A long-haul trucker from Iowa was arrested Wednesday based on DNA evidence that linked him to the killings of three women, two of them pregnant, in early 1990s.

Clark Perry Baldwin, 58, was arrested from his home in Waterloo, Iowa, on murder charges filed in Wyoming and Tennessee following the deaths of the women whose bodies were found dumped separately.

Investigators obtained semen and other materials from the bodies to prepare a DNA profile of the perpetrators and Baldwin was linked to all three cases, according to court documents. Investigators could successfully pinpoint Baldwin because some of his relatives had uploaded their DNA data to a genealogy site. The FBI collected DNA from Baldwin’s trash and a shopping cart he used in Walmart leading to his identification.

The first victim’s nude body was discovered by a female trucker in March 1992 near the Bitter Creek Truck turnout on Interstate 80 in southwestern Wyoming. An autopsy ruled the cause of her death was trauma to the head consistent with strangulation.

A month later, a decomposing body of a pregnant woman was discovered by Wyoming Department of Transportation workers in a ditch off Interstate 90, near Sheridan in northern Wyoming. An autopsy didn’t confirm the cause of the death but indicated that the victim may have suffered a blow to head potentially leading to a fatal injury.

Investigators referred to the women as “Bitter Creek Betty” and “I-90 Jane Doe,” while withholding their true identities. Both the victims were believed to be in their late teens or early 20s, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Commander Matt Waldock said.

Tennessee police charged Baldwin with two counts of first-degree murder for the 1992 killing of a 32-year-old pregnant woman, Pamela McCall, from Virginia, and her fetus. McCall’s body was found in the woods near Interstate 65 in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and an autopsy ruled her death a case of strangulation. McCall had suffered neck and head injuries as well. Sperm was recovered from the undergarment worn by McCall, who was last seen at a Tennessee truck stop a few days back.

“I would like to thank the Spring Hill Police Department for never forgetting about Rose McCall, and all of the investigators and agencies that have assisted in bringing this serial killer to justice,” Brent Cooper, Tennessee district attorney, said in a press release. “I am also very happy to be able to give Rose McCall’s mother a chance to see justice for her daughter’s and granddaughter’s murders.”

Baldwin, a former resident of Nashua, Iowa, and Springfield, Missouri, was in possession of a cross-country truck permit. In 1991, he was accused of raping a woman at gunpoint in Wheeler County, Texas. His name surfaced as a homicide suspect in 1992 after his ex-wife told police that Baldwin once bragged about “killing a girl out west by strangulation and throwing her out of his truck.”

Investigators said they were “hopeful for” more unsolved homicides being linked to Baldwin.

He had other two encounters with police, one in 1997 for making counterfeit U.S. currency on a personal computer, another in 2008 in connection with a fire that destroyed a Nashua building where Baldwin operated a candle business.

He is currently being held at the Black Hawk County jail in Iowa and likely to be extradited to Tennessee.

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Representational image of a man in handcuffs.
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