Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED A SERIAL KILLER: The House of Horrors

Episode Date: June 6, 2026

In November of 1986, 25-year-old Josephina Rivera's life comes to a devastating halt when she's kidnapped by 43-year-old Gary Heidnik. Over the next four months, Josephina lives shackled in a basement while her captor abducts four more women to hold hostage in his "house of horrors." Josephina recounts a gripping tale of endurance and the shrewd calculations that helped her devise a plan of escape.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpApartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.BetterHelp - Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!Progressive - Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Police have arrested 43-year-old Gary Heidnick, charging him with numerous counts of kidnapping and rape. He was a monster. Human body parts were discovered in his house. Nothing is going to stop Gary, adding more victims in his diabolical plan. He comes up behind me and starts choking me. Then he puts me in this hole.

I'm like, oh, gosh, this guy's going to bury me. authorities say three women were rescued from Hydenick's basement they were found chained semi-nude and starving he's raping us he's beating us he would administer severe electric shocks her whole body just bam hit them soar it doesn't sound believable because it's so crazy I said I'm walking out of here the hell walked in here she's gonna do what she has to do it's about survival my heart was pounding. It was just a one-shot deal. I'm sitting there, you know, trying to figure out what the hell to do, you know?

I started chopping up the body. I dismembered the body and I, you know, started burning it on the stove. Real people who faced death and lived to tell how. This is I survived, a serial killer. My name is Josephina Rivera. and I survived a serial killer. I was raised in Philadelphia. I had an amazing childhood.

I went to Temple for a couple years. Got an associate degree in the county. I had everything I could possibly want it. So the direction I turned in, who knows why. You tried different things. They're not always good for you. You know, drugs. It just kind of took me down a different path

that I really shouldn't have been going in. Prostitution. November 25th of 1980, I was 25. It was around 8 or 9 o'clock. Pretty much everybody was home preparing for Thanksgiving. I ended up walking down Drive Avenue. A car went past me a couple times.

He finally pulled over. I went over and talked to him. He looked like he was in his 40s. He had a beer. He wore glasses. He was kind of heavy. He was white. I didn't get the impression that he was a nut.

He just said, hi, I'm Gary. We were discussing whether I wanted to go to a South, because he was six foot tall, so you really couldn't do anything in the car. So, you know, we worked it out. We go into the house. We went upstairs, we went to his bedroom, and he came up behind me and started choking me.

Things were flashing for my life, like a broken film projector. He loosened up some. I start going like this. He already had a handcuff on one hand. He kept saying, stop, stop, stop. I don't want to hurt you. Just put your other hand behind your back. There was nothing a whole lot of you.

whole lot I could do. It was just too big for me. I put my other arm behind my back and he handcuffed it. He proceeded to take me downstairs to the basement. He took chains and muffler clamps and put the muffler clamps around my ankles. And then he puts me in this hole that I can't sit in. Charles Peruto Jr. is Gary Hydenick's attorney. It's just a hole right through the concrete in the basement. So it's just this pit, a crude pit. I'm like, oh, gosh. This guy's going to bury me here. I was just screaming and hollering me because I was like suffocating in there.

He picks me up by my hair and starts beating me with this stick, telling me to shut up. And he puts me back at his hole. Then he put the board on top of it and put some bags of dirt. I couldn't get out, couldn't lift the border. There was music blaring throughout the whole basement. Nobody would be able to know that anybody was screaming or hollering.

It was hours. I was in there for a long time. He finally took me out and then he started telling me he wanted to kidnap women, get everybody pregnant and have a bunch of kids. He believed there should only be one race. And that if everyone mixed, in the end, there would be peace on the world. So he was going to raise these children on his own and create his perfect race. Jerry Jennings is a clinical psychologist.

It's a truly crazy plan. But within a week, he kidnapped his second victim. Sandra Lindsay was 24 years old. She was intellectually disabled. She knew Gary Hydenick pretty well. At the time, he's 43 years old, and he came up with this church for the disabled. He's a self-ordained bishop in the United Church

to the ministers of God that he created. He has real church services, showing everybody else that he's a respected member of the community of this Bishop Hydenick. I remember being in a whole, I remember hearing these footsteps. And I heard this girl crying. And I remember him, keeps saying to her,

Sandra, why are you crying? You know, you know me. You know, I'm not going to hurt you. He took me out of the hole. He introduces me to Sandra and says, well, y'all need to get along and get to know each other because y'all going to be here together for a while.

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Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our sin. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials.

No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. After he brought Sanja downstairs, he puts on the chains and the muffler clamps. Me and Sandra spent the whole next month together. This is the voice of Gary Hydenick. They go down in the hole in the morning, board goes over the top of a hole with the sand, bags and then they stay down there till roughly about eight at night. He's raping us. He's beating us.

