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Terror at the Truck Stop: The Murder of Bob Nelson
It should have been his last drive before retirement, but someone killed this friendly trucker instead.
It was June 1999, and 59-year-old truck driver Bob Nelson from California was on his last delivery run the week before he was due to retire. He was scheduled to do a drop-off in Miami on a route that would take him through Alabama before he headed home to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary.
However, instead of being able to commemorate both this happy occasion and leaving the world of work behind, the genial family man was found dead off a stretch of rural highway two weeks later.
It would be a further nearly 18 years before his killer was finally brought to justice.
Vanished off the highway
Although Mary Ann Nelson was used to her husband Bob being out in his big rig by now, she still made sure he kept himself safe on the wide open roads of the US. As she told Discovery’s Highway to Hell, she instructed him to call home whenever he stopped and — knowing he was the type of person to make friends wherever he went — urged him not to pick up hitchhikers.
His schedule could be unreliable though, so she wasn’t too concerned at first when she…
