Many serial killers become famous for the sheer horror of their crimes or because of the number of people they’ve killed. Sometimes when a killer attains worldwide notoriety, so do does their car. These serial killer cars often become crime scenes themselves, and serve as mobile murder enablers. So teach yourself the types of rides to avoid by familiarizing yourself with the serial killer vehicles in this list.
The 1934 Ford V-8 convertible sedan that notorious bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were shot in is one of America’s original “death cars.” In early 1934 they drove around the Midwest, robbing, pulling off heists, and killing at least nine police officers, but we’re finally stopped when Louisiana police put 130 bullets into their car.
The blood spattered, bullet-ridden car was an instant attraction, touring carnivals, amusement parks, and state fairs for 30 years. It’s doors have been tied shut and the car is displayed behind panels of glass, making snapshots difficult.
The car was bought by several different casinos around the country. It would be difficult to estimate how much money the car has made over it’s long career. Having long ago earned it’s keep, the car is now on display 24 hours a day for free.
Serial killers Charles Manson acquired two old 1935 Dodge Power Wagons to use as off-road vehicles at the Manson Family’s Barker Ranch. Manson Family member Charles “Tex” Watson took one in 1969 when Barker Ranch was raided, but it broke down, and Watson hitchhiked out of the area, eventually making it to Texas.
The power wagon remains sitting in the desert, with a few pentagrams drawn into the roof to mark it’s former owner. The power wagon has sat baking in the sun, broken down and abandoned for 41 years, near the 100 + year-old ghost town of Ballarat, CA.
Ballarat is located down a dirt road in the middle of Death Valley about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. Dry desert heat and the remote location of Ballarat have left the truck in relatively good condition. The truck sits there to this day, as an eerie roadside relic of one of America’s most notorious crime sprees.
Ted Bundy infamously committed many of his murders in a beige 1975 VW Beetle. He would often attempt to lure women back to it with a variety of lies, and perpetrated several murders in it. On August 15, 1975, Bundy was being pulled over and made a run for it.
When Bundy was finally caught, and the car searched, police found a crowbar, a box of green plastic garbage bags, an ice pick, flashlight, gloves, torn strips of sheeting, and a knit mask. They noticed that the passenger seat had been removed and placed in the back seat. After thoroughly cleaning his Volkswagen Beetle, he sold it to a teenager in Sandy, Utah.
Utah authorities seized the Volkswagen and examined it inch by inch. They found hairs that matched three potential victims. Later, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation found new hairs in the back seat area as well as blood under the door panel.
Bundy escaped a county prison, killed two women and severely maimed two more. Bundy was driving a stolen orange VW Beetle and was quickly arrested. Ted Bundy was executed on January 24, 1989, in Florida’s electric chair.
June 1994, saw the world transfixed by a car as never before. It was the white 1993 Ford Bronco truck that O. J. Simpson was riding shotgun in when it led a low-speed chase down the L A Freeway system, in the aftermath of Simpson’s wife Nicole and waiter Ron Goldman allegedly being murdered by the former football star.
While Simpson was renting a Ford Bronco at the time, it’s not the same one as Simpson crony AL Cowlings drove, as the world watched and wondered what was going on. Cowlings sold the car to a group of businessmen, who put it in storage for a number of years and leased it out for gatherings and openings.
The bronco began resurfacing like a ghost, at special events. Organizers who rent the vehicle are required to sign confidentiality agreements promising not to reveal the identities of the owners. After a stint on display at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, it’s back in storage.
33-time murderer, John Wayne Gacy, drove a black 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88, luring boys into it, then knocking them out with chloroform, driving them back to his Chicago area house and doing horrible things to them.
It was the black Olds that eventually gave Gacy away, as a man that Gacy had attempted to kidnap, followed it back to the killer clown’s house where he was arrested. While Gacy was soon released, and went back to killing, his car eventually testified at his trial.
Manson Family member Lisa Kasabian drove a yellow 1959 Ford Falcon during the Family’s murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. The car was originally owned by Barker ranch hand Johnny Swartz andwas impounded in August 1969, shortly after the murders.
Even though Linda was the only one with a driver’s license, Tex Watson, another Manson Family member, stayed behind the wheel. Linda sat with him in the front. Also two more Manson Family members, Susan and Pat, were in the back.
As the car was about to pull away, Charles called out to Susan, “Do something witchy.” Tex drove the old ford out of the ranch’s front gate. Tex didn’t talk as he drove, and so the women whispered to each other about the point of this expedition.
