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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how.
I am your host, Thomas Weyborg II. Tonight, we arrive at the end of the saga of the real-life Buffalo Bill serial killer. Last week, we left off as Gary Heidnik was placed under arrest. His reign of extreme horror, finally at an end. So, what's left? You, my dear listener, might ask. Quite a bit.
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Life started for Gary Michael Heidnik in November 1943 in Eastlake, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Eighteen months later, Gary's brother Terry was born.
Six months later, the parents, Michael and Ellen, divorced, and the boys went to live with their mother and her new husband until Gary started school, after which they went to live with their father and his new wife. These were not happy times for the boys, as they spent most of their time arguing with their stepmother or being heavily disciplined by their father.
Heidnik would later tell psychologists that his father had continually ridiculed him, especially when he wet his bed, which was often. At these times his father would hang the stained sheet out a second-story window in full view of all the neighbors. Gary was also ridiculed at school, after a fall from a tree left him with a misshapen head.
His brother Terry believes the accident was the root cause of Gary's erratic behavior. A curious comment, indeed considering Terry himself spent much of his life in mental institutions and made numerous suicide attempts. By the time Gary had reached the eighth grade, he had developed two main obsessions: making money and becoming an army officer.
So intense was the latter ambition that his father made arrangements for him to attend the prestigious Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. Gary lasted at the academy for two years, attaining excellent grades, but left suddenly in his junior year and returned home to live with his father. Within the next year he tried two different high schools—
but soon became bored and left after a few weeks. Finally, at age eighteen, he joined the regular army. Heidnik later told prison psychologists that he left Storten after visiting a psychologist, but failed to indicate why he had felt he needed one or given details of his treatment. Heidnik adapted readily to army life, but made few friends.
During his training, he was graded as excellent. Following basic training, he applied for several specialist training positions, including the military police, but was refused. Finally, he was sent to San Antonio, Texas, to be trained as a medic. Again, he did well, and also developed a thriving business by lending money to other soldiers and charging interest on the loans.
Unfortunately for him, this enterprise came to a swift end when he was transferred to a field hospital in West Germany. Within weeks of his new posting, Heidnik sat for a high school equivalency diploma, scoring 96%. Things seemed to be going well for him, until late August 1962, when he went to the sickbay, complaining of dizziness, blurred vision and nausea.
Our neurologist later determined that Heidnik was suffering from gastroenteritis and also displayed the symptoms of a mental illness.
Dr. Jack Apshey, a noted Philadelphia psychologist, later investigated Heidnik's history of mental illness and found that although the army had not indicated if they considered him schizoid or schizophrenic, they had prescribed a heavy tranquilizer normally reserved for the treatment of serious psychotics or patients that experience hallucinations.
Within weeks, Heidnik was sent back to the States. Three months later, he was given an honorable discharge and released from the army on medical grounds and given a 100% disability pension. The official diagnosis was schizoid personality disorder. He had served only 14 months. After leaving the army, he settled in Philadelphia and qualified as a licensed practical nurse
and was issued with a state certificate. He later enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, and gained credits in a variety of subjects, including anthropology, history, chemistry, and biology. Eventually, with his nursing qualifications, he was able to get a job in the university hospital, but was later fired when the standard of his work declined.
From there, he enrolled at a Veterans Administration hospital near Philadelphia to be trained as a psychiatric nurse, but he was asked to leave because of his bad attitude. From then on, Heidnik's life began to decline as he spent more and more time in mental institutions.
In 1970, his mother Ellen took her own life by swallowing poison, which only served to exacerbate his already fragile state of mind. Numerous suicide attempts followed, which ultimately resulted in more hospital time, and so the vicious cycle continued. He would often spend long periods refusing to communicate, which almost bordered on catatonia.
