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The Charlottesville Car Attack · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Discretion is advised. This is ten minted murderer. Between the eleventh and twelfth
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  of August twenty seventeen, a white supremacist rally was scheduled to take place in
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  Charlottesville, Virginia. It was called the Unite the Right Rally, organized by
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  a neo Nazi named Jason Kessler to protest Confederate monuments being removed by the government,
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  which Kessler called an effort to attack white history. The ralli's attendees varied
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  sees for right militia, diehard white supremacists, the alt right, and members
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  of the klu Klux Klan. Not to mention, the former Grand Wizard of
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  the klu Klux Klan, David Duke, this represents attorney pointment to take our
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  country back. We're gonna We're gonna fulfill the promises Donald Trump. That's when
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  we believed him. That's why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said
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  he's going to take our country back, and that's what we gotta do.
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  Local residents were concerned about what the rally would mean for their community. Just
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  over a month before, another rally had been held in Charlottesville by members of
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  the KKK. Groups of local people joined forces with activists who were planning to
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  protest against Unite the Right, and a counter protest was organized. The counter
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  protest united people from across different backgrounds, political alignments, religion, and beliefs,
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  and when the Unite the Right rally was about to begin, the protesters
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  gathered to stand up for what they felt was right. The rally was everything
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  that the Charlottesville community feared. People showed up waving Confederate battle flags and banners
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  painted with swastikas and other Nazi symbols. They joined together to yell racist chants,
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  waving their weapons and aggressively confronting counter protesters. On the twelfth of August,
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  just before two pm, a group of counter protesters were struck by car
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  driving twenty eight miles per hour. The Dodge Challenger mowed down several pedestrians and
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  then crashed into a sedan, which crashed into a minivan, which crashed into
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  even more people. Witnesses at the scenes said that pedestrians were thrown into the
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  air by the force of the impact. It was chaos, but the driver
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  of the Dodge was not done. The car only paused for a few seconds
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  before reversing into even more counter protesters. The man behind the wheel of the
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  Dodge reversed away from the crime scene for a couple of blocks, then turned
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  and attempted to make a getaway. The car was seriously damaged, causing its
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  bumper to drag along the ground, and it was covered with blood as well
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  as pieces of the people he had run over. A police helicopter, which
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  had watched the whole attack from above, documented the driver's escape to police units
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  on the ground. A deputy caught up with a Dodge only a mile away
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  from the protest and called for backup. Detective Stephen Young arrived at the scene
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  and apprehended the driver, a twenty year old man named James Alex Fields Junior.
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  James Fields had been a troubled teenager. According to one of his teachers
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  in high school, James suffered from severe outbursts of anger and had been diagnosed
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  with schizophrenia at a young age. As an adult, he needed treatment for
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  a range of other mental disorders, EH dis depression and bipolar disorder. James
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  was raised by a single mother, and she was the one who suffered the
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  most during his fits of rage. When he was thirteen years old, he
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  scared her so much that she locked herself in the bathroom, convinced that her
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  own son was going to kill her. In a call to the police,
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  she said that she'd told James that he needed to take a break from playing
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  video games. In response, James hit her, covered her mouth and had
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  taken away her phone. Derrick Weimer, the same high school teacher who knew
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  about James's schizophrenia diagnosis, remembered one other thing about the boy. He had
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  a strange, deep love for Adolph Hitler. His classmates remembered James doodling swastikas
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  on his school books while he was still in middle school, and as James
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  got older, he only became more and more fascinated with Hitler's ideologies. While
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  James's classmates and teachers were often disturbed by his behavior and his doodles, they
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  mostly thought that he was just an odd boy who was a bit of a
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  social outcast at school. Nobody ever officially reported James for his behavior, so
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  even though he had a bit of a reputation for being an extremist, the
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  school officials were never made aware. A spokesperson for Boone County Schools later criticized
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  james classmates, saying that if the stories that they're telling now had any truth
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  to them, they should have made an official report at the time. Quote
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  this is something I'm guilty of too, said one of James Field's ex classmates.
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  I kind of brushed it off as just creepy. We thought it was
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  all talk. No one ever thought he would do something so violent, Mister
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  Weimer said, quote, once you talked to James for a while, you
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  would start to see that sympathy toward Nazism, that idolization of Hitler, that
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  belief in white supremacy. It would start to creep out end quote. He
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  was concerned about James's interests in these things, but he also liked the kid,
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  who he thought was a student with a bright future. Mister Wymer had
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  attempted to discourage James's interest in Hitler, and for a while he thought he
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  had succeeded, until the day that James decided to drive a dodged challenger through
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  a crowd of people. When he was apprehended by the police, James's response
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  surprised Detective Young. Instead of behaving aggressively, he was incredibly apologetic and repeatedly
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  asked if anybody had been hurt in the attack. The truth is that thirty
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  five people had been wounded, and one woman, thirty two year old named
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  Heather Hager, had died from her injuries shortly afterwards. Heather was a passionate
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  advocate for equal rights, and she and her friends had initially agreed not to
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  attend the protest, thinking that it was too dangerous, but the night before,
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  Heather decided that she needed to stand up for what she believed in,
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  even if it was dangerous. When Detective Young told James about Heather's death,
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  he immediately burst into tears. Two days after the attack, Donald Trump gave
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  a statement where he praised Heather Hager, calling her an incredible young woman.
