Eat Thy Neighbour

by Daniel Diehl

  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.

  Beyond the confines of the kitchen there was little to be found except filthy furniture and dirt, but that one room was mute testimony to the extent of Gary Heidnik’s brutal insanity. The scorched and filthy cooking pot held a human skull and the yellow, gelatinous remains of human fat. This, along with a heap of charred ribs and selected roasts and chops, some cooked, some not, belonged to Sandra Lindsay. The industrial food processor on the counter had obviously been used to grind meat; there was already little doubt of what meat, but when one of the police opened the refrigerator, any lingering uncertainty was removed. On one shelf was a human forearm and elsewhere, neatly wrapped in plastic bags and labelled ‘dog food’ were 24lb of Sandra Lindsay’s flesh. To one side was a pile of arm and leg-bones with varying amounts of flesh still clinging to them.

  Over the following days, as police and forensic investigators scoured the house and garden, the newspapers, including the prestigious Philadelphia Inquirer, had a field day describing the ‘House of Horrors’, the ‘Torture Dungeon’ and the ‘Mad Man’s Sex Orgy’. It was shock journalism at its very worst. But for Gary Heidnik bad press was the least of his concerns. What he needed was a good lawyer. At least with the small fortune he had made playing
the market he could afford one.

  Chuck Peruto was one of Philadelphia’s best, and flashiest, legal eagles and he charged accordingly. His standard fee for capital offences was $10,000 plus expenses. He believed that everyone, no matter how hopeless their case looked, was entitled to the best defence money could buy, but in Heidnik’s case he was willing to make an exception. It was the kind of publicity he really did not need, so he told Heidnik that his fee was $100,000 plus expenses. He must have been surprised when Heidnik unhesitatingly agreed.

  On 23 April 1987, Gary Michael Heidnik, aged forty-four, appeared in court for his preliminary hearing. Opposing Peruto was Assistant District Attorney Charles Gallagher who was determined to make every one of the eighteen charges – including murder, rape, kidnapping, aggravated assault, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, indecent exposure, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, simple assault, indecent assault and all the rest – stick like glue to the Marshall Street maniac. At the preliminary hearing it was a foregone conclusion that Heidnik would be bound over for trial, but Peruto insisted that his client could not obtain an impartial trial in Philadelphia because of the sensational publicity he was receiving in the press. The judge agreed and the venue was changed to Pittsburgh, 300 miles to the west.

  When the trial opened on 20 June 1988 in the courtroom of Judge Lynn Abraham, Peruto already had his defence settled. He would, not surprisingly, plead insanity. District Attorney Gallagher countered by insisting that Heidnik had been too methodical in both his execution of the crimes, and the methods he employed in hiding his grisly work, for him not to have been completely aware of what he was doing. Peruto asked the judge to consider the possibility that Josefina Rivera was equally culpable. Judge Abraham agreed, but stipulated that if Heidnik was sane enough to enlist Rivera’s help, he was certainly not insane. Peruto withdrew the suggestion.

  The most damning evidence came from the captives’ description of their time in Heidnik’s homemade prison, but there was other, equally horrific testimony. Dr Paul Hoyer, of the county medical examiner’s office, detailed the gruesome finds in Heidnik’s kitchen, stating that the body parts had, apparently, been cut from the corpse with a power saw just as the girls had suspected at the time. Gallagher’s final witness turned out not to be connected with the case at all. Robert Kirkpatrick, Heidnik’s broker at Merrill Lynch, testified that Gary Heidnik was ‘an astute investor who knew exactly what he was doing’. Peruto’s defence was already badly damaged before he ever called his first witness.

  Peruto limited his defence to establishing Heidnik’s mental condition at the time of the kidnappings and torture. First to testify was Dr Clancy McKenzie who, for reasons unknown, refused to directly answer Peruto’s questions concerning Heidnik as an individual, but rambled on about schizophrenia as a general condition. It was all Peruto could do to get him to admit that Heidnik probably did not know the difference between right and wrong. The following day Jack Apsche, a noted Philadelphia psychologist was slated to testify, but Judge Abraham ruled that the majority of Apsche’s testimony was inadmissible. It was a severe blow to Peruto, but he had one final witness, Dr Kenneth Kool, a psychiatrist. Kool delivered his evidence but later, in a closed session with the judge, it came out that Kool had only spent twenty minutes with Heidnik who simply refused to say anything. When Judge Abraham asked him on what he had based his testimony, Kool admitted he gleaned his information from Heidnik’s past clinical records. Like Apsche before him, most of Kool’s statements were struck from the record. On 30 June, after ten days of testimony and arguments, the jury retired to consider their decision. Sixteen hours later they found Gary Heidnik guilty on all eighteen counts. Three days later Judge Abraham imposed the death penalty.

  For eleven years, while one appeal after another wound its way through the court system, Gary Heidnik was incarcerated on death row at Graterford Prison at Rockview, Pennsylvania. On 6 July 1999 at 10.29pm, he died by lethal injection. No one came forward to claim the body.

