Cannibals

by Ray Black

  The first of the girls to die was Sandy. She had been hung from a beam by her wrists for committing something that Heidnik disapproved of, and when she was let down she was simply thrown into the pit as a warning to the others. When she stopped breathing Heidnik got angry and dragged her body out of the pit. He proceeded to cut it up using an electric saw, the noise of which put the fear of God into the other women.

  The next meal the girls were dished up was not just dog food, it also contained ground up human flesh!

  As each day went by Heidnik became more and more deranged. The girls prayed daily to let there be an end to their suffering but things were to become even worse. As the stench of death hung around the cellar, Heidnik hung each girl from a beam by the wrists and then forced a screwdriver into their ears, piercing the eardrum and thus blocking out any sound.

  The only one to survive from this ordeal was Josefina who feigned affection for Heidnik, telling him that she needed him as her partner. Heidnik started to trust her and expected her to beat the other girls and to tell him if any of them misbehaved. As for Deborah Dudley, who was still constantly trying to fight off his attacks, he led her shuffling in her chains into the kitchen, where he pointed to a large pot on the stove which contained Sandra Lindsay’s head.

  Totally dumbstruck by what she had seen she was led back to the basement and simply sank to the floor in despair. Shortly after she recovered her composure and started to scream at the top of her voice, which made Heidnik even more angry. He tried to subdue her by using electric shocks. He stripped the flex from a cable, pressed the wires into her chains, and then watched her violently jolt as the current passed through her body. The other girls watched in complete horror, this madman just went from one crazed act to another. He threatened them that if any of them misbehaved they would receive the same punishment, already demoralized and weak the girls just sank to the floor.

  Heidnik was getting the taste for killing and it didn’t take long before he decided to make his next move. Askins, Thomas and Dudley, who were all tightly bound, were pushed into the pit which was covered by the plywood board through which Heidnik had drilled several holes. Next he ordered Josefina to fill the pit with water using a garden hose. Convinced that they were about to be drowned, the three women clawed at the board and begged with Josefina to help them. Next, two bare wires were poked through the holes and as soon as they touched the chains there were frantic screams from inside the pit. The next time the wires were poked through the holes, one of them touched Deborah’s flesh which caused her heart to stop beating. She dropped face down into the murky water, dead. Her body was dragged to the freezer and later buried in New Jersey State Park. It was Josefina Rivera who later led the police to the place where she was buried.

  Totally unconcerned by the death of his slave, Heidnik decided to go cruising for a replacement. This time Rivera went with him, always hopeful for the chance to escape the nightmare. Together they picked up a girl called Agnes Adams, and made a deal with her for sex. They took her back to the House of Horrors where she soon found herself chained, along with the remaining girls, down in the basement.

  Josefina’s chance to escape came on March 24. She persuaded him to take her cruising in his favourite Cadillac so that she could find him a ‘sexy, beautiful girl’. She promised she would be back by midnight, and she kept her promise she did return, but this time it was in a police patrol car. The officers, having seen the scars on her ankles, decided to take the matter seriously and accompanied her back to 3520 North Marshall Street.

  Number 3520

  The rundown house at North Marshall Street had in fact been under suspicion for several weeks, due to complaints from the neighbours. They had not only complained of screaming and the noise of orgies going on late at night, but they said there was a stench of burning flesh and the sound of a buzzing power saw. By now it was five o’clock in the morning and they wasted no time in gaining entry by smashing down the barred and bolted front door. Only then was the full extent of the horror revealed, when Josefina led them down to the dark and grimy basement.

  Two women, heavily scarred and trembling, lay cowering beneath a filthy blanket. They had red weals around their wrists and ankles where they were both chained together. A third girl lay completely naked in chains, and curled up like a child in the filthy ‘punishment pit’. The hole was about 4 ft deep and was covered by a plywood board held down by heavy bags. The girls, who were all black, once freed from their bondage were able to give their names as Jacqueline Askins and Lisa Thomas, and Agnes Adams, who was the girl who had been lying in the pit.

  While the three women managed to stagger out to a waiting ambulance, Homicide Lieutenant James Hansen and his men continued their gruesome search. When they opened the refrigerator in the filthy kitchen, they found a human arm and beside it, labelled ‘Dog Food’, were 24 lbs of frozen human limbs packed into polythene bags. They consisted of two forearms, one upper arm, two knees and pieces of thigh, and all still had skin, muscle and soft tissue clinging to the bone. They had been cut from the body using an electric saw. A food processor on one of the bloodstained worktops contained traces of human flesh, while an oven dish had what looked like the burnt remains of human ribs. On top of the cooker was a pot which contained a foul-smelling fatty substance – it was the boiled remains of a human head.

  Hansen and his men were totally nauseated, never in their life had they come across such atrocities. There was a dog wandering around the house chewing on a human leg bone. With their noses covered with handkerchiefs to try and block out the sickening stench, the police went from room to room only to discover more blood and bits of flesh and bone scattered everywhere. This was indeed a house of horror, a human abattoir that had been witness to the most unspeakable actions – murder, rape, torture, electrocution, savage beatings and cannibalism.

