by Rob Carpenter at X
A 35-year-old Mexican national working for an Arizona-based trucking company was arrested at the border after allegedly targeting middle school girls and multiple women during a single night in Ellensburg, Washington. The case fits a disturbing pattern the FBI has tracked since 2004 through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative, which has linked more than 850 murders to long-haul truck drivers and currently tracks 450 active suspects. FLOCK license plate readers traced the blue semi to the carrier and caught the driver trying to re-enter the country.
A long-haul truck driver is in custody awaiting extradition to Washington state after police say he spent a December night hunting women and children in a central Washington college town.
The case fits a pattern the FBI has been tracking for over two decades.
The Ellensburg Police Department announced this week that the 35-year-old suspect, a Mexican national employed by an Arizona-based trucking company, was arrested on January 6 while attempting to cross into the United States through an Arizona port of entry. An arrest warrant had been issued on December 31 based on surveillance footage and license plate reader data that connected a blue semi-truck to multiple incidents on the night of December 22, 2025.
Police have not publicly identified the driver or the motor carrier involved. The investigation remains active.
In 2004, the Bureau noticed something trending on America’s highways: women’s bodies kept turning up along interstates. Not random locations. Not scattered patterns. A trail of death follows our trucking corridors from coast to coast. They launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. Twenty years later, that database contains over 850 murdered women linked to long-haul truckers. And here’s the number that should keep you up at night: 450 suspects remain active persons of interest.
That means right now, as you’re reading this, the FBI believes there are multiple serial killers behind the wheels of big rigs sharing the road with your family. I started writing a book about this in 2023 and it’s still not finished.
The Perfect Profession…
— Rob Carpenter (@Thewhitesmoke) January 21, 2026
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