A 66-year-old trucker recently pleaded guilty to capital murder charges in connection with the homicide of a 24-year-old woman whose remains were found in Millard County, Utah. The trucker was originally charged with capital murder in Utah, but those charges were dismissed in favor of capital murder charges brought in Texas.
The trucker was charged with murder in Texas because that is where the body of the woman’s 28-year-old husband was found. Both bodies were found in 1990, the year of the murders, but the husband’s body wasn’t indentified until 1992 and the wife’s body was not identified until 2003. DNA evidence then linked the woman to items found at the time of the trucker’s arrest.
The trucker has been in prison since spring of 1990 when an Arizona state trooper discovered him torturing a woman in the sleeper car of his truck. The man has since been linked to several murders and authorities say that many unidentified victims may exist based on the items found in the man’s truck.
Based on a murder of a 14-year-old runaway in Illinois, the man is serving a life sentence without parole. If he were ever to get out of prison for his Illinois conviction, he would be sent immediately to a prison in Texas.
This case highlights the fact that there is no statute of limitations on murder. Many other crimes must be prosecuted within a certain amount of time, but serious crimes such as homicide can be charged whenever the prosecution feels that it has enough evidence.
Source: ABC News, “Trucker With Traveling Torture Chamber Admits to More Murders,” Christina Ng, Mar. 30, 2012