Netflix’s ‘Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker’ hit the end of his wild ride in Philly

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker, released earlier this week by Netflix, is currently the #1 documentary on the streaming service. It tells the story of Kai, the homeless backpacker who turned into an internet celebrity after he used his hatchet for good on a California roadway — only to be charged with a brutal murder a few months later in New Jersey.

His folk-hero status may have bought the fugitive a few days of freedom locally with female “fans,” but even a new short haircut and a lot of stops didn’t keep him from being recognized and apprehended at a Philadelphia bus station in May 2013.

Kai’s real name is Caleb Lawrence McGillivary, now 34.

A native of Canada, McGillivary lived a nomadic lifestyle and preferred to say he was “home-free” rather than homeless. He gained national attention in February 2013 after he used his hatchet to stop a man from assaulting a woman. The man, who had given McGillivary a ride, injured a Black utility worker with his car while spewing racial slurs. A female bystander tried to come to the injured man’s aid but was attacked by the driver. McGillivary then took his hatchet and hit the woman’s attacker, as he would recount later in a description that reverberate across the internet: “Smash! Smash! Suh-MASH!!”

In an interview with a California TV station, Kai charmed the internet with his post-hippie words of love. “No matter what you’ve done, you deserve respect,” he said.

He is serving a 57-year prison sentence in Trenton for the first-degree murder of Joseph Galfry Jr., 73. McGillivary was convicted of killing the North Jersey lawyer in his Clark home after they met in Times Square.

In an interview after the incident in California, he said: “As far as anybody I grew up with is concerned, I’m already dead.” But shortly after his May arrest for the Jersey murder, relatives of McGillivary in Canada told The Inquirer they did care for him. Some of their accounts, like some of the interviews in the Netflix documentary, suggest a childhood less than idyllic.

“I do believe he has post-traumatic stress,” his father, Gil McGillivary, told The Inquirer in May 2013.

Kai’s parents broke up when the boy was about 4. Then, from about age 9 to 18, he was sent to a residential facility in Alberta for youngsters with behavioral or psychiatric problems, where his son told him he was physically abused, McGillivary said.

His mother, Shirley Stromberg, said she had not heard any stories of abuse. Of his mental health, she said, “Caleb has had issues for years.”

Mary Ann McGillivary, his paternal grandmother, told The Inquirer after his arrest for murder that her grandson had a rough childhood but was “a very good boy” to her.

“He said, ‘When I have the money, I’m going to live with you. I’ll get us a place’,” she said.

In May 2013, after Galfry was found dead in his bed, wearing only socks and underwear, Caleb McGillivary ended up on the lam in the Philadelphia-South Jersey area.

Law enforcement sources said he spent time with two female “fans.” One of the women let him stay overnight in her Glassboro home, the sources said. The other spent time with him in Philadelphia. The two women reportedly drove him to Haddonfield. Authorities were also tipped off that he had spent time with a third woman in Cherry Hill. They didn’t find him with her, but she ended up getting arrested for having drug paraphernalia. One of her relatives told investigators he gave McGillivary money to travel and McGillivary showered with a gardening hose in his yard before heading to the Woodcrest PATCO station in Cherry Hill.

Surveillance tapes showed a man investigators thought was McGillivary at that station, and then at the Eighth and Market stop in Philadelphia.

Not long after, McGillivary was apprehended at a waiting area of the Philadelphia Greyhound terminal by city and SEPTA police. Just before that, he bought a small coffee at Starbucks. The person who waited on him recognized him and called 911.

McGillivary told authorities he acted in self-defense; he claimed Galfry had drugged and sexually abused him. Prosecutors said inconsistencies in his story and Galfry’s extensive injuries told another tale.

In 2019, McGillivary was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to 57 years behind bars, and will be required to serve at least 48 years.

He remains in the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.