The Truck Owner - w/audio

The Truck Owner - w/audio

In the fall of 2008, during the Salem, Massachusetts stop of the "True Crime: Warped Minds" tour, a series of events were deliberately set in motion by artist and provocateur Shane Bugbee, author of the new book "I STOLE ED GEIN'S TOMBSTONE." The catalyst was a 1949 Ford pickup, alleged to have once belonged to Ed Gein. To understand the controversy this truck was designed to create, one must first understand the key players. The first was Dave Gibson, the truck's owner in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Shortly after the tour began generating publicity, Gibson contacted Bugbee in a panic, claiming he was receiving death threats. This call marks the moment the art project began to elicit a very real and volatile human response.

What follows is the raw transcript of that initial call—a key piece of evidence in a bizarre social experiment. The full story of this psychological drama is detailed in the new book, "I STOLE ED GEIN'S TOMBSTONE." The original audio is included above.

Transcript: The Dave Gibson Phone Call

Shane Bugbee: Hi, it's David. Who is this?

Cindy: Shane.

Shane Bugbee: Shane? Yeah. Who's this?

Cindy: Cindy.

Shane Bugbee: Hey, how you doing?

Cindy: Miss you.

Shane Bugbee: What?

Cindy: I said I miss you.

Shane Bugbee: Oh yeah, me too. How you guys doing?

Cindy: Good. Just hanging out.

Shane Bugbee: That sounds like a real ordeal when you had that truck and all.

Cindy: Yeah, the guy called up said he was gonna kill my dad, so it was pretty freaky.

Shane Bugbee: What, recently?

Cindy: Yeah, he called last night and went to kill my dad.

Shane Bugbee: Who?

Cindy: Bobby Hill.

Shane Bugbee: Really? Why'd he do that?

Cindy: I don't know. Here's dad.

Shane Bugbee: Okay.

Dave Gibson: What's happening?

Shane Bugbee: Hey man. How you doing?

Dave Gibson: Not too bad. Wanted to give you a call, but I couldn't find, I emailed you a week or two ago, but I couldn't find your phone number. No way.

Shane Bugbee: Yeah, I know my brother. We got a hold of each other, so Yeah, so I've been working on that. I've been plugging away on that stuff, but very slow results. If anything, maybe these are part of the results. Why'd this guy call?

Dave Gibson: Someone must have told him that the truck's on eBay and he first must have got wind of it. Well, let me see once, I'll pull it up and I'll just like on the subheading, I'll show you here. It says it, 1949 Dodge Truck titled to Ed's best friend Bobby Hill. So right there he is pissed because I am calling his dad Ed Gein's best friend.

Shane Bugbee: So that's why he's pissed.

Dave Gibson: Oh, that's just one thing... Well, that's one reason because he's got the same name as his dad.

Shane Bugbee: Right.

Dave Gibson: So right away people are going to assume he is the Bobby Hill, or...

Shane Bugbee: Is his dad dead?

Dave Gibson: Yeah, died about three years ago. I had to plug my phone in. His dad died about three years ago. Yeah.

Shane Bugbee: Okay.

Dave Gibson: So he went to school. Like he said, when he went to school through school, he went to school with the grandchildren of Mrs. Warden that Ed chopped up and him having the same name as his dad probably caused him a lot of grief all the way through school...

Shane Bugbee: That's interesting though. He acted weird when we met him. He was all chipper to talk about selling meat grinders to college kids and stuff like that. So I mean, when he sold me all that stuff, he was happy with selling me it.

Dave Gibson: But if he would've known who we were and what we were all up to...

Shane Bugbee: Well, why would he sell meat grinders? To college kids that are interested in Ed Gein, then.

Dave Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of hypocritical, ain't it?

Shane Bugbee: Yeah. Well, he's going to sell these meat grinders to these kids and ultimately tell 'em, this is where Ed Gein was arrested. My dad was friends with 'em and he's selling a meat grinder, but then you can't, he's selling you the truck. That's weird. Have you read the story lately Underneath the truck?

Dave Gibson: No.

Shane Bugbee: Oh. But let me ask you some more questions about this. Bobby Hill Jr and stuff. So this happened last night?

Dave Gibson: Yeah. He called the cops yesterday afternoon or sometime yesterday.

Shane Bugbee: Why, don't you own the truck?

Dave Gibson: Yeah. He called the cops and the first I heard of it, it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. The sheriff's department from Waushara calls me and the cop says that they have a formal complaint registered from or about the truck that I got on eBay saying that it was Ed Gein's. And I says, yeah. I says to the cop, I says, can you prove otherwise? I says, go ahead and run the numbers then. And he says to me, that was a good thing. I said, he says, well, without a hold of truck. We can't run the numbers. You'd have to go to the Department of Transportation. He says, okay, I'll check with him Monday. He says, okay, bye.

Shane Bugbee: Yeah. So what Bobby Hill can't do anything for because of it. You bought it from him.

Dave Gibson: And then Bobby Hill calls me up and is just totally hostile and tell me I better get it off eBay and that he's going to come here tonight, last night, and shoot me and kill me and skin me out.

Shane Bugbee: Wow. That's a good one.

Dave Gibson: And I put it on speakerphone so everybody could hear it. That was here.

Shane Bugbee: Too bad you couldn't tape it... I think. But I told you before when we were talking about this, you should have cut him in or told him about it and told him you're going to give him some money.

Dave Gibson: I did. I went right to his house, me and my daughter, we sat on lawn chairs out in the yard. I told him how I was taking the truck out east and I might be able to sell it for a whole bunch of money. I offered him, I think hundreds or a thousand dollars or something for that picture he has got of Ed Gein with his family in the house. I told him that if he let me take a picture of that picture to take along on that trip, and if I sold that truck, I told him I would give him 10 or 20% of what the truck sold for.

Shane Bugbee: And he wasn't interested.

Dave Gibson: No, he wasn't. He wouldn't even return my phone calls the next couple days before I went on the trip when I wanted to get the picture.

Shane Bugbee: Really? So he already knew that you were doing what you were doing?

Dave Gibson: Yeah, but he says, I got everything all wrong in the story...