In the summer of 1981, the body of 30-year-old Wayne Leigh Rifendifer, a male, was discovered near Ravensburg State Park in Pennsylvania on August 19th. His naked body had been left in a desolate, wooded area. An autopsy would later reveal that he had been killed execution-style with a single gunshot to the head and had also suffered two severe blows to the head. In a particularly gruesome act, his genitals had been removed after his death and were missing from the scene. Investigators believed he was killed elsewhere and his body was dumped.
Rifendifer was known to be a drifter and an itinerant who had a history of hitchhiking across the country. Before his death, he had been residing in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In the days leading up to his murder, he was seen in and around Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and had reportedly attended a party. His lifestyle as a hitchhiker is believed to have made him a vulnerable target. For about a week after the discovery of his body, he remained a John Doe until he was identified through his fingerprints on August 27, 1981.
A strange and chilling event occurred on the very day Rifendifer was identified. Before police could even notify his family, an anonymous man called the Pennsylvania State Police. This caller claimed to have picked up Rifendifer and mentioned seeing his social security number and a notebook containing family information. Some investigators believe this mysterious caller was, in fact, the killer, brazenly inserting himself into the investigation.
The investigation into Rifendifer's murder took a significant turn when ballistics testing connected his death to the murder of another man, Marty James Shook, whose body was found in Utah in 1982. Shook was also a hitchhiker who had been shot with the same. 38 caliber pistol and was also found naked with his genitals removed. This discovery led investigators to theorize that they were dealing with a serial killer, possibly a long-distance truck driver who preyed on hitchhikers along the interstate highway system. Despite the connection between the cases and the suspicious phone call, the murder of Wayne Leigh Rifendifer remains unsolved, and no arrests have ever been made. The identity of the killer who left a trail of brutally slain men across the country in the early 1980s is still unknown.
