Gas attendant saves female motorist from backseat passenger? Fact Check

Claims online describe the tale of a female motorist at a gas station who narrowly escaped being attacked thanks to an eagle eyed gas station attendant who spotted her would-be attacker creeping into the backseat of her car.

FALSE

This tale has been circulating across the Internet ever since there was an Internet, and is the online adaptation to much older campfire horror stories. In fact, the stories of the backseat passenger deserve the status of bona fide urban legend.

Countless variants of the backseat passenger tale exist and have been spreading for decades. This specific piece of scarelore seems to loosely derive from similar stories where the backseat passenger is successful in his attempt to capture or kill an unsuspecting driver, a scene from many a bad horror flick. Old campfire tales describe various accounts of scared motorists being followed by cars or trucks flashing their headlights or beeping their horns, only to discover that they were trying to warn the motorist of a killer hidden in the backseat.

In turn we now have the gas attendant variant of the warning, with a thankfully much happier ending, in that the gas attendant successfully warns a lone female motorist of the criminal lurking in her backseat. While this variant has a happier ending, it is just as much fiction as the campfire tales that preceded it.

One popular example of this persistent hoax (below) that has been spreading online for several years claims to be from “Northants Police”, though there is no record of this police department ever making such a warning. It also attributes the story happening at a petrol station (the UK equivalent to an American ‘gas station’) on the M3 Fleet services, but again there is no record of this attempted crime actually happening.

POLICE INFORMATION
The first bit is mainly for women, but gents , please read it and send it on to any women you care about. The second bit is a warning to all of us!
Some sound advice for us all, as we all sometimes forget to take our commonsense with us when we go out.
This is from Northants Police Women…..
Please read, and pass on.
An important message from the Police –
please pass this along to all the women you know…..
This actually happened a few weeks ago on the M3 FLEET SERVICES!!!
It was early evening, and a young girl stopped to get petrol. She filled her tank and walked into the store to pay for her petrol. The cashier told her, Dont pay for your petrol yet……walk around the store for a while, and act as if youre picking up some other things to buy. A man just got into the back of your car. Ive called the police, and theyre on their way.
When the police arrived, they found the man in the back seat of the girls car and asked him what he was doing. He replied, he was joining a gang, and the initiation to join is to kidnap a woman and bring her back to the gang to be raped by every member of the gang. If the woman was still alive by the time they finish with her then they let her go. According to the police that night, there is a new gang forming here, originating from London . The scary part of this is, because the guy didnt have a weapon on him, the police could only charge him with trespassing….
Hes back on the street and free to try again. Something similar to this happened at the Tesco garage on Cardiff Road in Newport recently, but luckily the cashier saw the man get into her car. Please be aware of whats going on around you, and warn your family and friends.
LADIES, you or one of your family or friends could be the next victim. Please forward this on to everyone you know. Please do not discard this message; it is very important that everyone knows what is happening. Please be careful when leaving your vehicle, and make sure it is ALWAYS LOCKED to prevent this from happening to you.

In fact the tale of the eagled eyed gas attendant pre-dates the attribution to the M3 Fleet services account, lessening the probability even further that the crime actually occurred there, or indeed ever occurred at all.

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Countless of versions exist, with many others attributing the attempted crime to gang initiations whereas gang members are charged with the task of “bringing back” a woman and her car. Again these warnings have been spreading across the Internet for years, always without substance.

A friend stopped at a pay-at-the-pump gas station to get gas. Once she filled her gas tank and after paying at the pump and starting to leave, the voice of the attendant inside came over the speaker.. He told her that something happened with her card and that she needed to come inside to pay. The lady was confused because the transaction showed complete and approved. She relayed that to him and was getting ready to leave but the attendant, once again, urged her to come in to pay or there’d be trouble. She proceeded to go inside and started arguing with the attendant about his threat. He told her to calm down and listen carefully:
He said that while she was pumping gas, a guy slipped into the back seat of her car on the other side and the attendant had already called the police.She became frightened and looked out in time to see her car door open and the guy slip out. The report is that the new gang initiation thing is to bring back a woman and/or her car. One way they are doing this is crawling under women’s cars while they’re pumping gas or at grocery stores in the nighttime. The other way is slipping into unattended cars and kidnapping the women.Please pass this on to other women, young and old alike. Be extra careful going to and from your car at night.
If at all possible, don’t go alone! This is real!!
The message:
1. ALWAYS lock your car doors, even if you’re gone for just a second!
2. Check underneath your car when approaching it for reentry, and check in the back before getting in.
3. Always be aware of your surroundings and of other individuals in your general vicinity, particularly at night!
Send this to everyone so your friends can take precaution.
AND GUYS…YOU TELL ANY WOMEN YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS Thanks,
Barbara Baker, Secretary Directorate of Training U.S. Army Military Police School

 
However not all variants of this tale have a happy ending, as the below demonstrates. In this example, a bad stutter from the gas attendant prevents him from successfully warning the female motorist, who is presumed to have met a grisly end…

A girl was traveling to visit a friend and stopped to get gas. When she attempted to return to her car the gas station attendant who had a strong stutter told her to follow him inside as there was a problem with her credit card.
She was suspicious as to why there would be a problem with her card but obliged and went inside. As soon as she walked in, the attendant shit the door behind them and locked it. The girl started screaming and shouting at him to move out the way. The attendant tried to explain, but his stutter made him difficult to understand. “Th-th-there uh mmmm i-i-i-its b- because”. The woman was too scared and too impatient to listen to the attendant. She managed to push him aside and get out of the station, but the attendant was running after her.
She rushed back to her car and got in, slammed the door shut and drove off as the attendant was still trying to get his words out “TH-THERE’S SOMEONE IN THE BACK SEAT!!”
The girl wasn’t listening, but someone rose up behind her in the back seat with an axe and…

We have found no reputable real life account where a female motorist was saved (or not saved) from certain attack by a gas attendant who spotted her would-be attacked entering her car. The story may try to act as some type of cautionary tale about always being vigilant of ones surroundings, though popularising alarmist fictional tales may prove to be more of a hindrance than a help.

Occasionally, these tales also come attached to other examples of urban legend scarelore. In one case, a long winded warning also attaches the legend of criminals luring out female victims from their homes using recorded baby cries (that’s a hoax) and the claim that carjackers are using pieces of paper stuck to a would-be victim’s windshield to lure them out of their car (also a hoax.)

Of course, as we always say when debunking this type of lore, always be cautious of your surroundings and follow common sense advice to help keep yourself safe. But promoting very specific and “potentially possible” scenarios while simultaneously (and falsely) asserting they are true does nothing to help the cause of keeping us safe.