Where The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker Took a Hell of a Turn

Was Kai a victim of assault and abuse?

Falling through the cracks at the time were comments Kai made—on camera—to Reisbeck and others about violent encounters, as well as disturbing Facebook posts (seen in the documentary) that seemed to indicate his personal knowledge of child abuse.

“This one time I was in an orchard and this f–king guy started beating on a woman,” Kai recalled in the original Fresno interview, and his response was to start “smashing him in the head.”

He also said at the time that he didn’t have any family, that “as far as anyone I grew up with is concerned, I’m already dead.”

Talking to Reisbeck in Stockton, Kai alleged that he’d been attacked and raped by a man when he was 17. And, Kai said, when he was a kid he was locked in a cage for four years.

In the documentary, his mother, Shirley, says there was a “short period” when she took measures to stop Caleb (her son’s actual name) from getting up too early so he wouldn’t “get into stuff that could harm him” when he was very young. She doesn’t specify what she did, but says she “never locked him in a room.”

Shirley (who did not want her last name used in the doc or in media reports regarding her son) spoke from Canada, where Kai was born—as opposed to West Virginia, where Kai once told Reisbeck he was from.