Chapter 12
TRUCK-STOP PERIL
Chief Jim Murphy’s initial hunch about Adam Leroy Lane proved to be right on, and he was no longer the only one who believed that there could be other victims of Lane’s nocturnal hunting escapades still to be identified. Authorities in jurisdictions up and down the East Coast, heeding the news of the multistate charges being brought against Lane, began checking the details of all their unsolved cases along the highways and truck routes that Lane had used, especially crimes committed near truck stops.
Truckers are required by federal law to keep logs of all their stops, though in the two days prior to his arrest, Lane had not made a single entry in his log. However, now that they knew what they were looking for, investigators could readily gain an exact history of Lane’s past and recent movements by combing through the Federal Department of Transportation’s databases and then comparing that information with the occurrences of any unsolved violent crimes in those areas where he had traveled.
There are strict federal laws mandating how long a trucker can be behind the wheel each day. After clocking a maximum of eleven consecutive hours on the road, drivers are required to be off duty for ten hours. These regulations may keep drowsy drivers from making deadly mistakes, but at the same time it gives them a lot of downtime. People who spend any time at all on the highways will observe that there are always trucks traveling alongside them. There are so many, they may sometimes be taken for granted. But for every commercial tractor-trailer seen on the road, there are just as many unseen, on duty but off-road somewhere. Accounting for the whereabouts of these truckers became a focus of much discussion in the local Massachusetts media.
As law enforcement was investigating Lane’s possible connection to unsolved home-invasion crimes in other states, state police in Massachusetts defended their patrol frequency of Bay State highway rest areas and truck stops, including the ones on I-495 North and South in Chelmsford.
Trooper Jim Burke, of the Concord barracks, told the press that the rest areas and truck stops were all checked a few times a night. “We take notice if there’s anybody in the woods, or anything else out of the ordinary,” he said. He explained that seemingly empty cabs do not necessarily raise red flags because of the possibility that the driver could be simply using the bathroom facilities or asleep in the truck.
It was discovered that there were actually fewer commercial travel centers with twenty-four-hour restaurants, shower facilities and other amenities in Massachusetts than in other parts of the country, so truck drivers frequently depended on the basic highway-shoulder rest areas for use of restrooms and places to pull over and sleep.
Not everyone, however, was sympathetic to the difficulties faced by long-haul truckers. In the days following the attack, a local newspaper caught up with one Chelmsford selectman, Philip Eliopoulos, who let them know that he had lobbied against having a truck stop constructed on Route 3 long before Adam Leroy Lane came along. As a former member of the Route 3 Project Advisory Committee, Eliopoulos had been one of several opponents who’d fought to have a truck stop permanently removed from the new plan.
“I can see how they benefit the highway,” Eliopoulos said of the bare-bones rest stops. “But they don’t really benefit the communities that they’re in. Just a blanket, no-facilities-type rest area can pose safety concerns. A commercial one is more monitorable.”
In Bloomsbury, New Jersey, Dan Hurley, the deputy chief of operations and spokesman for the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office, said authorities originally withheld information about the Massaro murder investigation because police did not immediately focus on a lead suspect.
“We desperately wanted to be able to give [the residents of Bloomsbury] some relief initially,” Hurley said. “The detectives, from the day this task force was first created to today, have worked tirelessly on this.” He credited all the agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), various state police agencies in New Jersey and Massachusetts as well as local authorities in each state.
“We hope this will bring a measure of closure to the residents of Bloomsbury,” New Jersey State Police Lieutenant Colonel Gayle Cameron said. “I’m sure the people of Bloomsbury will rest a bit easier knowing that the perpetrator of this brutal murder has been identified and captured.”
However, as more details of Lane’s apprehension continued to spread up and down Bloomsbury’s wide Main Street, confirming that the murder had been committed by a stranger, the level of concern rose exponentially.
Monica’s neighbors were interviewed, and they expressed an overall feeling of unease in the wake of the murder. “Everyone is more in tune with everyday events,” said one. “More aware of their surroundings and looking behind them as they walk down the street.”
“He could have gone into any house in the neighborhood,” said another, who lived just a few doors down from Monica. “It’s never going to be the same. . . . If it happened once, it could happen again. Especially something random like that.”
Residents may have been relieved that Monica’s killer was in custody, but they gave a wide berth to the nearby truck stop, and there remained an overall heightened sense of caution to any stranger. A crime of this nature was unimaginable to many; they did not know how to react.
“We were shocked,” reflected Bloomsbury Mayor Mark Peck. “These kinds of things don’t happen in Bloomsbury. We’re a small, rural community. Before this murder, people used to leave their doors unlocked. They don’t anymore.”
You could almost hear the collective sound of all the doors and windows being closed and locked every night around the borough.
The mayor went on to say that ways to reduce traffic at the truck stops where Lane parked would be considered. In particular, he noted that the Pilot Travel Center had faced considerable opposition from residents when it first replaced a similar mom-and-pop facility at the truck stop.
Authorities and citizens alike could at least be satisfied that it wasn’t going to be Adam Leroy Lane who would terrorize another truck-stop community like theirs again.
“We have in fact placed a detainer on Adam Lane while he’s in Massachusetts facing the charges there,” said Dan Hurley, for the prosecutor’s office. The detainer prevented Lane’s release from custody before he could be transferred to Hunterdon County.
“He will not be coming to New Jersey until the charges are resolved in Massachusetts one way or the other,” Hurley said. “There’s no way to say exactly when he will be here. We don’t anticipate it will be in the next several months and it could be a year. But all of that is just speculation.”