Basement of Horrors: The Life and Crimes of Gary Heidnik

It was close to midnight on March 24, 1988 when Vincent Nelson heard a knock at his door. He was shocked when he opened it and saw what looked like an emaciated, ghastly version of his girlfriend, Josefina Rivera. He had not seen or heard from her since the previous Thanksgiving when she stormed out of his apartment after a heated argument. The woman was in fact his girlfriend. She was sobbing and hysterical when she entered the apartment.

Barely able to keep from crying, Josefina told her boyfriend of the horrible ordeal that had led her to her present condition. She told him that she and several other women had been held captive by a maniac who left them chained to pipes in his basement. She described the torture and abuse that she and the other women endured. She then told Vincent that the man who had abducted her killed two of the other women and forced the remaining captives to consume their flesh. She even knew the name of her captor: Gary Heidnik.

Vincent immediately called the police and told them what Josefina had told him. They were skeptical at first, but obtained a search warrant and went to check the house the following morning. Their skepticism was replaced by terror as they searched the home and found three haggard, nude women in the basement. Two of them were chained to pipes and the other was being kept in a shallow pit. In Gary Heidnik's kitchen, officers found a severed forearm in the freezer and a charred human rib bone in a roasting pan in the oven. Gary was immediately placed under arrest.

Born in1943, Gary was abused as a child. His mother was an alcoholic who left when he was two years old. She later committed suicide. His father was a strict disciplinarian who tormented him. He had a bed-wetting problem (a common trait among serial murderers) and his father frequently hung his stained bed sheets in the front window to humiliate him.

In 1962, Gary joined the army. He was discharged for mental disability almost one year later. From that point up until his arrest 26 years later, he was in and out of institutions. He made numerous suicide attempts throughout his life, including: overdosing on drugs, reckless driving, trying to hang himself and swallowing glass.

After his release from the army, Gary purchased a dilapidated three story building and became its landlord. In 1971, he established his own church and declared himself the bishop. He attracted a small number of followers who donated a total of $1500 to the "church." Extremely stock market savvy, Gary invested the money and by ten years later, it grew to a sum of $500,000.

Gary had a strange fetish for mentally challenged African American women. On one occasion, he and one of his girlfriends kidnapped her mentally challenged sister, Alberta, from an institution. The police were notified by the institution and the missing woman was soon tracked to Gary's home. She was found in the basement. She had been raped and sodomized. She was also afflicted with gonorrhea in her throat as a result of forced oral copulation.

Gary was arrested and convicted of multiple crimes, including kidnapping. He was sentenced to three to seven years in a penitentiary. He was released after serving only four years of his sentence. Upon his release, he was briefly married to a mail order bride. It was not long before she grew tired of his sexual deviancy and left him.

After his wife left him, Gary descended rapidly into madness. He became completely obsessed with creating a baby factory in his basement. His goal was to abduct, imprison and impregnate ten women.

On Thanksgiving Day of 1987, Gary captured his first victim: Josefina Rivera. She and her boyfriend had a heated argument that night. Shortly after storming out of his apartment, she was picked up by Gary. They went back to his house and after having sex, he brought her to his basement and chained her to a pipe.

Two days later he captured his second victim: a mentally challenged African American woman named Sandra Lindsay. Over the next few days, Gary captured three more women, including 23-year-old Deborah Dudley. The five women were beaten, raped and tortured on a daily basis. They lived on a diet of oatmeal, bread and dog biscuits and spent their days and nights chained to pipes in the basement. On occasion, Gary would electrocute his victims or shove screwdrivers in their ears.

After enduring over one week of unimaginable torture, Sandra died. Gary took her body upstairs and dismembered her with a power saw. He then cooked her head in a saucepan and roasted her ribs in the oven. He ground the remaining flesh in the blender, mixed it with dog food and fed it to the remaining captives.

A couple of days later, Deborah tried to fight off Gary. As punishment for her non-compliance, Gary threw Deborah into a water-filled pit and electrocuted her with a live wire. After she died, he stored her body in his freezer for several days before dumping it in the woods.

On March 23, 1988, Josefina Rivera managed to escape from Gary's house. She immediately made her way to her boyfriend's house and told him what had happened to her. After police searched his house and discovered the gruesome evidence of Gary's atrocious acts, he was placed under arrest. He was found guilty of 18 charges, including first-degree murder on July 1, 1988. He was executed via lethal injection eleven years later on July 6, 1999.