My Search for Ruth Eileen Mendenhall

*Update towards end-- 5/28/20

Happy Sunday!

Since 2014, I have been researching my great-aunt Ruth Eileen Mendenhall. She is a mystery and it's taken years and years to dig up what I have been able to find about her. 

So, this post is sort of a compilation of all of those previous posts I have already written, dating back to 2014. 

~In June 2014, this is what I knew of Ruth:

Ruth Eileen Mendenhall

born: 16 Jan 1927 in Dayton, Ohio

died: Unknown (rumored- California), age- unknown

Parents: Earl Dwight Mendenhall (1894-1972) & 

             Edna Grace Miles (1894-1934)

Siblings: Harold Earl Mendenhall (1916-1989) (my grandfather)

         Robert Eugene Mendenhall (1919-1993)

So, back then, the rumor in the family was that Ruth was 14 when the family disowned her. My mother always said that she thought she had gotten pregnant and kicked out of the house. Her family supposedly trashed all of her possessions and pictures of her. One picture was found- it had fallen behind a dresser. 

Ruth in her 3rd grade picture, 1935 at Shiloh Springs School in Dayton Ohio. 
Ruth is the girl in the middle row, 4th one from the left.
Look at that mischievous face!! 
(Shiloh Springs School- 5816 North Main Street in Dayton Ohio. It was demolished in Aug 2012)

In the 70's, after Ruth's parents had passed, her brothers tried looking for her. They hired a private investigator who found her living in California, married to a doctor. She didn't want any contact so that was that.

A Serial Killer in the Family Tree!?

Genealogy has been a hobby of mine for almost 20 years now. One name I research frequently is Mendenhall. So, I googled Mendenhall Murders-- thinking something might pop up- like a Mendenhall being murdered. I know it sounds gruesome. There is no ill-intent or disrespect with this search- just curiosity. 

That's when I found my first (and hopefully the only) serial killer in my family tree!

Bruce Delane Mendenhall 

(aka The Prosti-Shooter, The Rest Stop Killer, The Truck Stop Killer)

Born: 14 Apr 1951 in Crawford County, Illinois

Date Apprehended: 12 Jul 2007, Tennessee

Bruce was a truck driver, married with 2 children. He was found guilty in 2010 for the 26 Jun 2007 murder of Sara Hulbert. Total possible victims: (still being investigated)

• Tammy Zywicki, 21- a student who was found stabbed to death on 02 Sep 1992. She vanished from Interstate 80 near LaSalle, Illinois nine days before.
• Belinda Cartwright, 36- a hitchhiker who was run over at a truck stop in Georgia in 2001, died 22 Feb 2001.

• Deborah Ann Glover, 43- an Atlanta prostitute whose body was found near a Motel 6 in Suwanee, Georgia on 29 Jan 2007 (shot). 
• Sherry Drinkard- a prostitute from Gary, Indiana whose body was found naked in a snow embankment on 22 Feb 2007 (shot in the head).
• Sara Nicole Hulbert, 25- found dead, stuffed in a trashcan, with gunshot wounds on June 26 2007 at a truck stop along Interstate 24 in Nashville. (Mendenhall was found Guilty for the Murder of Sara Hulbert, her DNA was found in his truck).
• Robin Bishop- a prostitute who was run over at a Flying J truck stop on Interstate 40 in Fairview, Tennessee on 01 Jul 2007.

My heart goes out to all of these's women's family and friends. It's devastating to say the least. I hope they will get the answers they need and deserve.

~Finding a connection:

I have been researching the Mendenhall family for a long time- and not just my direct line because I like finding distant cousins, celebrities and notable people, people of interest. 

Finding Bruce Mendenhall's ancestry was a bit of a challenge. Of course, his parents name's aren't just displayed for the world to see on the internet, so I had to do some digging. I refuse to name his immediate family's names, but I did find his parents names and his grandfather Mendenhall's name through one of his daughter's birth announcement's in the newspaper. 

How I'm related to the Truck Stop Killer: 

5th cousin, 2x removed

Update of Ruth Eileen Mendenhall

On June 23, 2014, I wrote a blog post about my great-aunt Ruth Mendenhall. You can read that post by Here, but for the short-version, all I really knew about her was that she was disowned around the age of 14 because of a pregnancy. There were rumors of her ending up in California, married to a doctor and she didn't want anything to do with the family.

It was hard to find anything on Ruth, but I finally found her in Dec 2016. Again, here is the original blog post that you can read  Here, but for the shorter version, I found that she died on 08 Mar 2002 in Scottsdale, Arizona. She had been married to a man named Jack V. Breckenridge (1921-2011), a veteran. There appeared to be no children in the picture.

Recently, I decided to try and find more on Ruth. I decided to focus on her husband and his family. Jacks middle name is Victor and he had 3 siblings- Janet Louise (1918-2007), James Harold (1925-2011) and Richard A. (1928-2016). I did find living relatives for all of these siblings and messaged them on Facebook, hoping to find some answers- maybe some of them knew about Ruth, but this was on May 13 and nobody has responded (Can't say I blame them, they don't know me). I also found a picture of Jack--

 Recently, Newspapers.com had a "free" weekend and I decided to research Ruth in the papers, see if anything came up. My thought was, maybe she didn't leave Ohio for California...let's search that. AND I found more!

I found a couple of newspaper articles about a Ruth, same age, same address as her parents. They were dated September, 1945-- she would have been 19 years old. She had broken her parole. When she was 19, she had been arrested for forgery and, since breaking her parole, she was being sent to  jail for 1-20 years!

Here are the articles:

With the name, age, and address all matching, I just don't see how this COULDN'T be my great-aunt Ruth. This would make sense...for even though she wasn't 14 at the time, she was still a young woman who was sent to prison. After finding this information, I talked to my Aunt Nancy who confirmed it- she remembers her mother talking about when she was younger about Ruth being in prison. Apparently, my mother didn't know about this. :)

So...NOW, the next step is getting Ruth's prison records to see how much time she served...all out of pure curiosity! Wish me luck!