We didn't take bass. We didn't comb our hair. He gave us water and bread, but there was nothing else. Sandra knew Gary really well. So I spent a lot of time talking to her about Gary's honey. Because I wanted to know how to deal with Gary. I was just kind of doing a little bit of homework for the future. And asking Sandra all the information information she could, Josephina was already hard at work trying to find a way to get out of this nightmare.

He was continuously digging a hole to sit more people. And December to January, he kidnapped three more women. Lisa Thomas, Deborah Dudley and Jackie, it was one after another. This is Philadelphia 30, 35 years ago. These areas of the city were undermanned when it came to police. So Gary was able to get away with this. Jackie came right before my birthday in January. And apparently when she got in the car,

he had this cake that he was bringing back to the house for this birthday party he was planning on having for me. He brought me a birthday present and everything. Slippers. Josephina felt her only way out was to not complain and be happy. And Gary started to build trust with Josephina. and he really thought that Josephina was on board. He wanted to reward her because of her behavior

and wanted the others to see, here's what happens when you behave. In his mind, he was treating her very special. I just went with it. My main focus was trying to get out of there. It was a step-by-step day-by-day thing. But every day, something is happening that's worse than the day before.

At one of his most vicious... periods he actually took a screwdriver and jammed it into the ears to puncture the ear drums of all the women so that they couldn't hear when he would leave the house or anyone would visit the house that they could cry out for help he hurt and abused us it wasn't pleasant at all on February 7th Sandra Lindsay was just plain sick so she wasn't eating and and don't forget all of this was about getting her pregnant so she's not eating she's not able to carry a baby, and that's what he wanted.

He kept trying to make her eat, and she couldn't. And he had decided to punish her by hanging her from a rafter with one arm. And he kept beating her and beating her, trying to get her to eat. And he left her handcuffed hanging from that beam until she became so weak that she was barely conscious. Ultimately, the act of hanging that position for so long

put a strain on her heart and her body. She was just like hanging and he put the key in the handcuff and her whole body just fell. And she was gone. When she died, I was really heartbroken. Me and Sandra had spent so much time near together alone that we had like really got close. The other girls were very upset. They were screaming and Gary is now in a state of panic. What to do with Sandra Lindsay now?

So he takes Sandra upstairs and literally cuts her body up. The following day, there's a horrible smell emanating from the house. There is neighbors that called the police about the stench coming from Gary Hydenick's house. So the police come to his door and ask him, what was the smell? He said, I'd burnt the roast. Unfortunately, the officer believed his story and left the house. It's really unimaginable what the other women must have felt.

I said he's got to be cooking this girl's body. Like I said, every day, it was getting worse than the day before. And it was just like, yeah, anything is possible. Now all of them must have known. Our very lives are at stake here. Then another six weeks go by where four of them are still surviving in this horrible prison basement. And they couldn't help but start not being

as subservient as Hydenick would like. At this point, he came up with his latest idea. He would use electrical shocks to train them into being subservient and obeying his will without question. I was trying to find something that would make him behave. He filled this hole with some water, and Lisa, Jackie, and Debbie were together in a pool of water. Then he applied electric wires to the chains.

He would administer these severe, severe. electric shocks. And he had me do it because he wanted a partner. He wanted somebody else to blame. I would never hurt anybody, but I didn't have a choice. I'm still chained too. At no time did I ever do anything to these girls that Gary didn't make me do. It was either that or now I'm going to get punished.

So it's not like a choice. He wanted to see if she would do it. Every day was a different test to see if he could trust Josephina. So he's making me do it. and he's doing it, and then I'm doing it, and he's doing it. Everything she did was to gain Gary's trust. Deborah Dudley had been screaming from being electrocuted, and now of a sudden she wasn't screaming any longer.

Jackie lifts the board and says, Deborah's dead. She just plopped in the water, straight down. Gary went over and pulled her head up, and then he pulled her out. The girls are screaming, because somebody in this tiny tub, Next to them just died and they're all chained together. It's horrifying. I said something we've got to give.

I'm walking out of here the way I walked in here. Then he took off the muffler clamps. And even though he took them chains off, I still thought it was a trick. After that, Gary believed that Josefina was his girlfriend. She was able to use his bathroom, shower. He bought her soap, shampoo, clean clothes. She stayed upstairs.

She was starting to live like a human being, which she hadn't for months. And she didn't try to escape. I don't think she wanted to take the chance unless she made that one chance a good one. Now Hydenk's faced with, he's got to dispose of a second body. He gets Josephina to join him in the car. They put the body in the car and they drive

to the pine bearings in New Jersey. It's hundreds of acres of sort of flat pine lands, quite remote. pulled into the Pine Barrens. I could hear him taking Deborah's body out. I could hear her body hit in the back of the trunk. I could hear him walking away, shh, she on the leaves. And now I'm sitting there saying on my stuff,

oh my God, is he going to dump me out here too? He takes the body into the wilderness and buries the body in a shallow grave. Two girls were dead at this point. So he asked Josephine if she would help him get another girl. I'm looking at it as, yeah, okay, let's try to wheel and deal here. It's about survival. It's about convincing Gary that she's all in.

