Regina Kay Walters

When investigators found photographs of Regina, she was still listed as missing. Fourteen-year-old Regina Kay Walters had left her home in Pasadena, Texas, with her boyfriend; she was last seen there on 3 February 1990. She later ended up in the truck of Robert Ben Rhoades. The long-haul driver abducted and murdered her. The pictures he made became evidence against him.

1. Regina beside the barn

Provenance and sources for frame 1

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Rhoades was arrested in Arizona that April. A highway patrol officer stopped beside his truck on the shoulder of the road and discovered a naked woman chained in its sleeping compartment. She was alive.

Searching Rhoades’s house, investigators found women’s clothing, restraints and photographs of several women. Some showed Regina inside the truck and beside a wooden building. Items in the house resembled clothes seen in her photographs. At the time, she was still considered a missing person.

Her body was found on 29 September in an abandoned barn near Interstate 70 in Bond County, Illinois. She had been strangled with a wire ligature. It was the same building beside which Rhoades had photographed her. His employer’s travel logs showed him on that stretch of highway in February or March 1990.

Online, the barn photograph is often captioned “seconds before her death.” The court records do not say how much time passed between the photograph and the murder. They do establish the place: Rhoades photographed Regina beside the building where her body was later found.

On 11 September 1992, Rhoades pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The photographs, clothing and route records formed part of the evidence set out in the court’s decision.

2. Robert Ben Rhoades

Provenance and sources for frame 2

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