‘Oh, you again,’ I imagined them laughing. ‘What are you? Some kind of crazy magnet?’
And what would the press say? I worried that any bit of credibility I had would be destroyed by my reporting the man, which would impact on Heidnik’s trial. In the end, I guess I was afraid that if I reported what had happened to me then the trial would collapse and Heidnik would basically get away with murder. No, better to keep my mouth shut and move on.
I had no right to complain. I knew better than anyone in the world there were crazies out there.
So I stopped tricking not long after. Risk and danger came with the territory and I’d had my fair share of that already. I had to find another source of income so by September I was working at a laminate company and still getting high.
At this point I didn’t even consider giving up drugs – crack was the one thing that let me forget about everything. It held me at night in its warm embrace and let me sleep without dreaming, keeping all the bad memories at bay. Those memories came at me all the time, night and day, when I was least expecting it.
Occasionally I had an attack of fear so severe I didn’t want to go outside at all. My heart raced, my head replayed all the terrible images I’d witnessed and I imagined Heidnik coming for me in the middle of the night. Even though I knew he was safely behind bars, I had a real fear that he would escape. At night I had to sleep with the light on because the dark brought such terror I lay on my back, paralyzed with fear.
The police still called me in every week and the psychiatrists were trying to help with the constant nightmares and panic attacks.
‘We want to admit you for observation,’ they’d tell me.
‘Fine,’ I’d say. ‘But I’m not going on any medication. I don’t want to be wandering through your corridors like another whacked-out zombie.’
‘Then we can’t admit you and we can’t help you,’ they’d reply.
And that was that – they left me to cope on my own. Which meant I bought drugs and got high. It was as simple as that.
Chapter Twenty-One
Limbo
If Heidnik was my captor and abuser, the man who haunted my dreams and cast a shadow over my waking life, Charles Peruto Junior was the one who buried me.
The son of a famous defense attorney, Peruto Junior seemed determined to use the Heidnik trial to get out from under his daddy’s shadow, to make a name for himself.
And he used me as a punchbag in court.
If I’d been Heidnik, I would have sacked him. Besides the way he treated me, I honestly didn’t think he was a very good attorney. He had one idea and one idea only – blame Josefina Rivera.
His whole defense could be summed up in this way: Heidnik was too crazy to come up with the plan to capture and shackle a bunch of women in his basement or to invent the means of torture, it must have been me.
If he’d sat back and thought about that for any length of time he might have realized the ridiculous nature of the defense. You don’t shackle your co-conspirator for more than 100 days!
But Peruto was so locked in to his idea he probably didn’t properly consider the ramifications of his defense strategy.
At some point during Heidnik’s trial, more than a year after our rescue, he actually asked the judge to instruct the jury to consider the possibility that I was an accomplice, something I didn’t discover until much later.
It took the judge herself to point out the flaw in Peruto’s logic.
‘If the defendant is clever enough to enlist the aid of an accomplice, he knows what he’s doing,’ Judge Abraham told Peruto Junior. ‘This could be a problem if you charge Rivera… If you want an accomplice charge I’ll give you one, but Rivera is no fool. It is no great leap to say if your client got someone to work with him, if he’s smart enough to get an accomplice, he’s not insane. Why don’t you talk it over with your client?’
In the end of course Peruto Junior dropped the idea of charging me too but that didn’t stop him going after me like Rottweiler.
And the result of that was immense and far-reaching.
From the moment I came up against Peruto I become Josefina Rivera – Victim or Accomplice? It was too neat, too enticing for the press to ignore.
And so, whatever the outcome for Heidnik of his days on the stand, the writing was on the wall for me from the start. I’d lost my children, my freedom, my sense of self, a good part of my sanity and now I was about to lose my standing as a victim.
But this was all far, far in the future. For now I was stuck in an uncomfortable limbo, unable to talk publicly due to Limbo the gagging order and yet still the subject of unending speculation. The press hounded me and my family, I was trying to keep up the pretense of a normal life but underneath I seethed, waiting and waiting for my time in court.
Neither the police nor Gallagher wanted me to read the press reports anymore – they thought it made me too angry – but I couldn’t help myself. As much as I hated reading about myself, I was ravenous for more information on Heidnik.
From the moment he took me prisoner, huge questions haunted me. Why did this happen? Who was responsible? I’d worked out that I had my part to play in this and I’d heard Heidnik’s reasoning but what was the truth?
I scoured the papers every day, searching for answers. There, I learned about Heidnik’s strange and unsettling past. I read it all, desperate to understand more about this man, about what drove him to do the things he did.
I learned how he and his younger brother Terry were born to a violent father and an alcoholic mother in Cleveland, Ohio.
She, Ellen, was an attractive beautician with a Creole heritage and he, Michael, was a tool-and-die maker. Their marriage, by all accounts, was miserable. And the boys suffered too.
Michael was a harsh disciplinarian and didn’t spare either child. He inflicted punishments so humiliating and terrifying that both children grew up hating him.
