Cannibals (17 page)
Neighbours had not only reported tales of orgies, screams and the buzz of a power saw late at night, but also that they couldn’t stand the smell of burning flesh . . .
Gary Michael Heidnik did not have the best start to his life. He was born in November 1943 in Eastlake which is a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. His brother Terry was born 18 months later and shortly after the Heidnik’s marriage broke up and ended in divorce. For a while the boys lived with their mother and her new husband. However, she was an alcoholic and, feeling she was unable to look after her two young boys, packed them off to live with their father and his new wife. They were not happy times, for their father was a true disciplinarian and also a heavy drinker which was not helped by their constant arguing with their stepmother. Gary started to wet the bed and became the subject of his father’s ridicule, even to the point that his stained sheets would be hung out of the window so that everyone could see what he had done.
Gary also received ridicule from school due to the fact that his head was somewhat misshapen following a fall out of a tree. It was possibly this fall that was the root to Gary’s bizarre behaviour later in his life.
When Gary left school he was desperate to join the army, an ambition that was so strong that his father arranged for him to study at the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. Gary stayed at Staunton for the next two years and managed to achieve excellent grades. Living back with his father again, Gary found it hard to settle into another school and eventually, at the age of eighteen he was allowed to join the regular army.
Gary soon adapted to army life which he loved and once again did very well in his training receiving excellent grades. He made few friends and, although he was refused for the Military Police, eventually got a posting in San Antonio, Texas, to train as a medic. Once again Gary took to the training like a duck to water and even managed to build up a thriving business by lending money to other students at exorbitant rates. However, this good fortune was all to come to an end when he was transferred to a field hospital in Germany. In August 1962 he was taken to the sick bay and was diagnosed with gastroenteritis. During his examinations a neurologist also reported that he was showing signs of mental illness which meant the end of his career in Germany. He was prescribed heavy tranquillizers and was transported back to the United States. Within three months he had been discharged from the Army on medical grounds and was given a 100 per cent disability pension – the official diagnosis being ‘Schizoid Personality Disorder’.
After being discharged from the Army Gary settled in Philadelphia and qualified as a nurse. He managed to get a job in the University Hospital in Philadelphia but was later fired due to a poor standard of work. From there he enrolled at the Veterans Administration Hospital to train as a psychiatric nurse, but was asked to leave because they did not like his attitude.
From then on Gary Heidnik’s life went from bad to worse and he spent much of his time in and out of mental institutions. In 1970, his mother, Ellen, committed suicide by drinking poison, and this only added to his already disturbed state of mind. Gary himself attempted suicide on numerous occasions which meant more and more time in hospital, and so the vicious circle continued. With each admission into hospital, Gary’s behaviour became more and more bizarre, and most of his days were spent in complete silence. Refusing to communicate verbally, Gary’s only form of contact was by writing notes. His personal hygiene became virtually non-existent and also around this time he developed very peculiar habits and mannerisms.
Gary’s world outside of institutions revolved around the Elwyn Institute for the Retarded. He became the father-figure to the mostly black or Hispanic female inmates, most of whom were extremely gullible and desperate for some form of affection. In 1971 Gary came up with the brainwave that he would like to start his own church and he joined the United Church of the Ministers of God and appointed himself as the ‘Bishop’. The church at the time only had eight members, one of these was Gary’s mentally handicapped girlfriend, and the remainder were from the under-privileged at the Elwyn Institute.
There were strange goings-on at the United Church of the Ministers of God and especially at night, and it wasn’t long before the neighbours were complaining to the police. Gary didn’t want them to start snooping around and so he decided it was time to move on. He sold the premises and when the new owner moved in they founds piles of pornographic magazines, rubbish was strewn throughout the house and there were boxes and boxes of battery-operated sex toys.
In 1977 Heidnik invested $35,000 in shares at Merrill Lynch, and over a period of 12 years managed to acquire a fortune of half a million dollars. He spent the money lavishly and bought himself a fleet of luxury cars including a Rolls Royce, a Lincoln Convertible and a customized van. Using his assumed title of Bishop of the United Church of the Ministers of God, Gein was able to avoid paying tax on any of the cars he purchased. His greatest possession was his Cadillac and he spent a lot of money buying extras for it and making it his pride and joy.
Now relocated Heidnik carried on various relationships with women, most of whom were black and some of them even with serious mental problems. His aim at this time was to try to father a child and indeed his very first black partner bore him a daughter, but left shortly after the baby was born. Gary would simply bring women off the streets to have sex with him, including his own girlfriend’s sister. The sister lived in a mental institution and on one occasion Heidnik and his girlfriend drove up to Harrisburg to take her out to dinner on a special 12-hour pass. However, they never went out to dinner. He took the 34-year-old woman, who only had the mentality of a baby, back to his cellar where he raped and sodomized her while his girlfriend looked on. When the girl failed to turn up at the institute, the police were called and they turned up at Heidnik’s house and took the girl back. They arrested Gary on June 6 and he was charged with kidnapping, rape, deviant sexual intercourse using the handle of a hammer, unlawful restraint and interfering with the custody of an illiterate and committed person. The case went to trail in November 1978, and Heidnik took the stand in his own defence pleading that he was not guilty. Heidnik was given a psychological examination and he was diagnosed as being ‘manipulative and psycho-sexually immature’. He was found guilty and sentenced to serve between three and seven years in jail. He ended up serving four years, three of which were spent in various mental institutions, after three attempted suicides in prison. On one of the occasions he nearly succeeded when he swallowed a light bulb.