  While the grisly search took place, Gary Heidnik was back at the police headquarters facing stiff questioning. Tall, broad-shouldered and somewhat broody, this man with the dark moustache and beard was the epitome of pious hypocrisy, claiming to be a self-styled ‘Bishop’. He had been conned by his trusty captive, Josefina, and while the police checked her fantastic story all he could do was sit and wait. Mind you, he didn’t have to wait for long because back at the house was all the overwhelming evidence they needed to back up her story.

  The Trial

  Josefina Rivera told the horror-struck courtroom everything that had happened to the girls at the house in North Marshall Street. She told the jury that Heidnik had forced her to write a confession admitting that she had killed Deborah Dudley. She said that at no time did she consider disobeying his orders as she knew what the consequences would be.

  However, as the trial continued Thomas took the stand and said that she felt Rivera had started to enjoy the grotesque tortures that she was forced to carry out on the other girls. She even nicknamed her the ‘boss of the basement’ and said that it had been her idea to use the electric shock punishment. Askins also corroborated this story, and went on to add that Rivera would warn Heidnik if any of the girls made plans to jump him and attempt an escape. She added that Rivera would be rewarded with a night out with Heidnik at a fancy restaurant and when they came back she would brag about the lovely time they had had and the delicious food they had eaten. However, the jury decided that Rivera really had no choice than to play up to her captor if she wanted to stay alive, and under the circumstances there wasn’t much else she could do. The three remaining captives all testified that Heidnik was desperate to get them pregnant so that he would have a load of his own children playing in the basement.

  The already horrified courtroom then had to listen to the testimony of Dr. Paul Hoyer, who told them that he had found several bags of white meat in the freezer compartment of Heidnik’s refrigerator. In the oven itself there were several body parts that had been dressed up like roasts and assorted chops, which made it obvious that Heidnik was planning, and had indeed, committed cannib
alism.

  On April 6, while Gary Heidnik was waiting for his case to come to trial, he tried to hang himself in his cell. Meanwhile, the gruesome details of his killings had been so widely publicized in the press that the judge deemed it would prevent Heidnik from receiving a fair trial. They set a new venue for June 13, three hundred miles away in Pittsburgh. An unbiased jury was selected and as the case unravelled, the people of Pittsburgh could not believe their ears. The jurors sat pale-faced as they heard all the gory details and soon a picture of a deranged madman emerged. In fact at one point the whole courtroom sat transfixed as they learned of how Heidnik had dismembered Sandra, cooked her head, feet and hands and then fed her to the other girls.

  In his defence, Philadelphia lawyer, Charles Peruto, stated that although his client was undoubtedly guilty of everything that had been outlined to the court, he had never in fact intentionally killed anyone. The deaths of the two women were an accident, and besides anyone who commits such heinous acts could certainly not be right in the head and he put in a plea of insanity.

  In his own defence Heidnik claimed that the women were already living in the house when he first moved in – but for some reason the judge didn’t believe him!

  The jury started their deliberations on June 29, 1988 and on Saturday morning, July 2, The Inquirer ran the headline – HEIDNIK IS CONVICTED OF MURDER. Heidnik stood convicted on 18 separate counts which ranged from murder, rape and kidnapping, to aggravated assault and deviant sexual intercourse. Gary Heidnik was sentenced to death.

  After his sentence was read out, Peruto told reporters that he felt that Heidnik would kill himself, before they actually managed to carry out the execution, and his prediction almost came true. A guard found Heidnik unconscious on New Year’s morning, January 1, 1989, following an overdose of Thorazine, an anti-psychotic drug that he had been prescribed by the prison doctors. However, the doctors acted swiftly and he was saved for the executioner.

  Heidnik spent 11 years on death row and on July 6, 1999, at 10.29 p.m. after a final meal of pizza and black coffee, he was executed by lethal injection at the Graterford Prison at Rockview. Not one member of his family came forward to claim his body, and his victims started civil proceedings to release the funds from his Merrill Lynch account. His $550,000 stock market fortune was divided between his victims, the taxman and his lawyer.

  Issei Sagawa

  Issei Sagawa was dubbed the ‘Godfather of Cannibals’ but due to a legal loophole this monster was released back into our society and still walks free today

  Issei Sagawa is just under 5 ft tall and considered to be a very intelligent Japanese man. He walks with a limp and, many say, talks with the voice of a girl. He has never considered himself to be an attractive man, and was always very self-conscious of his shortcomings. When he was a child, Issei had a dream about himself and his brother being boiled alive in a pot, to be served up as someone’s dinner. It appears that ever since he had that dream he has fantasized about being a cannibal himself. He had pictures in his mind of eating a large, blonde woman, with beautiful white skin. He was very attracted to Nordic women, tall and beautiful, in fact everything that he was not.

  Turning Dreams Into Reality

  Soon Issei’s obsession with tall women was not enough and he decided to turn his fantasy into reality. He was studying for a degree in English literature at Wako University in Tokyo, when he became attracted to one of his teachers, a tall German woman. He started to fantasize about eating her, and one summer’s day he crawled through her apartment window with the intention of killing her. To his sheer delight he discovered her asleep, wearing very little clothing. He became very excited and looked around for something to either knock her out or stab her with, when he spotted an umbrella in the corner of the room. Luckily, for her, the woman woke up and saw him in her room. She screamed so loudly, it frightened the young Issei and he fled quickly from her apartment.

