Gary Heidnik had great potential. He had an IQ of 130 and was great when it came to the stock market. Leave it up to his parents though to ruin any chance he had. His father was a brutal man. When Gary would wet his bed, his father would hang the sheets outside where everyone could see. His mother was a drunk who left when Gary was only two years old. She would commit suicide. In 1962 Gary entered the Army. By then he was starting to show severe psychological issues. Between the time that he was released from the Army in 1963 and the time of his arrest years later, Gary would be in and out of mental hospitals a total of 21 times. He had made over a dozen suicide attempts as well. He tried to overdose, hang himself and tried to die by crashing his car. He even forced himself to eat a broken light bulb. As far as his sexual choice’s went, he ran to mentally challenged black women. One of his girlfriends even gave birth to a daughter in 1978. During May of the same year, Gary and his girlfriend drove to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to visit the girlfriends sister who lived in a mental institution. The sister was 34 years old but had the mental capacity of a toddler. The pair got permission to take Alberta on an outing but when they failed to return the police were called. Alberta was found in Heidnik’s basement. Medical exams showed she had been raped and sodomized. He was arrested and only served four years for his crime. One day about half way through his sentence, Gary slipped a strange note to the guard. It read that Gary could no longer speak because the devil had shoved a cookie down his throat. Gary was a mute for the next two and 1/2 years.

After he was released from prison, Gary married a mail order bride who gave birth to his son. She soon left him though after she became fed up of his behavior. This included Gary forcing her to watch him have sex with prostitutes. After his wife left, Gary came up with a crazy idea. He wanted to make a baby factory in his basement. He would kidnap, imprison and impregnate 10 women. The first victim was Josefina Riveria. She worked as a part time prostitute and Gary picked her up on Thanksgiving. After they had sex, he forced her into the basement where he chained her to a pipe. Just two days later he added Sandra Lindsay. The women were subjected to beatings, torture and were raped on a daily basis. Five more women would become his victims. Overtime the punishments got worse. He would use shock therapy on the women and would shove screwdrivers into their ears. Sandra died after hanging by her wrists for a week. When she died, Gary took her body upstairs where he dismembered her with a power saw. He then cooked up her flesh and mixed it with some dog food. He would serve this to the remaining captives. Josephina Rivera somehow managed to escape. She ran to her boyfriends house and explained what had happened. He hadn’t seen her in 3 months and she looked like hell. He called the police and at first they found everything she told them hard to believe. Once they went to the Heidnick residence though, they were horrified at what they saw.

On July 1st of 1988 Gary was sentenced to death. He was found guilty on 18 counts including two counts of first degree murder. When his father was told that he was son was going to be put to death, he simply said he wasn’t interested. On July 6, 1999 Heidnik was put to death my lethal injection.