Last fall, drivers along a quiet stretch of Highway 36 near Bennington, Nebraska, began encountering strange, dangerous obstacles late at night. A child’s bicycle. An upright kitchen chair. Segments of scrap metal. Each object appeared just before a crash, always in roughly the same few miles of road.

Drivers who swerved to avoid the objects often lost control

Several went off the road entirely. One car plowed through a wire guardrail and crashed into a ravine. Another bounced across the shoulder after striking debris head-on. 

Strangely, in each case, before the dust even settled, a young man appeared at the scene.

A man typically walked up on foot or emerged from a parked car nearby

He offered to call 911. Asked if they were injured. Sometimes, he suggested they wait in his vehicle. No one took him up on it. Most left quickly, unnerved not only by the crash, but by how fast someone managed to find them in the dark.

Over the next several weeks, more crash victims came forward

They described near-identical experiences. The same type of object, the same stretch of road, the same man. Some said they saw him parked near the intersection before they crashed. 

Others realized only later that he arrived far too quickly for it to have been a coincidence.

At first, investigators considered whether the debris had simply fallen off trucks headed to the nearby landfill. That explanation made sense for a while…until the pattern became too specific. 

The timing, the consistency, and especially the fact that the same person kept showing up began to draw real concern.

By mid-December, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office had a suspect in mind

He wasn’t just a witness. Investigators believed he was planting the objects, triggering the crashes, and then rushing in to act like a helpful bystander. One deputy described it as someone trying to play “hero” in a disaster he secretly caused.

In total, four crashes were officially tied to the case. All happened between late October and mid-December 2024. All involved some sort of deliberately placed obstruction. And all had one man waiting in the wings, watching.

At one point, someone called a local news outlet, impersonating a victim

The caller identified themselves as someone who’d reported their accident. They asked WOWT to take down the story. The caller used an anonymous number. Police noted the behavior, stating that if the caller had dialed the sheriff’s office instead, it’d be a crime.

Eventually, investigators matched cell phone data to each scene. The same number had pinged nearby towers just minutes before each crash. That number belonged to 23-year-old Spencer Rademacker. Deputies arrested him in March 2025.

This month, Rademacker, 23, pleaded no contest in Douglas County District Court to a felony charge of criminal mischief causing more than $5,000 in damages. A charge of attempted first-degree assault was dropped. His sentencing is scheduled for September 11. He faces up to two years in prison.

WOWT also reported that Rademacker was previously diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and that he lived with his parents.

And while it wasn’t mentioned directly by WOWT, I’ll say what the rest of us are feeling: Some real serial killer vibes, right? After all, a few of the best-known criminals fitting the bill share pieces of this disturbing pattern: the staging, voyeurism, and attention-seeking.

Of course, Rademaker was charged based on the facts at hand, not disturbing what-ifs.

Thank goodness the crash victims all walked away. They still have plenty to process and recover from, of course.

MotorBiscuit reached out to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office via its Contact Us page for comment.