Original subtitles

- From January through June of 2007,

there were six women that had been killed

at or near truck stops by the same serial killer.

- This was the first crime scene I had seen

that was so methodically staged.

We have to find out who this person is.

- What type of person would murder a young girl

and leave her naked on display for the world to see?

- There was a message.

"Let me humiliate this victim as much as possible."

- Whoever was in that truck pushed the victim

out of the truck and took off.

- He basically drove, worked, lived

in what was a killing chamber

in the cab of that tractor trailer.

- The family wants to know why he killed our mother.

- All these horrible things that he did in there.

Oh, my God.

♪

♪

- In the overnight hours,

the Metro Nashville Police Department

received a call about a body being found

at a truck stop in Nashville.

- I get called initially, and I respond to the scene.

The victim was found on the backside of the truck stop

in a dirt area, close to a fence,

typically where the trucks would back in and sleep for the night.

I see a female, white, looked to be in the 20s,

and this young girl is naked.

Her legs were spread apart,

and the soles of her feet together.

- In addition to the posed feet,

she had her hand underneath, behind her buttocks.

- Whoever killed her clearly wanted her to be found

in just a very bizarre display.

It was pretty clear she had been shot

on the left side of the head,

but there wasn't a big pool of blood.

- It was significant because a gunshot wound bleeds profusely.

That meant perhaps something was covering her head

at the time that the gunshot wound was inflicted.

- There was nothing really to suggest

that there was a struggle here or anything along those lines.

It was more like the victim was carried over there

after she had been killed, and then, for whatever reason,

they thought it necessary to display the victim

and take the time, risk getting caught,

but still insisting on displaying the victim.

That's when I became concerned about what we were dealing with.

- Someone who would take a deceased young woman out

and place her out in the open

in a way that would expose her genitals--

there was a message.

"Let me humiliate this victim as much as possible."

- There was no ID found on the victim

or near the victim, anything like that,

so we had no idea who we were dealing with.

We found-- underneath the victim's head

was a piece of plastic.

The plastic appeared to be from a bag

that you would carry groceries in,

which suggested that there was a shopping type bag

placed over the victim's head to catch the blood.

- In close proximity to where the body was located,

investigators also were able to notice a definitive shoeprint.

- It was a circular pattern.

The size of the shoeprint was somewhere in the range

of ten or a ten and a half.

- While the crime scene was being processed,

investigators at the scene were able to locate the 911 caller.

That caller was a security officer at the truck stop.

They learned from him

that he had a very specific pattern

of doing rounds around the parking lot,

and that particular night had walked by the area at 12:20

and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

He went by again at 12:50,

and that's when he discovered the body.

- So, there's a little window there.

Approximately 12:20 a.m. to 12:50 a.m.

where we know the victim was placed there,

and in that displayed fashion.

But we don't know who this victim is

or how she got out there.

Being outside in a truck stop is really a difficult crime scene.

There were hundreds of trucks in there at any given time.

- In general, finding a body at a truck stop

doesn't necessarily mean that a trucker killed this person.

There could be someone who did this and dumped the body there,

hoping that people would think it was the trucker.

- However, if we're dealing with a trucker,

a trucker that travels everywhere

from California to New York,

they could kill a victim in a truck stop

and be two states away before the victim is even found.

- If you are somebody looking to prey on individuals,

then there are some qualities of the trucking industry

that provides a lot of cover for you

because you may be gone for weeks.

You're also stopping at truck stops,

and there's illegal activity going on--

drugs are exchanged, there's sex work.

It's not that the industry in and of itself is problematic.

It's the opportunity these places provide to a predator.

- Throughout the night and the next morning,

we interview everybody you can possibly interview

who's on the scene.

You bang on doors, wake up truckers

that are in their trucks sleeping.

Did they see anything?

Did they hear anything suspicious?

Most of the truck drivers I've encountered

seem to be decent people,

and there was nothing to point to a particular suspect.

♪

The body goes to the medical examiner's office

to do an autopsy and identify this person.

- Investigators were able to confirm through fingerprints

that the victim was in fact Sara Hulbert,

a 25-year-old woman from Nashville.

