Authors: Daniel Diehl
Twenty-five-year-old Sandra Lindsay was only mildly retarded but her speech impairment and a pronounced limp made life especially hard for her. Still, she was determined that with the help of her training classes at the Elwyn Institute she would find a job that paid enough for her not to be a burden on her mother and siblings. That November evening she was on her way to the drugstore near her home when one of the staff from Elwyn pulled up and asked her if she wanted a lift. Happy to see a friendly face, she got into Gary’s car and disappeared.
When they returned to the house on Marshall Street, he dragged her to the basement, stripped her of everything except a blouse and chained her to the pipe on the ceiling. He then went over to the pit, removed the board and let Josefina out, chained her up next to Sandy, introduced them, and left. It took Josefina a few minutes to realise why her fellow prisoner seemed so ‘out of it’. Then she understood: the girl was retarded. Slowly, Sandy explained that Gary was a friend from the Elwyn Institute and that they had often had sex in the past. Once, she said, he had got her pregnant but she had had an abortion and Gary was furious. Since then he had been demanding that she have his baby. She guessed that was why he had brought her here. Although she remained composed while she told her story, when she finished she broke down and wept. She just wanted to go home.
Over the next few days, Heidnik raped both women repeatedly and, not having planned far enough in advance for so many mouths to feed, began doling out bowls of the canned dog food he normally fed to his two dogs, which often wandered into the basement to visit his prisoners. While the girls had disappeared,
they had not been forgotten. Sandy’s mother had alerted the police who, in turn, had instituted a search of her neighbourhood. When news of the missing retarded girl began appearing on local television and in the newspapers, Heidnik forced Sandy to write a note to her mother, telling her that she had gone away for a while but would ring her soon.
Heidnik may have thought it was a clever move, but, desperate to find her daughter, Sandy’s mother told police that her daughter had often mentioned a man from the Elwyn Institute named Gary Heidnik who lived somewhere on Marshall Street. The police followed up the lead and repeatedly visited Heidnik’s house, but no one ever answered the door. Finally, lacking any firm grounds to order a search warrant, they abandoned that particular line of inquiry. Maybe Sandy would turn up somewhere else.
On 22 December yet another young black girl disappeared. Nineteen-year-old Lisa Thomas was a high-school dropout living on social security, but she enjoyed living, and dressing well. Attracted by her flashy clothes, the man in the white Cadillac pulled up to the kerb and asked if she was ‘hooking’. She became indignant and started to storm away, but the big car crept along after her, the driver apologising and offering her a ride to make up for his rude behaviour. Attracted by the car and the expensive watch and rings on the man’s hands, she finally agreed. Amazingly, Heidnik took his time with Lisa. They went out for dinner and during conversation, he offered to take her to Atlantic City the next weekend. Lisa was thrilled but said she didn’t have any clothes to wear, so Heidnik offered to take her shopping. Again she agreed. After a spree at the local Sears Roebuck store, she also agreed to go back to Heidnik’s house. That was a big mistake.
At first everything seemed fine. Heidnik even opened a bottle of wine, but it was ‘spiked’ and Lisa quickly passed out. When she awoke, Gary was taking her clothes off, but she wasn’t too
disturbed and was more than willing to have sex with him. It was only when he dragged her to the basement and chained her up with Josefina and Sandra that Lisa realised just how awful her situation really was.
Now faced with three ‘wives’, Heidnik had to make a few adaptations. Cleanliness was not a problem – they could just stay as dirty as he was, but thoughtfully, he bought a portable camper toilet for the girls to use. He also added another feature to their lives. In addition to the continual rapes, beatings and occasional trip to the pit, he added electric shocks. When the girls refused to behave, he would clamp the exposed end of an old extension lead to their chains and plug it in to an outlet. Any tiny deviation from Gary’s rules could warrant such treatment. If they resisted his advances . . . zap. If he wanted to watch while they had sex with each other and they refused . . . zap. If one of them was ‘bad’ and the others failed to inform on her, they both got a good jolt. If they cried too loudly during their torture . . . they were zapped again. When he got tired of the shock treatment and the beatings, he suspended his victim of the moment from a ceiling beam by one arm, and left her dangling for hours, nearly pulling her arm from its socket. All the girls could do was huddle together and pray that somehow one of them would escape and rescue the others.
