Dark side of the road: Inside FBI's 'Highway Serial Killings' initiative, fight against trafficking

Overdrive Radio

In this podcast, the voice of former FBI counterintelligence assistant director Frank Figliuzzi, in conversation with Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole about the new book, "Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers," a close look at the FBI's long investigation of almost 1,000 murders over decades collected and analyzed in its "Highway Serial Killings" database. As Cole writes in a story that will go live with the post containing this podcast on OverdriveOnline.com Monday, June 24, "This, for all of us, is a tough subject to broach. Why? The killings caught the attention of the FBI principally because they all had enough in common that investigators could confidently say they appeared to have been committed by truck drivers." Trucking professionals who pick up the book or listen to the podcast, furthemore, will have to get past the fact of Frank Figliuzzi’s frequent shorthand use the often honorific term "trucker" in reference to various perpetrators of violence in-cab and elsewhere out along the highways. Reading the first parts of the book, Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills couldn’t help but think, "over and over and over again, 'Man, Frank, did you ever consider calling these folks what they are? Killers, maybe.' Or: 'Quite disturbed steering wheel holders?' Deserving of the 'trucker' label they are not." At once, a big part ot Figliuzzi's engagement with the subject matter -- the book's dedicated in part to truckers generally -- is to emphasize on-highway pros' role combatting a central problem, namely sex trafficking, that leads to so many of the killings logged in the FBI’s HSK database, many of them unsolved. Speaking directly to truckers, too, Figliuzzi hopes to inspire many to continue to be eyes and ears OTR, noting during the talk the Truckers Against Trafficking organization and all that organization’s done to marshal working owner-operators and drivers against sex crimes and violence. The organization was in part instrumental in establishing and promoting to the industry the National Human Trafficking Hotline well more than a decade ago now -- a good point of contact to this day for reporting crimes in progress, things that just don’t look right out on the road as well. That’s 888-3737-888. More about Truckers Against Trafficking: https://tatnonprofit.org Also discussed in the podcast -- Overdrive's 2023 "Trucking's State of Surveillance" series: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15541635/truckings-state-of-surveillance-inside-the-costs-benefits