Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers

by Frank Figliuzzi

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Delivered with the careful eye of an FBI agent, this shocking story ticks all the boxes of a true crime narrative. With a vividly written and unforgettable cast of characters, it's a definite stand-out.

"A true-crime masterpiece." —Don Winslow

From the FBI’s former assistant director, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for the long-haul truckers behind an astonishing 850 murders–and counting.

In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and “The Interstate Strangler,” who once answered a phone call from his mother while killing one of his dozen victims. The crisis was such that the FBI opened a special unit, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative. In many cases, the victims—often at-risk women—are picked up at truck stops in one jurisdiction, sexually assaulted and murdered in another, and dumped along a highway in a third place. The transient nature of the offenders and multiple jurisdictions involved make these cases incredibly difficult to solve.

Based on his own on-the-ground research and drawing on his twenty-five-year career as an FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi investigates the most terrifying cases. He also rides in a big-rig with a long-haul trucker for thousands of miles, gaining an intimate understanding of the life and habits of drivers and their roadside culture. And he interviews the courageous trafficked victims of these crimes, and their inspiring efforts to now help others avoid similar fates.

Long Haul is a gripping exploration of a violent, disordered world hiding in plain sight, and the heroes racing to end the horror. It will forever unsettle how you travel on the road.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063265158
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/28/2024
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	6,926
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Frank Figliuzzi was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is an MSNBC columnist and a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. He is the author of the national bestseller The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau's Code of Excellence.

Editorial Reviews

03/04/2024

FBI veteran Figliuzzi (The FBI Way) examines in this rattling work of true crime the serial murderers crisscrossing America behind the wheels of big rig trucks. Of the million registered semi truck drivers in the United States, the vast majority are just men doing their jobs, Figliuzzi notes. However, the FBI’s Highway Serial Killer Initiative is actively hunting 450 possible suspects involved in some 850 homicides, mostly of women whose bodies were dumped along major roadsides. Figliuzzi takes readers inside some of the most notorious cases—including that of the “Big Rig Killer,” who tortured more than 50 women during the 1970s and ’80s—and paints a hard-edged portrait of life on the road, replete with drug use, crushing isolation, and a thriving truck-stop sex trade. In a particularly memorable section, he rides for thousands of miles alongside a trucker who’s been on the job for 40 years and is struggling with the industry’s increasing tilt toward automation. Along the way, Figliuzzi circles a single, blaring question: Does the long-haul life create, or just draw, violent criminals? While he doesn’t arrive at a definitive answer, his blend of thorough research and immersive storytelling takes readers deep inside the conundrum. It’s fascinating stuff. Agent: Peter McGuigan, Ultra Literary. (May)

Publishers Weekly

2024-04-18
A former assistant director of counterintelligence for the FBI delves into the work of a special unit that examines the link between truckers and highway serial killings.

Figliuzzi, author of The FBI Way, first learned about the agency’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative in 2021. The criminal analyst who told him about HSK revealed that agents had gathered enough evidence to link long-haul truckers to a shocking 850 murders, many of them unsolved. To better grasp the group’s mission, the author ventured back into the field to study not only trucker subculture, but also the women mostly likely to fall victim to trucker serial killers. For one week, he rode the highways with Mike, a young man early into his trucking career, to get a sense of the everyday challenges and hardships truckers faced and the personality types that would be attracted to the lifestyle. Figliuzzi also interviewed a retired trucker named Dale: An alcoholic loner and gun-owner, Dale ticked “boxes on a crime analyst’s HSK checklist” that the more sociable Mike did not. From the leading academic researchers, the author gained insight into the ways prostitution and human trafficking intersected with truck stop culture to create conditions that predators could exploit to their advantage. But it was the female survivors of trucker abuse that gave Figliuzzi the most harrowing glimpses into the depths of this disturbing branch of trucker subculture. Wounded by early trauma, these women became targets of unscrupulous individuals who used drugs to lure them into situations of involuntary servitude that included prostituting themselves to truckers. As the author brings to light the important work of a little-known FBI investigative unit, he illuminates the dark underside of an industry that, while essential, is also brutal and unforgiving.

Compelling reading for true-crime enthusiasts, especially those intrigued by the psychology of serial killers.

Kirkus Reviews

"This is a true crime masterpiece. Figliuzzi combines his career FBI agent’s pursuit of investigative detail, with a journalism-like level of research and story-telling." — Don Winslow, #1 bestselling author of The Force, The Cartel, and City on Fire

“In his groundbreaking new book, former FBI special agent Frank Figliuzzi does the digging that few in law enforcement have done: he spent countless hours on the road with truckers, examining the dark underbelly of long-haulers who prey on women and girls – and the online sex trafficking culture surrounding these crimes that is a nationwide epidemic. Figliuzzi’s work highlights how sex traffickers exploit the weaknesses of local police – and what an elite FBI unit is now doing to combat it.”  — Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald investigative journalist and author of Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story

"Figliuzzi takes us on a frightening and compelling journey on America’s highways, where serial killers have been hunting vulnerable prey and law enforcers seek to catch them. A revealing look at something most Americans would never guess: as many as 800 murder victims are believed to be traced to a tiny subset of long-haul truckers who have turned into isolated sociopaths and stealthy killers." — Carol Leonnig, Washington Post investigative reporter, four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, #1 bestselling author of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service

“Long Haul is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Figliuzzi is an amazing writer whose real-life characters seem to leap out of a Hollywood movie script. As Frank rides shotgun in a semi driving cross country, we learn a hidden world of truck driving serial killers, the heartbreaking stories of their victims, and the men and women who have dedicated their lives to finding and stopping them. This is the underbelly of a world we would otherwise never know.” — John Miller, former NYPD Deputy Commissioner and CNN Chief Criminal Justice and Intelligence Analyst

“Frank’s finger is on the pulse of a visceral fear every woman who has ever driven alone on a dark highway has felt: danger. In Long Haul he shines his unflinching spotlight on the voiceless victims of human trafficking whose gruesome murders at the hands of long haul truckers and members of their subculture too often go unsolved. This first hand and expert account reads like a season of True Detective and will forever change your experience and awareness on America’s highways.” — Nicolle Wallace, Host, Deadline White House, MSNBC; former Communications Director for President George W. Bush

“Shocking. . . . As Figliuzzi brings to light the important work of a little-known FBI investigative unit, he illuminates the dark underside of an industry that, while essential, is also brutal and unforgiving. Compelling reading for true-crime enthusiasts, especially those intrigued by the psychology of serial killers.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Figliuzzi examines in this rattling work of true crime the serial murderers crisscrossing America behind the wheels of big rig trucks. . . . His blend of thorough research and immersive storytelling takes readers deep inside the conundrum. It’s fascinating stuff.”  — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher