Cruising With the Whore Cop

Throughout that spring and summer, the killing continued. Buffie Rae Brawley, a 27-year-old out of Toledo, was found March 24 in the parking lot of a former truck stop about 35 miles out of Indianapolis. Her mouth and nose had been taped shut. "It appears the guy pulled up in a semi--you can tell by the tracks--and tossed her out," the local sheriff told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "She was dead before she hit the ground." She was wearing a shirt and bra when they found her, the sheriff said, and had injuries from bindings around her wrists and ankles. "This guy in my opinion tortured her," he said. "He beat her over the head. There were four distinct trauma injuries to the head that caused 3-inch gaps. This guy didn't care if she was found or not. He ran over her right foot with one of his rear tires. This may have been out of contempt."

In August, two more hookers were found dead; one in Mississippi, the other in Oklahoma. Cops throughout the South began working on the case, meeting once that summer in Oklahoma City and once in Grapevine to discuss the unsolved murders of 15 truck stop prostitutes. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations, which ran lead in the investigation, estimated that at least 10 of the killings were linked.

The big break came in the summer of 2005 when America's Most Wanted aired a program on Pipestem's murder. Shortly after, Grapevine police got a tip that the murderer was already in jail in Mississippi. The caller on the other end was a relative of the man in question, 29-year-old John Robert Williams.

Grapevine police detectives traveled to Mississippi to interview Williams. For two days they questioned him. "He was pleasant to talk to," Grapevine Corporal Larry Hallmark remembers. "If you met him at the truck stop, you'd think, 'Oh, there's just a likable old truck driver.' But after you sit and start talking about some of these murders and talk about some of the specific things that occurred and you see the lack of emotion, then you realize that you're dealing with someone that's different than you and I.

"I'm absolutely convinced that he is the one that killed Casey. Even the first day he admitted some knowledge in the murder and gave us some information that only the killer would have known."

Hallmark thinks Williams has killed at least eight truck stop prostitutes. Williams has already agreed to plea bargains in the deaths of two of them. To avoid interfering with any open investigations, Grapevine police have held off on arresting him for Pipestem's murder, but it's only a matter of time.

If there is any good to come out of Pipestem's murder it is this: It created a network for cops pursuing truck stop killers. There are now regional meetings, such as the one held in Grapevine, every couple of months, and at least weekly, Hallmark talks to cops such as Peters, who are on the front lines, so to speak. Without a doubt, Hallmark says, there are other killers out there.

"I'm not saying that most truck drivers are serial killers or that if you're a truck driver there's a good likelihood that you're a serial killer. But if you're a serial killer, truck driving would be a good profession."

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Terry Peters likes to say that he doesn't care about the girls. But ride with him for a while, and you'll see different. Girls will call him. Girls that are sober, girls that have cleaned up their lives. One is a drug counselor now; another works at the mall behind a cosmetics counter. Which cosmetics counter and which mall, Peters won't say. Well, he'll say, but you better not print it. The last thing these girls need is some newspaper reporter putting them on the front page as former crack whores. They're trying to move on, and they're fragile.

When they call, his voice softens. It's like he's talking to his grown children. "Oh, she's fine," he'll say, when they ask about his wife, to whom he's been married for 33 years. She has health problems and this worries the girls, because they care about Peters. When he hangs up he'll start worrying himself--how this one's been struggling, how this one's been sober for three years now, how this one's having dreams about smoking dope.

"But I don't ever smoke it in my dreams," says one of the former prostitutes, who calls me at Peters' request. "Either the lighter won't light, or there'll be a breeze, or the dope will fall off the pipe and when I pick it up it's a peanut or something." She can laugh at it all now.

She went by Baby Doll back when she worked the truck stops. She got started in Corpus Christi, and one night she fell asleep in a driver's truck, and that's how she ended up in Dallas. The money was so good she never left. For seven years she worked the truck stops near I-20 and Lancaster Road, which is where she met Peters.

Hers was a $300 a day habit, but she made more than $1,000 a day, easy. Most of it came from dealing, not prostitution. After she'd smoked her crack, she spent what was left on a hotel room and food. Tried to take care of herself, unlike some of the other girls, who didn't even bathe.