Sixteen-year-old Caucasian female Wendy Rachel Von Huben left Woodstock, Illinois, in February 1997 with her 19-year-old fiancé, Jesse Howell, chasing a rail-rider's adventure through the Southeast. On 23 March 1997 a locomotive crew spotted Howell's bludgeoned body beside the tracks at Belleview, Florida; money still in his pocket showed robbery was not the motive. Investigators believed the teen's companion had witnessed the attack and vanished or been taken.
Extensive land-and-air searches, flyers, and even surveillance footage of a girl who resembled Von Huben failed to locate the 16-year-old Caucasian runaway, leaving the case cold for three years.
The mystery broke open after Mexican serial killer Ángel Maturino Reséndiz—known as “the Railroad Killer”—was arrested in Texas on 13 July 1999 following his placement on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. In early 2000, while already facing capital charges elsewhere, the 39-year-old Hispanic male confessed that on 23 March 1997 he first slew Howell with a rail-car air-brake coupling and, eight hours later, raped, strangled, and suffocated Wendy Von Huben before burying the Caucasian teenager in a shallow grave near Oxford, Florida.
On 15 July 2000 Reséndiz led Marion County deputies to the burial site. The skeletal remains, wrapped in a blanket and camouflage jacket, lay about 15 miles south of the Belleview homicide scene; family jewelry and later DNA testing confirmed the identity of the 16-year-old Caucasian victim.
Because Reséndiz cooperated and produced the body, Florida authorities granted him immunity from prosecution in the Von Huben and Howell killings; no other suspects were ever charged, although an itinerant rail-rider with a prosthetic leg had earlier been questioned and cleared. Reséndiz remained on Texas death row for the 1998 murder of Dr. Claudia Benton, was sentenced to death on 22 May 2000, and was executed by lethal injection on 27 June 2006. Thus the only arrest tied to Wendy Von Huben's case was the capture of the Mexican male serial murderer who ultimately admitted responsibility and guided detectives to her grave.
