Route 40 Killer: Steven Brian Pennell and the Blue Van of Death

0:00 November 29, 1987. It's Thanksgiving weekend. Two teenagers looking for a little privacy pull off on Route 40 in Delaware and spot what they think is a mannequin in the road. The boyfriend drives closer and that's when they realize it's a woman's body, bound and brutalized. This is the beginning of Delaware's only serial killer case. [Music] In the late 1980s, the stretch through Bear and Glasgow was lined with budget motels, truck stops and 24 hour diners. During the day, it looked like any American highway. At night, near construction sites and industrial areas, it felt isolated, vulnerable.

1:06 Sex workers and hitchhikers used Route 40 because traffic was constant. The highway had this quality where you're near Wilmington, near civilization, but when darkness fell, you may as well have been in the middle of nowhere. That combination made it perfect for Stephen Bryan Penel. Shirley Anna Ellis was 23 in November 1987. She'd worked as a prostitute but was turning her life around, enrolled in nursing school. During the AIDS epidemic, when most people were terrified and healthcare workers refused to go near AIDS patients, Shirley was visiting them, bringing them food, showing up when society had abandoned them. On November 29, three days after Thanksgiving, Shirley left her family home around 6 p.m. carrying a platter that she'd prepared for an AIDS patient at Wilmington Hospital. She needed to make the 14-mile trek. Public transit basically didn't exist, so Shirley walked to Route 40 to hitchhike. That evening, a couple drove to a construction site looking for privacy. The boyfriend spotted something in the road. He told his girlfriend, "Hey, that looks like a mannequin." They drove closer. It wasn't. Shirley was found partially nude, hands and feet bound with adhesive tape, a ligature wound around her neck, her head bludgeoned with a hammer, the crucial detail. No sexual assault. The person who did this got off on the torture itself. Seven months passed, then on June 28, 1988, Catherine DeMaro, 31,

2:40 was seen walking Route 40 around 11.30 p.m. By morning, construction workers found her naked body. Same pattern. Beaton-bound tortured. No sexual assault. Hammer. Strangulation. The Catherine's body gave investigators something new. She was covered in thousands of blue carpet fibers. Forensics determined they came from the vehicle's interior. Catherine had been forced to lie on a carpeted surface for an extended time. Every time she struggled, more fibers transferred to her body. Police now knew they were looking for a vehicle with distinctive blue carpeting. The FBI profile said they were dealing with a sadist who didn't need sexual penetration.

3:21 The torture itself was the gratification. August 22, 1988. Margaret Lynn Finner, 27, goes missing. Last scene getting into a blue van. Her body was found near the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, but decomposition destroyed most evidence. Penel was never charged, though everyone believes she was his victim. September 18, Michelle Gordon, 22, was seen entering a blue Ford van. A witness who knew both Michelle and a local electrician named Stephen Bryan Penel watched her climb in. Michelle's body was found September 20 on the rocks along the canal. The autopsy revealed cocaine in her system. The medical examiner believed the drugs weakened her heart and when Penel started torturing her, that shock caused her heart to stop before he'd finished.

4:10 Michelle's body was dumped differently, tossed onto the rocks. Three days later, September 23, 26-year-old Kathleen Mayer vanishes. An off-duty officer spotted a young woman hitchhiking around 9.30 pm. He watched a blue Ford van pull over. Something felt off. So instead of intervening, he wrote down a license plate number as she climbed inside. The plate came back to Stephen Bryan Penel. Kathleen Mayer's body has never been found. Delaware police formed a massive task force. Over 60 officers, they brought in the FBI's behavioral science unit. They made a gutsy decision. Sinden a decoy. Officer Renee Trachner volunteered.