  The sight of this lovely white woman haunted him and he knew that he had to prepare himself better if he was to fulfil his fantasy. He started to make plans and looked around for his next victim. However, it wasn’t until he went to Paris several years later, in 1981, that he actually found the woman of his dreams.

  Renee Hartevelt

  Issei could not get 25-year-old Renee Hartevelt out of his mind. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with her white skin, her fleshy buttocks and her beautiful features. When he sat next to her in his class he knew instinctively that she was the perfect woman for what he wanted to do. This time he would go more slowly; he knew he had to be really careful if he wanted to succeed.

  Renee was extremely intelligent and spoke three different languages, she had a very bright future ahead of her. Issei approached her and asked if she would be prepared to teach him German. He told her that his father was wealthy and would pay her for her tuition, and so she agreed. She was impressed by his intelligence and ability to talk knowledgeably on most subjects. Issei started to write her love letters and invited her out to concerts and exhibitions.

  Before long he had completely gained her trust and respect and he invited Renee over to his apartment for a Japanese dinner. After they had eaten, Issei asked Renee to read him his favourite German Expressionist poem, and as she spoke he found he could not take his eyes of her – he was totally obsessed. After she left he could still smell her body where she had sat on the bed sheets reading the poem, and he started to lick the chopsticks and the dishes she had used to eat her meal. With the taste on his lips his passion heightened and he knew then and there that he just had to eat her.

  On the evening of June 11, 1981, he invited her over again for dinner. This time he asked if he could record her reading his favourite poem and she agreed. When she arrived the recorder was already positioned and Issei prepared himself to carry out his ultimate fantasy. When Issei had first arrived in Paris he had bought a .22 calibre rifle, and this he placed beside a chest of drawers. He asked Renee to sit on the floor, Japanese-style, so that they could partake in the oriental tradition of drinking tea. He poured some whisky into her tea to make her relax, and while he waited for the alcohol to have its effect they sat and chatted as two old friends. When he noticed that Renee was starting to relax he told her that he loved her and that he wanted to take her to bed. She answered by saying that although she found him very good company she was not sexually attracted to him and only wanted to be his friend.

  Issei said that he understood and got up from the floor to get the book of poetry. He handed the book to Renee and started the tape recorder so that she could read the poem in her native language. As he listened to her perfect German, Issei reached for the rifle that stood beside the chest of drawers. Issei came up behind her and shot her in the back of the head, and her body immediately slumped from the chair onto the floor. He tried to talk to her and seemed a little bemused when she didn’t answer. There was blood pouring from the wound in her head and Issei tried in vain to clear up the ever-increasing pool of blood on the floor. Soon he realized that there was no point and the silence of death surrounded him.

  Next Issei tried to undress her, but he found it hard to take the clothes off a dead body. Finally when she was laying completely naked he marvelled at the beauty of her body. He had waited so long for this moment and he couldn’t resist touching her amazing white skin. He was desperate to eat her but didn’t really know where to start. He went to the kitchen and got a knife and cut off the tip of her left breast and a piece of her nose and put it into his mouth. Next he chose her right buttock, but found it difficult to bite into it, so he stabbed deeper into her skin. He watched with great delight as the fat oozed out of the wound. Underneath the sallow fat he managed to find the red meat and he scooped it out of her body and placed it into his mouth. The first thing he noticed was that it didn’t have any real taste or smell and he later stated that it ‘melts in my mouth like a perfect piece of tuna’.

  Issei thought she was totally delicious and he
looked into Renee’s unseeing eyes and told her so. He was ecstatic, he had her beautiful body all to himself. Then he got down to the real business of carving her body using an electric carving knife. He laid out pieces of her flesh to store for later consumption, while he nibbled pieces of her meat again and again.

  Next he took a photograph of her white body with its deep wounds, and then had sex with her mutilated corpse. He later recalled that as he hugged her she let out a breath as if she was still alive, and a little frightened he kissed her and told her how much he loved her.

  Then Issei dragged the remains of Renee’s body into the bathroom. By this time he was totally exhausted and decided that he needed more of her flesh to give him strength. He cut into her hip and put the meat into a roasting pan. When it was cooked he turned on the tape recorder so that he could listen to her reciting the poem, and then sat down to enjoy his meal. He was a little disappointed that it didn’t seem to have much taste and so he added some salt and mustard which he said made it absolutely delicious.

  Having enjoyed the meal so much he returned to the bathroom where he cuts off her breast and baked it. Again he roasts the meat and served it up on a plate. He started to eat it with a knife and fork but decided it didn’t taste so good, it was too greasy. He returned to the body and repeated the exercise with a piece of her thighs – the thighs were delicious and he considered it to be the best meal he had ever tasted. With his appetite now satisfied, and feeling totally exhausted, he took what was left of the corpse to his bed where he spent the night.