Cellar Girl

by Josefina Rivera

  Peruto was trying to square Heidnik’s apparent normalcy in some areas with his dreadful acts in others.

  He got Kool to explain: ‘His psychoses are primarily in the areas of reproduction – having babies and completing his pact with God. He does not have it in areas that are not conflicting.’

  Yes, but did he really believe this pact with God stuff or had Heidnik just spun another clever story to snare the experts? I wondered.

  Gallagher now stood to cross-examine the witness. He outlined Heidnik’s pension-benefit history and asked if Kool believed the defendant had been faking it.

  ‘No, he replied airily. ‘In my opinion he has a major mental illness.’

  ‘Do you think he was telling you the truth when you examined him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gallagher asked how he could be certain.

  ‘I can’t read minds. I’m giving you my best opinion. I can’t tell if someone is lying.’

  This was the defense case over. It was now time for the prosecution to bring out its big gun: Dr Robert Sadoff. Like Dr Kool, Dr Sadoff seemed relaxed in the witness box – I learned later he was a pro and had testified in thousands of trials for federal and state courts in twenty states.

  His testimony completely contradicted Dr Kool’s. According to Sadoff, Heidnik was a highly intelligent, calculating individual who knew what he was doing when he enslaved us all in his basement.

  ‘The behavior that is on the record shows many indications that he tried to conceal what he was doing, that he did not want people to know what he was doing and that he had the intellectual ability and the awareness to know that what he was doing was wrong.’

  Sadoff said a host of Heidnik’s actions showed that he knew the ‘nature and quality’ of his acts and knew they were wrong.

  He carefully planned the abductions, placed sound-absorbing tiles in the basement so we wouldn’t know when he was home, mailed letters to Sandra Lindsay’s family so they’d think Sandra was in New York and of course, disposed carefully of the bodies.

  ‘Is it true that Gary Heidnik knew what he was doing when he picked up obviously mentally deficient girls and took them home to satisfy his sexual desires?’ asked Gallagher.

  ‘In my opinion he did. He is a man who has sexual interest and desires, and showed a plan of calculation and preparation. He didn’t just grab them off the street.’

  Sadoff delved into the details of the case. When it came to sending the letter to Sandra’s mom he said, ‘It’s deceptive, it’s calculating, it’s premeditated – all the things that one has to have a fairly intact intellect to deal with.’

  Even when bouncing from one mental institution to another, Gallagher pointed out that Heidnik had the wherewithal to always let his stockbroker know where he was, so he could send him his financial statement.

  In summary, Sadoff asserted, ‘Maybe he had a major mental illness. But the evidence indicates that he was not so deprived of his reason that he did not know the nature and quality of his acts.’

  I found myself nodding along. I saw more truth in this than either Apsche or Kool’s testimonies. The fact was Gary always boasted to me he knew how to work the system. If he didn’t, how could he have kept collecting his disability check? He made damn sure he stayed in the easier mental institutions than spend any hard time in prison.

  Sadoff concluded: ‘There is nothing to indicate that Heidnik did not know what he was doing was wrong at the time he was doing it.’

  A handful of prosecution witnesses followed – the dealer at the Cadillac showroom, an old girlfriend, and even a psychiatrist at a VA clinic who saw Heidnik three times during the period he had us all locked up.

  In December 1986, while he had me chained and naked in his cellar, he kept his psychiatrist appointments and, according to Richard W Hole, showed absolutely no signs of mental illness.

  ‘Mr Heidnik did not complain of symptoms nor did he show manifestations of ongoing or poorly treated schizophrenic illness.’

  According to Hole, Gary’s illness was under control.

  ‘I asked him if he was depressed, and he denied that. I asked him if he was suicidal, and he denied that. I asked him if he was paranoid, and he denied that. I asked him if he heard voices or was having hallucinations, and he denied that. He essentially denied all psychiatric symptomology.’

  If my opinion of psychiatrists was low before, now it hit rock bottom. How could a psychiatrist see him three times during that period and not get any clue that anything was wrong?