- I was at work, and I got a call from my uncle.

I knew just from the tone of the conversation

that something was bad.

When I had learned that Sara had been killed

and was found at a truck stop, we were devastated.

We were absolutely devastated.

♪

Sara was born on May 19th, 1982.

Sara was the baby of us four.

We grew up in Dalton, Tennessee, on a big farm.

In 1987, when Sara was 5 and I was around 9,

our mother passed away.

At that time,

Sara was taken to Washington State

to be with an aunt and uncle that lived up there.

Sara was tall.

She had short dark hair, dark eyes, very beautiful.

She was always very creative, very active.

But I feel like Sara struggled a lot as a child,

being separated from us,

and unfortunately, she chose drugs and alcohol

to help cushion some of the demons

that she was dealing with.

I believe it was around the summer of 2000

when Sara moved back to the Nashville area

to be with her family,

but she had a lot of internal demons that she was battling

that I don't think that we completely understood.

- Roxie Wayman, the victim's sister,

she gave us a lot of insight into Sara's life

and what Sara was dealing with,

including Sara's ex-boyfriend, John.

- They were off and on

from the time that she moved down here to Nashville.

I didn't have a relationship with him.

I didn't agree with the lifestyle

that she was living at the time.

- They had two children, and it was a tough time.

- Several times, she would get clean

and went through rehab.

Unfortunately, the drugs and the alcohol took a hold,

and there was no stopping it.

The girls were taken away from Sara.

She struggled with not being able to be the mom

that she wanted to be,

and that's about the time

that everything spiraled out of control.

What type of person would murder a young girl

and leave her, you know, naked in a truck stop

on display for the world to see?

♪

- After Sergeant Postiglione spoke with Sara's family,

investigators had a number of things

that they needed to look into.

- Clearly, one of the first people

you're going to go contact would be

the boyfriend, John.

He did, at some point, get custody of the two kids,

and we were able to confirm that he was, in fact,

in another state,

and it would have been physically impossible

for him to have been here

when Sara was killed.

We also learned from Sara's family

about two drug users that hang out with Sara.

They went by the names Lee and Hollywood.

We were able to track Lee and Hollywood down,

and we interviewed them extensively.

- During those interviews,

investigators learned, surprisingly,

that Sara had actually been with them that night.

- Lee and Hollywood told us they had Sara.

They were looking for drugs, and they went to the truck stop.

And why would you go to the truck stop with Sara

at this time of night?

Well, because Sara's going to get out

and she's going to go prostitute herself

to make money so they all three can get drugs.

- Sara turned to sex work to feed her drug habit.

- She gets out of the car, according to Lee and Hollywood,

walks towards the truckers.

Enough time went by to cause them to say,

"Hey, we're not going to hang out here anymore."

They left the truck stop.

- Learning from Lee and Hollywood

that they had been with Sara

and had, in fact, taken her to the place

where she was found dead,

obviously raised the questions

about whether or not they had anything to do with her death.

- There was nothing that they did or said

that led us to believe that they might be involved.

They admitted to being there.

We didn't catch them there.

They had provided information that was valuable.

They had told us that she got out of the car

and she went toward the truckers,

so we continue on.

We're looking at a trucker

or somebody connected to the trucking business.

We had surveillance video from the area

that we were looking through during the times in question.

And we, of course, went through the video,

and they were never on the video.

We did find places where you could drive through

and not be caught on video.

Is it possible that the suspect came in and went out

and it was never recorded?

Yeah, it's possible.

- Within the next day,

the medical examiner completed his autopsy of Sara.

The investigators learned a number of things.

Sara had been shot in the head with a .22-caliber firearm.

She had bruises and abrasions all over her body.

She'd been sexually assaulted,

and we discovered that a chunk of her skin

had been cut out of her buttocks where her hand was.

They spoke with Sara's family again,

and they learned that she had a tattoo of red lips.

- The obvious question is,

why would somebody cut this off of her

and take it with them?

What are they going to do with it?

- Perhaps this had been some sort of trophy

that was taken by the person who killed Sara.

