Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “Buffalo Bill” from The Silence of the Lambs

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Premiering in 1991, The Silence of the Lambs was anything but your typical horror movie. While it made the name Hannibal Lecter famous, at its core, the film was a psychological thriller that tracked the moves of a murderer at large: Buffalo Bill. But while Bill’s methods may have seemed too gruesome to be true, the inspiration was a combination of three of the most heinous killers of all time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, dismemberment, and cannibalism. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Police Lieutenant James Hansen didn't spook easily. As a lieutenant in Philadelphia's homicide division, he'd seen more than a share of disturbing sights. Keeping your wits about you was part of the job. But as he and his partner pushed open the back door of a two-story house, he had an uneasy feeling in his gut.

The place was imposing. There were bars on every window, some adorned with crucifixes, and the curtains were all closed, though it was the middle of the day. Then there was the smell. As soon as Hansen walked inside, it was overpowering,

the stench of rot and of burning flesh. After inspecting the first floor, Hansen drew his gun and made his way towards the door to the cellar. The young woman had told him all about this house, her story had been so far-fetched, so outlandish, that he had a hard time believing it was true. Or maybe he just didn't want to believe it. But the moment he opened the basement door, he knew she'd been telling the truth.

As he began descending the steps, he called out, police, is anybody down here? A chorus of panicked voices answered him, and as he reached the bottom step, he saw them. Three young women, half naked, chained to a pipe. As Hansen stared into their wide eyes, he struggled to process the nightmarish scene. The crucifix, the foul smell, this makeshift prison in the cellar, none of it felt real. It felt like something out of a horror movie. Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. Welcome back to our special serial killers Halloween series, where we're delving into the stories behind classic horror movies.

I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. you can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. Last time, we kicked off of the conversation about Scream, and how its self-referential approach reinvigorated the slasher movie genre. We also discussed the real serial killer who inspired the movie's villain, Ghostface. Today, we'll turn our attention to a movie that changed the face of scary movies in a completely different way. Where Scream combined tongue-in-cheek writing with big,

splashy horror set pieces, the Silence of the Lambs was a completely new and more grounded kind of horror hit. In this episode, we'll explore its dark appeal and dig into the numerous real cases that inspired screenwriter Ted Talley's script. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any loss to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the commerce platform that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash killers. That's Shopify.com slash killers. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a job. a role or searching for a killer. The hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the Unit Bomber. It's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So if you're hiring, I've got news for you. You can skip the lengthy investigation and the tiresome process of sorting

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and no wire comfort that lasts all day. All over smooth, all day comfort, vanity fair lingerie. Find yours at Target today. Nowadays, you don't need to be a true crime fan to know all about criminal profiling. The notion of interviewing a killer in order to understand them is everywhere in pop culture, inspiring movies like David Fincher's 7

and popular TV shows from criminal minds to mind hunter. We can trace that fascination in part back to 1991, when The Silence of the Lambs pioneered a new kind of horror cinema. Nobody expected the movie to be a hit. It was a cerebral, supremely violent, R-rated thriller based on a series of novels that had already proved tricky to adapt. The first of Thomas Harris' books about Hannibal Lecter, a highly intelligent cannibal with refined tastes, has been adapted into the 1986 movie Manhunter. Directed by Michael Mann, it earned mixed reviews and was a box office flop. On their surface, the two films are similar. Both focus on

the uneasy alliance between Lecter and a single FBI agent who enlist the imprisoned cannibals help in catching a mass murderer. Both highlight the forensic work and criminal profiling techniques that go into real-life investigations. But the silence of the lambs resonated with audiences on an entirely different level. As we discussed last week, the early 1990s was a time when serial killers were very much in the public consciousness. Though Scream's ghostface was inspired by a real killer, he is not a realistic villain. He's a crazed slasher and a ghostly mask who terrorizes teens at a house party, a sensational, symbolic response to everyday terror.