In one of his more lucid moments, he was given a series of intelligence tests, which indicated that he was of superior intellect. On one occasion, he was admitted to a mental ward, after he attacked his brother Terry with a wood plane. When he later visited, while Terry was recuperating, he told Terry that if he had died from his wounds—
he would have soaked his remains in a bathtub full of acid to dispose of his body. With each admission to hospital, his behavior became more bizarre. He spent most days completely mute, only communicating by writing notes. He constantly wore a leather jacket, which he refused to take off. His personal hygiene was almost non-existent.
and he developed a series of mannerisms, such as saluting and rolling up one pants leg when he didn't wish to be disturbed. In 1971, while on a trip to California, Heidnik had the startling revelation that he should form his own church. Returning to Philadelphia, he registered the United Church of the Ministers of God and installed himself as Bishop Heidnik. At that time,
The church had just five members, which included Terry Heidnik and Gary's mentally disabled girlfriend. In 1975, Heidnik opened a Merrill Lynch account in the church's name.
Over the next twelve years, due in no small part to his childhood interest in all things financial, he succeeded in parlaying his $1,500 investment into $545,000. During these times, he was in and out of mental hospitals or ministering to his parishioners, which were few.
as well as being a regular at mental hospitals. Heidnik had also become well known to the police. In 1976, he was charged with aggravated assault and carrying an unlicensed pistol. The charges were laid after Heidnik had fired a shot at a man who rented a house from him, grazing his face. The house was later sold and, while the new owners were in the process of cleaning it,
They found boxes of pornographic magazines and a hole dug in the concrete floor of the basement. Eighteen months later, he again came to the attention of the police when he signed his mentally disabled black girlfriend's sister out of a mental institution on day leave and kept her prisoner in his apartment. The sister, also seriously mentally disabled,
was later recovered from a locked storage room in Heidnik's basement and returned to the home. On her return to the hospital, she was examined and found to have been raped, sodomized, and contracted gonorrhea, both vaginally and orally.
Heidnik was later arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, and interfering with the custody of a committed person. When the case went to trial in November 1978, Heidnik pleaded not guilty and took the stand in his own defense, claiming that he was innocent.
After ordering a psychological examination, which found that Heidnik was manipulative and psychosexually immature, he was found guilty and sentenced to three to seven years in prison. A later appeal overturned the original sentence, which resulted in him spending almost three years of his incarceration in various mental institutions instead.
He was finally released on the 12th of April, 1983, on the condition that he remain under the supervision of a state-sanctioned mental health program. As in so many similar cases, if the state had realized the true state of Heidnik's mind, they would never have released him. Prior to his imprisonment, Heidnik had carried on various relationships with women.
He seemed to prefer black women, some of them mentally disabled. During these relationships, his focus seemed to be on fathering children. His first black partner bore him a daughter, but left shortly after, taking the baby with her. The next was another black woman, named Dorothy, who was seriously mentally disabled.
According to neighbors, Heidnik treated Dorothy badly, and often beat her and locked her up and refused to feed her. Dorothy eventually wandered off, and was later found living on the street in a dazed condition. The next woman Heidnik selected was Anne Jeannette, the sister of the girl that Heidnik was convicted of raping.
As before, she was black and mentally disabled. When Heidnik returned from prison, Aunt Jeanette was gone. A later police investigation failed to find any trace of her, leaving police with the impression that Heidnik was responsible for her disappearance. And this, dear listener, is the main reason I have placed Gary Heidnik in my list of serial killers.
I find it more than likely that Aunt Jeanette Davidson was in fact killed by Gary, especially so considering she is still missing so many years later. For his next part, Heidnik enlisted the aid of a matrimonial service. His selection criteria was simple. He wanted an oriental virgin.
A few weeks later, he was corresponding by mail with Betty Disto, a young Filipino woman. For two years, she and Heidnik communicated by mail and the occasional phone call. Eventually, Heidnik proposed marriage, telling Betty that he was a minister of religion. Betty accepted and traveled to Philadelphia in September 1985.
After greeting her at the airport, Heidnik took her home to the North Marshall Street house and showed her to her room. She was shocked to find a mentally disabled black woman sleeping in the bed she was to occupy. In explanation, Heidnik told her the woman was a paying tenant. Despite her misgivings about Heidnik and the living arrangements, she did marry him on the 3rd of October in Maryland. For the first week,
Heidnik treated her well and spoke of starting a family. A week later, she returned from shopping to find Heidnik in bed having sex with three black women. Horrified, she demanded that he pay to send her back home. He refused, telling her that he was the boss and having multiple sex partners was normal for him.
