CRIMINAL RECORD
Name – Gary Michael Heidnik (1943-1999)
Place of business – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA)
Deaths – two
– (Felipe Martini/)
1. Born in Eastlake, Ohio, Gary was left in his father’s care as a child after he and his younger brother lived with their alcoholic mother for a few years. However, they were always attacked and humiliated, due to the father’s oppressive profile. They were once forced to wear pants with a target on their butt to be kicked.
two. Gary tried his hand at the Army twice. At 14, he went to a military academy to try to be an officer – but dropped out in his junior year. Then, aged 18, he enlisted in the armed forces and went to work in West Germany as a nurse. However, with little more than a year of activity, he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder and discharged in 1962.
3. In the following years, now living in Philadelphia, Heidnik was hospitalized several times in psychiatric hospitals for attempting suicide. During these phases, he got into the habit of being mute, saluting, and ignoring personal hygiene. To make matters worse, his mother killed herself in 1970. And, when everything already looked like chaos, in 1971 he founded the United Church of God’s Ministers, declaring himself Bishop Heidnik
4. In 1978, he was arrested for holding his girlfriend’s sister hostage in their home. Mentally and visually impaired, the young woman was raped, sodomized and infected with gonorrhea. Heidnik was convicted, but managed to serve most of his sentence in psychiatric prisons. Upon his release in April 1983, he purchased the three-story North Philadelphia home that would become known nationally as «The House of Horrors.»
5. Through a marriage service, Gary married Filipina Betty Disto in 1985. However, the relationship only lasted until January of the following year, when Betty ran away from home and revealed her daily life to the authorities. When she wasn’t raped and beaten by her husband, she was forced to watch him have sex with prostitutes. Heidnik was not convicted as the ex-wife did not attend the preliminary hearing.
– (Felipe Martini/)
6. After the affair with Disto, Gary conceived a sick plan: to have a harem of women for a kind of «baby factory». Thus, between November 1986 and March 1987, he kidnapped six black women, keeping them trapped in the basement of his house. Handcuffed most of the time to a pipe in the ceiling, they were half naked and were constantly raped and beaten. Other than that, they were fed dry bread, stale sandwiches and dog food.
7. Gary also tortured them, pinning them by just one limb to a ceiling beam. On other occasions, he kept them in a hole in the basement floor, covered with boards and bags of earth, where it was difficult to move and breathe. He once filled the pit with water and electrocuted three girls. Finally, he also tried to pierce everyone’s eardrums to make them deaf and make it difficult for them to escape.
8. In captivity, two women died. Sandra Lindsay, 24, died after being trapped in the beam for days. She was dismembered by Heidnik, who stored body parts in the fridge, roasted the ribs in the oven, boiled the head in a pot and allegedly mixed the remains with dog food. Deborah Dudley, 23, died after being electrocuted inside the water hole. Her body was dumped by Gary in a wooded area of New Jersey.
9. Heidnik’s plan ended on March 24, 1987 thanks to Josefina Rivera, the first kidnapped. She gained her kidnapper’s trust over the months and was given permission to leave the house in order to bring another girl into the «harem». Free, she went straight to her boyfriend’s house and then to the police, who were slow to believe her story. In the end, Heidnik was captured at the gas station where the two had arranged to meet.
WHAT END DID IT TAKE?
Heidnik was charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and aggravated assault. Unable to prove insanity, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection and executed on July 6, 1999.
SOURCES Websites Criminal Minds Wiki, Murderpedia, The New York Times, Philadelphia Magazine It is The Green Apprentice; book Cellar of Horror: The Story of Gary Heidnikby Ken Englade