The frantic wiggling of fingers protruding from the trunk of a battered brown Dodge on a sun-drenched Alabama interstate sparked a harrowing, three-hour chase that ended with the dramatic rescue of a man who had already made peace with his own death. It was Saturday, May 5, 1979, and the routine hum of the Birmingham News newsroom was shattered by a bizarre police scanner report that would thrust two local journalists into the heart of a life-or-death pursuit. The report was chillingly simple: a brown or beige Dodge was driving around Birmingham with what appeared to be a human hand sticking out of the back of the car, the fingers moving with desperate urgency.
Several alarmed members of the public had already dialed the police from payphones, but in an era before cell phones, social media, CCTV, or GPS tracking, the car remained a ghost on the road, capable of vanishing for miles with every passing minute. The newsroom buzzed with a mixture of disbelief and morbid curiosity as the dispatcher’s voice crackled with updates that the car was still on the loose, a moving crime scene that defied easy capture. News editor Garland Reeves, recognizing the gravity and the sheer strangeness of the situation, made a snap decision that would alter the course of the day.
He dispatched two men to find the vehicle: veteran photographer Jerry Ayers and a young, eager summer intern named Mark Wynn.
The latest scanner reports placed the elusive Dodge somewhere on Interstate 20, a major artery cutting through the heart of Birmingham. Ayers and Wynn jumped into their car and headed directly for the highway, their vehicle becoming a mobile command post as Reeves relayed every new location update via the car radio. The task felt impossible, a true needle-in-a-haystack search.
A brown Dodge was hardly a standout vehicle on an interstate teeming with hundreds of cars, trucks, and vans, all blurring past in a stream of metal and glass. For nearly three hours, the two journalists crisscrossed the highway, their eyes straining, their hopes fading with each fruitless pass.
On the verge of giving up, the young intern Mark Wynn let out a sudden shout. He had spotted it: a battered, old brown Dodge with an Alabama license plate reading EDX 003. The car was real, and the sight that greeted them was even more surreal than the radio reports had suggested.
Three people were inside the vehicle, two men and a female driver, and protruding from the closed trunk was a hand, its fingers wiggling with a frantic, almost desperate life of their own. Wynn immediately radioed back to Garland Reeves, his voice tight with tension. Reeves asked if he should call the police.
Wynn’s answer was immediate and absolute: “Yes, this isn’t a joke.”
Jerry Ayers, who was driving, quickly assessed the situation. He told Wynn to take the wheel, then leaned out of the driver’s window, his camera already in hand. He began snapping photographs of the rear of the Dodge, capturing the haunting image of the fingers sticking out of the trunk, a silent scream for help frozen in film.
Meanwhile, Reeves had already contacted the police, who responded with an urgent, direct command: “Don’t lose that car.” The roles had instantly reversed. Wynn and Ayers were no longer just reporters; they were the eyes and ears of law enforcement, reporting the car’s location while Reeves relayed the information back to the dispatchers.
The Dodge stayed on the I-20, passing downtown Birmingham and heading northeast, its occupants seemingly oblivious to the tail. But as the chase approached the airport, the situation shifted. The Dodge’s driver apparently spotted the newspapermen following, and the car abruptly exited the interstate at Airport Boulevard, plunging into a maze of residential streets.
Ayers and Wynn followed, but a cold wave of fear washed over them. They were now in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, alone in a car with no backup, facing unknown criminals who had already shown a capacity for violence. Ayers turned to Wynn and said, “Mark, I’m fine with chasing them all over Birmingham, but if they turn around and point a gun at us, I’m going the other way.”
Despite the very real personal danger, a sense of duty overrode their fear. They had a responsibility, a moral and journalistic obligation, to stay with that car. The Dodge’s occupants, now aware they were being followed, began a desperate attempt to shake their pursuers.
The car made erratic turns, came to sudden, jarring stops, and even reversed towards the journalists in a menacing display. But Ayers and Wynn doggedly stayed on their tail, weaving through the quiet neighborhoods, their hearts pounding, their eyes locked on the trunk and the wiggling fingers that represented a life hanging in the balance.
Finally, just as the Dodge was attempting to leave the residential area and return to the main roads, salvation arrived in a wave of flashing lights. A whole convoy of police cruisers descended on the scene, boxing in the brown Dodge with surgical precision. The occupants were quickly arrested, their faces a mix of shock and defiance.
Then came the moment everyone had been waiting for. Police officers approached the trunk, their movements tense and deliberate. The lock clicked open, and the lid swung up to reveal 35-year-old Gary Collier, battered, wounded, and disoriented, but very much alive.
Collier’s first request, as he was helped from the trunk, was for a cigarette. As he inhaled the smoke, he began to tell a story of a nightmarish 14-hour ordeal that had begun the previous evening. He had been out drinking at a bar in Bessemer, where he met two individuals, 27-year-old Joseph Findley and 24-year-old Robin Green.
The initial camaraderie soured when Findley and Green started downing whiskey shots and taking illegal drugs. Collier decided it was time to leave, but his new acquaintances had other plans. They followed him into the car park, assaulted him, attacked him with a screwdriver, and stole the $350 he had on him after cashing his disability check.
They then bundled him into the trunk of the Dodge, and a living nightmare began. Collier recalled drifting in and out of consciousness as exhaust fumes wafted into the confined space, poisoning the air. He could hear his captors discussing, in chilling detail, how to finish him off, arguing about the best place to dump his body.
He was convinced he was going to die. “I’d done made my peace, or was trying to,” he later told police. Strangely, come morning, they were still driving around Birmingham, having briefly stopped to pick up Findley’s uncle, 49-year-old Wilbur Findley, who joined the pair for the final leg of the trip.
Collier, believing they must have left the state due to the length of the drive, did not give up. He managed to pry away the rubber seal on the trunk rim, a seemingly trivial action that yielded no immediate results. But it was this small act of defiance that saved his life.
By pushing his fingers through the gap, he created the very signal that would alert the world to his plight. The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks to the dogged determination of two local journalists, his life had been saved, and he was able to enjoy that much-needed cigarette.
Wynn and Ayers returned to the Birmingham News office to a rapturous welcome. Applause echoed through the newsroom as their colleagues celebrated their incredible feat. Ayers went home to get some rest, but he was soon woken by a phone call.
“Why?” he asked. “Because this story is running up,” they said.
To borrow a modern phrase for an old story, the photograph of the hand in the trunk was going 𝓿𝒾𝓇𝒶𝓁. The images were syndicated nationally, then internationally. People from New York to Rome to Berlin and Tokyo saw the haunting photograph and read the exploits of Ayers and Wynn.
As Jerry Ayers later reflected, “It was my 15 minutes of fame.”
Everyone else involved in the story quickly faded back into obscurity. The three individuals were arrested and initially charged with robbery and kidnap, although it appears Wilbur Findley was released without charge, as Collier was already in the trunk before he got into the car. He was apparently able to convince the judge that it was all a big surprise to him when police opened the boot.
There is no readily available record of what charges the other two ultimately faced or whether they were convicted. As for Collier, he too disappeared from the story, leaving only the hope that after this brush with death, he was able to pick his drinking buddies with more care and live a long and happy life, forever grateful for the wiggling fingers that caught the eye of the world.