- The way Sara was displayed,

the way the tattoo was cut out of her,

the way she was shot with a rifle,

it seems clear to me

that this is not this person's first homicide,

and I'm guessing it's not going to be his last.

The second day, I contacted the FBI

because they have the resources to reach out

to all the local police agencies all around,

and we're looking for crimes similar to this crime.

And I learned about another homicide in Lebanon, Tennessee,

very similar to my homicide victim.

So, we spoke with the detectives,

and we got a briefing on what exactly they found.

- It's about 8:45 in the morning.

We get a call from the manager of the Pilot truck stop,

and he tells us that one of his outside maintenance crew

found a body inside of a trash can

in the back parking lot.

- The victim was placed inside of a 55-gallon drum,

and she was in a posed position.

And to make it even a little more bizarre,

there was trash placed between her shoulder blades.

- At that point in my career, I'd seen several crime scenes.

This was the first one I had seen

that was so methodically staged.

When we removed the victim from the trash can,

we saw what appeared to be a gunshot wound

to her right ear.

- Later that day,

investigators were able to determine through fingerprints

that that victim was 48-year-old Symantha Winters.

Symantha Winters' autopsy revealed

that she, too, had been shot in the head

with a .22-caliber firearm,

and she also had been sexually assaulted.

But they weren't able to obtain DNA samples

from that violent sexual activity.

The victim didn't appear to have anything

that had been removed from her body.

There was no apparent trophy taken,

as was apparent from Sara Hulbert's body.

- We learned that she did have some history of arrest

with prostitution.

The family members that we had talked to

didn't really have any solid contact with her at the time.

She had actually been seen stopped by the police

the day before in Nashville.

So, we thought that she had been killed elsewhere

and then brought here to Lebanon.

- So, I requested ballistics to be done

on both Sara Hulbert's bullet

and the bullet from Symantha Winters.

- It confirmed that the victims had been killed

with the same firearm.

- We may be looking at a serial killer.

The question is, are there other possible victims out there?

- Once they get a taste of that sense of control,

then it can very quickly escalate.

- I look down, and all I see is blood.

- He tells them, "They're the ones doing the killing, not me."

- He was deceiving me.

I knew we had something going here.

- As investigators,

we're looking at the murder of Sara Hulbert.

They found similarities in another homicide

30 miles to the east of where the body was found.

It started to become clear

that we had someone responsible for multiple murders,

and we may be looking at a serial killer.

- I was in daily communication with the FBI,

and they're sending me information on other homicides

that may or may not be related.

- Just before 5:00 p.m.,

a call came into 911

that there was a body behind a shipping container

at the Motel 6 in Suwanee, outside the metro Atlanta.

The area that the body was found is next to a truck parking area

where trucks commonly parked overnight.

The victim was lying on her back with her coat over her face,

and her legs were spread.

She was exposed from the waist down.

- Similar to Sara Hulbert's case, she was posed in a way,

she had the heels of her feet were together,

her thighs were open.

- She did not have any identification on her.

Her clothes were completely soaked in blood,

but there was no blood on the scene.

We quickly determined that the victim was shot somewhere else

and was not shot at the location.

- And like Symantha and Sara,

the victim was also shot in the head with a 22.

- The bullet went through and through,

so we didn't have any ballistics to match to anything.

We didn't have any DNA on her.

We were able to get fingerprints from the victim.

- Through fingerprints, investigators learned

that this victim was 43-year-old Debra Glover,

a mother of five.

- January 2007.

It was tough.

That was a tough, tough day that day.

My brother called me crying,

and he told me Mom was gone.

I was 29.

To lose my mom was gut-wrenching.

My mom was born in 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia.

When you had the opportunity to sit down and talk with her,

she would make you laugh.

She, from my understanding,

had a great childhood with my grandmother,

but she had me at 13.

When you think back to that now as an adult,

what could have been going on with a 12- to 13-year-old child

that she had a baby?

My mom had five children.

I'm the oldest.

It was a happy childhood.

Somewhere in there, though, in her life, it took a turn.

