Rhoades is charged in Millard County with one count of murder, but he is charged in Texas with the Utah killing as well as a related Texas slaying.

Assistant Utah Attorney General Creighton Horton said Friday it "made sense" to let Texas try both homicide cases at once.

"It spares the victims having to go through all the proceedings here, and then doing it all again in Texas," Horton said.

According to court records, 4th District Judge Donald Eyre will sign papers on Monday dismissing the Utah charges, one count each of capital murder and first-degree felony aggravated kidnapping.

Rhoades, 60, will be sent back to Illinois - where he was serving a life sentence for murdering a 14-year-old girl - and then extradited to Texas, where he has been indicted on two counts of capital murder.

Horton said the decision to dismiss the Utah case was reached after Rhoades last month rejected a plea deal.

Rhoades - a long-haul truck driver who had converted the sleeper cab of his truck into a torture chamber - is suspected by authorities of killing at least four people in 1990, as well as raping two women who survived.

In the Utah/Texas cases, Rhoades is accused of kidnapping and killing newlywed Christian missionaries Patricia Candice Walsh and Douglas Scott Zyskowski.

The couple, last seen alive in January 1990, were preaching at a home for wayward men in Georgia before setting out to hitchhike to Walsh's home in Seattle.

It is unknown how the couple might have crossed paths with Rhoades. But authorities say the trucker shot and killed Zyskowski, 28, then dumped his body near I-10 outside of Ozona, Texas.

Investigators say Walsh was shot multiple times in the head a week later and her naked body was dumped near I-15 in Millard County.

Walsh's body was found by deer hunters in October 1990. Zyskowski's body had been discovered months earlier.

Zyskowski was identified in 1992, but the two slayings were not linked until 2003, when Walsh was identified through dental records.

Rhoades was subsequently linked to Walsh through evidence of the woman's DNA found on items belonging to Rhoades, who had been arrested in April 1990.

Rhoades was captured by an Arizona state trooper who found him torturing a naked woman chained inside the sleeper compartment of his rig.

Evidence subsequently seized at Rhoades' Houston apartment was used to link him to the 1990 death of runaway Regina K. Walters, 14, of Texas, whose body was found in an old barn along I-70 in Illinois. She had been strangled with baling wire.

Rhoades is also suspected of killing Walters' boyfriend, 18-year-old Ricky Lee Jones, whose body has never been found.

The trucker was also investigated in the kidnapping and rape of a California woman who was kept chained in a truck for two weeks in February 1990 before she escaped. Rhoades was arrested, but investigators say the woman was afraid to identify her attacker.

Based on items seized from Rhoades - including photographs of other women and jewelry - authorities believe he has preyed on many more victims.

Utah prosecutors charged and extradited him last year.

Horton said Walsh's brother and mother, who live in Seattle, approved of the plan to dismiss the Utah case and allow Rhoades be tried in Texas.

shunt@sltrib.com