A former truck driver was convicted Wednesday of killing a third woman in Indiana, and is charged or suspected in additional killings in other states, prosecutors said.
Bruce Mendenhall, who is already serving two life sentences for killing two women in Tennessee, was convicted by an Indianapolis jury in the 2007 murder of Karmapurapura, the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said. was found guilty of
“It is my hope that today’s verdict brings resolution to Karma’s family and others who have waited years for answers and accountability after losing loved ones,” Prosecutor Ryan Meyers said in a statement.
Mendenhall was arrested in 2007 in the slaying of Sarah Nicole Hilbert, who was shot to death at a truck stop in North Nashville, but he has pleaded not guilty to other murders in other states. Granted, officials said at the time.
Mendenhall, now 73, has been nicknamed the “truck stop serial killer,” Meyers said.
He was convicted of first-degree murder in Tennessee in 2010 for killing Hilbert, whose body was found on June 26, 2007, and sentenced to life in prison.
Eight years later, in 2018, Mendenhall was convicted of murder in the murder of Samantha Winters, whose body was found in a trash can at a Pilot truck stop in Lebanon, Tennessee on June 6, 2007. He was also sentenced to life imprisonment. In this case prison
Indiana prosecutor Meyers credited former Nashville police detective Sgt. With the arrest of Pat Postiglione Mendenhall.
Postiglione testified at trial that in 2007 he was investigating Hilbert’s murder and approached Mendenhall’s truck, noticing blood stains on the inside of the driver’s side door. Indianapolis’ NBC affiliate WTHR reported.. A bag was recovered when the taxi was searched.
“I opened the bag, and I looked inside the bag, and I saw, what was clear to me, blood,” Postiglione testified Tuesday, the station reported.
“There were a lot of blue napkins that were soaked in blood. There were clothes that were covered in blood. I saw a pair of ladies’ crocs and what I thought was a lady’s dress, all covered in blood. was,” he said, according to the station.
A sentencing hearing for Pura’s murder is scheduled for Feb. 13, court records show.
In the Tennessee cases, Mendenhall was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, or back-to-back.
Associated Press Cooperated.
