Victims
Mendenhall's victims were primarily young prostitutes, usually found shot, though detectives have determined that his method of killing may have changed over the years. During questioning, he implicated himself in the shooting death of Hulbert, whose body was found on June 26, 2007.
He has also implicated himself in the shooting death of Symantha Winters, whose body was found June 6, 2007 in a trash can at a truck stop in Lebanon, Tennessee. She had a criminal record showing at least one previous charge of prostitution. On August 17, 2007, a Wilson County grand jury indicted Mendenhall for the murder of Winters.
The body of another victim killed on July 11, 2007 at a Flying J truck stop on Interstate 465 in Indianapolis, Indiana has yet to be found. Carma Purpura, a 31-year old mother of two, was last seen at the far-southside Indianapolis truck stop. On April 10, 2008, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi charged Mendenhall with murder in the case. DNA tests link a large quantity of the blood from Mendenhall's truck cab to the woman's parents. Investigators also found her cell phone, ATM card and clothing she wore on the day she disappeared.
On July 28, police in Birmingham, Alabama charged Mendenhall with the murder of Lucille "Gretna" Carter, who was found nude in a trash bin with a plastic bag taped around her head on July 1. She was shot with a .22-caliber weapon.
Investigators said Mendenhall was initially cooperative, but subsequently ceased to implicate himself in other murders. Police are investigating the possibility that Mendenhall is responsible for other murders in the region including:
- Deborah Ann Glover, an Atlanta prostitute whose body was found near a Motel 6 in Suwanee, Georgia on January 29, 2007. Police are certain that Mendenhall was in Georgia on the day Glover was shot.
- Sherry Drinkard, a prostitute from Gary, Indiana whose body was found naked in a snow embankment
- Tammy Zywicki, a student who was found stabbed to death on September 2, 1992. She vanished from Interstate 80 near LaSalle, Illinois nine days before, after dropping off her brother at Northwestern University.
- Jennifer Smith, a prostitute found nude at a truck stop in Bucksnort, Tennessee in April 2005.
- Robin Bishop, a prostitute who was run over at a Flying J truck stop on Interstate 40 in Fairview, Tennessee on July 1, 2007.
- Belinda Cartwright, a hitchhiker who was run over at a truck stop in Georgia in 2001. A composite police sketch made of the suspect based on information from witnesses bears a striking resemblance to Mendenhall.
Read more about this topic: Bruce Mendenhall
Famous quotes containing the word victims:
“Whether in the field of health, education or welfare, I have put my emphasis on preventive rather than curative programs and tried to influence our elaborate, costly and ill- co-ordinated welfare organizations in that direction. Unfortunately the momentum of social work is still directed toward compensating the victims of our society for its injustices rather than eliminating those injustices.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict.”
—Combined Loyalist Military Command. New York Times, p. A12 (October 14, l994)
“At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping soldiers of the proletariat will awake as at the fanfare of the Last Judgment and the corpses of the victims of the struggle will arise and demand an accounting from those who are loaded down with curses.”
—Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919)