The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker: The True Story, 10 Years Later

Netflix certainly has a talent for proving that “truth is stranger than fiction.” They’ve done it again with their newest true crime documentary, The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.

Normally hatchet-wielding hitchhikers are associated with the stuff of horror stories. In this case, Caleb Lawrence “Kai” McGillvary, the homeless —or home-free, as he preferred to view it— hitchhiking hatchet hero used his to rescue someone. But since he was also homeless, wow. What a story!

Or so it seemed…

In less than an hour and a half, the documentary takes viewers on a whirlwind journey via a sentinel three-month period in Kai’s life. It starts in Fresno, California, in February 2013, where Kai saved a woman’s life, and ends in Clark, New Jersey, in May 2013, after he brutally murdered a man.

And whether it was on purpose or not, almost 10 years to the day that he first rose to fame, here comes this documentary about his rapid rise to stardom and equally fast descent into infamy —and incarceration.

If you either missed the story of the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker back when it first went viral or forgot about it, let’s start at the beginning. Because that story alone is crazy enough, but there’s more to it. Way more.

However, I warn you. Buckle up. There’s a wild ride with spoilers —and sensitive subject matter about rape and sexual abuse—ahead.

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker Is Born

Kai was home and fancy-free in early February 2013. He’d hitched a ride with Jett McBride, and, while driving through Fresno, was in the car when McBride plowed into Rayshawn Neely, a PG&E worker, on purpose, simply because Neely was black.

Shortly before the crash, McBride had allegedly told Kai that he had raped a 14-year-old girl, was Jesus Christ, and that it was his mission to rid the Earth of black people. A plan he apparently decided to initiate that day.

When a woman who witnessed the crash went to help Neely, McBride attacked her. That’s when Kai grabbed his hatchet and “smash, smash, suh-mashed” McBride on his head. The first two times were with the dull side of the hatchet. The third time was with the sharp edge.

Kai didn’t kill McBride. He either impaired him enough that McBride desisted his attack on the woman, or the police came, or maybe both.

The Reporter and Kai’s Powerful Message

But the police weren’t the only ones to show up. News reporters quickly arrived on the scene too, and learned of Kai’s heroic effort. But Kai ended up only talking to one reporter that day, Jessob Reisbeck, who had no idea he was about to get an exclusive that would change both his life and Kai’s.

Kai immediately impressed Reisbeck when he stopped, looked directly in the camera, and shared a profound message:

“Before I say anything else, I wanna say no matter what you’ve done, you deserve respect. Even if you make mistakes, you’re lovable, and it doesn’t matter your looks, skills, or age, size, or anything, you’re worthwhile. No one can ever take that away from you.”

That made it on air. So did about a minute and a half more of the interview with Kai. But all in all, Reisbeck had talked with him for over six minutes. He decided more people needed to see that.

The YouTube Video

As Reisbeck explained in the documentary, Kai disclosed a lot of “really, really terrible things that happened to him.” And how “you can’t put a lot of that stuff on TV.”

But he wanted people to see the charm of Kai that he did. The honest, genuine, scarred human being who was still positive despite his suffering.

So he uploaded that, having no idea it would go viral, but that’s what happened.

Hollywood Calling

And once Kai was Internet famous, it wasn’t long before producers of all kinds were trying to track him down. Producers from late-night talk shows, like Jimmy Kimmel, wanted him. Even the company that produced The Kardashians recognized his “it” factor and was immediately interested in having him star in his own reality show.

Because Kai had no ID, he couldn’t fly or take a train down from Fresno to L.A. to tape the Kimmel show. The potential reality show folks were the ones who went to get him and drive him down for his Kimmel appearance. Besides, it would only be good for them, too, right? Wine and dine him, pamper him a bit, and make sure he signed exclusively with them before anyone else could get him.

It backfired on them big time. First, he publicly urinated on Julio Iglesias’s star. Then he skateboarded in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, where they had put him up. Security immediately banned him and said he couldn’t come back in. Then they got him to Kimmel’s show, where he proudly peed on Kimmel’s sign. At one point he even took a big knife that he was carrying and threw it aggressively into the grass over and over.

It quickly became apparent that Kai wasn’t so much of a lovable free spirit as he was a disturbed loose canon. Something was clearly not right with him.

