In the stillness of America’s truck stops, a killer moved unseen through the darkness.
After each murder, he returned to the cab of his semi-truck—described in Oxygen’s Unknown Serial Killers of America as a mobile “killing chamber”—and drove away, staying ahead of investigators while searching for another victim in another town.
“This was the first crime scene I had seen that was so methodically staged,” former Lebanon Police Det. Chris Melvin said. “We had to find out who this person is.”
The crimes were eventually connected to Bruce Mendenhall, a married father who concealed a chilling double life and became known as the Truck Stop Killer.
Bruce Mendenhall’s Victims Included Young Mom Found Posed in “Bizarre Display”
The investigation began on June 26, 2007, when a body was found at a truck stop in Nashville, Tenn.
Retired Metro Nashville Police Det. Sgt. Pat Postiglione recalled that the victim was discovered behind the truck stop, in a dirt area near a fence where trucks commonly backed in so drivers could sleep for the night.
She was naked and posed with her legs apart and the soles of her feet touching. Investigators determined she had been sexually assaulted and shot in the left side of the head with a rifle. They also believed she had been killed elsewhere before her body was moved to the truck stop.
“Whoever killed her,” Postiglione said, “clearly wanted her to be found in just a very bizarre display.”
Investigators also noticed that a section of skin had been cut away from the area of her tattoo, raising the possibility that the killer had taken it as a trophy.
A shoe impression in the mud offered one of the few tangible leads: a men’s size 10 or 10.5 shoe with a distinctive circular pattern on its sole. A security guard who routinely patrolled the property determined that the body had been left there sometime between 12:20 a.m. and 12:50 a.m., but detectives had little else to identify the killer.
The victim was identified as 25-year-old Sara Hulbert, a young mother of two who had struggled with drugs and alcohol after losing her own mother at an early age.
Her sister, Roxie Ferguson, remembered Hulbert as “creative” and “active,” while acknowledging that she had faced “a lot of internal demons that she was battling that I don’t think we completely understood.”
Investigators learned from two of Hulbert’s friends that on the night of her death the three had driven to the truck stop so that Hulbert could engage in sex work to make money for drugs. Her friends left when she never returned.
Victim Symantha Winters Found Dead Posed in Trash Can
After reaching out to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to determine whether there had been any similar homicides, Postiglione learned that just three weeks earlier on June 6, 2007, a woman’s body had been discovered shoved into a trash can in a Lebanon, Tenn. parking lot.
The victim—later identified as 48-year-old Symantha Winters—had been posed inside the 55-gallon trash can and the killer had placed trash on top of her shoulder blades. Like Hulbert, she’d been sexually assaulted and shot in the head.
“They weren’t able to obtain DNA from that violent sexual activity,” former Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Rachel Stephens explained. “The victim didn’t appear to have anything that had been removed from her body. There was no apparent trophy taken.”
Though Winters had not been in contact with her family when she disappeared, she did have prior arrests for prostitution.
“She’d actually been seen stopped by the police the day before in Nashville,” Melvin said, “so we thought that she had been killed elsewhere and then brought here to Lebanon.”
Ballistics tests proved that both women had been killed by the same gun.
Detectives Link More Possible Murders to Truck Stop Killer
As the investigation continued, detectives learned there had been more deaths across the country they believed could be linked to their killer. On Jan. 29, 2007, the body of 43-year-old Debra Ann Glover was discovered behind a motel near a truck parking area in Suwanee, Georgia. Like the others, the mother of five had been posed, shot with a .22 caliber weapon and had a history of sex work.
“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,” her daughter Tomeka Napper shared. “She was changing her life, and who knows how [much] further she could have gone.”
Hundreds of miles away, the body of 43-year-old Sherry Drinkard was found Feb. 22, 2007 in Lake Station, Indiana.
Then, just days after Hulbert’s murder, the body of Lucille Carter was discovered on July 1, 2007 in Birmingham, Alabama near a truck stop. A business owner reported seeing two semi trucks in the area around the time both with yellow cabs and white trailers, giving investigators a critical clue to the killer’s identity.
Detective Confronts Bruce Mendenhall, Makes Grisly Discovery
Now armed with the vehicle description, Postiglione was headed back to the truck stop where Hulbert was killed on July 12, 2007, when he spotted a truck matching the description. After the truck pulled into the lot, he approached the driver and asked him to come out and talk.
“He didn’t really look like a killer,” Postiglione recalled. “He looked like an everyday, normal person and he was very low-key, very quiet.”
The driver was identified as 56-year-old Mendenhall, a married truck driver and father of two daughters from Illinois.
While searching the vehicle, Postiglione found black duct tape, a bag covered in blood with women’s clothing and a pair of shoes with soles that appeared to match Hulbert’s crime scene.
“That’s when my level of suspicion peaked,” he said. “I’m thinking this is him.”
When Postiglione asked Mendenhall whether he was the guy they were looking for, the detective recalled Mendenhall shrugging and replying, “if you say so.”
Back at the station, Mendenhall claimed that he was innocent and that three men had been following him around country, doing the killings and then leaving the bodies in his truck in an effort to frame him.
“They go, ‘It’s your problem, not ours,’” he explained to detectives. “And they got out and left.”
Detectives weren’t buying the story and Mendenhall was arrested.
What Evidence Was Linked to Bruce Mendenhall?
While processing his truck, investigators uncovered a blood-soaked mattress with at least eight different DNA profiles, sex toys, handcuffs and the loaded .22 rifle.
“He had used the back of that truck as a killing room,” Postiglione said. “More than likely he had killed his victims and then laid them down in the back on the mattress and then did whatever he did with them.”
Investigators found Hulbert’s blood in the truck, Drinkard’s DNA on the black duct tape and Mendenhall’s fingerprint on the trash left on top of Winters’ back. Inside the bloody trash bag, investigators uncovered the ATM card and cell phone of another potential victim 31-year-old Carma Purpura.
“I think Bruce Mendenhall killed these women because he wanted to and he really enjoyed it,” forensic psychologist Dr. Joni Johnson theorized. “He had sexual sadism and I think he really got sexual pleasure out of the pain that he caused.”
What Happened to Bruce Mendenhall?
Mendenhall was charged in the murders of Hulbert, Winters and Carter. He was convicted in 2010 in Tennessee of first-degree murder in Hulbert’s death and sentenced to life in prison. Eight years later, he received another life sentence in Tennessee after being convicted in Winters’ death.
After Purpura’s remains were discovered in Kentucky, Mendenhall was also charged with her murder. He was convicted by an Indianapolis jury in January 2025 and sentenced to 65 years in prison.
Although there was enough evidence to charge him in Carter’s death, Jefferson County Chief Deputy District Attorney Joe Roberts told producers her family opted not to take the case to trial given that he was already serving two life sentences plus 65 years for the three murder convictions. The case is now closed.
Mendenhall was suspected in Glover and Drinkard’s deaths, but he was never charged in either case.
As of publication, he was being incarcerated at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee.