One punishment for Gary was being hung out of the window by his ankles, another included having a bullseye painted on the backside of his pants to show the other boys at school where to kick him.
His parents split when he was two and his mother went on in her shabby, chaotic way, marrying three more times before killing herself by drinking mercury in 1970.
Gary and his brother Terry had both been in and out of mental institutions for most of their lives, racking up a number of suicide attempts.
By the time of his arrest Gary had tried to kill himself thirteen times, including one occasion where he drove his motorcycle head-on into a wall.
It was fascinating but in some ways unsurprising – of course there had to be childhood trauma and dysfunction to create such a monster.
The stuff I found harder to digest centered on the agencies that frequently came into contact with Gary as an adult and as a direct result of either his mental ill health or criminal actions.
The two converged alarmingly in 1979 when he was put away for kidnapping Alberta, Anjeanette’s sister.
One resourceful reporter turned up the old court files and quoted from a psychologist tasked with evaluating Heidnik in 1979 in connection to his conviction.
Astonishingly, the report predicted with alarming clarity Heidnik’s likelihood of committing such crimes in the future.
The court psychologist wrote at the time Heidnik presented a ‘high probability for serious or even bizarre offenses against relatively helpless members of the community.’
It went on: ‘Of particular concern is the defendant’s potential for engaging in sexually assaultive crimes against females.’
Heidnik, then 34, had ‘engaged in a series of exploitative and manipulative relationships with a series of mentally retarded black women whom he may have exploited financially and sexually. This behavior seems to fit a pattern of taking an authoritative position in charge of more vulnerable individuals.’
He concluded: ‘In order to avoid such a tragedy in the future it will be necessary for him to be very closely supervise
d and for him to receive continuing surveillance over a long period of time.’
Prognosis for improvement? ‘Extremely grave’.
They knew! I realized with horror. People knew what he was capable of and they still let him go free. I boiled with rage – if they had these reports, why was Heidnik allowed to roam the streets, picking up women every day? Why wasn’t he supervised as the report had suggested? This was written in 1979 when Heidnik was sent to prison for his seven-year term. He bounced between mental institutions for the length of his sentence before his parole finished in January 1986. Within a matter of months he had begun to collect women in his cellar.
Less than eight years after the evaluation, Sandra and Deborah were dead. Why didn’t the authorities heed the reports and keep Heidnik under close supervision?
The judge at the time paid attention to the psychologist’s warning and gave him the maximum sentence possible. But after that he was turned loose, free to torture, abuse and kill at will.
I read on. The psychologist, Dr Wayne C Blodgett, had been tracked down and told the reporter why he made such strong remarks.
‘In this particular case, I just had a bad feeling about this person,’ he said. ‘I wanted to communicate that to the court.’
If only somebody had kept up close observation of Heidnik, as Blodgett suggested, two women might be alive today.
I wanted to hurry up and get to the trial. I needed to know more. I needed to know how Heidnik was allowed to fall through the cracks.
But the waiting went on.
Aside from the usual evidence-gathering that takes place before a trial, a major cause of delay was the fact that Peruto petitioned the court to move the case to a different city, on the grounds that there had been damaging press in Philadelphia that could prejudice potential jurors.
The judge denied Peruto’s motion – she wanted to see for herself whether the ordinary citizens of Philadelphia had heard too many Heidnik horror stories to prevent them being able to make an objective decision in the case.
The question was not ‘was Gary Heidnik guilty?’ That had been established beyond doubt. Nobody could have argued that they’d got the wrong guy. The question now was whether he knew what he was doing when he did it. Was he insane?
If so, the charge would drop to second- or third-degree murder and Heidnik would be saved from the electric chair.
Peruto was hot on the insanity plea right from the start. He happily told anyone who’d listen that his client was ‘out to lunch’. This was the main thrust of his defense.
I turned up to as many court hearings as I was allowed to attend. Many of them were the financial hearings. On one occasion, Peruto announced confidently, ‘I am positive that any psychiatrist who examines Gary will conclude that he is suffering from a mental disease.’
He went on, ‘When someone is dealing with him on a subject he’s interested in, such as stocks and bonds, they may believe there is absolutely nothing wrong with him. But if you discuss a matter that is annoying to him, he is totally irrational.
‘Gary has been abused so severely in the past that he may not even be responsible for his own predicament. Sometimes he doesn’t even realize he is in jail.’
It took three days of trying to select a jury before Judge Lynne Abraham gave up and moved jury selection to Pittsburgh, a city far west of Philadelphia but still in the state of Pennsylvania.
By now I was staying in an apartment over the garage of my brother-in-law’s place in north Philly where fortunately the press had failed to track me down. Angelo was married to Iris but they were in the process of separating and right now it seemed the only place I could move around freely.
It was Iris’s idea.
‘Listen, no one here is going to tell them and they can’t connect the two of you through the records so take it,’ she urged.
I did – it was my last refuge and sanctuary. I didn’t even consider going to my mom’s place – why would I want to bring all this down on her head? She didn’t deserve it. Besides, Angelo had a habit too and he understood my need to get high.