The woman stopped whispering and settled back in their seats wondering where they were going. Tex hadn’t told them and they didn’t ask. The three women didn’t know they were going to kill anyone.
At one point, serial killer and cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer, was linked to the murder of 7-year-old Adam Walsh in Hollywood, Florida. Witnesses claim they saw a man with a “protruding chin” throw a struggling young boy into a blue van and drove away.
At the time, Dahmer was working for a floral delivery company that drove blue vans ---- but the link between Dahmer and the kidnapping was never proven, and Dahmer never claimed to have been connected to Adam Walsh’s death.
In the part of a file released in 1996, two witnesses told police they’d seen Dahmer at the Hollywood shopping mall where Adam was reported last seen. There were also five more separate witnesses who also said they’d seen Dahmer there.
Three of them said they’d seen a blue van in the parking lot; one said as well, that the blue van was the getaway vehicle, which was what a witness in the first week after Adam’s disappearance had told police. For the next month they’d stopped every blue van they saw. They asked the police agencies elsewhere to do the same, and asked the public, through the media, to tip them to all sightings of blue vans.
Priscilla Ford had a blood alcohol of .162 when she drove her 1974 blue Lincoln Continental down the streets of Reno on Thanksgiving Day, 1980. She plowed through pedestrians, going over 40 mph down five blocks of packed streets before finally stopping at a nearby red light. When it was all over she killed six people and injured two dozen others.
The Lincoln made its way to 100 ft south of the southeast corner of Second and Virginia streets. At 2:59 pm, the Lincoln jumps the curb and careens down the sidewalk. It hits the curb at 20 mph, a speed not likely to blow the tires.
The car rapidly accelerates to as high as 40 mph, driving 100 ft down the sidewalk, witnesses would later say. It crosses the Second Street crosswalk and continues another 322 ft down the sidewalk in front of the bank, in front of Harrah’s Nevada Club and Harola’s Club.
Then it’s back on Virginia Street, crossing to the south-bound lane and stopping two blocks later behind traffic at the Fifth Street traffic light which is red. Destruction follows the car’s path like an indictment.
Five people are killed immediately, and 24 injured. Fourteen people will be sent to Washoe Medical Center; the remaining 10 to St. Mary’s . Street signs, body parts, clothing, and the wounded and dead lie on the sidewalk and in the gutter, like victims of a natural disaster.
It takes only a few seconds for Ford to drive that five-block total. But the longest wait is for justice. On March 28, 1982, she was sentenced to death in Nevada’s gas chamber in 2005.
Psycho serial killer and body snatcher Ed Gein drove a 1949 Ford Sedan, using it to drive his victims to various horrible places around Wisconsin. After Gein’s arrest, side show operator, Bunny Gibbons, bought the car at a public auction for $760, and charged 25 cents to see and have pictures taken with “Ed Gein’s Ghoul Car.”
Eventually, local authorities shut the exhibit down, and the car is lost to the history.
Bundy might have made one VW Beetle famous, but actually has a connection to a second one. Around 1:30 am on February 15, a Pensacola police officer noticed a stolen orange Volkswagen Beetle driving west on Cervantes Street and ordered the car to pullover.
Bundy resisted but was eventually taken into custody. The officer had no idea who was inside the car, but Bundy was quickly identified with the help of the FBI’s fugitive flyer and was soon back in Colorado to face murder charges.
Among the loot that was found in the second Beetle were three sets of ID’s belonging to female FSU students he had assaulted, nearly two dozen stolen credit cards, and a stolen TV. He was eventually convicted and executed, but not before admitting to more than two dozen murders over many years.
Robert Lee Yates used a white 1977 Corvette for at least one of his murders. Sadly, Yates had actually been pulled over in the Corvette while police were searching for it, but the fields interview report was misread as saying “Camaro” rather than “Corvette.”
Yates was arrested on April 8, 1999, for the murder of Jennifer Joseph. After Yates’ arrest, a search warrant was served on a 1977 white Corvette he had previously owned. A white Corvette had been identified as the vehicle that one of the victims had last been seen in.
After searching the Corvette, police discovered blood that they linked to Jennifer Joseph, and DNA from Yates that they tied to 12 other victims. Yates is currently is on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Infamous British killers Ian Brady and Myra Hinsley became known as the ”Moors Murderers” because of their pathology of killing and disposing of children on the foreboding Saddleworth Moor outside Manchester. The duo owned a small and popular Morris Mini Van, belonging to Myra, to lure and capture victims.
