Murders of Women in 1990s Attributed to Former Truck Driver
On March 10, 1991, the body of a woman was discovered near a road in Spring Hill, Tennessee. She was later identified as 32-year-old Virginia native Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall, a free-spirited woman who was pregnant at the time of her murder.
Pamela hitchhiked regularly, traveling back and forth between Virginia and Tennessee and police believed she was last sighted in the presence of a trucker at Union 76 Truck Stop along I-65. They believe that she was travelling with the unidentified man before she was assaulted, strangled to death and dumped by the side of the road.
DNA found on the victim was carefully collected and preserved but there were no leads and the case went cold. Almost thirty years later the DNA would be entered into a national database where it matched with the DNA found on two unidentified female victims who were killed in very much the same way around the same time, in 1992.
The naked body of the first victim was found face down in the snow along Interstate-80 near Bitter Creek on March 1, 1992. She too had died by strangulation and her body had lay undiscovered for several weeks in South West Wyoming until a female truck driver stumbled upon it that March.
It is estimated that she was murdered between October 1991 and February 1992. She too had been sexually assaulted. She was estimated to be in her mid-twenties, no older than 32.
The unidentified woman became known as Bitter Creek Betty and despite interest in the case and reconstructions depicting her image circulated nationally, her death remained unsolved and her identity unknown.
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The following month, on April 13, 1992, 400 miles from Bitter Creek, a second victim was discovered dumped in a ditch by mile post 5 along I-90 in Sheridan County, Wyoming. By the time workers discovered the body it was in a mummified state making the cause of death difficult to determine, however there was evidence of blunt force trauma to the head and sexual assault. She was also pregnant at the time of her murder and was found without shoes.
The victim was estimated to have been in her late teens or early twenties at the time of her murder. She came to be known as I-90 Doe.
DNA indicated that all three women had been murdered by the same man and the FBI began to secretly surveil him to obtain a sample of his DNA. They went through his trash and lifted DNA from a shopping cart he had pushed around a local Walmart and found it to be a match with the DNA found on all three victims.
Clark Perry Baldwin, 59, was arrested at his home in Iowa and charged with two counts of murder for the killing of Pamela Rose Aldridge McCall and her unborn child. He would have been around 30 years old at the time of McCall’s murder.
A look into his criminal history revealed a shocking alleged rape and murder attempt in Texas in 1991 that gives terrifying insight into what the women he murdered may have experienced. Court documents detailed that the suspect raped a female in Wheeler County, Texas. The woman, just 21 at the time, was hit over the head, bound, gagged raped and strangled. The young woman managed to get away alive and Baldwin was charged with assault, but his victim was too terrified to ever step foot in Texas again in order to testify against him and Baldwin went free.
Clark Perry Baldwin was an ex-truck driver, driving cross country for Marten Transport and had resided in several different Southern states over the years. Those following the case and those working on it cannot help but speculate that the murders of many unidentified young women along his cross-country route could be linked to him.
Baldwin’s victims had several characteristics in common; they were in their teens but no older than 32-years-old, they all had dark hair to the collar or shoulders, they were either pregnant or had given birth before, they were between 5”5 – 5”8 and were white or Hispanic/white.
The victims usually had blunt force trauma, were all sexually assaulted and had all been strangled.
None of the victims were wearing shoes when they were found, police believe the killer may have been keeping them as souvenirs.
A quick look at the Doe Network database, searching geographically and chronologically for women fitting the characteristics of Baldwins known victims brings up a few results that fit his M.O.
Another unidentified victim found shoeless along I-40 in Orange County, North Carolina, bares similarities to the women slain in the early nineties. Known as The New Hope Doe, this unidentified victim was found September 19, 1990 a week after she was strangled to death.
She was estimated to be between 15 – 22 years old with shoulder length dark blonde hair and died in much the same way as McCall and the other two unidentified women. Could she too be a victim of Clark Perry Baldwin?
The Hillsborough Jane Doe was also killed around the same time. Her body was discovered September 19, 1990. A work crew found her body at the bottom of an embankment along I-40 in Hillsborough. North Carolina. She was estimated to be 14 – 25, had collar length hair and was found without shoes. She was however wearing clean socks, leading investigators to believe that her killer may have removed them before transporting and dumping her body down the embankment. The original suspect, a taxi driver with a similar M.O killed himself earlier in the investigation. But one cannot help but wonder if Baldwin had a hand in this young woman’s killing. To add weight to the speculation there was a possible sighting of a female matching her description at a truck stop in Alamance County.
Baldwin is currently being held at The Black Hawk County Jail.
