Back in the year 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Having been inspired during his time in Germany in World War 2, and seeing the efficiency of the autobahn system, he sought to bring this type of highway system to the good ol’ US of A. Not only did a national highway system make sense from an economic standpoint, but also, in the event of an invasion by a foreign power, a highway system would be needed in order to transport troops, equipment, and supplies across the country in an efficient and timely manner.
The result was the creation of the nation’s interstate highway system, a system of vital arteries running across long stretches of the nation.
Nowadays, millions of people drive on the interstate highways without so much as a second thought. It’s something we take for granted in our modern, fast-paced world. Some of you who may be listening to this podcast RIGHT NOW may be driving on it.
You might be a 9 to 5 wageslave on your way to the office. Or maybe you’re a long-haul truck driver, popping no-doz, listening to an endless stream of podcasts for some semblance of human companionship, and heaving your piss jugs out onto the side of the highway at 70 mph only to make some poor bastard wearing an orange reflective vest who was just convicted of a DUI come by and pick it up off the side of the road. We’re not here to judge.
But if you happen to be driving around on the US highway system, or any other nation’s highway system for that matter, take a look at the cars and trucks around you. Have you ever wondered who these people really are? Or, could one of these assholes congesting up YOUR highway even be a bloodthirsty serial killer? The answer to that question, in case you are wondering, is a resounding YES.
Interstate 70, or I-70 for short. From Baltimore, Maryland, all the way to Salt Lake City Utah, it stretches East-West across the United States Heartland. Construction of it began in 1956, and wasn’t fully completed until 1992, the very same year our story takes place.
But in the spring of that year, a sadistic madman would set out on a brutal cross-country killing spree along this dusty stretch of highway, leaving at least 6 people dead in his wake, and possibly several others in the following years. To this day, the chickenshit son of a bitch known as the I-70 Killer has never been identified, nor has he ever been brought to justice. Tonight, dear listener, please pay close attention to the details in this case. Someone out there knows this person. And perhaps, that someone is YOU.
On the cool and breezy afternoon of April 8, 1992, at a Payless ShoeSource located at 7325 Pendleton Pike in Indianapolis, Indiana, Robin Fuldauer, a 26-year-old employee of the store had come in to work to fill in for another employee who had called out sick. Just 4 years prior, in 1988, she had graduated from Indiana University, and now wanted nothing more than to settle down with a good man to start a family with.
However, instead of the heroic man of her dreams coming in to sweep her off her feet, a strange, unknown man caught the eye of an employee in a nearby store, who was sitting on a curb in his parking lot, staring out across the street at the Payless ShoeSource as he rifled around through his bag for about half an hour. He was purported to have been seen talking to himself and occasionally laughing.
At around 2PM, the manager of the Payless began trying to call Robin to check up on her, but nobody was answering the phone. After failing to get in contact with Robin, the owner of the Payless called the gas station next door, and an employee of the gas station went over to check on Robin. What she found inside the store was unsettling at best.
The cash register was wide open, the money taken, and the store appeared to be empty. She immediately called the police, who quickly came and discovered Robin’s body lying face-down in the back office. She had been shot twice in the back of the head with a 22-caliber firearm, execution style, with no signs of a struggle. Although $90 had been stolen from the register, robbery did not appear to be the main motive.
The killer had apparently fled the scene through the back door of the store, as it was wide open.
Just 3 days later, and nearly 700 miles to the West, in Wichita, Kansas, the killer would strike again.
23-year-old Patricia Smith, and 32 year old Patricia Magers were working at a bridal shop called La’Bride d’Elegance. The two Patricias were happily married, but to separate men, not each other.
The store was located at 4613 East Kellogg Ave, inside of a small strip mall just off of US Route 400.
The store was supposed to have closed at 6 PM on that evening, but the duo agreed to wait just a little bit longer for a customer who wanted to swing by and pick up a cummerbund for his tuxedo.