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  The next day he gave a follow up statement, but this one was not
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  well received. You're putting what you're calling the ald Left and white supremacist on
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  the same moral plane. I'm not putting anybody on a moral plane. What
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  I'm saying is this. You had a group on one side, and you
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  had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs,
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  and it was vicious, and it was horrible, and it was a
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  horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group
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  on this side. You can call them the left. You've just called them
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  the left that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what
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  you want, but that's the way it is. I think there's blame on
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  both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don't have
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  any doubt about it either. And you had some in that group, but
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  you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had
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  people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same
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  pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to
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  protest the taking down to them a very very important statue and the renaming of
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  a park from Robert E. Lee to another end. So I only tell
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  you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took
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  place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment, But there
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  are two sides of the country. Does anybody Jason Kessler, the man who
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  had organized the rally, stated that he wasn't affiliated with James Fields Junior in
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  any way. In fact, he said that he didn't even know who he
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  was. However, less than a week after Heather died, Kessler posted a
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  tweets where he called her a quote a fat, disgusting communist, adding communists
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  have killed ninety four million. Looks like it was paidback time. After a
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  huge amount of backlash, he deleted the tweets, claiming that his Twitter account
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  had been hacked. Later, he went back on his statements, saying that
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  he'd actually posted the tweet while he'd been under the influence of drugs. From
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  the beginning of the investigation, the Department of Justice announced that the case would
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  be charged as a federal hate crime. The director of the FBI stated that
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  the attack met the definition of domestic terrorism. To discourage any similar attacks in
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  the future, they needed to make an example out of James, no matter
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  how remorseful and apologetic he had been. When he was arrested in June twenty
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  eighteen, James faced charges for several counts of three different federal hate crimes,
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  one count of racially motivated violent interference with a federally protected activity, one count
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  of a hate crime resulting in death, and twenty eight counts of a hate
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  crime causing bodily injury and involving an attempt to kill. At his federal trial,
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  he pleaded not guilty to all charges. Against him, but later he
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  changed to a guilty plea, hoping to avoid the death penalty. Instead of
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  execution, he received a life sentence. James also faced state charges for malicious
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  wounding, a hitden run, and second degree murder. Later the charges were
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  changed to include first degree murder and felonious assault. After a three week long
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  trial in twenty eighteen, James was found guilty. He was handed a second
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  life sentence for Heather Hayer's murder, as well as four hundred nineteen additional years
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  in prison for the other crimes he committed. Even after James was convicted,
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  white supremacist media continued to push the agenda that Heather Hager hadn't actually died due
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  to James running her over. Instead, they said that she passed away because
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  of a heart attack due to her weight. This was the most popular conspiracy
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  theory surrounding the attack, but it wasn't the only one. There were also
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  rumours that James had been acting in self defense after a protester threatened to shoot
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  him, and that a different man had actually been behind the wheel of the
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  car. Heather's father insisted that he'd forgiven James and urged other people to do
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  the same quote. My thoughts with all of this stuff are that people need
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  to stop hating and they need to forgive each other, he said. I
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  include myself in that forgiving the guy that did this. He doesn't know better.
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  I just think about what the Lord said on the cross Lord, forgive
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  them. They don't know what they're doing. That is ten Minute Murder for
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  today, brief and vengeable true crime. I'm Joe the host, and thank
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  you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. If you're brand new
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  to listening to The Ten Minute Murder, welcome to the podcasts. Hope you
• 11:48
  enjoy it, and please subscribe now so that you can more easily catch up
• 11:52
  on all the back episodes and connect on social media. See the pictures of
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  what we talk about here in the podcast, not gross and graphic stuff,
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  and especially not with what we're talking about today. I will probably post links
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  to some of the news stories surrounding the Charlottesville car attack. However, it's
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  not going to be gruesome crime scene stuff. I've mentioned this before. I
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  don't like seeing that, and I assume that you don't either. If you
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  do, you're more than welcome to find that stuff on your own. I
• 12:20
  can't control that, so you do you. I'm just not going to post
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  it helps this show grow. It helps more and more people find Ten
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  Minute Murder, and it helps the show grow. And maybe the biggest thing
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  that helps is sharing this podcast with your friends and family. Quickly, an
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  email from one of you listening. This is from Ellie in Atlanta. Hey,
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  Joe, longtime, first time. Let me ask you something. If
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  you didn't do a podcast about true crime, what else would you do a
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  podcast about? Also? Are you as cute as you sound? And that's
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  again Ellie in Atlanta. Let me address that last thing first. Ellie,
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  Yes, obviously I am. My mom says I'm handsome, so that should
• 13:11
  clear it up unless you're calling my mom a liar, and then we've got
• 13:15
  beef. Okay. So, if I wasn't doing a podcast about true crime,
• 13:20
  I'd probably do one interviewing stand up comedians. I love stand up comedy
• 13:24
  and it's what I use to kind of get my brain in a different place.
• 13:28
  After I finish researching and doing episodes for this podcast, I listened to
• 13:31
  stand up Comedy. Where I watch stand up comedy, their lives are really
• 13:35
  interesting and I think that would make an interesting podcast. Or maybe since my
• 13:39
  work away from this podcast involves directing and producing video content, I could do
• 13:45
  a podcast about something related to that. But like many of you listening,
• 13:48
  I love my job, but when I come home from work, I want
• 13:52
  to leave work at work as much as possible. Again, thank you Ellie
• 13:56
  for the email, and if you want to get in touch Joe at ten
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  minute murder dot com is my email address. All right, that's going to
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  do it. That's your episode for today. Thank you so much for listening
• 14:07
  to ten Minute Murder.