From that time on, Heidnik was never without additional women in the house, and often made Betty watch while he had sex with them. On the occasions that she complained, he would beat her, and order her to cook for him and his partner at the time. As the days progressed, he became increasingly violent, and constantly warned Betty that if she left, he would find her and kill her. Later that autumn, 1986,
was the last straw for Betty. After she complained about the women he was bringing home, Heidnik beat her and raped her vaginally and anally, and again threatened to kill her. Because she only knew Heidnik and his friends, Betty was forced to turn to other members of the Filipino community for help. They convinced her that she should leave him, so four days later, after pretending to go out shopping, she left,
and never went back. Two weeks after she left, Heidnik was picked up and charged with assault, indecent assault, spousal rape, and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. Luckily for Heidnik, the parole period for his previous sexual offenses expired the day before his arrest.
His luck continued to hold when the charges were later dismissed when Betty failed to appear for the preliminary hearing. In 1987, Betty finally managed to drag Heidnik into court in an attempt to win financial support for her son. During the case, the judge became aware of Heidnik's medical history and ordered him to undergo a series of tests to determine his mental competency.
By the time the tests were conducted, two of the girls he held captive in his homemade hellhole had already died. Ironically, when Betty Distow left Heidnik, she was pregnant with his child, and later gave birth to a son. And so it was, that just before 5 a.m., on the 25th of March, 1987,
A squad of police under the direction of Homicide Lieutenant James Hansen arrived at 3520 North Marshall Street. Unable to gain access via Heidnik's intricate lock system, you remember, the one where he cut his key in two, Hansen gave the order to simply break the door down. One of the first officers through the door was Dave Savage, one of the men who had arrested Gary Heidnik.
Following Josefina Rivera's direction, he and his partner, Officer McCloskey, went straight to the basement. When Savage entered the small room, he saw two black women asleep on a mattress in the middle of the room. Despite the cold conditions, their only covering was a thin, dirty blanket. As he approached them, they woke and began to scream, probably thinking that Heidnik was planning to have them raped.
Not only by him, but his friends as well. They had a look of utter panic and horror in their eyes as they screamed, until Savage assured them that he was a police officer who had come to release them. He noticed that the women were chained to a pipe in the ceiling and were naked, except a flimsy blanket and their chains. There is actually a photo online of the women, still chained up,
You can't see their upper bodies, only their legs. The photo shows how they are naked. You can see one of the girls' pubic hair, and very malnourished. The legs are covered in small wounds and scabs, and are extremely thin, the bones clearly showing beneath the skin. They identified themselves as Jacqueline Askins and Lisa Thomas. When one of the officers asked if there were any more women in the house,
Lisa pointed to the sheet of plywood on the floor that had plastic bags filled with soil piled on top of it. This summer, Instacart presents famous summer flavors coming to your front door. Or pool. Or hotel. Your grocery delivery has arrived, sir. That was faster than room service. No violins in the lobby? Seriously?
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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night.
For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Pushing aside the bags and the board, McCloskey saw the nude figure of Agnes Adams laying in a fetal position in the bottom of the pit.
She looked up with a look of tired hope on her face that brightened as he repeated he was from the police. After lifting Adams out, the police removed the girls' chains and took them upstairs to a waiting ambulance. Here I would like to pause and reflect a bit. Oftentimes when reading about victims of serial killers, you're not told what happened to the victims that survived.
The same goes for how victims are portrayed in films. They are rescued, and the audience is happy. But then what? The torture inflicted on those young women did not end with them ascending from Heidnik's hellish pit of abasement. Being kidnapped is in itself a terrible ordeal that can cause massive, lasting psychological trauma. It's common to develop trust issues and anxiety issues.
Being kidnapped, imprisoned, raped more times than you can count, having to watch your co-victims being killed, being forced to inflict pain upon others against your will, starved and tortured. Well, going through that is so extreme, it is very difficult to even imagine what sort of psychological damage it caused.