Dapper Englishman John George Haigh committed a series of murders in the late 40s, and disposed of his victims in such a gruesome way that he became known as the “Acid Bath Killer.” In February, 1949, Haigh committed his sixth and final killing, murdering a wealthy widow by shooting her in the head after driving her around in his luxury Alvis TA 14, which he had paid for using money stolen from other victims.
In what’s become known as the Beltway Sniper attacks, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo cut a swath of terror through the east coast, shooting 27 people, 17 fatally, while driving around in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice Sedan.
The infamous blue Chevrolet was used by Muhammad and Malvo for the attacks, as well as the physical evidence collected and related to the individual sniper incidents. The evidence consisted of items like bullet fragments and a tarot card recovered from various crime scenes.
The back seat had been removed and a hole cut in the trunk, allowing the shooter to remain hidden while picking off targets. There was also a blue can of spray used to camouflage the inside of the car’s trunk, and everything from inside the Caprice when Muhammed and Malvo were captured, including several maps and atlases.
On September 11, 1978, Gerald decided it was time to turn fantasies that he had been harboring into reality. He and Charlene hopped into their 1973 Dodge van and drove off in search of a sex slave for Gerald.
Charlene and Gerald Gallego killed 11 teenage and young adult victims after using them as sex slaves. Charlene, who was utterly dominated by Gerald, would lure the girls into their 1973 Dodge van by promising them weed.
They’d find Gerald waiting inside the van with a gun. Gerald would rape the girls, then shoot them and dump them in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The Gallegos also used Charlene’s Oldsmobile Cutlass for several of their murders, often splitting up for one to drive while the other drove their van to get rid of their victim.
On November 2, 1980, Gerald saw a young couple standing on the side of the street. In his most brazen attempt yet, Gerald got out of the car, walked right up to them with a .25 caliber Beretta, and ordered them into the car.
Friends of the couple saw them get into the car and wrote down the license plate. Gerald drove to a secluded area, commanded the man out of the car, and aimed his pistol shooting him point-blank range in the back of the head at the front of the vehicle.
Gerald ordered Charlene to drive to their apartment where he raped the girl for hours. He ordered Charlene to drive the Cutlass to a rural area. Gerald ordered the young girl out of the car and shot her three times at point-blank range. Officers traced the vehicle to Charlene parents.
Los Angeles serial killer suspect Lonnie David Franklin, gained the nickname “The Grim Sleeper” because he took a pause of almost 24 years between murders going from 1988 to 2002 without a single killing.
In 2008, new evidence emerged connecting Franklin to the crimes, including pictures and license plates of a blue and white 1977 Dodge van. Franklin was caught in 2010, and his trial began in June, 2015.
Li Xianliang’s Extremely Large Shovel Loader :
Drunken shovel loader driver, Li Xianliang ,went on a rampage in Hebei, China in August, 2010, that killed 17 people. He used the giant vehicle as a weapon to crush anything and anyone in his path. After an argument with a co-worker, Li jumped in the massive shovel loader and went after a customer but missed and killed someone else.
He then ran over his boss and drove out to a local road, flipping cars with his shovel before crushing them under his wheels. Next up was a crowded street where he drove the vehicle into parked cars, pedestrians, and shops before heading back to the coal depot. He was finally subdued (and stabbed) by passers-by, whom Li attacked with a crowbar and brick.
38-year-old Dutch citizen, Karst Roeland Tates , drove his black Suzuki Swift straight toward the Dutch Royal Family as they paraded down the streets of Apeldoorn, Holland. But he missed and plowed into the crowd lining the parade route, killing seven people and injuring 10 more.
Tates was attempting to attack Queen Beatrix and other members of the Royal Family 60 miles east of Amsterdam. They looked on in shock as he crashed his Suzuki car at high speed into spectators. He rammed through two police barricades.
Tates smashed through a crowd celebrating Queen’s Day, towards an open top bus carrying members of the Royal Family. Pulled from his smashed up car by police, he told an officer that the attack was aimed at the Royal Family.
Officials have revealed that Tates was carrying a map of the Queen’s route but his precise motive has remained unclear. Tates died the next day.
What kind of cars do serial killers drive? In a few cases, the car itself is the weapon, driven by a lunatic on a mission to kill. Since these cars are so often used as evidence, they often survive trials and become tourist attractions. You might even be able to find a serial killer death car at a museum near you. Just don’t look in the trunk.
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