Sarah Hulbert’s Search for Drugs Brings an End to Her Journey

Sarah Hulbert

(Nashville, TN) On the night of June 25, 2007, Sarah Hulbert, a 25-year-old prostitute, found herself sitting in a circle of her friends a few hundred feet from a secluded road in Nashville.  They were getting high together; Sarah was already numb from the drugs, but she wanted more.  She asked the group, but they refused.  She was not getting the share she had paid for.  Angry, Sarah got up, huffed to herself, and began to walk off unnoticed by her friends.  She walked down North First Street towards the truck stop, where she had often been able to find someone dealing in the past.  She planned to get her own stash this time, and the others would have none of it.

The walk to the stop was not very far, but in her drug-addled state, every step was a challenge.  She was relieved when a large shipping truck pulled up alongside her, and she heard from inside its cabin a call to hop in.  Sarah climbed her way up the steps and opened the door, only to become suddenly unsettled.  The man inside was diminutive and strange; he had messy thin hair, and slightly disfigured features.  Sarah would never learn that his name was Bruce Mendenhall, 56.  The man pulled her into the car from her position of hesitation with surprising strength.  She struggled, but he pulled a nightstick from somewhere in the cabin and beat her with it.  Already confused, she was now unable to fight back and fell onto the seat lazily.  She vaguely heard the ripping of tape, followed by the sealing of her mouth and a clicking around her wrists as the steel of handcuffs wrapped around them.

Sarah’s consciousness darkened as the man ripped her clothes away and brought sex toys forth from hiding places.  He violated her with them, preparing her for his own body, which came soon enough.  All her body understood was the pounding of his muscles across all her limbs.  When he was done, he pulled a gun from behind the seat and forced the barrel into her mouth.  He yelled something at her, trying to get a reaction, but she felt her eyes roll up into the top of her head, unable to do anything but groan.  He pulled the trigger, exploding her head and filling the cabin with blood.  The car was later pulled into the truck stop, where Mendenhall tossed Sarah’s body and drove off.

Sarah’s body was found, and the security tapes for the station were viewed.  Later, a cop recognized Mendenhall’s car at another Nashville truck stop, and arrested him upon finding it covered in blood and holding over 300 items including a knife, rifle, gloves, and other items of torturous and sexual nature.  Upon interrogation, Mendenhall implicated himself in Sarah’s murder as well as the death of Symantha Winters in Lebanon, Tennessee.  He has been connected with the murders of seven women, mostly prostitutes, and is under investigation for many more.  On May 14, 2010, he was found guilty of killing Sarah Hulbert.