  There was only one answer in my mind: Gary was a master manipulator. He was too clever to let the system beat him. He had proved that time and again. He’d ensnared two experts into believing he was so insane he didn’t know what he was doing in his basement. If the jury believed them then Gary Heidnik would have won.

  But Gallagher’s troop of witnesses were compelling. And during this last batch, none seemed more devastating to the defense than Robert Kirkpatrick, Heidnik’s stockbroker.

  Interestingly, for the first time in the trial, Heidnik actually seemed to sit up and pay attention when Kirkpatrick was called to the stand. He testified that ‘Bishop Gary Heidnik’, as he always addressed himself to his Merrill Lynch stockbroker, was a very astute and shrewd investor with a flair for finance.

  Heidnik had invested $15,000 in 1975 and by March 1987, the time of his arrest, he’d turned that into a $532,000 stock portfolio.

  He usually kept in touch by telephone calls or through letters and Kirkpatrick read out excerpts from a couple of these.

  In one he wrote: ‘I saw that Tastykake hit 11 yesterday. I hope we got the 2,000 shares I previously ordered. Also, I want to place an order of 1,000 shares of GPU at market. (Don’t forget my 35 per cent discount.)’

  On another occasion in 1983 he wrote: ‘Please transfer our idle funds to our ready assets account. It should be around $16,000 and that’s a lot of money hanging around not drawing interest. I remain respectfully at your service, Bishop Gary M Heidnik.’

  ‘Did he ever lose money on Crazy Eddie stock?’ Gallagher asked.

  ‘No, he did not,’ replied Kirkpatrick.

  ‘What kind of investor was he?’

  ‘An astute investor.’

  It was then just a matter for closing arguments.

  Peruto went first. ‘The question is not whether Gary Heidnik did these heinous acts but whether or not he was insane. We’re not contesting that these women were raped, that these women were kidnapped, that these women were killed. What we’re here to determine is the level of culpability of the defendant. Even though we have conceded that these acts took place, we are not conceding first-degree murder – the specific intent to kill.

  ‘Let’s say he was a malingerer. A faker. That he went into the army with plans to develop a paranoid schizophrenic personality so one day he could make a living that way… Could he fool all those doctors all the time? Could he fake mental illness – schizophrenia – for twenty-five years? You have to believe that. You have to believe he did this for twenty-five years so that when he got caught building his family in the basement, he could say that he was insane. That’s the prosecution’s case. Does that make any sense?

  ‘What was Gary Heidnik’s purpose? His purpose was to raise ten kids, not to kill anybody. He was punishing the women for disobeying him, not trying to murder them. Third-degree murder is reckless disregard for human life. This is a classic case of third degree.’

  On and on he went – at one point, in describing what Heidnik did with Sandra’s body, he expanded in such grisly detail her mom started sobbing and had to be helped from court. He didn’t hold back. He even pointed the finger at me, accusing me of ‘feeding a sick mind’, of going too far and even acting criminally.

  It was enough to make me want to punch his lights out but I just sat there, stony-faced.

  He sat down and we broke for a recess. Then it was Gallagher’s turn.

  He stood, folded his hands in front of him and started
in his quiet, solemn tones: ‘I want you to rely upon your good old-fashioned common sense. Rely upon your powers of observation. Go over the evidence with me.’

  He turned and pointed dramatically at Heidnik, who had returned now to his old act of seeming completely out of it.

  At this very moment he was staring at the rear wall.

  ‘This man,’ Gallagher’s voice rose, ‘repeated sadistic and malicious acts upon six victims. He planned it. He did it, and he concealed it. Ladies and gentleman, I submit to you – make no mistake about it – that this man committed murder in the first degree. It’s clear that Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Johnson Dudley were killed as a result of being taken into that basement. It’s clear that Gary Heidnik did it. It was premeditated. It was deliberate. It was intentional.’

  Gallagher told the jury that none of the experts could read a person’s mind, none could tell if a person was lying – the jury must rely on their common sense to deal with this.

