At the station, the 27-year-old woman explained how she was hitchhiking to visit friends when she accepted a ride from a seemingly polite stranger. Grateful for some rest, she fell asleep in the passenger seat and woke up being shoved in the sleeper cab.

Everywhere Rhoades went, he brought a meticulously organized briefcase containing leashes, whips, handcuffs, alligator clips, pins, fish hooks, and sex toys, Det. Rick Barnhardt told the Tuscon Weekly in February 1996. The woman Miller found chained on Interstate 10 detailed to detectives how her kidnapper had laid down a white towel before torturing and raping her, and how he bragged that he had been doing it for years — and how he had always gotten away with it.

At the police station, Rhoades was calm and quietly dismissive, claiming the woman chained in his truck was a “lot lizard” — a consenting prostitute who was “not playing with a full deck.” Rhoades acted chummy with the officers as he tried to persuade them that the nasty business of the shackled women in his truck was not a big deal — that it was all her idea. This tactic of sewing doubt had worked for him before, but this time the victim was not afraid, and would not back down. Rhoades was booked for aggravated assault, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment.