‘Interstate Strangler’ serial killer confesses in podcast to another murder leading cops to bones

Serial killer the ‘Interstate Strangler’ – who terrorized the nation’s highways murdering up to 52 women in a two decade-long spree – has confessed in a podcast interview to another murder 15 years ago, leading cops to find suspected human bones in Illinois.  

Dellmus ‘Heavy’ Colvin, 61, claimed last week on the ‘Where the Bodies are Buried’ podcast that he killed a woman at a truck stop along Interstate 80 outside LaSalle County before dumping her naked body round the back of a now-closed truck wash in Peru.

A search Wednesday uncovered two small pieces of bone at the alleged burial site which are now being analyzed by forensics to determine if they are human, authorities said.  

Colvin, who bragged that he ‘slept great’ after his first murder, is currently behind bars in Ohio serving two life sentences after confessing to the murders of seven women.

The serial killer stalked America’s highways while working as a trucker, luring sex workers into his truck cab before strangling them and dumping their bodies in other states. 

He claims to have killed up to 52 women across multiple states between 1983 and 2005.

Cadaver dogs, investigators and crime scene technicians on Wednesday afternoon combed the site of the abandoned truck wash where the killer said he dumped the victim’s body. 

LaSalle County Sheriff Tom Templeton said evidence, including two small pieces of bone, was found at the site and sent to a forensic investigator for analysis. 

The search was temporarily suspended because the cadaver dogs were struggling in the extreme heat. 

It will resume next week however Templeton said ‘animal activity’ in the area and the length of time since the body was allegedly dumped at the site means it may be unlikely any more evidence is found. 

Investigators spoke to Colvin after the podcast and he confirmed the same version of events, police said. 

The identity of the victim is not known and there are no missing persons cases that match Colvin’s version of events, according to Templeton.

Colvin said the woman worked as a prostitute outside the truck stop.

‘Individuals who work a high-risk lifestyle tend to move around a lot,’ Templeton said Wednesday.    

The infamous serial killer preyed on drug addicts and sex workers who lived transient lifestyles and were often not reported missing. 

Colvin said he never knew the names of any of his victims before he slayed them.   

In the August 26 podcast, Colvin told Florida criminal profiler Phil Chalmers that in 2004 or 2005, he was driving along Interstate 80 and stopped at the Flying J Travel Center outside LaSalle, reported Fox13.   

He said the woman then knocked on the door of his truck.  

Colvin described the woman as white with ‘dishwater blonde’ hair which he laughed was combed over her blackened right eye.

‘Someone dotted that eye,’ Colvin jeered. ‘It wasn’t me.’ 

‘I said, ‘Beat it. Get the f** out of here,’ he said.

The woman left, but then came back again a few minutes later, he said.

Colvin said he went into the store, bought a few log books, returned to his truck and let the woman into the sleeper area of his truck.

He said he strangled her there and then drove her body to the truck wash on May Road.  

‘The road is deserted. No one comes down there, it’s dark and it’s scary,’ the killer said with a laugh.

‘I pulled all the way in the back. The weeds are so high, and I just remember picking [the body] up on my shoulder and into the woods I go.’ 

He said he then dragged her naked body 30 to 40 feet into a wooded area behind the truck wash and dumped her there.

He took her clothing – a t-shirt with a cartoon character like Garfield or Tweety bird on and sweat pants – with him to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and dumped it there. 

Colvin said the woman’s body would be one of the easiest to find of his victims. 

The serial killer also spoke about some of his other crimes but refused to talk about any that had taken place in states carrying the death penalty.

When asked how many states he committed murders in as he traveled across state lines as a trucker, Colvin simply said: ‘Quite a few. Quite a few.’

Colvin made his latest confession in a phone call from Lebanon Correctional Institution in Ohio where he has been held since his 2006 conviction. 

The killer, who said he has contracted COVID-19 behind bars, is serving two life sentences for the murders of Jackie Simpson, 33, and Melissa Weber, 37, who he murdered in Toledo in 2003.

He later pleaded guilty to killing four other women in Ohio and one in New Jersey. 

Between 1983 and 2005, Colvin drove coast to coast across America prowling the highways for vulnerable women.

Dubbed ‘The Interstate Strangler’, the long-haul trucker, drug dealer, and truck-stop pimp, would pick up prostitutes from truck stops and highways and strangle them in the cab of his truck.

He then wrapped their heads in plastic bags and duct tape because ‘the last thing you want is someone popping up while you’re going down the interstate about 70 or 80 mph.’

He then dumped the victim’s bodies in rural, wooded areas.  

He would often kill his victims in one state, dump their bodies in another and get rid of their clothing in a third. 

Colvin said he began killing around the age of 24 and lost count of the number of victims, but boasted that in his ‘best year’ he killed three. 

‘I never counted,’ Colvin said on the podcast. ‘I averaged one to two a year. My best year, I did three. Calculate that, it comes to between 47 to 52.’ 

The extent of his murders are not yet known but he claimed his first murder was of a hitchhiker in New Jersey.

He told Chalmers she ‘gave him lip’ so he strangled her and her body ‘ended up in Pomona, in the woods.’ 

He boasted that he ‘slept great’ after his first kill and laughed off the idea that looking into a person’s eyes as you killed them would ‘haunt you forever’.

‘That’s a damn myth. I know that for a fact. I slept great that night,’ the killer bragged. 

He added that his motive was ‘pure pleasure’ from the kill.  

‘They’re fighting for their lives and I’m fighting for my plea… it’s pleasure,’ he said. 

Colvin also joked about his victim’s bodies being good passengers because they don’t need anything.

‘You ain’t got to share your goodies with them. You want some Wendy’s, baby?’ Hell no. She don’t need nothing,’ he laughed. 

He added that dumping bodies was easy around the US: ‘Oh my God, everything from Hamilton, New Jersey, it ain’t nothing but woods. It’s a dumping paradise.’ 

The murders he has been convicted of date back to 2000.  

The remains of Valerie Jones, 38, were found in January 2000 near a landfill, followed by the body of Dorothea Wetzel, 40, in Toledo in August that year. 

Jacquelynn Thomas, 42, was found September 2000 at a roadside and the body of Lily Summers, 43, turned up in 2002 in a tractor-trailer. 

In 2003, Colvin smothered Jackie Simpson with a pillow at a South Toledo motel because he said she was annoying him.  

‘All the time she was there, she was crying about her mama, her creepy uncle,’ Colvin said in the podcast. 

‘I don’t care nothing about that. I just got tired of her whining.’

The killer said he kept her body in his truck for months even parking up outside court where he faced burglary charges with her decomposing corpse in the back.

Her remains were found in April 2003.   

Weber’s remains were found in 2005 under a couch in a vacant trucking terminal.

The net closed in on Colvin when his DNA was collected in 2004 in connection with the sexual assault of one woman who managed to escape.

His DNA matched the sample later found under Weber’s fingernails and also tied him to Simpson’s murder and a 1998 sexual assault. 

In September 2006, Colvin pleaded guilty to the murders of Jackie Simpson, Melissa Weber, Valerie Jones, Jacquelynn Thomas and Lily Summers. 

One month later, he admitted to murdering Dorothea Wetzel. 

In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the 1987 murder of Donna Lee White, 27 in Atlantic City.