Josefina gave an interview in late March 2014, where she tells us a bit about how she copes. I quote: "I'll pass by a hole where some workmen are digging up the road, and I don't think anything of it at the time. But that night I will get an overwhelming sense of panic, because it has triggered an association, or I could spot something as innocent as a screwdriver or a chain
These things are just ordinary everyday objects to most people. For me, they are enough to set off a depressive period that lasts for months. Josefina was not treated well by the press after Heidnik's arrest. Throughout the trial and for years afterwards, Josefina was painted by the press as Heidnik's actual accomplice.
Not a strong woman who, through cunning and wit, managed to save not only herself, but three other women. She had to give up her two youngest children for adoption when she came out of the cellar, because she wasn't capable of caring for them. And she picked up her drug habit again for a number of years to cope with the ongoing trauma. "'My time in the cellar changed me forever,' she says."
I kept trying to go back to the person I was before Heidnik, but it simply wasn't possible. End quote. She finally found the right therapy in 2010 and was also reunited with the children she had given up for adoption. Josefina is now a 58-year-old grandmother of six and close to all her family. She has found peace at last, living near the sea in Atlantic City.
In 2013, she married her long-term partner, Chris Lyle. You don't ever totally get over an experience like mine, says Josefina. You just have to learn to live with it. End quote. Nearly 30 years after her kidnapping, Jackie Askins still can't bring herself to walk into a basement, not even her own.
She is on a daily regimen of seven medications to help with her anxiety and fear, and suffers intense flashbacks. Speaking with Lisa Ling on Our America, Jackie describes how she has coped over the years. The trauma she endured altered Jackie's nervous system, and today, a stressful trigger, such as an argument or a bill she can't pay, can send her body back to the basement.
She has no memory of these episodes. Her two sons tell how she'd crawl in the corner. It was like she was still in the basement. When these episodes happen, Jackie assumes a different personality, whom she calls Donna. Psychologists call this subconscious identity shift Disassociation, a traumatized mind's way of protecting itself from fear and pain.
Donna is the dominant one, Jackie explains. She's ready to go to war with anybody that's hurting me. She's my protective shield, end quote. Jackie has warned her sons to stay away when Donna emerges in case she becomes violent, which Yuan says has happened on more than one occasion. She said, Gary Heidnik, I'm going to kill you, Yuan recalls.
She grabbed the nearest object, which was a spoon, and she stabbed me with it. There have been a couple of times like that. If that spoon was a knife, I probably wouldn't be here. Though she still struggles, Jackie feels stronger than she's ever been, now able to talk about her horrific experience and share her story while trying to live a normal life. Today, Jackie works cleaning houses, picks up her daughter each day from school,
and is also in the process of adopting her cousin's two kids, determined to give all of the children the foundation she never had. With the girls freed, the police turned their attention to the search. In the kitchen, Savage found an aluminum pot on the stove, which was badly scorched and contained a yellowish fatty substance.
The kitchen counter was an industrial food processor, which had been recently used, possibly, for raw meat. Inside the stove, he found an oven dish containing a charred piece of bone that resembled a human rib. Up to that point, Savage was still struggling to believe what had actually occurred in the room. But when he opened the fridge, what he found removed all doubt.
Lying on a shelf in the freezer compartment was a human forearm. Over several days, police searched the house and yards, detailing every piece of paper and material they found. They excavated the front and back yards, but did not find any further human remains. In the house they found a closet, full of pornographic magazines, all of which featured black women.
Although the house and surroundings gave the impression that the owner had been a disturbed person, existing only on a veteran's pension, they later discovered that Gary Heidnik was in fact a rich man, having amassed an amazing $550,000 in a Merrill Lynch stock market investment account.
While the search was continuing, Heidnik was being questioned in custody as police attempted to unravel the life and crimes of the scruffy individual the press were already calling a vicious madman. On the 23rd of April, 1987, Heidnik appeared in court for the first time since his arrest. Beside him sat his counsel, Charles Chuck Peruto.
