Caleb “Kai’ Lawrence McGillvaryNEWARK, N.J. – He was a gregarious, spontaneous child, his father said, a handful at times who loved music and playing the guitar.
As an adult he became famous as Kai, the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker, his celebrity taking a turn toward notoriety when he was arrested in Philadelphia last week and charged with killing a New Jersey lawyer.
Caleb McGillivary, his real name, claimed that he was “home free” rather than homeless, a traveler by choice with roots in Sophia, W.Va.
“I don’t have any family,” he had said in the television interview in February that gave him to a measure of fame after he intervened in an attack on a utility worker in Fresno, Calif. “As far as anyone I grew up with is concerned, I’m already dead.”
But according to McGillivary’s father, Gil, he does have a family that is concerned about his well-being.