

Her face, however, showed that she had recovered from a broken cheek and a left eye socket that had since healed but may have left her with a physical deformity. Because of this, she wore a dental plate, and it looked as if the clothing she was wearing was purchased in Montreal. Other than that, the police remain clueless as to who this mystery woman is, but they are sure that someone, somewhere, used that rest area to dump her like she was garbage. They're so sure that she was the victim of foul play that the government is offering up a $50,000 reward, but, even with all of the calls that have come in, the woman has yet to be identified.