Investigation Discovery (ID) will examine the crimes that occurred along Highway 20 between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, where John Arthur Ackroyd abducted, raped, or murdered several young women and girls. The three-part documentary, titled ‘Lost Women of Highway 20’ will premiere on ID on Sunday, November 5, at 9 p.m. EST.
The series explores notorious serial killer John Arthur Ackroyd’s abductions and murders of multiple women. In 1992, the court sentenced him to five life terms in prison for abducting and murdering Kaye Turner.
Shockingly, another young girl’s disappearance aided the authorities in solving the murder case of Turner and apprehending John Arthur Ackroyd.
How vanishing of Rachanda Pickle helped in nabbing John Arthur Ackroyd
In 1990, Rachanda Pickle, who was 13 years old at the time, disappeared from her home in Sweet Home, Oregon. Pickle was Ackroyd’s stepdaughter. Police quickly converged on the highway compound. The rapid spread of news about Ackroyd’s stepdaughter’s disappearance reached the neighboring Jefferson County, where Kaye Turner had been murdered more than a decade ago.
As the investigation progressed, the law enforcement authorities began interrogating John Arthur Ackroyd and they started suspecting that he might be a person of interest because he was the last person to see his stepdaughter. Interestingly, the advanced police techniques used to investigate Pickle’s disappearance proved instrumental in solving the Kaye Turner case. The techniques revealed that Ackroyd and one of his accomplices were the main suspects in the Turner’s murder case.
Over the next 23 months, investigators built a case against John Arthur Ackroyd and one of his accomplices, Roger Dale Beck. Forensics subsequently determined that someone had raped, stabbed, and beaten Turner. Authorities arrested Ackroyd and Beck on June 12, 1992, charging them with the rape and murder of Turner.
More than a year later, the trial of Ackroyd commenced in the Jefferson County Circuit Court on September 8, 1993. On October 5, 1993, a jury pronounced him guilty on all five counts of murder. Beck’s trial commenced on October 28, 1993, and ended on November 22 with a guilty verdict.
On December 6, 1993, they sentenced Ackroyd, who was also a suspect in other murders in the state, to life in prison. He faced arraignment on a murder charge in the death of Pickle in April 2013, but the trial never began because John Arthur Ackroyd died in prison in 2016.