Kai’s Demons

Kai couldn’t concentrate. He used a pencil to decide whether he’d rather have the world handed to him or continue on his way to the Bay area to smoke weed. (The weed won. He only agreed to do the whole Kimmel thing and meet the producers who wanted to give him a reality show after they promised him a whole limo full of weed.)

And he could lose his temper in an instant, but then just as fast bounce back to his happy-go-lucky self. He triggered that “something’s not right with this guy” feeling in most people.

Yet, many ignored it at first because, as I alluded to before, they were focused on capitalizing on his newfound fame. Surely, they could tame him.

Nope.

He was too plagued by demons.

Substance Abuse

Pot wasn’t the only thing he was fond of. If it was available or he had access to it, Kai would also drink heavily.

Sexual Abuse

Kai disclosed that a man had choked, beat, and raped him when he was 17.

Child Abuse

He also claimed to have been abused as a child, and may have been subject to an exorcism with hot pepper and soap, as evidenced by an ominous Mother’s Day post he made on Facebook:

“First memories I was in a crib and ‘family’ was fussin over me. But I kept getting told that I ‘had a demon.’ I would get locked in a room for 20 hours a day with a little porta potty [sic] camp toilet in the corner of the room. Then after that my mouth filled with hot pepper and soap for yelling fuck you at the top of my lungs. Signing off, ‘happy Mother’s Day.'”

Kai’s first cousin, Jeremy McGillivary Wolfe, revealed that Kai wasn’t allowed to play the same way that Jeremy was. He didn’t say that Kai was abused or mistreated. Just that things were different, stricter, at Kai’s house.

But Kai’s mom Shirley was also interviewed. She admitted that, sure, she did lock him in his room from time to time. She was being a responsible parent and looking out for his safety because Caleb (she preferred to call him by his given name), had a penchant for mischief and trouble. But she didn’t lock him up for hours. Just here and there as need be.

She also alluded to the fact she tried to get him help because he was wild, unfocused, and hard to manage from the beginning. And while the “medical field,” as she put it, wondered if Caleb suffered from ADHD, they didn’t seem to make a conclusive decision. They did try to get him help but nothing really worked. When he was 13 and got too much for her, he was shipped off to a boys’ home.

While she admired he had flaws, she also saw the good in him and said he had good heart.

The Murder of Joseph Galfy

By May 2013, Kai had hitchhiked his way across the country and found himself in New York. It was in Times Square where he claimed he met attorney Joseph Galfy, who bought Kai dinner and took him back to his home in Clark, New Jersey.

Kai spent that first night at Galfy’s on Friday, May 10, 2013. When friends didn’t show to pick him up on Saturday, May 11, 2013, Kai went back to Galfy’s to see if he could stay there again. Galfy obliged.

But it’s unclear what really transpired between them.

The Welfare Check

When Galfy didn’t report to work a couple of days later, his secretary contacted his neighbor who discovered the Sunday and Monday newspaper were still outside. He called for a welfare check. That’s how they discovered Galfy had been beaten to death.

Lawrence Kai and the Ticket Stub

Police didn’t have a lot to go on, but one clue was a piece of paper under a laptop with the name “Lawrence Kai” written on it. Police Googled that and ended up coming across the story of Kai, the hatchet wielding hitchhiker out in Calilfornia. Could it be the same guy?

They didn’t know, but they reached out to Fresno police while following up on one other clue they’d unearthed. Galfy had bought a train ticket over the weekend. Detectives weren’t sure it would lead to anything, but they got video from the station and found footage of Galfy buying the ticket and handing it to a man with long curly hair and a backpack who hugged him. A man who looked an awful lot like the same Kai who had thwarted a murder out West a few months earlier.

The “what would you do” Post

On May 14, Kai posed a disturbing question on Facebook:

“what would you do if you woke up with a groggy head, metallic taste in your mouth, in a strangers [sic] house…walked to the mirror and seen come [sic] dripping from the side of your face from your mouth, and started wrenching, realizing that someone had drugged, raped and blown their fuckin load in you? what would you do?”

Fan Number One

Detectives also determined Kai had been communicating with a woman through Facebook. They’d made plans to get together on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 12.

It appeared the woman didn’t follow through with plans where they were supposed to meet. Kai repeatedly called her, asking for help getting out of the Clark area.

When they caught up, she was surprised to find he didn’t look like she expected. Where were his long locks? He’d chopped them off and now sported short hair. Still, they took a picture and posed on Facebook together, and that was actually what helped catch him after police issued a warrant for his arrest.