  ‘Just because someone does bizarre acts, the law doesn’t recognize them as insane. What he did was premeditated, deliberate murder.’

  Now he stopped still and looked intently at the jury.

  ‘Reject this defense,’ he said. ‘Reject the very idea that this man is insane. Seek the truth, and I think you will find that this man, Gary M Heidnik, is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the specific intent to kill two young girls, and that when he did that, he knew what he was doing was wrong.’

  Finally, the following day, Judge Abraham set out the charges to the jury in a lengthy address, complete with a green chalkboard, explaining all the legal language and the possible verdicts. They could find Heidnik either ‘not guilty’, ‘guilty’, ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’, ‘guilty but mentally ill’ or ‘diminished capacity’. She also explained the various different degrees of murder.

  It was lunchtime by the time she finished and the jury retired to consider its verdict. I didn’t envy them their task.

  The fact was, as much as I wanted Heidnik to go down, I wasn’t convinced myself that it was first-degree murder. I didn’t think Heidnik was legally insane – he was manipulative and deeply cunning – but to my mind he hadn’t intended to kill either Sarah or Deborah.

  That was what first-degree murder meant – that it was premeditated, intended murder. This wasn’t Heidnik’s intention – I knew that from first-hand experience. His aim was to father ten children. Why? Because I think he just wanted people around to love him. I think it boiled down to those very simple terms. In that respect alone, I agreed with Peruto. There was no motive to kill. He just never saw the consequences of his actions.

  But with Heidnik we were looking at a whole different set of circumstances. On the last day of evidence the judge admitted a piece of evidence showing Heidnik scored 148 on the IQ test. That was intelligence at genius level. Could you ever allow a sadistic, evil genius back on the streets? Someone made the mistake once before and look what had happened.

  If he was committed now, he would have to be committed forever.

  No, it had to be a guilty verdict. Nothing else would work. Gallagher anticipated a quick decision but much to everyone’s surprise, we had to wait two and half days to find out the result.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Verdict

  The word rang through the courtroom over and over again: Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

  After sixteen hours’ deliberations over two and a half days, the forewoman of the jury ran down the list of charges and repeated the jury’s findings.

  A wave of emotion swept through the courtroom – I saw Sandra and Deborah’s families slump in relief as Heidnik was found guilty of all but one of the counts against him. Ironically, it was a charge of deviate sexual intercourse with me, which I had never fully understood since Heidnik certainly didn’t have any deviate sexual preferences with me or the girls as far as I could make out.

  But I too felt palpable relief at the outcome. After hearing all the evidence and the strength of the prosecution’s case I didn’t really see how they could come to any other decision. But they hadn’t taken their duty lightly – they’d sat for hours discussing the case, which took just slightly over a week to hear.

  Knowing that Heidnik would never be out on the streets again gave me some comfort, some peace of mind. Heidnik, as usual, was unmoved – he sat, bolt upright, facing the rear wall, jiggling one leg. His lawyer, however, seemed devastated. Peruto insisted that every single juror be polled and that’s when we heard the word ‘guilty’ resound through the courtroom 216 times for eighteen counts. Peruto was utterly deflated.

  But there was no celebrating. Just the task now of deciding Heidnik’s fate – for the first-degree murder charge Heidnik could either be sentenced to life imprisonment or death. The next day the jury heard arguments on both sides and this time it took them less than two hours to decide. Heidnik was to be put to death for the murders of Deborah Dudley and Sandra Lindsay.

  Judge Abraham thanked the jury ‘for your service, not for your decision’. Then she turned to us, the victims.

  ‘None of you girls are going to have to worry about him anymore because the next time Gary Heidnik sees the streets of Philadelphia he will be in a pine box,’ she said.

  Peruto had thrown himself forward in his chair and his head was bent onto folded arms. He was beaten.

  * * *

  As for me, I was still left wondering, even more so than before the trial, how this was allowed to happen. I wanted to be happy, I wanted to feel satisfied with the result but I couldn’t help it. I was angry still. Very, very angry.

  I headed straight to Angelo’s place and obliterated the rest of the day in a fug of crack.