Heidnik had selected Peruto, an experienced, sharp-minded defense attorney, based on his reputation for defending sensational cases. The reason for the appearance was to officially determine if the prosecution had the probable cause to hold Gary Heidnik for the crimes he had been charged with.
For Assistant District Attorney Charles Gallagher, the preliminary hearing was a mere formality as he presented the state's case against Gary Heidnik.
Heidnik stood charged with murder, kidnapping, rape, aggravated assault, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, indecent exposure, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, simple assault, indecent assault, and other associated offenses. The most damning evidence against Heidnik was the testimony of the captives themselves.
The first to be called was Lisa Thomas, who described in minute detail how Gary Heidnik had chained, beaten, and raped her. Next to give evidence was Josefina Rivera. In a clear and confident voice, she related her story from the time she was picked up in Heidnik's Cadillac until the time she was released. She was particularly graphic in her description of Sandra Lindsay's death.
and the electrocution murder of Deborah Dudley, particularly when she admitted that it had been she who had pushed the power cord into the pit. Peruto later cross-examined Rivera and accused her of instigating many of the beatings and the electrocution of Dudley. When Lisa Thomas was cross-examined,
She too accused Rivera of being Heidnik's willing partner in his acts of death and depravity. However, her evidence was refuted when Jacqueline Askins took the stand and told the court that Rivera only did Heidnik's bidding when she was under the threat of death or punishment. The proceedings ended with Dr. Paul Hoyer
of the county medical examiner's office, giving evidence regarding the body parts and other human remains found in Heidnik's kitchen. In a hushed courtroom, Dr. Hoyer read out the items found like a gruesome shopping list. Two forearms, one upper arm, two knees, and two segments of thigh, all cut with a saw, the tissue, skin, and muscle still attached.
In all, 24 pounds of human remains were found carefully wrapped and stored in Gary Heidnik's refrigerator. It might be that Heidnik simply planned to use the meat as food for his captives, but storing so much of it makes me believe he was on the verge of becoming something akin to Jeffrey Dahmer.
lusting for his victims' bodies and body parts in death as much as in life. Although considered a foregone conclusion, Gary Heidnik was indicted and held for trial. After the usual legal machinations and the jury selection process, the main trial began in earnest on the 20th of June, 1988, in front of a packed courtroom.
From the outset, as Charles Gallagher outlined the prosecution's case in all its gory detail, Chuck Peruto knew what his defense was going to be. He was going to plead his client guilty on all charges, but was going to try to prove that Gary Heidnik was certifiably insane. If the prosecution's case had been strong at the pre-trial hearing, at the trial itself it seemed even stronger.
With both sides opening statements having taken only a few minutes, Charles Gallagher began calling his witnesses to the stand. For two days, the jury of six whites and six blacks heard testimony from the captives themselves, their families, the police, and the medical examiners. As the judge excused the last of the prosecution's witnesses,
Chuck Peruto requested that the charge of first-degree murder be removed on the grounds that intent to kill had not been proven. Judge Lynn Abraham's reply was one that Peruto would become familiar with during the trial. Overruled. Chuck Peruto's defense was centered around two men, Heidnik's psychiatrist, Dr. Clancy McKenzie, and psychologist Jack Apshey.
Unfortunately for Peruto and Heidnik, when he called his first witness to the stand, he found that Mackenzie had his own agenda. Mackenzie, who had spent a total of one hundred hours with Heidnik,
refused to answer direct questions, preferring instead to launch into intellectual discussions on schizophrenia and others associated mental conditions, which at times completely confused the jury. Eventually, Peruto managed to direct McKenzie to give his opinion on the most important aspect of an insanity defense. I quote,
At a time of the offenses, did Gary Heidnik know the difference between right and wrong? Mackenzie answered, No, he did not. Peruto then asked the judge to instruct the jury to consider the possibility that Josefina Rivera was actually an accomplice of Gary Heidnik's. Judge Abraham answered that she would be prepared to do so, as long as he understood that
that it would indicate to the jury that if Heidnik was capable of enlisting the aid of an accomplice, then he was clearly not insane. Wisely, Peruto decided not to pursue the point. The following day, the defense case received another setback, when Judge Abraham refused to admit most of Jack Apsche's testimony on Heidnik's mental history, ruling it inadmissible.