5 Unanswered Questions about the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker

1. Did he lace the joint he’d shared with McBride?

One of Kai’s talents was singing. He ended up playing at a bar where Gabriel Francisco of the band the Redcoats was also playing. Francisco explained that Kai had told him, and others, that the joint Kai had given to McBride was laced. With what? Who knows? But Kai said that McBride “lost his shit” and it was after that that he opened up about the rape, said he was Jesus Christ, and tried to kill a man.

Inadvertently, Kai admitted that he might have been culpable in McBride hitting Neely. Francisco described how Kai recalled him and McBride were discussing how they were ghosts, and if they rammed into the PG&E truck they’d probably just go right through it.

Francisco figured that was huge, that Kai would surely get in trouble too, but he never did. Police did reveal they conducted toxicology on McBride but nothing other than marijuana showed up. So did their tests not pick up anything else, or was Kai lying about that?

2. Who raped Kai?

Does Kai even know him, or was it a random anonymous stranger? If it even happened, that is. Which is another question a lot of people are wondering.

3. Real or imagined?

Alex Aguirre, one of the camerapeople who was first involved with Kai, said, “You get kinda jaded with interviews, and you kinda have, like, a truth meter on if what they’re saying is accurate, and I didn’t know if it was 100% true. But even if, like, 50% of what he was saying was true, he had a horrible, horrible childhood.”

I’m not sure if Kai was 100% truthful all the time, either. However, it was definitely apparent his demons haunted him. Sadly, it appears they won.

4. Did Galfy drug and/or sexually assault him?

That was Kai’s defense, which forensics didn’t prove out. Kai showed no signs of struggling with the 74-year-old Galfy, who also didn’t appear super physically fit. Kai had no bruising, scrapes, or scratches.

But they never said in the doc whether detectives tested Kai for any date rape-like substances. Then again, by the time he was arrested, maybe they wouldn’t be in his system anymore.

5. Is Kai now getting the mental help he needs?

Even though Kai was sentenced to 57 years behind bars, I hope he’s getting the mental help he clearly so desperately needs.

3 Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker Unexpected Insights

The people interviewed in documentaries often offer a lot of unexpected insights, and The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker was no exception. Here are the three that stood out to me.

1. Reality TV Is Anything But

Most of us know that Reality TV takes a page from wrestling: it’s scripted and concocted. Not that the stars are reading from a script, per se, but there’s a lot of staging going on. Brad Mulcahy, the booker for Kimmel, offered more evidence of that when he said this about Kai’s appearance on the show:

“We were barely able to corral him for those eight minutes on that one night. Him doing a reality TV show would never have worked. He never would’ve done it. So he’s gonna show up at 3:45 at some doughnut shop and fake some scene that they wrote? There’s no chance. There’s no chance he’s doing that. No chance. What a bizarre thing. That would’ve never worked.”

2. Kai Represented a Feel-Good, Free-Spirit Fantasy

People want a feel-good fantasy. We want to cheer for the underdog and root for the unlikely hero. That’s what drew so many people into Kai’s story…and why it was so easy for reporters to craft and sell it as such.

Because we also like the non-conformists. It takes guts to be your authentic self without regard for other people’s opinions. Kai seemed to have tapped into that.

Except, that’s what we wanted to believe. That he was a true free spirit vs. a “powder keg of explosive rage,” as Judge Robert Kirsch described him during his trial.

Brad Mulcahy once again provided a great quote about this illusion too when he said:

“For most people, what they know of him is something maybe we wanna be. Maybe many of us don’t want the responsibilities we have, the bills and the cars and the insurance and the property taxes, and this guy was living that life without those responsibilities, and it was going well. And then…then it didn’t. It’s a much more sad existence than maybe the exhilarating or free experience people think.”

3. Caveat Emptor

But perhaps the real issue here is sometimes we don’t do our due diligence as celebrity consumers. We want to believe the story we’re being sold, so we overlook or make excuses for bad behavior when instead we should be asking if they’re worthy of our adoration.

Bob Ellenport, Galfy’s neighbor, said something to that effect, which Sandy Panman so sagely paraphrased like this:

“I think what Bob’s saying is if you’re going to glorify someone, you better know who you’re glorifying.”

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker Trailer

Check-In

Do you remember hearing about the hatchet-wielding hitchhiking hero back in 2013?