But the co-villain of the Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill, is scary in a way that film audiences hadn't seen before. He's a terrifyingly grounded monster, an amalgamation of traits from several real killers, whose stories still haunted the public. And perhaps that's why the film became an unlikely box office sensation. Following its nationwide release on Valentine's Day of 1991, the movie soared to number one in the U.S., a position it held for five weeks. It went on to set international box office records and became one of the highest grossing

movies of the year. At the 1991 Oscars, it became only the third film in history to win Academy Awards in all five of the major categories. Best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, and best adapted screenplay. Beyond its critical acclaim, the silence of the lambs also became a cultural phenomenon. Nobody ever looked at Fava Beans, Kianti, or Lotion the same way again. And over the years, it's inspired countless homages, comedic skits, and even some odd Lego reenactments. Given the movie's dark and twisted subject matter, that kind of cultural sound is surprising. Back then, true crime wasn't yet mainstream in the way that it is today.

Yet audiences fell hard for Silence of the Lambs, and particularly for the character of Hannibal Lecter, who consistently tops best movie villains of all time lists, despite not even being the primary antagonist of the movie. Lecter is the epitome of the genius serial killer trope that we all know and love, but with an unexpectedly genteel twist, Lector's impeccable manners and his taste for the finer things in life seem to kick against the grotesque details of his crimes. We tend to think of cannibals as feral, but Lecter's quite the opposite. His supreme intelligence also comes through clearly, and Anthony Hopkins' gleeful, mesmerizing performance. A former psychiatrist himself, Lecter knows every trick in the FBI's playbook, and so far has refused to cooperate with their

interview requests. And when we find out that the FBI hopes to use Lecter to catch another brutal murderer, we buy it. Despite how far-fetched this idea may seem, his otherworldly intelligence makes the whole thing feel plausible. Although he's largely a fictional creation, Lecter is inspired by at least one real person. In the early 1960s, an author Thomas Harris was working as a reporter. He visited a Mexican prison to cover the case of an American charged with murder. At the prison medical office, he met a physician named Dr. Salazar. Harris recalled that the doctor was eager to speak with him about the case and seemed particularly interested in the killer's M.O. Salazar was polite and had a certain elegance about him that intrigued Harris. It was only later

that Harris learned that Salazar was not a prison employee, but an inmate serving time for murder. Salazar, whose real name was Alfredo Bayee Trevino, had killed his boyfriend in 1959. Reports of motive vary. Some say the couple was having money problems, while others say, Trevino flew into a rage after learning that his boyfriend planned to marry a woman. Either way, was described as a crime of passion, which ended in dismemberment. Trevino really was a doctor, and his medical knowledge had played a macabre role in his crime. As the prison warden put it to Harris, as a surgeon, he could package his victim in a surprisingly small box. He will never leave this place. He is insane. Harris was astonished.

The man he met had seemed perfectly sane, not to mention smart and well put together. Everything about the way he presented himself blew in the face of the horrific crime he'd committed, and the strange juxtaposition of decorum and savagery inspired him to create the character of Hannibal Lecter. We don't know what the warden meant specifically when he called Trevino insane, and though Lecter is imprisoned at a facility for the criminally insane, it's also never clear what his condition might be. Still, this wouldn't be an episode of serial killers without a little armchair diagnosis. Before we continue with the psychology for this episode, please keep in mind that neither Vanessa nor myself are licensed psychologists or psychiatrists, but we've done a lot of research for this show.

Thanks, Greg. Hannibal Lecter is often referred to as a psychopath, a colloquial term for traits mostly aligned with antisocial personality disorder. and at first glance he certainly embodies many of the best-known symptoms, like superficial charm, manipulation, and lack of remorse. But in other respects, he doesn't fit the psychopath profile at all. For one thing, he seems to develop a genuine connection with Clarice, so much so that when he ultimately escapes from prison, she's totally unconcerned for her safety. She knows he won't hurt her.

Lecter's superior intelligence and articulacy may also make make this diagnosis less likely. According to a 2009 meta-analysis of data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, people who display psychopathic traits tend to be less verbally intelligent than the general population. In the end, Lecter defies classification, but the authorities still have to try, and the task falls to a plucky young FBI trainee, Clarice Starling. Played with nuance by Jody Foster, Clarice's quiet strength and intelligence are tangent. Though she's still just a rookie, she's clearly destined for greatness. As a cultural figure, Clarice is just as iconic as Lecter.

