Hand in the Trunk: The Kidnapping of Gary Collier

In May 1979, motorists in Birmingham, Alabama, began reporting a bizarre sight: a hand sticking out of the trunk of a moving car. When two journalists set out to find the vehicle, what began as an unusual assignment quickly became something far more serious.

Table of Contents

Strange Reports

On Saturday, 5th May 1979, news editor Garland Reeves was monitoring the police scanner at the Birmingham News offices in Alabama when a series of unusual reports began coming through. Motorists claimed they had seen a brown car travelling through Birmingham with a hand protruding from its trunk.

At first, Reeves wasn’t sure whether the reports were genuine or part of an elaborate hoax. Police were also struggling to locate the vehicle. This was long before mobile phones, meaning witnesses first had to find somewhere to stop and then locate a payphone before they could report what they had seen. By the time officers received the information, the car had already moved on.

Reeves decided to send intern reporter Mark Winne and veteran photographer Jerry Ayres to investigate. If they could locate the mysterious car, they might be able to catch up with the police and photograph whatever was happening.

Instead, the two journalists would find the car before the police did.

The Chase

Winne and Ayres set off with Ayres behind the wheel and Winne in the passenger seat. Back at the office, Reeves continued monitoring the police radio and relayed updates about the car’s suspected location.

For roughly three hours, the journalists drove around Birmingham without finding it. They were close to giving up when Winne spotted a battered beige Dodge Polara travelling north on Interstate 20/59 near Ensley. The number plate matched the one being broadcast over the police radio: EDX 003.

Inside the Dodge were a female driver and two male passengers. More importantly, protruding through a small gap in the trunk seal was a hand. Its fingers were moving, apparently trying to attract the attention of passing motorists.

The reports had been real.

Winne and Ayres began following the Dodge, pursuing it through traffic for around thirty minutes as it continued northeast along the interstate. Winne kept Reeves updated by radio, while Reeves passed their location to police. At one point, Winne took over the driving so that Ayres could lean from the window and photograph the Dodge, capturing the hand still protruding from its trunk.

By then, the woman driving the Dodge appeared to have realised she was being followed. She left the interstate at Airport Boulevard and began driving erratically through residential streets in an apparent attempt to lose them. Winne and Ayres knew they had no idea who was inside the car or what they might be capable of, but they continued the pursuit.

Winne later explained why:

“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.”

Eventually, Winne and Ayres managed to delay the Dodge long enough for police to catch up and box it in. Officers arrested the three occupants: 24-year-old Robin Green of Birmingham, 27-year-old Joseph Fendley of Morris, and Joseph’s uncle, 49-year-old Wilburn Fendley of Bessemer.

The police then rushed to the trunk.

They opened it and discovered the man whose hand motorists had been seeing for hours.

The Victim

The man who emerged barefoot from the trunk was 35-year-old Gary Collier. He was groggy and injured, but his first request after being freed was for a cigarette.

Collier told Sgt Howard Felts that he had been at a bar in Bessemer the previous evening, where he met Robin Green and Joseph Fendley for the first time. He initially believed they simply wanted to go drinking, but when the pair began taking drugs, he decided to leave.

At around 9 pm, Collier said Green and Fendley attacked him in the car park. He was stabbed with a screwdriver and beaten until he lost consciousness, before his $350 disability cheque was taken and he was placed inside the trunk of the Dodge.

When Collier regained consciousness, the car was moving. Trapped inside the trunk, he managed to tear away part of the rubber seal and create a gap large enough to push his hand through. From there, all he could do was move his fingers and hope that someone passing by would notice.

As the hours passed, Collier drifted in and out of consciousness while carbon monoxide fumes leaked into the trunk. He did not know when the car stopped to pick up Wilburn Fendley, but he could hear the people inside discussing where they might dump his body.

By the time police opened the trunk, Collier had been inside for around fourteen hours. After being driven around for so long, he believed his kidnappers must have taken him out of the state. In reality, he was rescued just ten miles from the bar where the ordeal had begun. His kidnappers appeared to have spent much of those fourteen hours simply driving around in circles.

After his rescue, Collier thanked Winne and Ayres. He told Ayres that while he was trapped inside the car, he had begun to believe he would not survive:

“I’d done made my peace, or was trying to.”

Aftermath

What ultimately happened to Joseph Fendley and Robin Green, who was also known as Robin Lowery, is unclear. Although contemporary reports identified them following their arrests, surviving accounts do not appear to document the eventual outcome of their cases.

Charges against Wilburn Fendley were later dismissed. He had joined Green and his nephew after Collier had already been attacked, robbed, and placed inside the trunk, although the circumstances surrounding his involvement remain unclear.

For Mark Winne, the extraordinary pursuit came near the beginning of what would become a long career in journalism. He went on to become an investigative reporter at WSB-TV in Atlanta, while Jerry Ayres and Garland Reeves later retired from The Birmingham News.

Gary Collier is believed to have died in 1989.

What began with scattered reports of a hand protruding from a moving car had seemed so improbable that Garland Reeves initially wondered whether it was a hoax. It was only because motorists continued reporting what they had seen, and Winne and Ayres stayed with the Dodge until police could reach it, that Collier was found alive after fourteen hours in the trunk.