Gary Heidnik and His Death

Gary Heidnik and His Death Chamber

In Philadelphia, on March 25, 1987, police received a 911 call from a hysterical woman, Josephine Rivera. She claimed she had just escaped from a mad man, and three other women were still being held captive in his house on North Marshall Street. When the police arrived, Rivera showed them the scars on her ankles from the clamps this monster had used to tie her to the sewer pipes in his basement. She said he had allowed her to leave that night so she could procure another victim for him. He would be waiting for her in a local gas station. Sure enough -- that's where the police found Gary Heidnik, perpetrator of the most horrible crimes in Philadelphia's history. He was sitting quietly in his Cadillac Coupe DeVille.

After depositing Heidnik at the station, police then drove to the rundown house on North Marshall Street. They knocked down the front door and went down the basement steps, and they were stunned by what they found. The three women were there, naked except for their shirts and chained to a sewer pipe. Body parts from some other woman were still stored in the refrigerator. Upstairs, the police found a wall papered with dollar bills, and pennies covered a wall in the kitchen. Public knowledge of the life of Gary Heidnik, who was later portrayed in the film Silence of the Lambs, began with this 911 call. But the story of the horrors of his life started long before.

Gary Heidnik was born to alcoholic parents, Michael and Ellen Heidnik, and his younger brother, Terry, was born a year later. Their childhood can be described only as dreadful. When Gary wet his bed, his father would lock him outdoors, still in his wet underwear. The wet sheets were drying on the line to embarrass him. His mother was not only an alcoholic, but she was mentally ill besides. She would force Gary to steal money for her so she could buy wine and whiskey. When his parents divorced, the boys lived with their mother. But later, she rejected them and sent them to live with their father and his new wife. When she later committed suicide, she had her husband's help. On the night she died, she called her husband at a bar to tell him she had overdosed on medicine, but her husband remained at the bar and had another drink.

At school, Gary was often bullied and teased by the other students because of his head, which was misshapen as a result of an accident. But he was an excellent student and had an IQ of 130. At 14, he enrolled in Staunton Military Academy, but left before graduation and returned to public school. In 1961, he dropped out of school and joined the United States Army. He performed well in basic training and was sent to San Antonio, Texas, for training as a medic. After this training, he was transferred to a hospital in West Germany and soon earned his GED. However, he had some problems and was sent home to a mental institution for therapy. Although he was closely monitored for awhile, the army decided to discharge him honorably in 1962, with a pension of $1,400 a month.

Back home, he spent time in and out of three mental institutions. But he decided he wanted to become nurse, and he succeeded. In three years, he earned enough to buy a three-family house. He took the first floor for himself, and he rented the other two floors.

But in 1967, somehow he was allowed to date patients from the Elwyn Institute, which was a local home for retarded women. These dates usually started in a movie house or a picnic area, and they always ended at Heidnik's house for passionate love making. In 1971, he set up a church in his house with a sign that read "United Church of the Ministries of God." He himself was the bishop and his congregation was a group of eight Elwyn women. During this time, he became wealthy by investing in stocks and using the church as a tax shelter.

But for some reason he began to collect junk, sometimes as many as four non-working cars and heaps of junk piles scattered around the front yard. Neighbors began to complain, not only about the mess on the lawn but also about the women in the house. Heidnik became furious and there were shouting matches with the neighbors. He also screamed to friends about a coming racial war that whites would win, although he himself dated only black women. His religious and sexual rants continued to fire up the neighbors. Finally, Heidnik withdrew to the basement and locked himself in there, with his arsenal, and daring one of them to come down to the basement and "tell him to his face." One neighbor decided to do this, and Gary shot him in the face. Somehow, charges were dropped, but Heidnik fled the house.

In 1977, he decided to invest the rest of his money in stocks, and his $35,000 of saved money soon grew to $500,000. Heidnik was rich enough to find a woman, and he did. She was illiterate and retarded, and they soon had a child, a boy, who was taken from them and placed into foster care. One day they decided to drive to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to pick up his girlfriend's retarded sister, who at 34 years of age had the IQ of a child three years old. They didn't return her to the hospital. After a week, however, authorities came to Heidnick's basement and found the girl chained up there. Heidnik was charged with rape, kidnapping, and unlawful restraint. He paid for this crime. During the four years he was in prison, he was hospitalized three times because of suicide attempts, each by a different method. In his third attempt, he ate a light bulb.

When he was released, in 1984, he moved to the house on North Marshall Avenue. He settled down and soon started his church once again. He hired a young, retarded black man, Cyril Brown, as his handy man. He also took a new young wife, who left the following year. On Thanksgiving Day of that year, a part-time prostitute, Josephine Rivera, left her boyfriend's home after a birthday party and somehow met up with Heidnik. She accepted his offer of $20 for an hour of fantasy love. But once he had her in his house, he choked her until she was unconscious and chained her to the bed. He kept there for days, raping her again and again. He fed her only bread and water and, sometimes, a dog biscuit.

In December, Cyril Brown brought home a young retarded friend. Heidnik soon raped her and chained her as well, feeding her only garbage and rotted leftovers. Two more retarded ladies arrived, Jacqueline Atkins and Lisa Thomas. Heidnik now had a harem, and he wanted to have as many children as possible. He also played his ladies off on one another. They were his sex slaves. If one woman did something behind his back, another woman would tell on her. Punishment was a beating or electric shock. If misbehavior was more serious, the punishment was a screwdriver drill in the ear.