What did John Arthur Ackroyd and Roger Dale Beck do?
John Arthur Ackroyd and Roger Dale Beck were American serial killers who were believed to be responsible for the murders of as many as 4 women.
Ackroyd and Beck raped Marlene Gabrielsen in 1977, but she survived to tell the tale. The two men then went on to abduct and murder Kaye Turner in 1978.
Years later in 1990, Ackroyd’s step-daughter Rachanda Pickle went missing, and this re-ignited interest in Ackroyd for the murder of Kaye Turner. In 1992, Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders were murdered in Lincoln County, Oregon, and Ackroyd was suspected to be responsible for these deaths as well. Just weeks after these brutal murders, Ackroyd was arrested for the murder of Kaye Turner.
What happened at Ackroyd and Beck’s separate trials?
In 1992, Ackroyd was sentenced to 5 life terms in prison for the abduction and murder of Kaye Turner. Roger Beck was also found guilty in the murder of Kaye Turner in a separate trial.
Ackroyd was later charged with Rachanda’s murder in 2013, and he pleaded no contest. The Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office was set to present evidence against Ackroyd for the murders of Swanson and Sanders to the grand jury when something unexpected happened.
Where are the Highway 20 killers now?
Ackroyd was serving his time in Oregon State Penitentiary when he died unexpectedly alone in his cell in 2016 of natural causes, meaning he would never be tried for the murders of Swanson and Sanders.
Roger Dale Beck continues to serve his life sentence at the same prison. He is 74 years old now and he has applied for parole many times but has been turned down every time. The Oregon Board of Parole ruled that he’d not been sufficiently rehabilitated. They claimed Beck has failed to accept responsibility for his role in the murder of Kaye Turner and also found Beck had been promoting a conspiracy theory involving 6 different people supposedly being responsible for the crime. The board claimed this showed Beck didn’t have the maturity or stability to be released from prison and integrated back into the community.
Octavia Spencer narrated a 3-part documentary about the case, called Lost Women of Highway 20, which aired on Investigation Discovery in November 2023.
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