She made her debut at a time when female law enforcement figures were still rare on screen and endures sexism at every turn throughout the movie. She's patronized, harassed, and objectified by male colleagues and criminals alike, yet never skips a beat in her dogged investigation. The FBI cooperated with the producers of The Silence of the Lambs because they hoped that the character of Clarice could be a recruitment tool for women. And at least on screen, it worked. From television to major motion pictures,

Clarice ushered in a generation of compelling, complex female characters in crime drama. In an interview with Empire magazine shortly after the film's release, Foster pointed out that Clarice was unique because she wasn't trying to imitate a male action star. She explained, Clarice is very competent and she is very human. She combats the villain with her emotionality, her intuition, her frailty and vulnerability. I don't think there's ever been a female hero like that. That intuition is exactly why Clarice is plucked from her training class by Jack Crawford, who heads up the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit.

Formed during the 1970s in response to an uptick in violent crime and homicides, the BSU was where the term serial killer was first coined, and where profiling was pioneered. A child of the 1970s, Clarice has grown up keenly aware of the BSU's work, and when Crawford enlists her to go and interview a serial killer, she doesn't hesitate. Far from being intimidated by the prospect of walking into a hospital for the criminally insane, she's eager to jump right in at the deep end. She's told that she's being assigned to interview Hannibal Lecter in order to put together a psychological profile on him.

But she soon discovers this isn't the whole story. The FBI doesn't want to get inside Lecter's head. They want to use him as a tool to catch another killer, one who's still very much at large. His real identity is unclear, so he's known only by an unforgettable nickname, Buffalo Bill. Lecter is designed to be larger than life, and strangely aspirational,

not a realistic portrayal of a violent crux. criminal. Buffalo Bill, on the other hand, is dangerous in a way that feels uncomfortably true to life. Like most real killers, he's not a master manipulator. He's not especially charming, and he certainly isn't a genius. Yet, he's managed to evade law enforcement, and the FBI is desperate enough to turn to an incarcerated killer for help. It's more than half an hour before Buffalo Bill actually appears on screen, but we're introduced to him in a jarring way much earlier, via snapshots of his crime scenes. Though it's only a glimpse, one thing is clear. His five victims so far have all been skinned. After some back and forth, Lecter agrees to help Clarice develop a profile

of Buffalo Bill in exchange for a transfer to a cushier cell with a view. This cements a psychological game of cat and mouse between Lecter and Clarice, who are both fascinated by the other in spite of themselves. It's never entirely clear who's playing who, but Clarice. finally get some real information about the mysterious killer. Crucially, the fact that he's a former patient of lecters. In the meantime, Buffalo Bills back out on the hunt. Thanks to the movie's omniscient POV, the viewer is soon made painfully aware of just how dangerous this man is,

and just how quickly his latest victim is running out of time. In a moment, we'll discuss how Buffalo Bills M.O. was inspired by the most famous serial killer in American history. You tell yourself it's only a movie. None of this could ever happen to you. You feel relieved until you discover what you're watching is based on actual events. Hi listeners, it's Vanessa and Greg from the Spotify original from Parcast, Serial Killers. In our Halloween special, Real Horror, we're spotlighting three of the most iconic horror films of all time and telling the terrifying true stories that inspired them.

Recovering the real influences behind. characters like Ghostface from the 90s mega-hit scream. Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill from the Oscar-winning thriller, The Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface, from the 70s cult classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Enjoy real horror, the serial killer's three-part Halloween special.

Listen to all three episodes the final week of October, free and only on Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen.

Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Now back to the story. The scene in which Buffalo Bill captures his sixth victim encapsulates. a classic horror movie trope, a girl walking unsuspectingly into terrible danger. Sometimes she's descending the stairs into a darkened basement. Sometimes she's heading outside to see what that strange noise was. In the silence of the lambs, she's offering help to a seemingly vulnerable stranger.