However, just a few minutes after 6PM, a man knocked on the door of the business. Patricia Smith went over to open the door, believing it to be the customer they were both waiting on. But the man soon pulled out a gun, and ushered the two women into the back room, and made them lie face down on the floor, where he subsequently shot both of them in the back of the head, Smith once, and Magers twice.
As the killer was preparing to exit, the customer who was there to pick up his cummerbund arrived. The killer was holding a gun which was wrapped in a wedding veil, and attempted to coerce the man to come into the store and enter the backroom. However, the customer refused, and realizing that he was losing control of the situation, the killer told him to GET, and not say a word to anyone. The customer slowly backed out of the store, never turning his back to the killer.
Terrified, the witness waited an hour before calling the police, who arrived at 7:30PM to a horrific scene, the bodies of Patricia Smith and Patricia Magers lying in a pool of blood in the back room of the store.
Just like the previous crime, the store had been robbed, but only a small amount of money was taken.
The witness described the man as a slightly built red haired man, wearing a brown jacket and wielding an strange looking gun. No escape vehicle was spotted.
Wichita Detective Tim Relph said “If that witness would have cooperated, he would have killed him.”
And:
“I don’t think he anticipated for there to be a second person there.”
We’ll get into more details later on in the episode, but the witness was able to give a description of the suspect, stating that he was about 5’6 or 5’7, and from his cooperation, a composite sketch of the suspect was created, which is the photo for this episode if your app supports episode photos. You can also just Google I-70 Killer and the composite sketch will be plastered all over the search results if you’d like to see it.
A description of the weapon that the killer held was also provided, which, when combined with some other forensic details, would later help police determine the exact make and model of the weapon, which we will go into in greater detail a bit further on in the episode.
The witness described it as looking something between a rifle with a short barrel or a pistol with a long barrel, with a foregrip on it, which to those of you who are not familiar with components on firearms, is a grip that goes under the barrel, for your off-hand to hold onto if you’re shooting it two-handed. So basically, it looked like a pistol with a really long barrel on it, so long in fact that it had a foregrip on it.
Just over two weeks later, on April 27, 1992, Michael “Mick” McCown, the 40-year-old owner of the ceramics shop called Sylvia’s Ceramics Supply located on 2615 South 3rd St in Terra Haute, Indiana, had a chiropractors appointment in the morning, and was deciding whether or not to take the day off or to go in and open up the shop. He decided to go in, which tragically, cost him his life.
Just after 4PM on that day, a killer walked into the store, and shot Mick point blank in the back of the head and stole $50 from the store before fleeing the scene. This time, the killer had become more brazen, by choosing a time and a location where more people were out and about. What also stands out is the fact that Michael was not lured into a back room; he was shot right there on the sales floor, with his hand just inches from an item, a plaster house, that he was presumably bending down to pick up.
Michael, or “Mick”, was also the only male victim in the entire spree, leading to speculation that the killer may have initially mistaken him for a woman, as he had long hair which he wore down in a ponytail, and an earring in one ear. It’s also speculated that the name “Sylvia’s Ceramics”, which Michael had named after his mother, may have led the killer to believe that a woman named Sylvia would be working inside.
Michael likely never even saw it coming, as police theorize that the killer may have asked to see an item, and was then shot in the back of the head as he bent down to retrieve it for the would-be customer. Or conversely, Michael was already bending down to retrieve the item as the killer quietly walked in, not even knowing that the killer was there at all.
In an article from kmov.com by Bob Cyphers dated Jan 20, 2022, Detective Brad Rumsey of the Terre Haute Police Department stated “It does strike me as odd. These were times when people were out and about. He got off on the fact that people were right there, and he was doing something that heinous and getting away with it. It probably really got the juices flowing for him knowing that people were right next door or on the street right in front of the place.”
Rumsey later went on to state that he believes the killer was stunned when he found out that his target wasn’t a woman. “When he realized it was a male, I think he was probably concerned about a struggle ensuing if he didn’t shoot him right there.”