- Tomeka, she helped us a lot

in trying to learn more about her mother

and what issues she dealt with.

We were able to determine that Ms. Glover

had a history of sex work,

and she did that in order to support her drug habit.

- Yes, my mom was an addict.

Yes, my mom was a prostitute,

but she had a family who loved her

beyond her addictions and her so-called profession.

She was changing her life,

and who knows how further she could have gone.

♪

- For several months we followed up on leads,

and we were unable to find anybody that had seen Debra

or seen her leaving a vehicle or seen her with anybody.

- We also became little investigators,

trying to figure it out.

Sometimes the streets talk a little bit more to the family

than they talk to detectives,

but no one had any concrete answers

as to how my mom wound up all the way in Suwanee, Georgia.

It just didn't make sense.

- We have at least three reports that are connected--

victims that are naked, posed near a truck stop

and shot in the head with a small-caliber weapon.

And now the FBI tells me, hey, we just found another one.

- A trucker reported a snow-covered body

at the TA truck stop.

- That victim was identified as 43-year-old Sherry Drinkard.

She was found posed.

She was shot in the head with a .22-caliber weapon.

So, that gives us number four victim.

Then five days after Sara Hulbert's body was found,

there's another victim found near a truck stop

in Birmingham, Alabama.

- 43-year-old Lucille Carter had been discovered

near a trash bin.

At this point, it appears as though within seven months,

five women have now been killed by the same serial killer.

We had two that happened in early 2007,

and then none that we knew of until June.

But in June, we have one on June 6th,

we have one June 26th, and one July 1st.

- He's out of control.

- And so at this point, the investigators are wondering

whether they can catch him

before the next one is going to happen.

- We are on the trail of a serial killer.

We believe that there were five women

from January through July of 2007

that had been killed at or near truck stops

by the same person.

- We only have a few days between killings.

That's incredibly concerning.

Typically, when you're dealing with a serial killer,

they have what they call a cooling-off period.

They kill somebody, they have a cooling-off period,

then they go and kill somebody again.

When you have people being killed within a five-day span,

the cooling-off period doesn't exist.

You're killing and then looking for your next victim

almost immediately.

- It certainly isn't uncommon for serial killers to escalate.

They have more confidence in their ability not to get caught.

And once they get a taste of that feeling

and that sense of control,

then it can very quickly escalate

in terms of "I want more."

- The Lucile Carter case in Alabama

did provide us the first lead on this.

- Lucile Carter, like the others, had been dumped.

She was naked.

She, too, had been shot in the head

with a .22-caliber firearm.

Though, on Ms. Carter,

the investigators were able to interview business owners

who were nearby and learned that

close in time to the victim being found,

there were two semi trucks in the area,

both with yellow cabs,

both with white trailers on them.

They saw a woman speaking with these two truck drivers,

and the business owner didn't want any

sort of suspicious activity happening with prostitutes

and with truck drivers near their business.

So, they actually went over there to speak with them.

And one of the trucks left,

but one stayed,

and the business owners left the area to go get an air horn

to try to drive the trucks out of the area.

- When he comes back out about 30 minutes later,

the truck driver's gone.

- That's when they found the victim.

So, the theory was that whoever was in that truck

pushed the victim out of the truck and took off.

I mean, that was pretty important.

We're looking for a yellow truck.

We had hours and hours and hours of surveillance video

from several truck stops that we were looking through.

On some of the surveillance video we were looking at,

in that same time frame as when the body was found,

we did see a truck that was a yellow cab.

I thought that that yellow truck could be something.

I certainly would like to find this truck.

So, I went back to the truck stop

where we started,

where Sara Hulbert's body was found.

I'm driving toward the truck stop.

And I see a truck coming toward me

that looked to me to be very similar to the truck

that I had seen on the video surveillance camera.

As I was coming toward him, he stopped,

and then he circles the block.

And I turned behind him, and I was going to follow him,

just to see if this is maybe the truck we're looking for.

And he circled the block again.

I don't know if he thinks I'm following him or what.

He turns into the truck stop.

I'm behind him.

