On the evening of March 24, 1987, Philadelphia police received a call from a pay phone at 6th and Girard Avenue. The woman on the phone frantically stated that she and five other women had been held captive for four months in a basement.
After hanging up, 25-year-old Josefina Rivera walked a short distance towards her boyfriend’s home to seek shelter and wait for the police.
When she walked in the door, her boyfriend, Vincent Nelson, was shocked by how she looked. Josefina’s clothes were filthy, and her hands were bruised. She also had raw scars on her ankles.
Seeing that the authorities were taking their time, he got back on the phone and urged them to hurry. Vincent also pushed Josefina to meet with them downstairs.
When police officers arrived at the location given, they encountered Josefina in a state of terror.
While they were initially sceptical, due to her agitated state, Josefina forced them to look at her body, exposing her wrists and ankles. These had heavy bruising and scarring from restraints.
She also screamed details about her captor, Harry Heidnik. Josefina kept emphasising that he was sitting in a Cadillac Coupe de Ville at a gas station around the corner.
The authorities noted her description of the man and silently converged on him. They surrounded the Cadillac with weapons drawn and ordered Heidnik to exit his car.
Heidnik did not put up a struggle. As they got him out, he acted oblivious, saying, “What’s this all about, Officer? Didn’t I pay my child support?” Officers searched him, confiscated his keys, and shoved him into a transport van.
Josefina also gave them Heidnik’s address, and a tactical unit wave raided Heidnik’s rowhouse at 3520 North Marshall Street.
Police officers were struck by an overwhelming stench of decomposition once they got in the door. A quick search of the house immediately yielded horrible results.
The kitchen had a large stockpot boiling on the stove. In it were the remains of a person who would later be identified as Sandra Lindsay.
The freezer and refrigerator also had six plastic trash bags packed with butchered human remains. Officers rushed down the basement stairs, beaming their lights around.
They found Lisa Thomas and Jacqueline Askins alive. The two women were huddled together on a mattress, naked from the waist down.
They were also anchored to a sewer pipe with iron chains.
A Troubled Beginning Sets the Trajectory for Gary Heidnik
Gary Michael Heidnik was born on November 22, 1943, to Michael Frank and Ellen Isabelle Heidnik in a Cleveland suburb. Three years after he was born, his parents got a divorce.
Gary Heidnik and his younger brother, Terry, were raised by their aunt for a time before eventually moving in with their father and new stepmother.
The new household was punishing. Heidnik suffered from anxiety, which led to chronic bedwetting. His father added to the humiliation by forcing him to hand his sheets from the bedroom window, so the entire neighbourhood could see them.
Apparently, his father also dangled him from the window by his ankles several times. A childhood fall from a tree also left him with a misshapen skull, causing his classmates to call him ‘football head’.
One would think the trauma and instability at home would impede his development, but Heidnik tested with an IQ of 148. He attended the Staunton Military Academy before enlisting in the army at age 17.
There, Heidnik served as a medic at the 46th Army Surgical Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. The tour was short-lived, though, as he reported intensifying medical issues, including headaches, blurred vision, and nausea in 1962.
A specialist examined him and posited that Heidnik may have had a mental illness. In October, he was transferred to a military hospital in Philadelphia, where he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.
Heidnik got an honourable discharge and a full disability pension. After leaving the army, he trained as a practical nurse and later enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, but soon dropped out.
Heidnik worked as a psychiatric nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Coatesville, but was fired for his poor attendance record and rudeness to patients. From the mid-60s on, Heidnik cycled in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
His mother committed suicide in 1970 by taking mercuric chloride. Heidnik’s brother, Terry, also struggled with mental illness and instability stemming from the family’s dysfunction.
These events sparked suicidal tendencies within Heidnik as well, and he made an attempt to take his own life in 1970, shortly after his mother died. Over the next 15 years, he would try to commit suicide more than a dozen times.
The attempts caused him to be committed to psychiatric facilities multiple times. In 1978, he was arrested for the rape of a disabled woman.
Heidnik was convicted and sentenced to three years in state prison. On the first day at Graterford Prison, he tried to take his own life by swallowing a lightbulb.
Heidnik was initially eligible for early release, but at the parole hearing, he refused to speak. Each time, he would write on a piece of paper that he could not talk because “the devil put a cookie in my throat.”
Heidnik was released in 1983 under the terms that he remain under the supervision of a state-sanctioned mental health program. Three years following his release, though, he would buy a house on North Marshall Street and embark on a killing spree.
The Preacher and Portfolio
Before his first stint in prison, Heidnik had incorporated the United Church of the Ministers of God in 1971 and appointed himself as the overseeing Bishop. This was a title that he freely used in Philadelphia.
The church was a sham, and its regular congregation consisted of only five followers. These were he, his brother, and women who had cognitive issues whom Heidnik had recruited for the ministry.
Heidnik would hold elaborate, eccentric religious services on the first floor of the North Marshall Street rowhouse. Neighbours also reported hearing loud hymns and preaching coming from the property.
While presenting himself as a humble man of God to his neighbours and congregation, Heidnik aggressively traded on the stock market. He had a sophisticated grasp of financial markets and opened a brokerage account with Merrill Lynch under the church’s name.
As the organisation was registered as a tax-exempt church, its financial growth was shielded from government taxation. The account began with a modest $1,500, but through aggressive trading, it grew into a sizeable investment portfolio with over $550,000 in assets.