Ten days after he added Lisa to his growing collection, Heidnik introduced yet another victim. Deborah Dudley was captured on New Year’s Day. At twenty-three Debbie was a pretty girl who had a mind of her own and a fiery temper. This one was going to be a challenge, but Heidnik liked that. As she struggled frantically against being hauled into the strange house and locked in chains, Heidnik beat her almost senseless.
While news of yet another lost girl sent shivers down the backs of Philadelphia residents, Gary Heidnik was busy devising new and better ways to control his slaves. He encouraged them to inform on each other for even the slightest infraction of ‘the
rules’. As a reward, the informer was ordered to administer a beating to the guilty party. If the punishment was not severe enough, they would both suffer. Soon, Josefina began to play up to Heidnik, informing on the others and telling Gary she was ‘on his side’.
On 18 January, still another victim appeared at 3520 North Marshall Street. Eighteen-year-old Jacquelyn Askins was a tiny, fragile, retarded girl whom he had picked up while she was ‘hooking’ on one of Philly’s main streets. When he got her to his basement, he stripped her, raped her, beat her savagely and told her it was just to show her who was boss. ‘You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll get more of the same.’
If Jacquelyn thought she was alone in her nightmare, it only took minutes for her to realise there were four other women chained up beside her. Now, finally, there might be enough of them to overpower their jailer. Sadly, Josefina informed Heidnik of the plan. Furious, he meted out the usual round of punishments. He also decided that if they couldn’t hear him coming and going, they would never know when it was safe to try to escape. To solve the problem, he jammed a screwdriver in each of the girls’ ears in an attempt to shatter their eardrums. Only Josefina, who had revealed the plot, escaped the horrible punishment.
A few days after the escape plan failed, Sandy Lindsay committed some small infraction that displeased Heidnik. He placed her in the punishment pit, but she struggled to push aside the board and the heavy weights holding it in place. Infuriated, Heidnik hung her from a beam with a single handcuff. Her feet did not quite reach the floor and the weight of her body pulling against one wrist and shoulder socket quickly became excruciating. Heidnik simply walked away.
Day after day Sandy hung there, growing weaker and weaker, finally developing a fever. She refused to eat and when Heidnik tried to force-feed her, she vomited. Eventually, she lost
consciousness. When Heidnik’s vicious slaps failed to waken her, he unlocked the handcuff, allowing her to crash to the floor. He then kicked her into the pit and brought a treat of ice cream to the rest of the terrified women. Finally, he knelt over the pit and checked Sandy’s pulse. She was dead. Calmly, without emotion, Heidnik pulled her body on to the floor, hoisted it to his shoulders and carried her out of the basement prison. Later, the girls trembled when they heard the high-pitched whine of a power saw filtering down from upstairs. Not long after, one of Heidnik’s dogs wandered into the basement carrying a large, meat-covered bone. Settling down in a corner, he began gnawing away contentedly. The surviving prisoners became violently sick.
Upstairs, Heidnik was calmly butchering the remains of Sandra Lindsay. Roasts and chops were laid aside, while the odds and ends were puréed in his commercial food processor and mixed in with the dog food that was the main diet of captives and canines alike. The unprocessed pieces of meat were loaded into a bag and chucked into the refrigerator after being marked ‘dog food’. Of course, there was still the problem of the head and ribcage. He had to render them down enough to dispose of them without rousing too much suspicion. The stench of overcooked human flesh, however, caused all the suspicion necessary for neighbours to call the cops.
In a ghetto neighbourhood screams and shouts don’t get too much attention, but this stench was too much to bear. When the police came knocking on his door, Gary apologised, explaining that he had burned a roast and it was nothing to worry about. Once again the police left without demanding entrance.
A day or two later, Debbie Dudley, always hot-tempered, began fighting frantically every time Sandy’s murderer approached. Calmly, Gary unchained her and led her upstairs. When she returned, Debbie was ashen faced and trembling. It took a while for her to calm down enough to explain what had happened. In a large stew pot on the stove, she had seen Sandy’s head being
boiled down to the bare skull. Inside the oven her ribcage was being roasted. He also showed her what was in the bags in the refrigerator and told her if she didn’t stop causing problems, she was going to be next.
