Five famous serial killer cars

So what can we glean from the cars of serial killers? That you never know who is behind the wheel… These cars are so average that they look like any other car on the road.

Ted Bundy used his 1968 VW Beetle for more than getting to the shops: he committed a number of his murders inside his little car. The Beetle was beige, the most average colour ever, and Bundy modified its insides to fit his victims’ bodies. The car, which Bundy later sold to a teenager, contained vital evidence that incriminated Bundy once and for all: hair from his victims and other murderous paraphernalia. Bundy was such a fan of Volkswagens that upon escaping custody – he did so twice – he stole another VW to commit more horrible murders before his eventual capture.

Beaten down under a desert sun, weathered and rusting away is Charles Manson’s 1935 Dodge Power Wagon. Manson was the self-imposed patriarch of the Manson Family, a cultish collective who committed the most infamous murder spree in Hollywood history. Many of their victims were involved in the Hollywood scene, including Roman Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate. Manson’s Dodge predates the murders: it was used to romp joyously around the Manson Family’s Barker Ranch in the California desert. After it broke down, it was left there to rot – just like Manson in jail. People still visit the car today.

Today it’s a classic, collectible muscle car, but over one million Chevrolet Impalas were sold across the US in the 1960s – making it a common machine for its time. Blending in is the aim of the game when you’re the Zodiac Killer, a mysterious man who stalked Northern California back roads in the late ’60s and early ’70s and became infamous for sending clues goading the local press with cryptograms, puzzles of encrypted text. Only one of these ’grams has been solved. In the letters accompanying his puzzles, the man referred to himself as ‘Zodiac’. While he has never been caught, pop-culture-cum-conspiracy theorists suggest, mockingly, that Zodiac is actually Texas senator Ted Cruz – and this theory is now a classic internet meme.

The Son of Sam – aka David Berkowitz – didn’t show the kind of sadistic intelligence present in other killers: he didn’t lead and organise a cult like Charles Manson, nor did he send complex cryptic clues like the Zodiac. His horrible spree, driving a 1970 Ford Galaxie around the streets of New York and finding his victims in lovers’ lanes, was relatively short: roughly a year, from summer to summer, 1977 to 1978. The letters Berkowitz sent to the media were rambling references to his neighbour Sam’s dog, Harvey, who he believed was a demon telling him what to do. Police found a gun and a map in Berkowitz’s Ford Galaxie, so they set up a stakeout and nabbed him.

John Wayne Gacy copped the nickname ‘Killer Clown’ because, despite being one of history’s worst ever serial killers, he regularly volunteered as Pogo the Clown in his downtime – horrifying news for coulrophobics. To all and sundry, he was a pretty typical fellow. His black 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 became a key part of the story after a surviving victim, author Jeffrey Rignall – who has published the book 29 Below about his ordeal and how we subsequently staked out Gacy’s car from freeways and overpasses – spotted the car he recognised as his perpetrator’s and followed it to Gacy’s home. Strangely, police didn’t act on this information at the time. Gacy was arrested later when the weight of evidence piled up after further incidents.

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