Catherine Martin is a good Samaritan. In the darkened parking lot of her apartment complex, she sees a man with his arm in a sling, struggling to hoist a large chair into the back of a moving truck. She offers to give him a hand, and he gratefully accepts. That sling is crucial. It completely changes the dynamic of the situation. Ordinarily, a young woman walking alone at night would be on her guard,

especially if a male stranger asks her for something. But the fact that this stranger has a broken arm makes him appear physically vulnerable. He's not a threat. Except that the sling is a ruse. As Catherine helps to lift the chair into the truck, she ends up backed into the very rear of the vehicle. vehicle. And at the moment she realizes that something is wrong, the stranger clubs are over the head, knocking her unconscious. Buffalo Bill, aka 35-year-old Jamie Gum, has just abducted another victim.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This entire scenario is lifted wholesale from Ted Bundy's playbook. As a handsome, clean-cut young law student, Bundy rarely had trouble convincing women to talk to him. But during one particularly infamous chapter of his most, multi-state murder spree, he developed a way of luring victims by appealing to their empathy. He'd wrap one of his arms in a cast or a sling and then drive to a parking lot. He often chose state parks or university buildings, where he knew there'd be plenty of targets passing by. Bundy would position himself next to his car with a heavy object, usually a sailboat or some

kind of heavy camping equipment. Then he'd approach a young woman with a sheepish smile. He'd apologize for bothering her. her and ask if she could possibly help him lift the item onto the roof of his car. Invariably, just like Catherine Martin, she'd say yes. Women are generally socialized to be helpful, agreeable, and highly attuned to the needs of people around them. This can manifest as people-pleasing behavior, saying yes when you'd rather not, and even

suppressing feelings of discomfort in order to avoid seeming rude. These tendencies are so ingrained that they're often unconscious, but they can lead to stress, anxiety, and in extreme cases, actual danger. It's entirely possible that more than one of Bundy's victims did feel uneasy about saying yes, but what kind of person refuses to help a guy with a broken arm? He was banking on their politeness, outweighing their fear. But this wasn't the only thing working in Bundy's favor. On the surface, he was the epitome of harmless, a handsome, well-educated, soft-spoken young man who blended right into any community he joined. He generally approached his victims in broad daylight

because he had no reason to hide, but as soon as he got them alone, he'd knock them unconscious, drive to a secluded area, then rape and murder them. Eventually, Bundy got overly cocky. He approached two victims in view of eyewitnesses, who later gave his description to the police.

But no one sees Jamie Gum abducted Catherine Martin. When she regains consciousness, Catherine's in a nightmare. She's trapped at the bottom of a 15-foot pit deep in the bowels of a nondescript Ohio home. She tries to reason with her captor, promising that her parents will pay any ransom he wants, but he's not interested in money or sex or even power.

All he wants from Catherine is her skin. At this point in the Buffalo Bill narrative, the Ted Bundy parallels go out the window. Bundy killed all of his victims within hours of abducting them and never kept captives. Though he did mutilate some of his victims, skinning wasn't part of his M.O. In what may be the most quoted scene from the film, Gum orders Catherine to rub lotion onto her skin,

but he does it in the most chilling, dehumanizing way. He refers to her in the third person, using the pronoun it instead of you. It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. In his 2011 book, Less Than Human, philosopher David Livingston Smith argues that many of history's cruelest chapters, from the Holocaust to slavery, were made possible by people's capacity for dehumanization and compartmentalization, that is, the ability to categorize victims or enemies as subhuman. He notes that dismemberment often goes hand in hand with this mindset, accompanying, quote, a form of dehumanization in which the enemy is, seen as game. Since Buffalo Bill's ultimate goal is to take his victim's skin and keep it as a trophy, it tracks that he refers to them in subhuman terms.

And this mindset is inspired by the stories of two real killers, both of whom saw their targets as nothing more than a means to an end. Ed Gein was active during the late 1940s through 1950s as both a murderer and a body snatcher. He didn't discriminate between living and dead victims because for his purposes, the difference didn't matter. Gien used human bodies like they were arts and craft supplies. He made chairs out of skin, corsets out of female torsos, and bowls out of skulls. At the time of his arrest, he was working on a skin suit, which he never completed. This murder in particular clearly inspired the creation of Jamie Gum. Shortly before he was apprehended, Gine abducted and murdered a tavernkeeper

named Mary Hogan, specifically because of her size. Mary weighed around 200 pounds, and the large surface area of her skin made her an ideal target for Gein. The fictional gum targets larger women for exactly the same reason, and when Clarice realizes this, it's a huge break in the FBI's investigation. In an exuberant call to Jack Crawford, she exclaims, that's why they're all so big, because he needs a lot of skin. He keeps them alive to starve them a while, to loosen their skin.

