15 Stories That Will Convince You to Never (Ever) Hitchhike

There’s nothing as romantic as the idea of hitchhiking across the world and relying on the kindness of strangers to get you from point A to point Z. But for every cinematic story of people meeting at a truck stop and becoming best friends, there are hundreds of hitchhiking horror stories. Not to sound like your mom, but there are so many reasons why you shouldn't hitchhike. Not only can you get hit by car or have all your money stolen, but you could end up being a forced sex slave who sleeps in a coffin under your captor’s waterbed for close to a decade. Make sure you read this before you go on a cross country trek so you can learn the dangers of hitchhiking.

The open road is a beautiful place where you can make friends that you’d never meet in the city and have adventures that will change your life. But there’s also a dangerous part to traveling with people on highways and back roads. For every eccentric goofball that you meet, one of them is probably an axe murderer waiting for the right time to chop you up. Keep reading for even more scary hitchhiking facts. 

Ben Rhoades is a trucker who once allegedly admitted that he had been "torturing women for 15 years as he crisscrossed America by highway." The sadistic trucker kept a briefcase full of alligator clips, leashes, handcuffs, whips and dildos, and he wasn't caught until one Arizona state trooper decided to chat with Rhoades, who had parked his big rig a little too close to the shoulder of Interstate 40.

Inside Rhoades's cab, the trooper found a woman shackled to the door covered in welts, cuts, and with a horse bridle secured to her mouth and neck. After Rhoades was arrested, he was tied to a series of hitchhiker murders, and received an overwhelming amount of life sentences. 

On September 7, 1982 two men from upstate New York picked up an 18-year-old hitchhiker named Randall Shoptwese who was making his way to Alaska. The men had been drinking all day and made the decision to rob the hitchhiker before pulling over to pick him up. When they picked up Shoptwese, he resisted their robbery attempt and they managed to handcuff him and slit his throat. The knife penetrated him so deeply that when Shoptwese's body was found his head was almost completely severed. Both men were sentenced and remain in prison to this day.

In the '90s, trucker Keith Hunter Jesperson was the wrong guy to hitch a ride with. He was a serial killer who at one time claimed to have murdered 160 victims, although he later recanted his confession and admitted that he had only killed eight women. His method was to pick victims up at a gas station or on the side of the road, strangle them in their sleep, and dump their bodies in another state. One woman whom he let use his credit card to make a long distance call was strapped to the bottom of his truck and dragged across the road until she was unrecognizable. 

If you're traveling through Iceland, it's not out of the ordinary to hitchhike across the small, glacial country. But on August 16, 1982 sisters Yvette and Marie Bauhaud were trekking across the beautiful country and accepted a ride that would change their world forever. The driver, Grétar Sigurður Árnason, dropped the two sisters off at a cabin before accusing them of hiding marijuana, bashing Marie in the head with a rock, and shooting Yvette with a shotgun. Luckily Marie survived by hiding in a sleeping bag and running after a police car that happened to drive by. 

While hitchhiking across New Zealand in 1989, Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen disappeared outside of Thames, a city on the Southwestern end of country's North Island. Despite a massive search for the couple, nothing was discovered until Höglin's body was discovered in 1991, Paakkonen's body was never found despite the police's efforts to question the couple's killer, David Tamihere. 

One of the most terrifying tales of hitchhiking gone wrong comes from the Australian outback (where nothing good happens). From the late '80s to the early 2000s, the bodies of multiple hitchhikers, ranging from 18-year-old Catherine Graham to 32-year-old Tony Jones turned up on a desolate stretch of highway outside the cattle town of Hughenden. The murders are still unsolved.

It's impossible to know if all of the murders were the work of one killer, or if this part of the Australian outback is just a hotspot for horrific murders. 

A Polish man traveling through Ireland to buy a car found out the hard way that it rarely pays to accept a ride from strangers. According to the man, the car that he flagged down seemed like it belonged to a family, and he didn't mind sitting between two children (one was a 6 month old, the other was 8 years old). But after about 15 minutes he realized all was not what it seemed when they locked him in and met up with a second car on a side road.

Even though the hitchhiker gave his attackers all his money, they still stabbed him five or six times in front of the children. Luckily, paramedics arrived on the scene just in time to save the man's life. 

Throughout the early '70s, the Sonoma Valley was thought to be an ideal spot for hitchhiking, but in reality it was the site of a brutal series of slayings that lasted from 1972 to 1979. Over the course of seven years, eight young women ranging from the ages of 13 to 20 were found raped and murdered in the rural outskirts of Santa Rosa, California. No one was ever convicted of the crimes, but one of the main suspects in the case is none other than the elusive Zodiac Killer. 

On May 19, 1977 Colleen Stan decided to hitchhike 400 miles from Eugene, OR to surprise her friend in Westwood, CA for her birthday. She was less than 100 miles away from her destination when she had the bad luck of running into Cameron Hooker, a 23-year-old lumber mill worker. Hooker was traveling with his wife and baby when he picked up Stan and forced her to be a sex slave in their home for seven years.

During that time Stan slept in a box under the couple’s waterbed, and was repeatedly raped and tortured. Janice wasn't freed until 1984 when Hooker's wife helped her escape and get to a bus stop. At his trial Hooker was sentenced to 104 years in prison. 

In July 2016, a group of hitchhikers near Brakpan, South Africa accepted a ride from two unknown men and ended up on the ride of their lives. One of the men began punching a hitchhiker in the face before tying him up, and shooting him five times in the leg. Since this happened while the car was in motion, the driver ended up accidentally running into the wall of a house in KwaThema. The suspects fled the scene and left the hitchhikers to die. Luckily everyone survived.