Once back on the streets Heidnik’s next purchase was a rundown house at 3520 North Marshall Street in Franklinville, Philadelphia which later became known as the ‘House of Horrors’. Heidnik made this house his headquarters of the United Church for the Ministers of God. Feeling lonely, Heidnik decided to put an advertisement in the newspaper for a wife. His requirements were quite simple – he wanted an oriental virgin. This advertisement caught the eye of a beautiful Filipina girl by the name of Betty Disto.
For the first couple of years Heidnik and Betty started corresponding by mail and the occasional phone call. Then Gary proposed marriage telling Betty that he was a minister of religion and she immediately accepted. Despite the objections of her parents Betty boarded a plane to Philadelphia on September 29, 1985. Heidnik met her at the airport and then took her home to North Marshall Street where he showed her her room. She was taken aback to find a mentally disturbed black woman asleep in her bed, but Heidnik explained that she was a paying tenant. Despite her misgivings Betty married Heidnik in a ‘quickie’ ceremony on October 3 and then went straight back to the house. For the first week Heidnik treated her well and even talked about starting a family, but her happiness was to be short-lived. They had been married for less than a month when she arrived back home one day to find her husband in bed with three black women. He asked if she would join them, but horrified Betty burst into tears and asked for him to give her the money so that she could return home. He categorically refused and said that as he was the master it was his right to have numerous sexual partners.
From then on life was hell for Betty and her husband always had several women in the house to act as his sex toys, sometimes forcing his wife to watch. If she dared to complain he would beat her and as the days went by he became progressively more and more violent. Eventually she couldn’t take any more and she turned to some fellow Filipinos for advice. When she told them about the macabre details of her marriage they told her she must leave him at once, even if he had threatened to kill her. So one day having plucked up the courage and on the pretence of going shopping she left and went to stay in a home for battered women.
Two weeks later Gary Heidnik was picked up and charged with assault, indecent assault, spousal rape and involuntary sexual intercourse. However, Betty failed to turn up for the preliminary hearing and the charges had to be dropped. What Gary didn’t realize was that Betty was pregnant at the time with his child, and in 1987 she took him to court to try to win financial support for her son. As the case progressed the judge became aware of Heidnik’s medical history and ordered that he undergo a series of psychological tests. What the judge didn’t know, however, was that two of the girls that Heidnik had held captive in his basement were already dead.
Josefina Rivera will never forget November 26, 1986. Josefina was a prostitute and on this particular night she was on her way to work following a violent argument with her boyfriend. It was raining and bitterly cold and she walked up and down the streets waiting for a likely punter. She was just about to give up for the night when a car drove slowly passed and then stopped. The car was a silver and white Cadillac and as she put her head in through the window a bearded man asked her if she was ‘hustling’ for business. The man introduced himself as Gary and he told Josefina that he had a call to make before they got down to business. Josefina introduced herself as Nicole and together they drove to a local McDonald’s, drank coffee together and then went back to North Marshall Street.
When they went inside the house Josefina was startled by the shabbiness of the surroundings, but still went upstairs and got into bed. Heidnik stripped off, passed her a $20 bill and then slipped into the bed next to her. Sex that evening was very quick and, thinking that she had fulfilled her obligation, Josefina got out of bed and started to get dressed. Suddenly Heidnik leapt up and clamped his hands around her throat and forced her downstairs and into the concrete cellar. The room was cold and damp and Josefina, only wearing a thin blouse, started to shiver uncontrollably. She pleaded with her captor to let her go, but he just told her to be quiet and threatened to hit her if she didn’t comply. Deciding that it would be wise to go along with his wishes, Josefina was dragged onto a soiled mattress and then her ankles were manacled to an iron pipe. She looked around her in desperation to see if there was any way she could escape. When Heidnik had finished he told Josefina to sit up and he laid his head in her lap and fell into a deep sleep. During the night Josefina herself drifted off to sleep and woke up with a start later to find that she was on her own. She looked around her cell and realized that the only light penetrating the cellar came from a boarded up window. She realized that the man was obviously a complete psycho but she shuddered and tried to remain calm. The basement itself was bare except for a freezer, a pool table and a rusty old washer-dryer. In the middle of the room she noticed that a small area of concrete had been removed and that a shallow pit had been dug into the ground underneath.
Later Heidnik returned and offered her some food, but even though she was really hungry, Josefina refused his offer because she was frightened that it was either drugged or poisoned. Heidnik took the food away and then came back with some digging implements. Josefina watched as he set to work making the hole in the middle of the room wider and deeper, wondering if that was where she was going to end up.
When Heidnik had finished his excavating, he came over to Josefina and demanded sex, after which he went back up upstairs. Left on her own again she managed to loosen one of her ankle clamps and with the chain stretched to its limit managed to reach the boarded window. Stretching up as high as she could she managed to pry open one of the boards and she started screaming at the top of her voice. Rivera’s plan to escape attracted the attention of her captor, and it brought swift punishment. She was viciously beaten with a plastic rod and then forced into the hole he had dug in the middle of the cellar. He forced her to curl up into a ball and then covered the hole with a piece of board and weighted it down. It was cold and damp and her cramped limbs started to ache, which made it impossible for Josefina to fall asleep. Heidnik had left the radio on at a high volume to cover the noise of any screams and as she lay waiting to die, she mentally ticked off each hour as listened to the radio news.