A Truck Stop Predator

The Predator that Inspired Midnight in the Switchgrass

When South African movie goers piled in to watch the riveting new thriller, Midnight in the Switchgrass, this weekend, they would likely have little initial knowledge of the true-life events that had inspired the movie.

Released in South Africa on the 29th of October, the movie stars Megan Fox and Bruce Willis as two FBI agents who cross paths with Crawford (Emile Hirsch), a Florida cop who’s investigating a string of murders that appear to be related. When an undercover sting goes horribly wrong, Crawford soon finds himself in a twisted game of cat and mouse with the killer (played by Lukas Haas).

Colson Baker, also known as rapper Machine Gun Kelly, fills the role of a local pimp, whose “business” is being significantly affected by the murders.

The skin-crawling thriller’s inspiration (for want of a less-conflictingly themed word) lies in the real-life crimes of Robert Benjamin Rhoades, an American serial killer who is believed to have been active between 1975 and 1990.

Rhoades, who was given the moniker, The Truck Stop Killer, is thought to have killed more than 50 people, mostly women, along truck stop routes in several American states in the 1970s. Although he would eventually only be convicted of three crimes, and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, prosecutors had sufficient evidence to nail him for many more crimes.

It would be the victims’ families who would request that further prosecution be halted as Rhoades was already going to be jailed for the rest of his life and the trauma of an ongoing legal battle seemed pointless.

Rhoades’ victim profile focused on hitchhikers and sex workers, with this choice clearly reflecting his knowledge that such victims would be considered high risk and would likely not be missed for some time.

This is, of course, a very common method of victim selection for serial predators in the United States, although less so in South Africa, where high rates of unemployment and poverty make for a far wider pool of at-risk victims.

The long-haul trucker serial killer identity is also quite common in the United States. Predators who work these far-flung routes have the benefit of distance and relative anonymity. They will often pick up their victims in one state, kill them in a second state, and dispose of the body in a third, making investigation and even linking the crimes extremely difficult.

Although Midnight in the Switchgrass does not emulate Rhoades’ crimes too closely, it still presents many of the themes that are so common in serial killer cases and gives us a glimpse into the lives of those tasked with hunting down these predators and protecting society from their particular brand of evil.

Midnight in the Switchgrass now in cinemas nationally.