On 18 March Heidnik was going through his usual routine of rape and torture when some of the girls did something to displease him. Obviously the usual corrections were not working and some new twist had to be added to get their attention. Ordering Josefina to fill the punishment pit with water, one after another he threw Debbie, Lisa and Jacquelyn into the rising pool of sludge. When the water had risen to chin level he ordered Josefina to stop. Then he threw the plywood across the hole and piled the weighted bags on top. It was new, it was novel, but it still wasn’t enough. Taking the electric cord he used to administer shocks through the girls’ chains, he lowered the bare end into the water and told Josefina to plug it into the socket. In a split second the water was alive with electricity and the girls were shrieking and screaming, jerking uncontrollably as the current surged through their bodies. Gary told Josefina to cut the power, but decided one more good jolt was needed to drive his point home. This time the end of the wire came in direct contact with the chain around Debbie Dudley’s neck. She jerked violently and fell forward into the water, dead. Jacquelyn and Lisa shrieked even louder than before and, this time, Heidnik pulled the wooden cover from the pit. Dragging Debbie’s lifeless body from the hole, he smiled at the other girls and asked, ‘Aren’t you glad it wasn’t one of you?’
Leaving Debbie’s body where it lay, he forced Josefina to write a statement saying she had been the one to electrocute Debbie. He then told her that if she ever had any ideas about going to the police he would use the statement to prove she was guilty of murder. The following day, with Josefina’s acquiescent help, he wrapped the body in plastic, heaved it into the chest freezer in the corner of the basement and left the house.
In the days that followed Debbie’s murder, Josefina remained close to Heidnik’s side, trying desperately to convince him that he needed her help if he was going to complete his collection of ‘wives’. Slowly winning his confidence, she was allowed to accompany him on his occasional trips into the real world. She became his confidante, and on 22 March 1987 she helped him carry Debbie’s frozen body to his van and drove with him to the desolate Pine Barrens section of New Jersey where they dumped the carcass in the undergrowth by the side of the road. Having thus proved her loyalty, when Heidnik started talking about abducting more women, Josefina suggested that she could help him. The following day they picked up another prostitute, Agnes Adams, and brought her back to the Marshall Street torture chamber.
Only a day later, 24 March, Josefina convinced Gary that if he took her home to see her family she could find him still more women to serve his needs. Excited at the prospect, he agreed on condition that if he dropped her off near her house, she would meet him at midnight at a nearby petrol station. Obviously, she agreed.
Once free of Heidnik, Josefina ran to the house of her former boyfriend Vincent Nelson where, nearing hysteria, she blurted out her incredible story. Vincent wanted to go to Heidnik’s house and confront him, but Josefina insisted they call the police. When Officers John Cannon and David Savidge arrived at Nelson’s she repeated her story to the sceptical men, telling them when and where Heidnik would be waiting for her. Finally convinced, they called in their report, demanding an immediate search warrant and back-up to help them search the house once they had Heidnik safely in custody.
At the appointed time the cruiser was parked discreetly across the street from the service station with Cannon and Savidge in the front and Josefina Rivera in the back. Minutes after midnight, Heidnik’s Cadillac pulled into sight. Guns drawn, Cannon and
Savidge approached the car, calling for Heidnik to step out with his hands up. Casually obeying, he asked if it was something to do with overdue child support payments. They assured him it was more serious.
It was nearly 5am when a squad of heavily armed police kicked open the front door of 3520 North Marshall Street. Pushing her way to the front, Josefina directed them to the basement steps, shouting for them to hurry. In the dark, dank cellar, the shocked policemen were greeted by a sight that could have come straight out of a cheap horror movie. On the floor two women lay huddled together on a filthy mattress, the chains from their legs running up to a large pipe fastened to the ceiling. When the hysterical girls stopped screaming, Officer Savidge asked them if there was anybody else there. Mutely, they pointed to the covered punishment pit. Inside the police found Agnes Adams, curled in a foetal position in the mud. After ambulances had taken the starved and beaten women to hospital, the officers began searching the rest of the house.