Strange Reports

On Saturday, 5th May 1979, news editor Garland Reeves was listening to the police scanner at the Birmingham News offices in Alabama with interest. He was unsure whether the calls about a brown car with a hand sticking out of the trunk were a hoax. Police were finding it difficult to locate the vehicle because of the delay between witnesses seeing the car and finding a payphone to report the incident.

Reeves was curious and sent intern reporter Mark Winne and veteran photographer Jerry Ayres out to see if they could find the car themselves. With any luck, they could follow the police and hopefully get a photograph or two along the way.

The Chase

The two men headed out. Winne was in the front passenger seat, and Ayres was driving. News editor Garland Reeves maintained radio contact and regularly updated them on the car’s location. 

Winne and Ayres drove around Birmingham for about three hours. Just as they were beginning to give up hope of ever finding the car, Winne suddenly spotted the beat-up beige Dodge Polara with the number plate EDX 003 travelling northbound on Interstate 20/59 in Ensley. Inside the car was a female driver and two males, and there, sticking out of the trunk through a small gap in the seal, was a hand, its fingers wiggling about and trying to get attention. It was now clear to Winne and Ayres that this was no hoax.

The men pursued the Dodge on a 30‐minute chase through traffic moving northeast on the interstate. Winne maintained radio contact with Reeves back at the office, who, in turn, relayed the car’s location to the police as Winne and Ayres stayed hot on its heels. At one point, the young intern took the car’s wheel so that Ayres could lean out of the window and photograph the beat-up Dodge and the hand sticking out of its trunk.

By this time, the female driver of the Dodge had become aware she was being followed and exited the interstate off-ramp for Airport Boulevard. As the Dodge weaved erratically through the residential streets, Winne and Ayres stayed close behind, despite the driver doing her best to shake them. The newsmen knew fully that the Dodge’s passengers could be dangerous, but as Winne would later point out, “I mean, we had a responsibility, a moral responsibility, a journalistic responsibility to stay with that car. It just had to work out that way”.

Finally, Winne and Ayres stopped the car just long enough for the police to box in the Dodge and arrest its occupants. The female driver was 24-year-old Robin Green of Birmingham, and the two male passengers were 27-year-old Joseph Fendley of Morris, and his uncle, 49-year-old Wilburn Fendley of Bessemer.

The police then raced to open the trunk and free the man inside.

The victim

The man who climbed barefoot out of the trunk was 35-year-old Gary Collier. He was groggy and injured, and the first thing he asked for was a cigarette.

Collier told Sgt. Howard Felts that he had been to a bar in Bessemer the night before where he met Robin Green and Joseph Fendley. He had never seen them before and thought they just wanted to go drinking. But when they started taking drugs, he decided to leave. At about 9 pm, they attacked him in the car park, stabbing him with a screwdriver and beating him unconscious. They robbed him of his $350 disability check before throwing him into the trunk of their Dodge Polara.

As the Dodge drove around, Collier managed to tear a gap in the trunk’s rubber seal and slip his hand through, praying that a passing motorist would see him. He would often drift in and out of consciousness, fighting the fumes from the carbon monoxide entering the trunk. He was uncertain when the car stopped to pick up Wilburn Fendley, but he could hear his kidnappers talking about where to dump his body. 

Collier had been held inside the trunk for 14 hours before being rescued. He had been driven around for so long that he believed they had left the state. However, when the police pulled them over, they were just 10 miles away from the bar where he had been attacked. Strangely, his kidnappers seemed to have been driving in circles.

After his rescue, Collier thanked Winne and Ayres, telling Ayres, “I’d done made my peace, or was trying to”.

Conclusion

What happened to Joseph Fendley and Robin Green (also known as Robin Lowery) is unknown. Court records pertaining to the charges brought against them have not been found.

The judge did however drop the charges against Wilburn Fendley because he had joined Green and Fendley after Collier had been robbed and put in the trunk. Just why he was in the car though remains a mystery.

Mark Winne continued his career in journalism and has been a long-time investigative reporter at WSB-TV in Atlanta. Jerry Ayres and Garland Reeves have both retired from The Birmingham News.

It is believed that Gary Collier died in 1989.

Sources