A road trip to the Kentucky Derby sounds like a pretty cool bachelor party (for everyone except the driver, anyway). You get yourself some of your closest friends and put them in an RV with some beers and you've got yourself a weekend. This all presupposes, of course, that you don't find a corpse hidden inside the RV.


A group of buddies from Minnesota were set to to just this; they rented an RV to drive from the Twin Cities to the Kentucky Derby for impending groom Dan Trainor's bachelor party. Unfortunately, someone stashed a dead guy in the RV they rented and the trip hit a snag.

The first hint of death came when one of the guys opened a front compartment on one side, then closed the door, Wanek said. That sent off the whoosh of an odd odor. When the door on the other side near the front was opened, that's when the body was spotted, he said. Wanek said that he saw the body from the knees down — feet bare and with pants on — and described it as a man who "didn't look fresh. Let's put it that way." He said the group didn't press its collective curiosity. "We weren't really too interested in poking around in there."


The party barely got on the road before they discovered the dead man and police were quickly called in. They were initially suspicious of the group of 11 guys but eventually realized they were innocent. Police have not identified the dead man or indicated a cause of death, but the owner of the RV might have some leads.

John Kirk, one of the passengers, said he and some of the others were told that the RV's owner had cautioned that the two compartments near the front "do not work and should not be opened."

All their gear is stuck inside the RV, which is state evidence now, so the road trip to the Derby is off. Plan B included watching the Minnesota Wild game last night and checking out the Derby today from Canterbury Park, a horse track and casino in Shakopee, Minnesota.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Odor in RV halts rolling bachelor party in Winona; body found in exterior cargo hold [Star Tribune]