Former Albion resident Bruce Mendenhall received renewed national attention last weekend when his case was featured on Oxygen’s Unknown Serial Killers of America.
The Sept. 13 episode examined Mendenhall’s crimes as a former cross-country truck driver. Now 75, Mendenhall is serving multiple lengthy sentences in Tennessee.
Mendenhall, who once ran for mayor in Albion, is serving separate life sentences for the murders of Sara Nichole Hulbert of Nashville and Symantha D. Winters of Lebanon, Tennessee. Both women were sexually assaulted and shot in the head.
Mendenhall was arrested in July 2007 after an investigation led by Nashville detective Pat Postiglione. He later received an additional 30-year sentence for attempting to hire another inmate to kill the detective.
Mendenhall also received a 65-year sentence in connection with the death of Carma Purpura of Indianapolis, who disappeared in 2007. Her remains were discovered four years later along an interstate in Kentucky.
Authorities have investigated Mendenhall in connection with several other killings. He has also been charged in the death of Deborah Ann Glover of Atlanta and has been identified as a suspect in other cases.
No trial date has been set in the Glover case.