Trucker Admits to Killing 3, Dumping Bodies Near Road

A trucker has confessed to murdering three women whose bodies were dumped along a highway, and investigators want to question him about dozens of similar slayings in 10 states, authorities said.

Sean Patrick Goble, 28, of Asheboro, N.C., will be charged with murdering the unidentified woman whose body was found Feb. 19 off Interstate 40 in Guilford County, sheriff’s Sgt. Jonathan Jacobs said.

Sheriff B. J. Barnes said Monday that Goble confessed to the slaying before an extradition hearing, but the trucker could not give authorities the victim’s name because he did not know it.

Goble had already confessed to suffocating Alice Rebecca Hanes, 36, of Columbus, Ohio, and to strangling Brenda Kay Hagy, 45, of Bloomington, Ind., authorities say.

Hagy was killed in January at a service station in eastern Tennessee, and her body was dumped along Interstate 81 in Virginia, police said. Hanes was killed at another Tennessee gas station near Interstate 81, authorities said. Her body was discovered March 19 about 60 miles away, near the highway in Kingsport.

Goble, who was arrested Thursday in Winston-Salem, waived extradition to Tennessee during a brief hearing Monday. He also waived his right to an attorney and represented himself, standing with his hands crossed behind his back while District Judge Ron Spivey explained the extradition process.

Security was tight, with at least six uniformed officers and other plainclothes officers around the trucker, who was dressed in dark blue coveralls and wore a leg chain.

Sheriff Terry Jones of Greene County, Tenn., said someone from the department would go to North Carolina to return with Goble.

It was not immediately clear if the Guilford County charges would have any effect on the extradition to Tennessee.

Investigators have refused to discuss a motive for the slayings.

Authorities in 10 states from Wisconsin to Florida want to find out if Goble was involved in any of dozens of similar deaths in recent years.

Many of the victims were prostitutes who were smothered or strangled and left by interstates.