Freeway

Vanessa Lutz is a 14-year-old illiterate teenager living south of Los Angeles. Her mother Ramona is arrested in a prostitution sting and her stepfather Larry is taken in on drug and child abuse charges. Social worker Mrs. Sheets comes to pick up Vanessa but she runs away. Taking her mother's run-down car, Vanessa plans to live with her grandmother in Stockton. Along the way, she stops to see her boyfriend Chopper Wood, a gang member, to tell him about her trip. He gives her a gun to sell upon arriving at her destination. Shortly after Vanessa leaves, he is killed in a drive-by shooting. The car breaks down, leaving her on the side of the highway where she is picked up by Bob Wolverton, a counselor at a school for boys with emotional problems. He offers to take her as far as Los Angeles. Over the long drive, Vanessa comes to trust Bob and confesses the details of her dysfunctional life, including sexual abuse by Larry and foster parents. That evening, Bob reveals he is a serial killer dubbed the "I-5 Killer" and attacks Vanessa. She turns the tables on him, however, and shoots him several times before fleeing to a diner where her blood-stained appearance prompts the owners to call 911. She is arrested and questioned by police detectives Mike Breer and Garnet Wallace, who write her off as a carjacker, even though she insists Bob tried to kill her and told her about his crimes. Bob survives but the bullet wounds have left him severely handicapped and facially disfigured. Vanessa is put on trial and sent to prison, while Bob and his socialite wife Mimi, who knows nothing of his crimes, are treated like heroes. Initially scared, Vanessa makes friends in prison who include heroin-addicted lesbian Rhonda and a vicious Hispanic gang leader named Mesquita. Vanessa plots to escape to her grandmother's house and fashions a shiv from a toothbrush. During their transport to a maximum security prison, Vanessa and Mesquita escape after killing security guard Mrs. Cullins and they go their separate ways. Re-examining evidence, the detectives realize Vanessa was telling the truth. They search Bob's home and find child pornography and human remains in a storage shed. Horrified, Mimi commits suicide. Evading the police, Bob travels to Vanessa's grandmother's trailer, using the address written on a picture Vanessa had shown him. Posing as a prostitute, Vanessa steals a car from a prospective john, driving to the trailer. She finds Bob in bed wearing her grandmother's nightgown and nightcap with the covers pulled up to his nose. A struggle ensues, culminating in her strangling him. Breer and Wallace arrive, finding the bodies of Bob and Vanessa's grandmother. Outside, Vanessa sits in a chair in a daze and then asks the detectives if they have a cigarette. They all smile and laugh.