On the evening of November 12, 1988, Dwayne Allen McCorkendale, a 27-year-old truck driver and father of twin girls, pulled his rig into a rest stop off the Turner Turnpike in Chandler, Oklahoma. His intention was simple: to make a phone call to his wife. He had announced his plan over his CB radio, a common practice for truckers on the long, lonely stretches of highway.
It is believed that this seemingly innocent transmission may have been his undoing, as investigators theorize that his killers either overheard the broadcast and followed him or were already lying in wait.
As McCorkendale walked toward the payphone, coins in hand, he was ambushed. A single, close-range shotgun blast to his back ended his life instantly. An anonymous caller later reported a body lying beside the phone booth to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. When authorities arrived at approximately 8 p.m., they found McCorkendale deceased with coins scattered around him. The motive appeared to be robbery, as his wallet, containing an estimated $25, and his keys were missing. The small amount of money taken made his death all the more senseless to his grieving family.
The investigation into the murder of Dwayne McCorkendale has spanned decades, yet it remains unsolved with no arrests ever made. The most significant lead in the case has been the repeated sightings of a brown Ford Pinto equipped with a CB radio. In the days and weeks following the murder, several truckers reported encounters with the car, which was often occupied by a white male and a black male, and sometimes a white woman. These truckers described the Pinto driving erratically and its occupants being abusive over the radio, even going so far as to threaten other drivers by claiming they had already killed one trucker and wouldn't hesitate to kill another.
Another trucker came forward with a story of a strange encounter at a rest stop just a day before McCorkendale's death, only thirteen miles away. He described a disheveled woman who approached his truck, asking for drugs or money. As he was looking for a map to help her, she began to climb into his cab, only to jump down and flee in a brown Pinto when it pulled up. Despite these leads and the case being featured on 'Unsolved Mysteries,' the identities of the individuals in the brown Pinto remain unknown, and the murder of Dwayne Allen McCorkendale continues to be a perplexing cold case. Years later, investigators considered a possible connection to a woman known as the 'El Dorado Jane Doe,' who was murdered in 1991, but this has not led to a resolution in McCorkendale's case.
