These are the last known photographs of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters, taken shortly before her death.
The man behind the camera was her killer.
In early 1990, Regina ran away from home with her boyfriend. Somewhere along the road, they were picked up by a long-haul truck driver named Robert Ben Rhoades.
It was the worst possible truck they could have entered.
Rhoades was a serial killer who had turned the sleeping compartment of his semi-truck into a mobile torture chamber fitted with chains and restraints. His job allowed him to hunt victims across state lines without raising suspicion.
Investigators believe Rhoades killed Regina’s boyfriend soon after picking them up.
Regina was kept alive and held captive in his truck for several weeks as he drove across the country.
Then, in an abandoned barn in Illinois, he prepared her final moments. By then, he had cut her hair. He forced her to wear a black dress and high heels, then photographed her standing with her hands raised.
She appears terrified.
Shortly afterward, Rhoades strangled her and left her body inside the barn, where it was found months later.
Rhoades was finally caught when an Arizona state trooper stopped to check on his truck, which was parked beside a highway with its hazard lights flashing.
Inside the sleeping compartment, the trooper found a naked woman chained to the wall and screaming for help.
In 1992, Rhoades pleaded guilty to Regina’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Investigators believe he may have tortured and killed dozens of women during his years on the road.
The true number of his victims remains unknown.
Tara Calico was 19 when she vanished during a morning bike ride near her home in New Mexico, in September 1988.
Before leaving, she told her mother she would be back by noon.
She never returned.
When noon passed, her mother drove along Tara’s route looking for her, but found nothing.
Witnesses remembered seeing an old pickup truck driving closely behind her that morning, but police could never find the vehicle.
Then, almost a year later, the case took a disturbing turn.
In a parking lot in Florida, more than 1,500 miles from where Tara disappeared, a woman found a Polaroid photo on the ground. It showed a young woman and a boy in the back of a van, bound and gagged.
The woman in the photo looked like Tara. A mark on her leg appeared to match a scar Tara had from an old car accident. Beside her was a copy of “My Sweet Audrina,” one of Tara’s favorite books.
Her mother was absolutely convinced it was her.
Despite the chilling resemblance, the FBI could not determine whether the woman was Tara.
Nearly 40 years later, no one knows what happened to Tara Calico, or who the two people in the Polaroid really were.