I'm watching him, and he pulls the curtains shut real quick.

I don't know why he did that, but I said,

"I'm going to go knock on the door

and talk to this guy."

Is this the truck that we saw on the video?

I get out of my car and I walk up to the truck.

I banged on the door.

The adrenaline starts flowing.

I was ready in case he come down and do something violent.

And then the second or third time I banged on the truck,

I saw the curtain open, and I held my ID up.

I said, "Hey, would you mind coming out here

and talk to me for a minute?"

He opened the door, and he jumped down.

He didn't really look like a killer.

He looked like a normal, everyday person.

And he was very low-key, very quiet.

And he was doing his stretching, like I had just woke him up.

Well, he didn't just wake up

because I followed him into the truck stop.

So, I knew that he was deceiving me, immediately.

So, that raised my level of suspicion.

Why would he do that?

I asked him if he had any ID,

and he handed me his driver's license.

- The man was 56-year-old Bruce Mendenhall

from Albion, Illinois.

- I said, "I'm looking for a truck

that looks similar to this truck.

Do you mind if I get up in your truck and look around?"

He said, "Go ahead."

And I went up in the truck,

and the first thing I saw was hanging on a hook

next to the steering wheel was a roll of black electrical tape,

which obviously caught my attention.

- One of the victims we had, Ms. Carter,

there was a full bag over her head

with black electrical tape around her neck.

- I start getting a little apprehensive,

but you're on guard.

It was a big cab, and there's a sleeper potion.

And I go in the back and I sit on the mattress,

and I look down and I see a bag behind the driver's seat.

And I look in it, and all I see is blood.

And there was clothing in there as well.

Several items in there that were clearly from a woman.

And then I noticed to my left was a pair of shoes.

And I turned them over,

and it looked identical to me

to the shoe print in the mud

that we found next to Sara Hulbert's body.

That's when my level of suspicion peaked.

I'm thinking, this is him.

- Sergeant Postiglione is talking with Bruce Mendenhall,

a trucker suspected to be a serial killer.

- I asked him, what's the story

on all that blood in that trash bag?

He said to me, "I cut my leg

getting in and out of the truck,"

and he pulls his pant leg up...

and there's no cut.

I don't know why he did that.

I did ask if he had a weapon in the truck,

and he said he had a .22 rifle.

I knew we had something going here.

I asked him point blank,

"Are you the guy we've been looking for?"

And he just kind of shrugged and said something like,

"If you say so."

I found that to be so bizarre.

- Mendenhall tells them, "I didn't do this."

There had been three men that were

following along with him, kind of,

and, "They're the ones doing the killing, not me."

- It was just kind of strange how he was acting like

he was some kind of a victim and I was picking on him.

We put him under arrest,

and I said, "Are you willing to go downtown

and make a statement about what they did?"

He said, "Yeah, I guess."

At this point, we need to learn as much as we can

about Bruce Mendenhall.

We learned that he lived in Albion, Illinois,

and I spoke with his wife over the phone.

She claims not to have been aware of anything.

She was somewhat defensive of him.

- His wife, she was blind and was not in good health.

He had two daughters.

- His daughters were just in shock about it.

- He's married, he has two children,

and he's on the road as a serial killer trucker.

He is so comfortable with this dichotomy.

I'm sure he's lied to his family over and over and over again.

- Mendenhall had been working in the trucking industry,

doing long-haul truck driving for almost two decades.

As detectives were looking at his background,

Mendenhall's brought downtown,

and he agrees that he will talk further

with Sergeant Postiglione.

- Bruce Mendenhall was kind of a flat line in his demeanor.

I felt like he was teetering on wanting an attorney,

so we had to be real careful.

He's going to tell us about the real killers.

That's what the deal is.

I go along with that.

You tell us about the real killers,

and let's see how detailed you can get.

- Mendenhall formulated this story

that three people from his hometown

named Terry, Ritchie, and David

had been following him around the country,

putting bodies in the back of his truck.

- He said they would just show up and they would kill the victim,

and then I come out of the truck stop

and there'd be a victim in my truck.

- There's no behavioral signs of anxiety at all.

