Charges in a 16-year-old murder case against a former truck driver police say tortured and killed women across the country were officially dropped in 4th District Court Monday.
But Robert Ben Rhoades, 60, is far from off the hook.
Prosecutors filed a motion in Millard County's 4th District Court Monday officially dismissing capital murder and aggravated kidnapping charges. Instead, Rhoades will be tried in Texas for the Utah slaying.
Before he was extradited to Utah in early 2005, Rhoades was serving a sentence of life without parole at the Pontiac, Ill., Correctional Center. He will now be returned there.
In Utah, he was charged with the murder of Candace Walsh, 24, whose badly decomposed body was discovered by deer hunters 22 miles south of Fillmore in October 1990. She had been dead for several months when she was found.
Walsh's body remained unidentified in the basement of the Millard County Sheriff's Office for 13 years until a chance set of circumstances lead to her identity finally being discovered.
Investigators believe Rhoades picked up Walsh and her new husband, Scott Zyskowski, 25, both originally from Seattle, hitchhiking in 1990. Near El Paso, Texas, Rhoades allegedly murdered Zyskowski and dumped his body in January 1990.
For the next seven days, Walsh was apparently held captive by Rhoades, according to prosecutors. A week later, he allegedly shot her multiple times and dumped her body in Millard County.
Rhoades murderous streak was written about in the book "Roadside Prey" by Alva Busch. It claimed Rhoades would pick up female hitchhikers or women he met at truck stops.
The cab of his trailer was described as a type of dungeon with handcuffs on the ceiling used for his victims. Rhoades is accused in the book and by investigators of sexually assaulting and systematically torturing the women he held captive before killing them.
A story in the Tucson Weekly in 1996 quoted officials as saying they believed by early 1990 Rhoades was kidnapping and murdering an average of three females a month. He allegedly carried a briefcase full of torture items with him on the road, according to the article.
Once Rhoades is returned to Illinois, Texas will begin the process of extraditing him to their state where murder charges for both Walsh and Zyskowski have been filed. If convicted there, Rhoades would face the death penalty.
Prosecutor Brent Berkley said Monday that the witnesses in both murders are all the same. It just made more sense, he said, to make those people only have to testify once.
"It's in the best interest of justice and the victims' families," he said.
Berkley said he didn't regret extraditing Rhoades to Utah only to return him to Illinois more than a year later.
"It was worth it, I think we'd do it again," he said. "This case is different from most homicides. Most of the evidence is from out of state and from different agencies. It's kind of a complicated case. When we got looking at the best interest of the victims ... it'll bring swifter justice in the case."
Under Texas law, the Lone Star State can prosecute both murders because Walsh's ordeal began with her kidnapping there, Berkley said. Utah, however, would only be able to prosecute one murder.
According to court documents, Walsh's family "expressed concern about having to go through multiple hearings" and "expressed their strong preference to proceed in Texas."
Berkley said he didn't know what, if any, involvement Utah prosecutors would have in the Texas trials.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com