  I had now been tarred by Peruto’s accusations against me. He wanted to paint me as an accomplice in some way and though the jury rejected his theory, the media still enjoyed posing the question: Josefina – Victim or Accomplice?

  I wasn’t the only one who gave out punishments but during the trial it was never mentioned that it wasn’t just me who was forced to do so. No one else was asked if they were victims or accomplices. In fact, totally inaccurate and damaging statements were made about me in the preliminary hearing in which it was claimed I beat the girls when Heidnik wasn’t there. This claim was retracted at the trial and Jacqueline Askins reiterated that I did not give out any beatings except when Heidnik was present. But Lisa put the knife in on the stand, claiming that I enjoyed the beatings and that the electric-shock punishments were my idea. Why did she do that? I still don’t know to this day.

  For whatever reason, it only fuelled the public speculation about my part in the Heidnik affair.

  I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and accept an invitation to speak about Heidnik on the Wally Kennedy talk show.

  I was there to discuss Heidnik’s state of mind but of course I used the opportunity to finally have my say about my part. The rumors and gossip had gone beyond a joke – I felt like I’d been put on trial when all I’d done was escape and help free the other girls.

  On the panel was a psychiatrist called Dr Clancy McKenzie, the first psychiatrist for the defense team who had nearly buried their case by his strange theorizing. So damaging was he to Peruto’s case that Peruto himself had called him a ‘flake’ the day after he took the stand. He tried to distance himself as much as possible from McKenzie’s testimony. Yet here he was again, outlining his idea that Heidnik’s behavior was led by the part of his mind still trapped as a two-year-old.

  ‘When he had to dispose of the bodies, it was like a two-year-old trying to hide the candy wrappers,’ he said. ‘He put body parts in a pot on the stove, in the oven, in the backyard, everywhere. The only thing he didn’t do was run them up the flagpole. Do you know why he put body parts in the freezer? He was planning to start the babies – once they were off the breast – on human flesh. Infants suck for six months, and then they have a wish to devour the mother’s flesh. This was the infant brain beyon
d a shadow of a doubt.’

  I’d heard enough.

  ‘Hang on there, doctor,’ I interrupted him. ‘Hang on a minute. I don’t know any two-year-old who is sitting around chaining up his stuffed animals to a pipe or torturing them! His mind was way more capable than a two-year-old’s or I would have been out of there a lot sooner!’

  The talk show helped. From that moment there was a sea change in the way people approached me and talked about me – mainly to my face now, not behind my back. It was strange. I felt like a weird minor celebrity. Now instead of yelling ‘Alpo’ at me, people stopped their cars in the middle of the street to get out and approach me. Thankfully it was no longer to tell me I was a terrible person, but to say ‘God bless you’.

  The state of Philadelphia even presented me with an honorary certificate for helping to save the other girls and giving evidence against Heidnik.

  I accepted but right now all I wanted was to get on with my life and try to move beyond Heidnik.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Moving On

  ‘So what happened? Why didn’t you warn me?’ Deborah was mad.

  ‘I tried, Deborah, I really did. You wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘You knew. You knew all along I wasn’t gonna get out of there but you let me die, Nicole. You didn’t even tell us your real name. You were never straight with us from the beginning. You gonna burn in hell, just like Heidnik.’

  Deborah’s eyes were dark black, her body seemed to swell visibly over me. Her movements seemed quick while I felt sluggish and slow.

  Hot tears trickled from my eyes. I was sat in the hole, my legs shackled together, the cold damp soil all around me. I was naked and cold and now the hole seemed bigger and deeper than ever. She towered over me, from somewhere way up high. I was stuck down here, there was nothing I could do.

  ‘You both killed me.’ Her voice pounded down on me, filling the hole with her anger, her burning, seething anger. ‘You and Heidnik together. You got no soul, Josefina Rivera! You could have tried harder. You should have done more. First you got rid of Sandra. Then you let me go. It’s your turn next. I’m coming for you, Josefina. I’m coming to make you pay…’