Unfortunately, this would not be the I-70 Killer’s last crime. Far from it, in fact.
24-year-old Nancy Kitzmiller of St. Charles, Missouri, would become the I-70 Killer’s 5th known victim.
Nancy had graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in geography, and loved soccer, and could be described as a proper “country girl”, who loved line-dancing, western wear, and country music. At the time, she was working as a manager at a footwear store called Boot Village, which specialized in western footwear, located in the Bogey Hills shopping plaza on 2079 Zumbehl Road.
On May 3, 1992, a beautiful spring day, tragedy would strike.
Nancy was not scheduled to be working on that day, but as fate would have it, another employee switched shifts with her, similar to what happened with Robin Fuldauer.
She was working alone on that day, and at 2:30 PM, a customer walked into the store and became concerned when they noticed nobody else was in the store. And as they walked into the back room to look for an employee, they were shocked, and horrified, by what they saw.
Nancy was laying lifeless on the floor, having been shot in the back of the head with a 22 caliber firearm.
The police initially believed it to have been a robbery gone bad, but soon realized that robbery was likely not the main motive, as Nancy’s purse remained untouched, and the killer had only stolen a small amount of money from the cash register.
St Charles Police Detective Pat McCarrick, regarding the strange circumstances of the crime, said “You go into a western store at 2PM on a Sunday, what are you expecting you’re going to get? You’re not going to get much money. Your average stick-up man, this is not what he’s going to do. This guy’s motivation was the act of the killing, not the robbery.”
Nobody had heard the gunshot or witnessed the perpetrator entering or exiting the scene. However, a witness did report a suspicious man nearby with dull red hair and a medium height who was sitting outside of the store at around 12:30, consistent with other eyewitness descriptions of the suspect.
The last confirmed victim of the I-70 Killer, but possibly not actually his last, was the owner of a small health store called The Store of Many Colors. 37-year-old Sarah Blessing had pulled into the Woodson Village Shopping Center, which was located at the corner of 63rd St and Woodson Rd in Raytown, Missouri, to open up her store at about noon. Her day proceeded as normal – talking to her husband over the phone about matters like her two boys, and their dog and cat.
However, the owner of the television repair and video store, directly next to The Store of Many Colors, Tim Hickman, spotted a man walking toward Sarah’s store from across the parking lot.
“I happened to glance up and I see a gentleman coming across the parking lot. He had on a sport coat, and I thought ‘wow, that’s weird’. He was walking this way. I look up again and he stepped right in front of my door. I looked at him and he looked at me. I think he was a little bit shocked, because if he scoped the store a little earlier, my mom and my sister were here. He looked kind of shocked. He looked at me like, ‘huh, that’s not what I kind of thought it was’. I looked at his face. He turned left and took off.”
The murderer then entered Sarah’s store. Tim Hickman went on to state “About two or three minutes after I see him leave, I hear a pop. It sounds like a gunshot. Then I said, ‘that can’t be it.’ I haven’t told anybody this before, but I grabbed my gun and had it behind my back. I jumped through the door. Sarah’s door was just closing, and the guy I saw earlier was going around the corner. I didn’t see his face, but I could tell by his clothes. He was whipping around the corner of the building. It was the same guy. Same clothes. I stood there for maybe 20 to 30 seconds. I said, ‘something is wrong.’ I looked both ways, and he was gone, over the hill. That’s a steep hill. It couldn’t have been more than 30-45 seconds now. I said, ‘where did this guy go?’ I ran back to the store and called for Sarah.”
Mr. Hickman went over to Sarah’s store to check up on her. As he looked through the window, he didn’t see anything out of place. However, as he took a few steps into her store, he was shocked and horrified by what he saw next.