His body language is open.

What that tells me is this is a story he's rehearsed.

- From Mendenhall's perspective,

obviously, he had no choice but to be disposing of these bodies

that these three individuals kept putting in his truck.

- It was just such a silly thing to be telling us.

Like we were going to believe

someone was following him around.

They would somehow miraculously know what truck stop he was at

in order to put the victim into his truck.

But that was okay.

We went with that because in so doing,

he was able to implicate himself in some of these cases.

- I did ask him if these three, "the real killers,"

did anything with a knife or with scissors.

And he looked at me...

What does that mean? She had a nice tattoo?

What's that got to do with a knife or scissors?

And that pretty much sealed it in my mind.

Clearly, he took a trophy from our victim

because she had a nice tattoo.

You know, why would he even bring that up

unless he knew all about it?

One hour in, I began to zero in on him as being the killer.

I feel certain that we're on the money here.

- Bruce Mendenhall had been arrested

and was suspected to be a serial killer,

responsible for the murders of five different people.

He was dubbed the Truck Stop Killer.

In his interview,

Mendenhall claimed he didn't kill them.

He just dumped the bodies.

- Once I began to pressure him as being the killer,

that's when he asked for an attorney.

But the damage is already done,

as far as we were concerned.

Everybody was satisfied

because we knew that he placed himself

at all these different crime scenes.

- Immediately after interviewing Bruce Mendenhall,

investigators were able to locate

Terry, Ritchie, and David.

- These people did exist.

They were shocked when he implicated them

in these homicides,

and they were incredibly cooperative.

We were able to eliminate them via DNA, via fingerprints,

and they had such airtight alibis.

He was just putting all this on them, obviously.

- The story is broken at that point.

- Mendenhall was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee.

- A man dubbed the Truck Stop Killer...

- They found a bag of bloody clothes in the truck.

- In the weeks after he was arrested,

investigators are processing Bruce Mendenhall's truck.

- During the search, they found numerous items

inside that truck.

The mattress was blood-soaked.

They found numerous sex toys.

They found a loaded ...22-caliber rifle

that was in the sleeper compartment there.

The tattoo that was cut out of Sara Hulbert was never found.

So, you can only speculate as to what happened to it.

He had used the back of that truck as a killing room.

More than likely, he killed his victims

and then laid them down in the back on the mattress

and then did whatever he did with them.

And he did it numerous times to all these poor women.

They figure out at least eight DNA profiles on the mattress

that was in the back of the truck.

- All across the country,

there could be other potential victims.

We were able to identify the DNA evidence

of Sara Hulbert's blood in the cab area of his truck.

- Drops of blood on the driver's door

and the blood on the rifle linked back to Sara Hulbert.

The gun that was found inside of Mendenhall's truck

ballistically matched the bullet

that was found inside of Sara Hulbert.

Only his fingerprints were found on the rifle, too, by the way.

We also know that the same gun was used

in killing of Sara Hulbert and Symantha Winters.

- We found a fingerprint on the Taco Bell box

that was found on top of Symantha Winters,

and they have matched that to Bruce Mendenhall.

- There was additional DNA

found on the black electrical tape

belonging to Sherry Drinkard.

- We got him. This is him.

♪

- In Tennessee, he was charged

with the murder of Sara Hulbert and Symantha Winters

and charged for the murder of Lucille Carter

in Birmingham, Alabama.

- I was glad that he was behind bars,

but it was sad to see there was no matches

to Debra Ann Glover, her DNA inside the truck.

- When Detective Shane Edmisten called us,

he had a somber tone.

The person that we were told who killed our mom

was Bruce Mendenhall.

But they couldn't prove he was guilty.

It stings, knowing that your mother

is in a line of young women who lost their lives also.

♪

- He was a trucker for 22 years.

It seems like he was probably doing this a lot younger

and that he was pretty good at it.

- It's so hard to believe that this is somebody

who began killing in his 50s.

From the first victim,

you see there's not an awkwardness.

There's a sense that this is somebody who's done this before,

and he knows exactly what he's doing.

