Highway 20 cuts through the United States for more than seven hundred kilometers from one end – Boston – to the other end, Newport.
John Ackroyd worked there with a few main tasks: he took care of the maintenance of a stretch of road that ran through his hometown of Sweet Home and helped motorists who might get into trouble: a car breakdown between Dolce Casa And the tens of kilometers that it was from the next Separating cities like Lebanon could mean spending the night in the freezing darkness of snow-covered forests. It could have been worse, but no one knew about it until the late 1970s. In fact, who better to get help than a road worker?
The secrets
Aside from his reserve and a superficial sense of harmlessness, John was not as quiet a boy as he tried to show. His playmates later recalled certain disturbing habits: setting fire to the rabbits that lived near the school bus stop, mistreating small dogs, and cutting off the tails of squirrels. After graduating from school with assessments that bordered on pathological learning delays, Ackroyd seemed to have carved out a respectful niche for himself in the adult world, despite the anonymity of this working class allergic to amazing projects. And all thanks to its peaceful and calming appearance. However, he was kicked out of the army after stealing supplies from a German base. His dossier, which was unknown to civil society before his arrest, also contained an allegation of drug trafficking. When he returned home, he was given an inconspicuous government post that was appreciated by few. John, on the other hand, enjoyed exploring the asphalt surface surrounded by nature and the ice of winter.
– The American serial killer's mugshot The first victim, unheard
Noelle Crombie, a reporter for The Oregonian, accessed the John Ackroyd investigative files to discover that a girl had reported being raped by him even before Highway 20 began consuming the lives of young women. Her name was Marlene and she was hitchhiking one evening while her husband was at a club. Ackroyd picked her up and attacked her. The investigators believed in the executioner's version that it was a consensual relationship. “I was a new mother, but I was a woman and I wasn't white,” comments the almost seventy-year-old and one of the protagonists of “Highway 20 – The Mystery of the Missing Women” laconically today on the Discovery+ platform, a production by Octavia Spencer , Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress in “The Help” in 2012. If she had been believed, the small community in the area would have known about John Ackroyd's criminal tendencies instead of letting him “hunt” undisturbed. John married Linda Pickle and took her to Santiam Junction, which is not a small town but takes its name from the intersection of the legendary “20” with another highway. There they live in bungalows and prefabricated houses. He became stepfather to Rachanda and Byron Pickle and began a life of violence and loneliness. If the boys did something wrong, he would beat them with a bat he had specially made. As a teenager, Rachanda changed her character: from a smiling and extroverted person, she became shy and melancholic. She confided in her friends that she didn't want to stay home any longer. On July 10, 1990, the girl went out and did not, as usual, leave a note informing her of her whereabouts. Her stepfather was the last to see her and happened to take a day off because he said he didn't have the materials to finish a job. A solemn lie. No one blamed John for Rachanda's disappearance and she was searched for months by a small army of about a hundred agents, rangers, friends and volunteers.
– Clockwise from top left, four of the serial killer's victims: Kaye Turner, Rachanda Pickle, killer's stepdaughter, Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson
Divorce and murder
Upset by the doubts about him, the man divorced and returned to his mother in Dolce Casa. But a year after the story of the raped woman and almost fifteen years before the Rachanda mystery, the alarm was raised again – in vain. On Christmas Eve 1978, avid runner Kaye Turner went running at Camp Sherman and never returned. Searches revealed that Ackroyd had passed there in his pickup truck at a time consistent with the disappearance. When he heard it, he stated that he saw her walking on the side of the road. He was dismissed. The following summer, when the woman's friends offered a thousand-dollar reward for information about her, John had Kaye's body found in the bush and claimed to have come across the remains by chance. Investigators eventually ran a lie detector and Ackroyd failed the test. He admitted to touching the body in the winter, months before he notified the authorities: an implausible statement, considering that a meter of snow had fallen after Christmas and the body could not have been visible.
– Actress Octavia Spencer, 53, Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress for The Help (2011): She is the producer of Highway 20 – The Mystery of the Missing Women. A false alibi
In 1992, Akroyd was finally arrested for the murder of Kaye Turner, only because police reopened the case by reexamining the evidence and a friend confessed to lying to John and also her ex-husband Roger Dale Beck To provide an alibi he implicated and convicted. What seemed like an end in 1993, namely the life sentence for both, was, however, the beginning of the horror. Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson, two teenagers with a strong desire to have fun in freedom, disappeared two weeks before Ackroyd's arrest while camping toward Newport. Twenty years later, while he was serving his sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary, prosecutors also accused him of murdering his stepdaughter Rachanda. In exchange for a plea agreement and parole waiver, Ackroyd accepted another fine without admitting to the murder or allowing the body to be discovered. The state also charged him in the deaths of Melissa and Sheila, but the trial never took place as he was found dead of a heart attack in his cell in 2016 at the age of 67. It is unknown how many other women Ackroyd may have killed. Maybe seven in total. Octavia Spencer highlights, among many others, a detail as cold as the forests of Dolce Casa: the passenger door of the pickup truck into which Marlene was loaded was modified so that it could not be opened from the inside. Same trick as Ted Bundy.
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