The psychiatrists I’d been sent to were less concerned with helping me than hearing the story. I wondered how giving them the gory details was supposed to help me deal with the constant nightmares, panic attacks and anxiety.
One doctor even admitted in private, ‘We don’t know how to help you. All we can do is try various drugs. You girls, unfortunately, are the guinea pigs. Nothing like this has ever happened here before so we’re doing the best we can but we’re in the dark. We can try and then we’ll know better for the future but right now, we don’t have any miracle cure.’
In those early months after my escape I was given a place at a women’s group home. The people were lovely but at night they wanted to turn the lights off.
‘No, I’m not staying,’ I told them.
Eventually, thanks to Mary’s help, we came to a compromise – I was placed in a room on my own and given two bright night-lights. I lasted a week. The place was on continuous lockdown. I couldn’t come in or leave when I liked. The restrictions were maddening and oppressive. I couldn’t stand it – nobody seemed to understand that I was trying to recover from incarceration. How could locking me up again help?
Gallagher and the police also knew about my habit. I hadn’t tried to hide it from them but I guess they thought it would be better all round if their star witness wasn’t a crack addict, so a few months before the trial I was sent to a swanky upmarket center for drug rehabilitation. I didn’t care one way or another and frankly I wasn’t that interested in stopping but I went, just to appease them. The place was usually for wealthy people and the main house and grounds were amazing. There was everything you could possibly want or imagine – swimming pools, tennis courts, beautiful gardens, and great food.
But like with any rehab, they treated me like a child, telling me what I could and couldn’t do. In the end, however you dress it up, rehab is a bit like prison and the staff are your wardens. They are there to stop you doing the things you like to do. The restrictions placed on me again were unnerving and the group therapy sent me insane. I had to listen to hour after hour of everybody else banging on about their addictions: what they took, how much, how it felt, what they did afterwards. After a couple of those sessions the only thing I could think about was drugs.
It didn’t work – so here I was, back at Angelo’s place, getting high, getting ready for Heidnik’s criminal trial. The only thing that I could rely on to numb the intense pain and anxiety was crack. It was the only way I knew how. On the surface I carried on as normal but that was thanks to the drugs. At this stage I had no intention of giving that up. Crack had become my release and my sanctuary from the memories of the horrors I had survived, as well as the horrors I was going through since my release.
* * *
At the same time as the criminal case was under way, all the financial aspects to the case were being heard in the civil courts. Accompanied by my lawyer, I attended every single hearing. Joseph Grimes was one of the first lawyers brought in to speak to us victims. He was tall with dark curly hair and glasses and I found I could talk to him easily. He decided to take me on exclusively and was a tremendous support in those early weeks as the court system took over from the police investigations.
For the most part the financial hearings passed in a blizzard of legal jargon, much of which I didn’t understand. But Joseph explained what was happening as we went along. And the matter became a fight over jurisdiction between the local and the federal courts.
I, along with all the other captives, was suing Gary Heidnik, as were the families of Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley and the State for back payment of child support. Heidnik’s accounts were frozen. Judge Samuel Lehrer in the Common Pleas Court was outraged that Heidnik had hidden his money in the church account, claiming the money wasn’t his but belonged to the church. He accused Heidnik of using a legal loophole in the tax system to evade taxes and described the chur
ch as a ‘sham’. Heidnik filed for bankruptcy and at that point the Federal Court waded in, striking down Lehrer’s judgment and assigning the case to the federal bankruptcy court. Now, we were told, the case would have to be wait to be heard in the federal courts. This would take some time.
Meanwhile, the funerals for Sandra and Deborah went ahead – I wanted to go but the police stopped me. ‘It’s not a good idea,’ they told me.
I knew that my mom and Toya still endured whispers and taunts but neither of them got down about it; at least, that’s what they told me. But inside I seethed. Why did they have to suffer? Mom was accused of raising me badly, that this was somehow all her fault. I was so mad I wanted to scream.
‘You were the one who helped me survive this thing,’ I told her. ‘That’s what you brought to the table. I was the one who was out there. I put myself in that position.’
‘Listen, don’t you worry,’ my mom reassured me. ‘I’m proud of you. I always have been. Nothing can make me feel bad about what happened.’
As the date of the trial approached, I became more and more determined to put the record straight. The week before it started Mary took me to the courtroom in City Hall where the trial was to be held. A once-beautiful building built some 100 years before, the old City Hall sat in the center of a traffic circle and though impressive on the outside, inside the huge corridors were dingy and depressing.
The lino floors were cracked, pockmarked and stained, litter was strewn about everywhere and there was a constant smell of urine leaching from the large stairwells. The place was so big there were courtrooms enough for eighty judges. We were assigned room 653 – this was where I was to give my evidence.
Mary pointed out the places where everyone would be sitting – over there is the defense table where Heidnik would sit next to Peruto, this is the prosecutor’s table for Gallagher, over here is the witness stand where you’ll be giving your evidence, the judge over there, and so on and so on.
Cellar Girl Page 18