KILLER TRUCKERS: Murdered Body of Carmen Purpura Finally ID'd after 9 Years as Victim of Long Haul Trucker Bruce Mendenhall

KILLER TRUCKERS: Murdered Body of Carmen Purpura finally ID'd with DNA on October 25th, 2016 after listed for 9 years as missing, she was a victim of Long Haul Trucker Bruce Mendenhall. I have written extensively over the last 6 years about long haul truck drivers moonlighting as serial killers and have investigated the missing person case of Carmen Purpura. Carmen Purpura, 31, was last seen on July 11, 2007, at a truck stop in Indianapolis. The cab of truck driver Bruce Mendenhall and suspected serial killer was “awash with blood” belonging to 10 different people, said a prosecutor who charged him with murdering a missing woman. Carmen Purpura’s body had not been found at the time, but the prosecutor said her blood soaked the seats in Bruce Mendenhall’s cab, and that so much of her blood was there she could not possibly be alive. Police say Bruce Mendenhall confessed to being present at as many as six slayings in Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. Also found in his truck cab was a .22-caliber handgun that Mendenhall used in the killings. Long Haul Trucker Bruce Mendenhall's victims were shot after their heads were wrapped in plastic wrap and duct tape.

Long Haul Trucker Bruce Mendenhall Victims (known and possible)
Sara Nicole Hulbert [6/26/07 Nashville, TN] convicted
Symantha Winters [6/06/2007 Lebanon, TN] *confessed to*
Dusty Shuck [5/06 Mount Airy, MD]
Deborah Ann Glover [1/29/2007 Suwanee, GA] *confessed to*
Tammy Zywicki [8/23/92 Lawrence County, MO]
Carma Purpura [7/11/2007 IN]
Sherry Drinkard [2/22/2007 Lake Station, IN] *confessed to*
Andrea Hendrix-Steinert [10/29/1997 Evansville, IN]
Latisha Yvonne Milliken [missing since 2/2007 Millersville, TN]
Belinda Cartwright [2001 GA] (sketch)
Tanya Estep (Robbins) [missing since 10/2006 Millersville, TN] (no picture)
Lucille “Gretna” Carter [7/2001/2007 Birmingham, AL] *confessed to* (no picture)
Jennifer Annette Smith [4/2005 Bucksnort, TN] *confessed to* (no picture)
Michelle Carter (no picture)
Robin Bishop [7/1/2007 TN] (possible victim)(no picture).

INDYSTAR NEWS: A body found on the side of a Kentucky highway in 2011 has been identified as a missing Indianapolis woman. Kentucky State Police identified the body as that of Carma J. Purpura, who was reported missing in Indianapolis in 2007, according to a news release. Her body was found along Louie B. Nunn Parkway in Barren County, Ky., on Aug. 15, 2011. She would have been 35 years old at that time. The Louisville Medical Examiner's Office identified the remains through DNA evidence, according to the release. The mother of two was last seen at a south-side Indianapolis truck stop on July 11, 2007.

BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS: Long Haul Trucker Bruce Mendenhall's Torture Chamber. A body found in Barren County in 2011 has been identified as an Indianapolis woman believed to have been the victim of a purported serial killer. The Kentucky State Medical Examiner’s Office identified the remains of a woman found along the Louie B. Nunn Cumberland Parkway near Glasgow as that of Carma J. Purpura, 31, of Indianapolis, according to a news release Monday from Kentucky State Police Post 3 in Bowling Green. She was last seen at an Indianapolis-area truck stop July 11, 2007. On July 12, 2007, truck driver Bruce Mendenhall of Albion, Ill., was captured after a detective who was investigating the death of a Tennessee woman saw blood coming from Mendenhall’s truck at a truck stop in Nashville. Ultimately, police found blood from 10 people in the truck. Mendenhall, who was charged and later convicted in the death of the Tennessee woman, was charged in 2008 with the slaying of Purpura by the Marion County, Ind., prosecutor.

“(Purpura’s) blood and stuff was in his truck,” said Pat Postiglione, a former Metro Nashville Police detective who worked in the homicide cold case unit at the time. “I saw the truck driving down the street before going into the truck stop. I followed him into the truck stop.” Mendenhall was apprehended at a TravelCenters of America location in Nashville. “I’m happy for the family that they have made the identification,” Postiglione said of Purpura’s family. “They came to the trial here and I got to meet them.”Postiglione said it was difficult for Purpura’s family, because while they knew their daughter was dead, her body had not been found or identified at the time. Purpura was the mother of two daughters, according to an online obituary from Hampton Gentry Funeral Home of Plainfield, Ind. An unidentified woman’s body was found Aug. 15, 2011, by state contractors spraying trees on a steep embankment near the 8-mile marker of the eastbound stretch of parkway in Barren County. Investigators later said the skull appeared to have been pierced with a bullet. It was that body that was identified this week through DNA evidence. It’s not clear at what point investigators believed the body was likely that of Purpura. Postiglione said Purpura and many other women who are the victims of trucker killers had a need for drugs that outweighed their fear of getting into a truck with a stranger.

The FBI’s Highway Serial Killings initiative in 2009 mapped at least 500 homicides in which mostly female bodies were dumped along major highways. “The victims in these cases are primarily women who are living high-risk, transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse and prostitution. They’re frequently picked up at truck stops or service stations and sexually assaulted, murdered and dumped along a highway,” the FBI website said. “The suspects are predominantly long-haul truck drivers. But the mobile nature of the offenders, the unsafe lifestyles of the victims, the significant distances and multiple jurisdictions involved, and the scarcity of witnesses or forensic evidence can make these cases tough to solve.” Postiglione said Mendenhall is “suspected in a minimum of eight deaths and charged in three.” “He’s a piece of work,” he said. “He had no criminal record. ... He had a wife, who died while he’s been in prison; in fact, he accused me of killing her, and he has two daughters and a son. He even ran for mayor of” Albion, Ill. “But from January 2007 to July 2007, he is believed to have had as many as eight victims,” Postiglione said. “He was 56 at the time, so the question is, ‘Does that person just start killing then or have they been killing all along and just got caught?’ He was a trucker for 25 years.”


Bill Warner Private Investigator Sarasota SEX, CRIME CHEATERS & TERRORISM at www.wbipi.com