“I kind of looked in through the door and I didn’t see anything. And I was calling ‘Ma’am, ma’am?’ And I stepped forward a couple more steps and then I saw her legs sticking out of the other room.” Mr. Hickman stepped in for a closer look, only to discover Sarah lying motionless in a pool of blood.
Mr. Hickman immediately phoned the police.
A grocery store worker who was out in the parking lot collecting shopping carts witnessed the man leaving Sarah’s shop, and then walk up a steep embankment toward Woodson Rd.
With that, that brings us to the end of the official story, but our work here is not done yet, dear listener.
Through forensic analysis and eyewitness testimony, it’s been determined that the killer almost certainly used a highly unusual firearm in all 6 of these killings, and it’s one that the average person would probably not be able to find very easily: The Erma Werke ET22.
As the iconic Luger went out of production following the end of World War 2, their popularity only soared as the supply of them started to dwindle, and they became hot collectors’ items.
However, in the 1960’s, the Erma Werke gun manufacturer of West Germany produced a Luger-style weapon that was based on the original Imperial German Navy model Luger which had featured the longer, 6 inch barrel instead of the standard 3.8 inch barrel. But instead of making an exact knockoff of it, they opted to make the barrel EVEN longer, coming in at a whopping 11.85 inch long – placing the gun at a total length of 16.5 inches, turning the weapon from a pistol, to what can almost be described as a carbine.
They dubbed the new weapon the ET22, and only 6,906 of them were ever produced.
To describe it visually, it would look like a Luger with nearly a foot long barrel, a wooden handgrip and wooden forestock. It’s extremely odd-looking, because it looks like a pistol toward the rear, but the barrel is freakishly long.
It was an extremely weird choice of weapon, because it was highly prone to jamming, and despite it being a pistol, was extremely large due to its comically long barrel, rendering it difficult to conceal.
Through forensic analysis of the shell casings, it was also determined that the killer painstakingly polished his bullets with jeweler’s red rouge, which would allow the bullet to slide more easily into the chamber, and reduce the chances of it jamming, which would make sense if he was using a piece of shit gun that was prone to jamming, like the Erma Werke ET22.
After the 6th killing, people living in the nearby vicinity of the I-70 Highway were on edge. The fear and paranoia had spread all over the Midwest by this point, and yet, as the great people of the Midwest collectively held their breath and clenched their buttcheeks together, nothing else happened. Days turned into weeks, and weeks, into months, and the killer seemingly vanished, like a fart into a gentle spring zephyr.
However, some suspicious incidents occurred in Texas which may or may not be linked to the mother fucker now known as the I-70 Killer.
September 25, 1993. Almost a year and a half after the last known I-70 Killer victim was murdered, 51 year old Mary Ann Glasscock of Fort Worth Texas was just minding her own business, working at a small store located at 4708 Bryce Avenue, called Emporium Antiques, which sat in a strip mall just about 6 blocks off of Interstate 35. When a friend decided to go into the store to visit her later in the day, she discovered Mary Ann dead from a gunshot wound, lying between the kitchen and another back room of the store.
Much like the other killings, she too had been shot in the back of the head execution style with a 22 caliber bullet while working in a store located in a small strip mall close to a highway offramp. A small amount of money was stolen from the scene, but the main motive was definitely not robbery.
As October of that year turned into November 1, the people of the great state of Texas, whom you should never mess with, collectively nursed their post-Halloween hangovers and flipped the page of their calendars. What should have been a quiet day of cleaning up smashed up pumpkins off of the neighborhood streets would turn into yet another day of senseless tragedy.
22-year-old Amy Vess, who worked at a dance apparel store in Arlington called Dancers Closet, dialed 911. She was in bad shape, and the operators could not understand her.
When first responders arrived at the scene, they discovered Amy lying on the floor with the phone still in her hand, with multiple bullet wounds in her face. She was still alive, but barely. The authorities questioned her about what happened, which she was able to nod when asked if it was a robbery, and also nodded when asked if it was a man who did this.
After being life flighted to a nearby hospital, she sadly ended up passing away the following day.
