
When hitchhiker Kai Lawrence began telling a news crew about rescuing a woman under attack at the scene of a vehicle incident in California in 2013, reporter Jessob Reisbeck felt he had found television gold.
Fresh-faced Kai brightened up the screen as he described his bold intervention, sporting a mischievous grin, untamed locks knotted in a scarf, and a message of love to everybody.
The 20-year-old described how he shared a ride with Jett Simmons McBride, who then crashed into a pedestrian, slamming him against the rear of a parked vehicle and shouted racist abuse.
When Kai went out to rescue the injured guy, a woman also stepped forward to assist, but McBride grabbed her.
Fearing that the automobile driver would snap her neck ‘like a pencil stick,’ he reacted by pulling a hatchet from his rucksack and repeatedly beating the driver on the head.
Kai even interspersed his portrayal of the strikes with the words’smash, smash, smash’ in his narrative.
The homeless Kai, actual name Caleb McGillvary, became an immediate hero after the exclusive news interview. Kai became a worldwide sensation after Reisbeck posted their encounter on YouTube, becoming known as ‘the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker’.
Reisbeck, overjoyed with his media coup, earned a second exclusive with Kai, showing his guitar and singing talent as well as his Robin Hood lifestyle – living on the go, taking from the rich and giving to the needy.
As a result, the frenzy continued. As producers from all over the world pleaded for interviews, the young hitchhiker went on Jimmy Kimmel Live and was sought by the creators of Keeping Up With The Kardashians for his own reality show.
However, it soon became clear that the ‘adorable traveller’ was not without his own demons.

Within months of his celebrity, he was accused of beating to death 73-year-old New Jersey lawyer Joseph Galfy.
In a newly released Netflix documentary exploring Kai’s meteoric rise and downfall, Reisbeck reflects: ‘In a matter of three months he went from being this amazing, heroic, beautiful person to being wanted by the authorities for murder. So it’s a f***ed up story.’
The fissures began to show early, according to the producers dealing with their ‘difficult’ new talent at the time.
Kai had a habit of peeing in public, bingeing on booze and giving strange or random answers to questions.
A musician recalled Kai telling how he had smoked marijuana, which he laced with something stronger in the car with McBride before the crash (toxicology reports showed only marijuana). And the ‘free spirit’ also spoke of a horrific childhood where he had been locked away, as well as how he had been raped while on the open road.
Meanwhile, online fame had made Kai welcome in any neighbourhood, so he continued travelling – stopping for parties and being backslapped everywhere for his ‘smash, smash, smash’ ethos. One comedian joked it was the first time US residents had ever been gleeful that a hitchhiker carried an axe with him.
However, it wasn’t until May 2013 that Kai made news again, this time with allegations of his name and phone number being discovered near the body of Galfy.
Kai claimed he acted in self-defense after the lawyer drugged and assaulted him, but investigators determined the elderly was stamped on and beaten to death.
In 2019, six years after his arrest, Kai, then 30, was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to 57 years in a maximum-security jail for murder by Judge Robert Kirsch, who branded him ‘a powder ball of explosive wrath’.
The judge said: ‘You are crafty, you are cunning, you are disingenuous and you are manipulative.’
He ruled Kai must serve at least 85% of his time behind bars, adding: ‘When you become eligible for parole, you will still be younger than Mr Galfy was when you murdered him.’
The verdict – which Kai has tried to appeal – left the Kardashians producer who hosted him alone at her own house wondering if she had been reckless. And the Jimmy Kimmel producer admitted he had ‘been wrong’ about the hitchhiker, not seeing a darker side to him.
A friend of the murdered lawyer accused the media of creating a celebrity monster, warning: ‘If you’re going to glorify someone, you better know who you’re glorifying.’
Today, Reisbeck is still in touch with Kai in prison. ‘I can sit here and say I tried to do everything the right way,’ the reporter told Netflix.
‘I tried to do everything for him and have him be successful and happy and… I don’t know… expose the good in him and hide the bad and I just couldn’t, I guess. No-one could, I guess.’
When hitchhiking takes a deadly turn
Kai’s astonishing story is far from the only gruesome account of a hitchhiking adventure gone wrong.
The murder of French hitchhiker Celine Figard in Newbury in 1995 drew widespread attention in the United Kingdom.
Stuart Morgan, a lorry driver from Hampshire, picked her up at a motorway service station shortly before Christmas and killed her. He is suspected of transporting her on his lorry for nine days before dumping her body in a lay-by.
He is still imprisoned.
Ivan Milat, who died in prison in 2019, was known as the backpack killer in Australia.
Between 1989 and 1992, he picked up and killed at least seven hitchhikers, including two Brits.
However, he was apprehended years later after a British man, Paul Onions, realised he had almost been one of his victims and informed authorities. Mr Onions was about to get into Milat’s car when he noticed a rifle and rope and fled – as the killer unsuccessfully attempted to shoot him.
Meanwhile, in the early 1970s, California was rocked by a spate of hitchhiker deaths.
The bodies of seven teenagers and young women who were known to hitchhike were discovered naked beside highways in rural Santa Rosa.
The crime is still unsolved to this day.
The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker is available to watch on Netflix now.