INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WOWO) — Bruce Mendenhall, also known as the “Truck Stop Serial Killer,” was sentenced Monday for the killing of an Indianapolis woman in 2007.
Mendenahll, a 73-year-old former truck driver from Illinois, was sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of Carma Purpura. She had disappeared from a Flying J truck stop on the south side of Indianapolis. Her body was later found near an interstate in Kentucky four years after she disappeared.
Not long after the murder, a Tennessee police officer pulled over Mendenhall over while he was driving his semitruck. The officer noticed blood in the cab and a bag of blood-stained clothing. Purpura’s ATM card and a receipt from an Indianapolis gas state were also found in the truck.
Mendenhall has denied killing Purpura. Police say the blood in his truck was a DNA match to DNA provided by Purpura’s parents.
Prosecutors have linked Mendenhall to several other similar killings across the country. He is already serving two life sentences for murders that happened in Tennessee.
