In 1978 Gary Heidnik was jailed for four years for kidnap and rape. After his release he began to assemble a harm of sex slaves by kidnapping women in the New Jersey area. By 1986 six women were imprisoned in Heidnik’s basement where they were tortured and raped. Two of the women eventually died from torture and they were fed to the other women, along with dog food. One of the women managed to escape and Heidnik was convicted and sentenced to death, a sentence carried out by lethal injection on 6 July 1999.

In 1978 Gary Heidnik was jailed for four years for kidnap and rape. After his release he began to assemble a harm of sex slaves by kidnapping women in the New Jersey area. By 1986 six women were imprisoned in Heidnik’s basement where they were tortured and raped. Two of the women eventually died from torture and they were fed to the other women, along with dog food. One of the women managed to escape and Heidnik was convicted and sentenced to death, a sentence carried out by lethal injection on 6 July 1999.

Gary Heidnik (born November 22, 1943) was an American criminal who kidnapped women and kept them as prisoners in the basement of his house in Philadelphia, Pennsylvenia. Although he “only” committed two murders, he is often referred to as a serial killer. Born in Eastlake, Ohio, Heidnik possessed a 130-point IQ and had some real potential. His parents got divorced when he was one year old and when Gary started school, his mother comitted suicide and he went to live with his father and stepmother. He spent much time arguing with his stepmother or being heavily disciplined by his father. The latter continually ridiculed him especially when he wet his bed, which was often. At this times his father would hang the stainded sheet out a second story window in full view of the neighbours. Young Gary Heidnik was also ridiculed at school after a fall from a tree left him with a misshapen head. His brother Terry believes the accident was the root cause of Gary’s erratic behavior. A curious comment indeed considering Terry himself spent much of his life in mental institutions and made numerous suicide attempts. When he was 18, Heidnik joined the regular army. In August 1962 he started having dizzy spells and nausea and was prescribed a heavy tranquillizer normally reserved for the treatment of serious psychotics or patients that experience hallucinations. Three months later he was given an honorable discharge and released from the Army on medical grounds and given a 100% disability pension. The official diagnosis was “schizoid personality disorder.” He had served only fourteen months.

Heidnik then started investing the funds he had in the stock market and within ten years he had earned a million dollars. Heidnik’s sexual tastes ran to mentally disabled women. In May 1978 Heidnik and his then-girlfriend got permission to take her mentally disabled sister, Alberta, for a day’s outing. When they didn’t retun the police was alerted who found Alberta in Heidnik’s basement. She had been raped and sodomized. Heidnik was sentenced to three to seven years, of which he only served four. In 1985 Heidnik married a Filipino mail-order bride. The marriage rapidly deteriorated and she found Heidnik in bed with three other women and he forced her to have sex with them. He beat and raped her until she left him three months later. Shortly after she left, Heidnik became obsessed with the idea to create a baby factory in his basement.

On November 26, 1986, he kidnapped Josefina Rivera, chained her in the cellar, nearly-choked and raped her. The next month another women joined Rivera when Heidnik ensnared Sandra Lindsay. Around the Christmas holidays two more were added, Lisa Thomas and Deborah Dudley. In the middle of January 1987, Heidnik imprisoned 18-year-old Jacqueline Askins. The five women were subjected to cruel punishment and were constatnly restrained in Heidnik’s basement either by being chained to water pipes or sealed in a pit their abductor had dug out of the basement floor. The women were fed dog food and water for the most part and spent all their time with nothing but shirts on, providing Heidnik with easy access for his frequent rapes. The women were subjected to painful tortures, also, perhaps the worst being when Heidnik became paranoid that they were plotting against him and stabbed his captives in the ears with a screwdriver to deafen them.

Only Rivera, by now reasonably trusted, was spared that punishment. All the other women, those who would eventually survive at least, would suffer permanent hearing damage. When Sandra Lindsay died after dangling by her wrists from a pipe for a week, Heidnik cut up her body and ground her flesh into meat that he ate. He then mixed the rest of the ground meat with dog food and forced his captives to eat it. On March 18, 1987 Dudley, who had been a constant hassle with her defiant attitude, was placed in the basement pit and after it had been filled with water she was electrocuted. With the help of Rivera, Heidnik dumped Dudley’s corpse in a New Jersey park a few days later. Soon afterwards Heidnik imprisoned a replacement for Dudley, a prostitute named Agnes Adams. On March 24 Heidnik loosened the reins on Rivera a bit too much and the woman fled while on an unsupervised trip outside of the house. She notified police who apprehended Heidnik and searched the house, discovering the remaining women huddled in the dank basement. To their horror they also found parts of Lindsay scattered throughout Heidnik’s freezer and refrigerator. Dudley’s corpse was also soon recovered. It had been four months since Rivera’s abduction. Charged with numerous crimes, including the two murders, Heidnik was tried and convicted on all counts on July 1, 1988. He was sentenced to die for his crimes. After several death row suicide attempts he was execuated by lethal injection of July 6, 1999.

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.