Auction of Car Used in Texas Murder Upsets Mother
In the jumble of miscellany that is eBay, the ad went unnoticed for days. For sale: 1986 Honda Accord, a “historical collector’s item” used by seven Texas fugitives after a prison breakout two years ago. Minimum bid, $10,000.
Though the price -- five times the sedan’s blue book value -- included the car title and “all the newspaper articles, the subpoena, etc.,” there were no takers when the online auction ended Monday. But there is now an angry Dallas mother, who heard about the attempted sale.
“What kind of person would try to attach some sick allure to the car because a criminal sat in it?” asked Jayne Hawkins, whose son Aubrey, a police officer, was killed when he confronted the escapees during a Christmas Eve robbery in 2000.
“It’s not their place to sensationalize people who hurt my child,” Hawkins said Tuesday. “It’s immoral.”
The man behind the eBay ad is Albert Struck, pastor of the Word of Jesus Christ Church in Pueblo, Colo. His auction listing explained that “all proceeds received from this vehicle will go towards a new church building.”
Although calls to the church Tuesday were not returned, Struck has expressed surprise at Hawkins’ reaction. “It’s just a car,” he told Associated Press. “It’s just a vehicle that they drove in. It wasn’t used for anything but to transport them from Texas to Colorado.”
The Honda was not re-listed on eBay on Tuesday. But in the original pitch, Struck said that he got the car after he found an envelope containing the keys in the church mailbox. “May God bless you the way he blessed us,” read the enclosed note, which also contained directions to the Accord.
The fugitives gave up their car a month after escaping Dec. 13, 2000, from a Texas prison in Kenedy, south of San Antonio. They first headed north to Irving, where they robbed an Oshman’s sporting goods store, shooting Hawkins 11 times after he arrived to investigate.
The escapees, crammed in the four-door sedan, eventually drove to Woodland Park, Colo. Six of the convicts were captured in late January 2001; the seventh committed suicide. The group’s ringleader, George Rivas, and two others are now on Texas’ death row.
Their blue getaway car has taken a pounding. Struck’s eBay listing warned that “the back light was ripped out by the FBI while looking for evidence.... They had to cut out 2 small pieces of the car seat because it had blood evidence that they needed in court.” Furthermore, “the Texas Seven ripped out the radio before they donated the car to us.”
Jayne Hawkins doesn’t know whether these are selling points or attempts at full disclosure. Either way, she’s disgusted. “I wouldn’t touch that car,” she said. “It’s like buying a house where someone was brutally murdered. Who would want to live there? It’s tainted.”
She is so upset she’s thinking about giving Struck and his wife a call. “If they’re honest Christians and the car is worth $1,500, why don’t they sell it for $1,500 and forget it?” she said.
Struck’s listing -- which promoted the Honda as the “Texas Seven Escapees Car” -- probably violated eBay’s “offensive listings guidelines,” said spokesman Kevin Pursglove. But with 12 million items up for auction, and 1.8 million new listings each day, eBay can’t catch every inappropriate ad, he said.
If Struck omitted all references to the Honda’s history, “he could sell the car on eBay in the same manner thousands of other people sell their cars,” Pursglove said.