And it was part of her game plan. I said, look, here's the deal. I'll go out with you to pick up another girl. But afterwards, I want to go see my family. He says, okay, that's fine. I was surprised that he had agreed to let me go and see my family. March 24th, they get in the car and go down the front street. which is an area for high traffic of prostitutes.

And they pick up Agnes Adams. She was a prostitute, and she knew Gary from prostituting. She had been with him before. She went right over to the car. They started talking. And then he brought her back to the house. I kind of ran, you know, but there was still other girls there. If I disappeared, of course he's going to get rid of him.

I was just focused on trying to get everybody out alive. And then I said, okay, good. Now we can go see my family. So we started driving. I said, there's a gas station at the corner. You can go there and get a couple of coffee. You know, I'll be like 15, 20 minutes. He went for it.

We get to the gas station around 9 or 10. I knew that there was a phone booth close to the gas station because I was from that neighborhood. I knew the area really well. It was a one-block walk. It seemed like my walk. You know, I keep looking back. to see if he's watching, to see where I'm going.

Because as soon as he thinks I'm not coming back, the girls are done. My heart was pounding. It was a one-shot deal. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Summer can be such a mixed bag. For some people, it's the best time of the year. Travel, sunshine, a little more freedom in the schedule. For others, it can feel like a lot to hold together.

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I called a police. They said, all right, stay on that corner, we'll send a cop. When they got there, I said, look, I've been chain and shackle for four months. I said, the guy is in the gas station. If you don't go pick them up, he's going to go back and kill these other girls. And they're like, really? At this point, she's telling the police what she's endured.

It doesn't sound believable because it's so crazy. They're like, oh, lift up your pants legs and they can see the marks from the shackles around my ankles. The marks and the scars on her ankles were so severe and so nasty. that when she showed the police those wounds, they're like, wow. They decided to go into the gas station and pick him up. The police detained Gary Heidnick at the gas station.

They took me up there to do the gas station to identify him. And when I seen him in a paddy wagon, he looked like somebody do a curve in his plan. He was totally hoodwinked by Josephina Rivera. The police go into the house. One police officer described going down the steps, and in an instant, he sees everything she Josephine has said. And oh my God, everything she just told us

in this wild tale, it's the truth. Authorities say three women were rescued from Hydenick's basement. They were found chained, semi-nude, and starving. The women are now receiving hospital care. I really wanted to be there when they were free, because we had been there for all those months together. Police have arrested 43-year-old Gary Heidnik, charging him with numerous counts of kidnapping and rape.

Authorities also believe that Heidnik may have committed murders after discovering human remains in his house. Gary Heidnick stands out as an atypical serial killer. Your classic serial killer is known as being a loner, but he was trying to secure himself some companionship to bolster his really weak ego. Everybody was safe. I was Sandra and Deborah both would have made it too, but it was just not in the cars. One of the survivors led authorities to a body Hynek allegedly buried in Pine Barrens of New Jersey. On April 4th, 1988, at the age of 44, Gary Heidnick appears in court and is charged

two counts of first-degree murder. One count for Sandra Lindsay, one count for Deborah Dudley. I testified. He didn't look at anybody. He kept his head down. I'd stand up against him again if I had to. The jury took a long time to reach her verdict, but once they did on July 1st, 1988,

he was found guilty of murder. Josephina was a true victim. No one ever considered charging her with any crime. And to her credit, she found a way to escape from Heidnick and rescue the lives of her fellow victims. Josephina said that was her mission. Mission accomplished. Ten years later, on July 6th,

In 1999, Gary Heidnick was put to death by lethal injection. Personally, I think he should have stayed in jail because now he's resting in peace. And a lot of us are still going through different things, you know. But it's good that I survive. Good that I saved other people. My faith in God gets me through every day and keeps me sane. Finding the one can feel impossible. And in today's world, it's even harder.

False profiles, inaccurate pictures, incompatibilities, ghosting on dates. Is this sounding familiar? But if you're ready to make your move to a new place, it doesn't have to feel like dating. All it takes is a simple search on Apartments.com to find your perfect match. Whether you're looking for a three-bedroom condo downtown, a two-bedroom duplex in a quiet neighborhood, a cozy studio in a walkable city, or even a single-family home in a cul-de-sac, you can find a place that checks all the right boxes. So whichever stage of life you're in, settle down in your perfect home by using Apartments.com. No more swiping and awkward first dates.

Make it easier to get a place that gets you. Visit Apartments.com, the place to find a place. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is our city. It's just... So beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.