ADOCUMENTARY IS FOCUSING ON THE VICTIMS OF A SERIAL PRE DATOR WHO OPERATED ALONG OREGON’S HIGH WAY 20
Kaye Turner, Rachanda Pickle, Melissa Sanders and Sheila Swanson were part of a group who came to be known collectively as the “Ghosts of Highway 20”. The term was coined by The Oregonian, a newspaper based in Portland that highlighted the lives of the women, who all disappeared along Highway 20, alonely route that winds through the mountains of central Oregon. Now, an Investigation Discovery series is telling the story of these all-but-forgotten victims because, as exec producer Octavia Spencer says, “We want to restore some of the dignity that was taken from them.”
AGIRL GOES MISSING
Rachanda Pickle had atough childhood. Her parents, Steve and Linda Pickle, had married young, and the marriage was marred by avindictiveness that would see them use Rachanda and her brother Byron against each other. Eventually, Steve and Linda divorced, and in the mid-1980s, Linda married John Arthur Ackroyd, who worked on Highway 20 as amechanic for the State Highway Department. The new family unit seemed to be solid –Ackroyd earned enough money to support them all financially, and outwardly, he appeared to be afirm but loving stepfather. As Byron says in the docuseries, “Some of the people in our family couldn’t read or write well, and then you have this guy who’d graduated high school. He had agreat career, aprevious military guy. This guy was my dad. He taught me how to hunt, to fish… he spent time with me.”
However, Rachanda’s friends knew the truth was vastly different. They knew Ackroyd was abusing the 13 year old, routinely beating her with apaddle he’d made specially. But, although she told an adult what was happening, she wasn’t believed and nothing was done to protect her. Now, though, Rachanda was frightened. “She was really scared because she had told about the abuse,” her friend Michelle Seiber says in the documentary. “She was scared of what John might do.” Tragically, she was right to be afraid of him. In July 1990, Rachanda and Byron took atrip to Medford, Oregon, to spend time with their biological father. At first, the kids enjoyed being with Pickle. Unlike at home, there were lots of other children their own age to hang out with in the area, and they would play basketball and go swimming. But, at some point, he turned on them. Byron describes how all the kids wanted to play hide and seek, but Pickle accused them of going off to have sex. “He started screaming at Rachanda, which made her cry,” said Byron. “I mean, you got your biological father basically calling you awhore. She was like, ‘I want to go home’.” So, Rachanda went back