Despite living in a run-down home in a low-income neighbourhood, Heidnik also drove around in a Rolls-Royce and an expensive Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
In 1985, Heidnik married Betty Disto, a Filipino woman whom he had met through a matrimonial service. The marriage quickly deteriorated, though, after Disto discovered that Heidnik was involved with several other women.
She left him in 1986. This divorce seemed to exacerbate his mental issues, leading to the abduction and murder of several victims.
The Six Victims
In November 1986, Heidnik picked up Josefina Rivera while he was driving through North Philadelphia. He brought her to his house using the pretext of paid sex, choked her unconscious, and chained her to the basement.
He also dug a pit in the basement floor where Josefina spent weeks alone, before Heidnik added other victims. The victims arrived in rapid succession.
Sandra Lindsay, 24, who had developmental issues and had previously attended the church, was abducted on December 3, 1986.
Lisa Thomas, 19, and a single mother, was taken on December 23, 1986, after Heidnik drugged her wine. 23-year-old Deborah Dudley was taken on January 2, 1987.
Jacqueline Askins, 18, was abducted on January 18, while Agnes Adams, 24, was taken on March 23rd.
Heidnik approached the women with promises of money, and once they were alone, he overpowered them. He brought them to the basement and chained the women to pipes in the pit.
The women were then denied food and water as well as access to the toilets. They were also subjected to sexual assault and repeatedly shocked. When Heidnik allowed them to bathe, it was only to prepare for another round of assault.
In what seemed like a survival strategy, Josefina managed to gain Heidnik’s confidence. Recognising that defiance resulted in physical torture, she intentionally suppressed her resistance and complied with his every request.
Sandra Lindsay was the first casualty. In February of 1987, she was caught trying to remove some of the boards in the pit. Heidnik punished her by hanging Sandra by her wrists from the ceiling rafters.
Sandra was denied water and food and got no care despite coming down with a fever. She eventually lost consciousness while being suspended from the rafters and was dead by the time Heidnik let her down.
Authorities later found that she died from a combination of starvation, torture, and fever. Heidnik dismembered her body and stored the portions in the freezer. The surviving victims testified that they were forced to consume her remains.
Deborah was killed on March 19, 1987. Heidnik apparently forced her to get into the water-filled pit and held a live electrical wire to the chains attached to her wrists. She died instantly from the shock.
Heidnik, at this time, was using Josefina to help with his persecution of the girls. He also required that she sign a document stating she willingly participated in Deborah’s death.
He took Josefina with him as he disposed of the body in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This was a coercion tactic to ensure Josefina’s silence.
Trial and an Insanity Defence
Due to the staggering gravity of the discoveries at the crime scene, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office then compiled a multiple-count charge set against Heindik to hold him without bail.
Charges included two counts of first-degree murder, six counts of kidnapping, five counts of rape, four counts of aggravated assault, and two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
The progression to trial was delayed by legal battles, considering Heidnik’s mental status. Defence attorney Charles Peruto Jr. argued that Heidnik was a severe schizophrenic who was disconnected from reality.
Dr Clancy McKenzie testified that Heidnik suffered from severe schizophrenia, and his actions were governed by an infant brain with a psychological age of 17 months.
The defence also highlighted Heidnik’s self-engineered delusions, which led him to create the United Church of the Ministers of God. He actually believed his calling involved enslaving women in his basement, so as to breed the perfect race.
The defence tried to shift the blame from Heidnik’s accountability by claiming one of the captive women whom Heidnik forced to help him torture others was the mastermind of the whole thing.
The prosecution was led by Charles Gallagher III and focused on challenging the insanity claim. Its most compelling argument was that, while Heidnik committed these offences, he was successfully trading stocks.
In fact, at the time of his arrest, he had amassed $550,000 in a Merrill Lynch account. The state then called his financial advisor, Robert Kirkpatrick, to the stand.
Kirkpatrick testified that Heidnik was very financially astute and a rational investor who understood complex market movements. The same person who comprehended financial markets could not have the same psychological profile as a two-year-old.
Judge Lynne Abraham commented that she believed Heidnik was faking his schizophrenic symptoms to begin with, as a means to game the system. The jury also rejected the insanity defence.
In July 1988, the jury found Gary Heidnik guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, rape, and assault. Judge Abraham sentenced him to death.
Execution and Legacy
Following his sentence, Heidnik was moved to the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh. In January 1989, he again tried to commit suicide by overdosing on Thorazine.
He refused to appeal the conviction and, at one point, even asked to have the court expedite the execution. The case underwent mandatory review by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and was affirmed.
On July 6, 1999, Gary Heidnik’s sentence was completed by lethal injection, and he was pronounced dead at 10.29 pm.
Since no one claimed the body, he was cremated. Heidnik remains the last person to be executed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
During his execution, applause broke out in the witness chamber. One of the witnesses said, “Thank Jesus.” Jacqueline Askins was present, as she said she wanted to be the last face Heidnik saw.
Josefina Rivera initially tried to return to sex work, but after a year, she got clean. She reunited with her children and currently lives with her husband in Atlantic City.
Lisa Thomas and Agness Adams chose to completely withdraw from the limelight. Neither has been able to recover from their trauma yet.
Jacqueline Askins was 18 years old during the abductions. She currently earns a living by cleaning houses and still maintains a close relationship with her sons.
Jacqueline claimed in many interviews that she still gets flashbacks. She is still completely unable to enter any basement.