More than 2 months had passed since the senseless murder of Amy Vess. By mid-January, the killer would strike again. This time, in Houston, on January 15 of ’94.
Vicki Webb, 35, was excited that day. She was about to go on vacation that very afternoon.
Vicki owned and operated a small store called Alternatives Gift Shop, again, located just off of a highway – in this case, I-69, in the Rice Village shopping district near Rice University.
After opening up her shop at 10 AM that day, one of her first customers was a man who was about 5 foot 8, wearing a beige cardigan sweater, who walked bow-legged. He had long, shaggy blonde hair, and spent a few minutes just looking around inside of the store.
“A short guy. Maybe 5 feet 8. He was thin. Very gaunt. Very skinny. I will always say he looked like a jockey. He walked into the store and really just started talking… I would guess he was in his mid-30’s. He was very tanned and had a leathery or weathered look. A worn-down look. I still keep thinking, he has to have worked somewhere outside… he asked me several questions about traffic in the area, ‘Did I get a lot of walk-in traffic?’ I said well, I am a small gift store and it is in the middle of January… I was talking to him very much like a businessperson would, thinking ‘oh this gentleman is looking for real estate or something in the area’”.
Another customer soon entered the store, and the man told Vicki that he would be back in a few minutes.
“He was acting strange. Who thinks anything else besides this is a strange guy?”
The man soon returned, just after the other customer left the store.
“He said he was waiting to meet his niece. He kept telling me how much she would like the store.”
The man kept looking out of the front window repeatedly, which Vicki assumed that he was just waiting for his niece to arrive.
“He was acting like he was in the same kind of business as me… He was looking out both sets of windows toward the parking lot. He kept mentioning his niece… he was very pensive. He never got close to me. But he was acting very nervous. But I was closing at 4 PM and going on vacation. My mind was certainly not there.”
After about 15 minutes in the store, the man pointed at an item.
“He said something about a copper picture frame that he wanted. He pointed at the wall where the frame was. I walked over, grabbed it, handed it to him and then turned around to go behind the counter.”
And then, the unthinkable happened.
“I never heard him come up on me. I never heard a thing. I never saw a gun. I just heard a loud pop behind me… I realized I was falling very slowly down. I fell on my right-hand side. I had not quite registered what had happened at that point. I laid there thinking ‘oh my gosh, I am in trouble.’”
The man then jumped over the counter and stole a small amount of money from the cash register.
“All I could see was his feet. He had on brown cowboy roper boots… He went to a small room in the back and opened the door. It was my storage closet. It was packed. There was no room in there. He closed it and then came back over to me.”
Vicki, in that moment, believed that the only chance she had at surviving was to play dead, and hope that the shooter mistakenly believed that he had killed her.
The shooter soon left the store, which was a relief, but to Vicki’s horror, he soon returned. She kept her eyes closed and laid perfectly still.
The man jumped over Vicki and pulled her legs down so that she was lying flat. He then pulled her pants down for an unknown reason, but was not sexually assaulted.
Then, the unthinkable happened again. The man put his gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger.
To Vicki’s relief, it just clicked.
The man then laughed at his shit luck, but was soon spooked by some sounds outside, and quickly left the scene. This time, for good.
Vicki laid in that spot for the next 10 to 15 minutes, completely paralyzed from the gunshot wound, until a would-be customer entered the store and came to her assistance.
She went through an excruciatingly painful ordeal at the hospital, as her entire head became hypersensitive, and in her words, child birth has a pain level of 3, but the pain she felt that day was unbearable.
However, through her own luck, she had a spinal abnormality, which deflected the bullet, which caused it to ricochet off of her vertebrae and lodge into her head. She had become paralyzed from the neck down, but eventually, through rehabilitation, regained her ability to walk. The bullet was never surgically removed, and remains inside of her to this day.