- We couldn't identify the several DNA profiles

found in the truck.

There may be others that were not aware of.

- The TBI finished processing the truck.

They end up finding some 300 pieces of evidence,

including evidence of another victim.

- We have a trash bag.

There was an ATM card found inside the bag,

identified as belonging to 31-year-old Carma Purpura.

And there's a lot of blood inside this trash bag,

and it's fresh blood.

Could it be this blood inside this bag

belongs to Carma Purpura?

We knew she was from Indianapolis.

It was on her ID,

so we contacted Indianapolis Homicide Unit

and she was not listed as a missing person.

The family didn't even know she was missing.

And the sister spoke with her the night before

on July the 11th.

So, we asked for the cellphone number,

and when they dialed that number, it rang.

[ Cellphone rings ]

It was a cell phone found inside the bag

in the back of Bruce Mendenhall's truck.

Now, we suspect we have a homicide,

but we don't know where the body is.

- As investigators completed processing

the Truck Stop Killer Bruce Mendenhall's truck,

they discovered these items

belonging to Carma Purpura.

- In Indianapolis, police searched all the truck stops.

Any place where Carma was known to hang out.

- Without her body being found,

they could not yet charge Mendenhall with that crime

up in Indianapolis.

- I think Bruce Mendenhall killed these women

because he wanted to, and he really enjoyed it.

He had sexual sadism,

and I think he really got sexual pleasure

out of the pain that he caused.

He didn't have a lot of empathy and remorse

and things that keep most of us from doing anything like that.

- Had we not got him that day,

he probably would have eventually got a victim.

I believe he killed Carma just a few hours before we got him,

and he was looking for a victim that very same day.

- While investigators in Indiana

continued an extensive search for the body of Carma Purpura,

we elected to try Sara Hulbert's murder trial first

because we had a strong case.

May 10th, 2010.

Mendenhall's first-degree murder trial for Sara Hulbert began.

There was a lot of media attention.

Members of Sara's family were with us every day of the trial.

- I was called on the stand to testify on Sara's behalf.

I did look at Bruce Mendenhall a couple of times

while I was on the stand,

but I wasn't able to look at him very long

because there was so much anger running through me at the time.

- The jury came back with a verdict

convicting Bruce Mendenhall of first-degree murder.

He was sentenced to a life sentence.

- We were ecstatic.

We were beyond ourselves with relief.

There were tears, but they were happy tears.

[ Laughs ]

- Four years later, some skeletal remains were found

along the side of a highway in Kentucky.

It was finally not until 2016

that they were able to do a DNA match,

and it came back positive for Carma Purpura.

So, they found her remains.

- In 2018, Bruce Mendenhall received another life sentence

for the murder of Symantha Winters.

And in January of 2025,

he was convicted of first-degree murder

for Carma Purpura's murder

and received a 65-year sentence in that case.

For three of the murders that we know Bruce Mendenhall committed,

he is now serving two life sentences

and a 65-year sentence in prison.

- The Lucile Carter case in Alabama

did have enough evidence,

but when the prosecutors talked with her family

and said, look, he's never getting out.

the family decided we don't want to go through the trial.

- Although our investigators believe

that Debra Glover's murder

was committed by Bruce Mendenhall,

ultimately, there wasn't enough evidence

to pursue murder charges against him in Georgia.

♪

- It's been 19 years since Mom was murdered.

The family would like to know

why Bruce Mendenhall killed our mother.

It would give us some closure

for him to just tell us what happened.

And we are afraid he's going to die in prison

and he's going to take that with him to his grave.

Debra Ann's children,

we want people to know

that that's not just your average street walker.

It's not just your average addict.

She was our mom.

She was a person, and we loved her,

and we miss her tremendously.

She has 18 grandkids and 11 great-grandkids

that she didn't get to see.

- If I could say anything to Sara today,

I would say we miss you.

We love you.

We're sorry that you were struggling

and we weren't able to help,

but we'll make sure that your daughters are happy...

...and healthy and that they never forget you.

I'm sorry.

The impact that man had on not just our family,

but other families,

it was just devastating.