Peruto was caught completely off guard by the ruling, as most of his insanity defense was based on the testimonies of Apshi and Mackenzie. But in a short time, Mackenzie had undermined his own credibility, and Apshi was not allowed to table the result of weeks of painstaking research into Heidnik's medical history.
the details of which Peruto believed would prove that his client had been insane for most of his adult life. Peruto then played his final card by calling Dr. Kenneth Kuhl, another psychiatrist. Kuhl was able to give part of his professional opinion regarding Heidnik's sanity, but in a closed session, Abraham ruled that his testimony was
confusing the jury, and ruled that most of it be stricken. Kuhl also had his testimony damaged in cross-examination when he admitted that he had only spent twenty minutes with Heidnik and had left in frustration when Heidnik refused to talk to him. When Gallagher asked what he had based his analysis on, he admitted that he had relied on Heidnik's previous mental history. As a parting shot,
At the already damaged defense case, Gallagher called an additional witness, Robert Kirkpatrick, Heidnik's broker at Merrill Lynch. Kirkpatrick gave evidence that the Gary Heidnik he knew was an, and I quote, an astute investor who knew exactly what he was doing, end quote.
For the next few days, Peruto and Gallagher called additional witnesses to prove and disprove each other's arguments until there were no more witnesses to call. They began their final summations. The following day was taken up with Judge Abraham instructing the jury on the technicalities of the various degrees of murder and other legalities to help them reach a verdict.
Finally, on the last day of June in 1988, after 16 hours of deliberation over two and a half days, the jury was ready. As Betty Ann Bennett, the jury foreperson, stood to read their verdict, Chuck Peruto was confident that his client would be found guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder and thereby escape the death penalty.
His hopes were dashed. However, when Bennett began reading the verdict, I quote, For the murder of Deborah Dudley, guilty in the first degree. For the murder of Sandra Lindsay, guilty in the first degree. And so the list went on. By the time Bennett had finished reading,
Hydenick stood convicted on 18 charges: With the verdicts announced,
Judge Abraham retired the jury until 9 a.m. the following day, when the prosecution and defense attorneys would have the chance to address the jury before the sentence was decided. By 12.15 p.m. the next day, the jury had made an unanimous decision. Gary Heidnik should be sentenced to death for the murders of Deborah Dudley and Sandra Lindsay. Just as he had throughout the trial,
Heidnik showed no sign of emotion when the sentence was read. For eleven long years, Gary Heidnik waited in prison until the many rounds of appeal that inevitably follows a death sentence had diminished. During that time, he made several suicide attempts and played very little part in the appeal process. Finally, on the 6th of July, 1999,
After a last meal of two cups of black coffee and two slices of cheese pizza, Heidnik was prepared for the lethal injection at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview. He had no last words and did not indicate what he wanted done with his remains. The curtain of the execution chamber opened at 10.18 p.m.,
with Heidnik covered up to his shoulders with a sheet, his right arm on a support. His face turned deep red, then ashen. Heidnik was executed about a half hour after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. Heidnik became the third man executed in Pennsylvania since 1962, with the two other executions carried out in 1995.
At the time of his death, no member of his family had made arrangements to claim his body.
Whoa, easy there. Yeah.
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Go to warbyparker.com slash covered to try five pairs of frames at home for free. warbyparker.com slash covered. My Keurig Brewer from Walmart always comes in super clutch. I got it so I can keep grinding on my paper. You know I'm hitting that deadline. I also got it so I can stay up late to do some exam cramming. And of course, you know I'll be ready to stroll into my morning class sipping in style. I guess you could say it's a literal lifesaver. Cheers to that.
Shop your coffee fuel needs at Walmart. And so ends the saga of the real-life Buffalo Bill, Gary Heidnik. Next week, I will bring to you a fresh new serial killer expose. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. This podcast would not be possible if it had not been for my dear patrons who pledge their hard-earned money every month.
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