  Agnes Adams, Josefina Rivera, Lisa Thomas and Jacquelyn Askins have filed suits to claim shares of Heidnik’s money in compensation for their ordeal.

  Just as Ed Gein, whom we met in an earlier chapter, served as a model for the crazed killer in Thomas Harris’s 1988 book Silence of the Lambs, so did Gary Heidnik. His penchant for keeping his captives in a pit in his basement became an integral part of the twisted character of Buffalo Bill.

  Seventeen

  Bringing Home the Bacon: Nicolas Claux (1990–4)

  In the late 1970s and early ’80s a new, youth-orientated subculture arose out of the then-current music scene. Just as the hippies had arisen out of ’60s hard rock, the new movement – known as ‘Goth’ – shaped itself out of the ‘punk’ and ‘new romantic’ musical scene. The name was derived from the nineteenth-century neo-Gothic movement in literature and architecture that provided the Goths with their look and lifestyle. Dressed in heavily romanticised versions of Victorian clothes, their hair dyed raven black, the Goths flock to their chosen musical venues where they listen to bands with names like Marilyn Manson, Sisters of Mercy and The Damned. There are enough Goths for them to hold parties and conventions all over the world. For most, it is no more than a weekend escape from the drabness and drudgery of modern urban life. For others it becomes a full-time lifestyle. Among the more serious and edgy members of the Goth community there is a predilection to adopt vampire-like personas taken straight from the pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire novels. For 99.9 per cent of the Goths it is all just good clean fun but for a tiny minority it becomes something much more dark and disturbing. Nicolas Claux was one of the few who took it all just a little too far.

  Nicolas Claux’s father worked in the international finance section of a French banking firm and, as a result, travelled widely. When Nicolas was born in 1972 his family was stationed in Cameroon, Africa, and moved to London when he was five years old. Two years later they returned to their native Paris. According to Claux, his parents never denied him any material necessity but were cold, unemotional people who seemed incapable of showing affection to their son. Nicolas seemed predisposed to return the favour, failing to display the normal emotions of a child. He was so withdrawn his mother was concerned that he might even be autistic. He was not, but insists that the only feeling he harboured for his parents was utter indifference.

  One day, when little Nico was ten years old, he became embroiled in a heated argument with his grandfather. During the exchange the old man suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and dropped dead. Such a traumatic event would undoubtedly cause deep disturbance for even the most normal child, and for Nico it became one of the defining moments of his life. From that point on he was obsessed with every aspect of death. Funeral rites, wakes, cemeteries, mortuaries, all began to exert a morbid attraction on him. He began reading everything he could lay his hands on that discussed death and the possibilities of an afterlife. Of particular fascination were fantasy novels and comic books concerned with vampires, werewolves, black magic and the occult.

  As his morbid streak grew and festered, more family moves – first to Portugal when he was twelve and then back to Paris at sixteen – only served to alienate him further from his family and people his own age. Seeking refuge from his loneliness, Claux began to wander through the famously elaborate graves and crypts of Parisian cemeteries. Between 1990 and 1993 he came to know the layout of these necropolises as well as most teenagers know their own neighbourhoods. Soon, the interests became more specific. ‘I would examine rusty locks and evaluate the weight of cement [crypt] lids. My favourite things were mausoleums. The most impressive ones can be found at Père Lachaise, Montmartre or Passy cemeteries. I would peep through their windows to see the inside. Some were decorated with furniture, paintings or statues.’ But somehow, looking was not quite enough. He needed to be inside; to share the experience of the dead.

  With a combination of lock-picks and crowbars Nicolas
Claux began breaking into the tombs that fascinated him most. Sometimes, if rusty door hinges refused to budge, he would simply break in through a window. Once inside, he revelled in the dank, dark surroundings, feeling, in his own words, ‘like an emperor reigning in Hell’. To prolong the eerily satisfying experience, he would break in during the day, remain there and creep out to wander alone among the graves and crypts during the dark of night. But just as peering through the windows and rusty grilles had not been enough to satisfy his ghoulish curiosity, neither was simply staring at the coffins resting on their lonely biers.

  I woke up one day feeling this sinister urge to dig up a corpse and mutilate it. I gathered a small crowbar, a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, black candles and a pair of surgical gloves in a backpack. Then I took the metro [to] the Trocadero station. It was nearly noon. The gates of the Passy Cemetery were wide open, but nobody was inside. The undertakers were out for lunch.

  Passy is a small Gothic graveyard with plenty of huge mausoleums, which were built during the nineteenth century. It is located right between two large avenues, so it is impossible to climb inside at night. But anyway, nobody could ever imagine that there was someone robbing graves at noon.

  I had this special grave in mind. It was a small mausoleum, the burial site of a family of Russian immigrants from the 1917 revolution. I had already prised open the iron door a few days before, and I had closed it afterwards so it would seem that nobody had ever touched it. All I had to do was kick it open . . . At this point, my mind was in total chaos. I had flashes of death in my head. I took a deep breath, and I climbed down the steps leading to the crypt.