4:54 She dressed like the women working Route 40. Got wired for sound and walked the dark highway while backup teams shattered her. On September 14, Renee noticed a blue Ford van cruise passed her seven times in 20 minutes. She moved to a darker stretch. The van stopped. The driver motion for her to come get in. Renee approached but did not get inside. She talked to the driver, a nervous white male who barely made eye contact. She later described his eyes as blank and cold, like there was no life behind them. While backup ran the plates, Renee had to think fast. She needed to see the inside without actually getting inside. She pretended to be interested in the van. She got him to turn on the dome light. When that light came on, Renee's heart stopped. The entire interior was covered in a distinctive blue carpet. The same fibers found on one of the victims. Renee made an excuse about being tired, saying that she needed to sleep. Penel got suspicious and drove off, but Renee had pulled fibers from the carpeting. Her backup team had the license plates, the driver's information everything. Stephen Bryan Penel, 31 years old, electrician, married father of two, without a criminal record. Police watched Penel for weeks. Renee ended up sitting next to a meta-moody blues concert during surveillance. His young daughter approached Renee to ask for a donation to a school fundraiser.

6:20 Police observed Penel continuing to cruise Route 40, still hunting, even as the community panicked and the net was closing. On November 29, 1988, exactly one year after Shelley Ellis's body was found, Penel was arrested. Police searched the van. It was a mobile torture chamber. Eight pairs of pliers, handcuffs, whips, knives, needles, flex cuffs, two rolls of duct tape matching the tape used on victims. The blue carpet shedding fibers everywhere. Blood and hair samples matching the victims. Penel's trial began September 1989. First time DNA profiling was used in a Delaware criminal case. The science was so new that the judge held extensive hearings to determine "admissibility."

7:08 They used RFLP testing to match blood from Penel's van to victims. The probability of it being someone else was essentially zero. The fiber evidence was equally damning. Perfect match. The jury convicted Penel of murdering Shelley Ellis and Catherine Demaro. They hung on Michelle Gordon because of her cause of death was complicated by cocaine. Penel received two consecutive life sentences, but prosecutors were not done. New evidence linked Penel to Michelle Gordon and Kathleen Mayor. They indicted him again. Penel then fired his attorneys and did the thing that I would encourage all serial killers to do? Represent yourself. He entered a no contest plea to both murders and then he asked to be sentenced to death. He cited the Bible, Numbers 3530 and Genesis 96. He framed his execution as God's law and state law aligning. He claimed he wanted to spare his family years of appeals. On October 31, 1991, the court sentenced him to death. A psychiatric evaluation described Penel as pleasant, attractive, friendly, no psychosis, no depression, no paranoia. The weird word there obviously being attractive. Because one, no he's not and two, why are you measuring that?

8:25 So on March 14, 1992, Stephen Bryan Penel became the first person executed in Delaware in 46 years. In the days before, reporters tried to get him to reveal where he'd hidden Kathleen Mayor's body. Her family was begging. Penel refused almost every interview. Finally, he agreed to one with his lawyer present. He revealed nothing. When the time came for his last meal, Penel refused it. He didn't apologize to the family. He didn't show any remorse. He talked about abortion. He said he was refusing his last meal because 33 million babies had been aborted. Babies who died for no reason. While he was dying for a deed, he deserved death for. He was glad Christ forgave him. He said, "Those babies never got a first meal, so he wouldn't take a last meal in their memory." A man who tortured women to death with pliers and whips refused to tell a family where their daughter's body was hidden. He used his final breath to lecture about abortion and position himself as spiritually redeemed. After the conviction, prosecutor Kathleen Jennings received flowers. The card read, "You made us feel human again, from the women of Route 40." The women working that strip, women, society often ignored, sent flowers thinking the prosecutor for treating them like they mattered.

9:42 Because to Penel, they didn't matter. They were objects he could use to satisfy his compulsion. To this day, Kathleen Mayor's family doesn't have a body to bury. Penel took that location to his grave. The case forced Delaware to professionalize its homicide investigations. It established DNA precedent still used today. But more than anything, it's a reminder that evil doesn't look like what we expect. Evil can be the guy who waves from his driveway. Evil can be the electrician with a wife and kids. Stephen Bryan Penel drove a blue van down a busy highway for over a year, hunting women in plain sight. Route 40 is still there. People still drive it every day. But for the families of those five women, that highway will forever be marked by the man who turned it into his personal nightmare.

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