She went on to state recently that “The man took a lot of my life away. Once I made the choice that he could not have anymore, I have never looked back. I am very lucky. If this was part of the I-70 killings, I am the 9th victim. The 8 before me are no longer here. But whether I was part of the I-70 case or not part of the I-70 case, there still was somebody who shot me, and they are still out there.”
Regarding the composite sketch of the suspect, Vicki has said that there were similarities, but would not go as far as to say it was an exact likeness, but rather, the man’s voice is what she would be able to immediately recognize.
So with that, dear listener, although disabled from her injuries, Vicki Webb is still alive to this day, perhaps being the sole survivor of the I-70 Killer.
At this point in the story, you might be wondering why the authorities are not sure whether or not these three attacks in Texas were committed by the I-70 Killer. It was a guy who committed the same exact types of crimes, with the same exact type of victim, in very similar storefronts, for seemingly no reason, with a 22 caliber firearm.
Well, as it turns out, the killings in Texas were committed with a different firearm than those committed in the crimes off of I-70, and so an official link between the two strings of murders has never been made. However, many believe these were all caused by the same sick individual.
But before we wrap up, there is one last crime that authorities have come out and stated recently as potentially having been committed by the I-70 Killer.
On November 30, 2001, in Terra Haute, Indiana, just several blocks away from where Michael McCown was gunned down inside of Sylvia’s Ceramics 9 years prior, a lone white male walked into the 7th & 70 Liquor Annex where 31-year-old Billy Brossman was working. It was the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday.
The events which unfolded were caught on the store’s CCTV cameras.
The man entered the store and picked up some beer from the fridge area, before then approaching the counter where Billy was. Then, suddenly, the man pulled out a gun and aimed it at Billy, who offered the contents of the cash register to the man, but was quickly ushered into the back corner of the store where the beer fridge was, and was immediately shot once in the head, dying instantly. The killer then ran out of the store, leaving the beer behind, as well as most of the money.
Shortly after the murders, the case was featured on the television show “America’s Most Wanted”, which resulted in multiple people calling in to the show to identify the man, and they identified the same individual. His identity has never been made public, but he lived in St. Charles Missouri at the time of the shooting, which is the same city that Nancy Kitzmiller was murdered in, and has been to Terra Haute before, and previously worked a construction job which took him all across the Midwest. However, despite all of this, the authorities never had enough evidence to charge him in the case.
Despite having fairly clear CCTV footage of the suspect, the person in the footage has never been identified or been brought to justice for Billy’s cold blooded murder.
Is he the I-70 Killer? You be the judge.
Just to do a little bit of a recap here, here are some important bullet points about the suspect and his crimes.
-White male, most likely between 5’7 and 5’9 (Possible manlet rage)
-Slender to Medium Build, weighing between 140 to 180 pounds
-Reddish or Sandy Blonde colored hair
-Beard stubble
-Thin lips
-Possible micropenis
- Lazy or Droopy eyelids
-According to witnesses, he was neatly dressed and clean-cut
-He appeared to be almost in some sort of trance prior to some of the murders
-He may have lived in an area near to interstate 70
-He may be a collector of antique or unique firearms
-Although money was stolen from each of the crime scenes, robbery was not his main motive
-None of his victims were sexually assaulted
-The FBI believes in the months prior to the murders, he fantasized about killing, and described him as a organized, coldblooded psychopath, and have also speculated that he is a “thrill killer”.
-They also speculate that he savored the sense of being superior to his victims because he held the power to end their lives in his hands.
-They suggest he may have chosen his victim type (which were young brunette women) based on someone who had wronged him in the past, or perceived to have wronged him, in order to enact revenge on similar types of people. (In other words, like a surrogate victims)
-All the stores he targeted were located inside of strip malls near to interstates.
-All murders happened in the afternoon
-He may have a link to the military, as some of the murders happened near to military bases, and could be a service member who was dealing with PTSD
-If alive today in 2023, the killer would likely be in his 50’s or 60’s.