Route 40 Killer: Steven Brian Pennell and the Blue Van of Death
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe
4.9 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's something deeply unsettling about a killer who looks like everyone else. Steven Brian Pennell was a married electrician with two kids, the guy who'd wave to you from his driveway while mowing the lawn. Between 1987 and 1988, he turned a stretch of highway in Delaware into his own personal nightmare factory. Route 40 became a place where women disappeared into a blue van and were found days later showing signs of torture that would make seasoned homicide detectives need a minute. This is the story of how a female undercover cop stared into the eyes of a predator, how cutting-edge forensic science caught up with evil, and how a killer demanded his own execution while quoting the Bible and refusing to reveal where he'd hidden his final victim's body.
#StevenBrianPennell #Route40Killer #DelawareSerialKiller #TrueCrime #SerialKiller #UnsolvedMysteries #ForensicEvidence
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | November 29th, 1987. |
| 0:04.0 | It's Thanksgiving weekend. |
| 0:06.0 | Two teenagers looking for a little privacy pull off on Route 40 in Delaware |
| 0:10.0 | and spot what they think is a mannequin in the road. |
| 0:14.0 | The boyfriend drives closer, and that's when they realize it's a woman's body, bound and brutalized. |
| 0:20.0 | This is the beginning of Delaware's only serial killer case. Route 40 in Delaware. |
| 0:50.3 | In the late 1980s, the stretch through Bear in Glasgow was lined with budget motels, truck stops, and 24-hour diners. |
| 0:58.2 | During the day, it looked like any American highway. |
| 1:01.0 | At night, near construction sites and industrial areas, it felt isolated, vulnerable. |
| 1:07.6 | Sex workers and hitchhikers used Route 40 because traffic was constant. |
| 1:11.9 | The highway had this quality where you're near Wilmington, near civilization, |
| 1:16.4 | but when darkness fell, you may as well have been in the middle of nowhere. |
| 1:20.2 | That combination made it perfect for Stephen Bryan-Panell. |
| 1:24.7 | Shirley Anna Ellis was 23 in November, 1987. She'd worked as a prostitute but was turning her |
| 1:31.1 | life around, enrolled in nursing school. During the AIDS epidemic, when most people were terrified |
| 1:36.7 | and health care workers refused to go near AIDS patients, Shirley was visiting them, |
| 1:42.0 | bringing them food, showing up when society had abandoned them. |
| 1:46.0 | On November 29th, three days after Thanksgiving, Shirley left her family home around 6 p.m. |
| 1:51.4 | carrying a platter that she'd prepared for an AIDS patient at Wilmington Hospital. |
| 1:56.3 | She needed to make the 14-mile trek. |
| 1:59.1 | Public transit basically didn't exist, so Shirley walked to Route 40, |
| 2:03.9 | to hitchhike. That evening, a couple drove to a construction site looking for privacy. The boyfriend |
... |
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