Finally, well into the third act of the movie, the significance of that lotion becomes sickeningly clear. Gum needs Catherine's skin to stay supple so that he can work with it after she's dead. This moment takes the Silence of the Lambs into the realm of body horror. This is a subgenre in which the human body is violated or distorted in grotesque ways. It can involve unnatural movement, mutilation, possession, and a whole slew of a other disturbing possibilities. According to some evolutionary psychologists, this kind of horror works by tapping

into some of our most primal fears. We instinctively fear injury, contamination, and other violations of the body. And seeing them depicted on screen can have a visceral effect on us. In fact, even hearing them described can do it, though the movie has a reputation for being gory. The most grisly acts of violence happen off screen.

We never actually see gum stripping skin from any of his victims. We don't need to. Our imagination fills in the gap for us. And knowing that the concept was inspired by real life makes it all the more horrifying. Jamie Gumm wasn't the only iconic screen villain inspired by Gine. In fact, we'll come back to him in our next episode. But there's another serial killer whose spree was just as influential on the Silence of the Lambs. In particular, its chilling depiction of Catherine's captivity in Gum's basement pit. Just like gum, Gary Hydenick was born and raised in Ohio in a wealthy suburb of Cleveland. Hydenick's 1950s childhood involved a lot of mental and physical trauma.

His father was physically abusive and his mother attempted suicide on at least one occasion. Heidnick reportedly wet the bed well into adulthood, which is a familiar red flag for true crime fans. Though it's historically been seen as a precursor to violent behavior, recent studies have shown that it's more often a response to an abusive or, unstable home environment, which Heidnick certainly had. After dropping out of high school at 17, Heidnick joined the army as a medic, desperate to get out of his hometown at any cost. But just after over a year, he was audibly discharged because he was demonstrating symptoms

of mental illness. Some reports indicate that Heidnick may have been faking in order to get out of an assignment he hated in Germany. According to a Philadelphia prosecutor, this was the beginning of a lifelong pattern of faker Whatever the truth, Heidnik ended up back in the U.S., where he relocated to Philadelphia. After failing to hold down a steady job, he devoted himself to a higher power. At least, so it appeared. Using a combination of family money and disability checks,

Heidnick founded his own small church. He was charismatic and well-liked in his neighborhood, and before long, he'd attracted a significant congregation. This kind of attention-seeking behavior sets Heidnick apart from Jamie Gum, who's a recluse with no apparent social life at all. Heidnik was also highly motivated by money, which is of no interest at all to gum. He'dick's career as a pastor was primarily a tax scam. He invested hundreds of dollars in his church's name and ultimately made close to a million,

thanks to donations. Perhaps getting away with this financial con emboldened Heidnik, he began to wonder what else he could get away with, and in 1978, his sadistic streak emerged. Hydenick's girlfriend at the time, Angena Davidson, had a sister who resided at a psychiatric facility. 34-year-old Alberta Davidson had a mental disability and required around-the-clock care. Heidnick saw an opportunity, one that he couldn't resist. In 1978, he signed Alberta out of the facility on day leave and brought her back to his house. There he held her prisoner inside a locked storage room in his basement and allegedly,

sexually assaulted her. It didn't take the authorities long to track Alberta down. After all, Heidic had signed her out himself. He was arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, and interfering with the custody of a committed person. Unfortunately, Alberta was deemed unfit to testify, and so several of the charges against Heidnick were dropped. He was ultimately sentenced to three to seven years behind bars.

A psychiatrist to examine Heidnick before the trial, warned the judge that there was a high probability that he would commit similar crimes in the future. Yet despite this prescient morning, Heidnik ended up serving only the minimum time behind bars. In April of 1983, Hydenick was released after three years on condition that he entered a state-sanctioned mental health program. With his 40th birthday fast approaching, he was eager to get his life back on track. And shockingly, despite the brutality of his crime and the psychiatrist's warning, Hidnick was able to pick up where he left off, returning to his life as a pastor in North Philadelphia. But now, he felt a glaring absence in his life.

His girlfriend, Anjanette, had vanished without a trace, and Hidnick was lonely. He longed for a family, though it's not clear whether he truly wanted one, or whether he just felt that having a family would help him to pass as the kind of upstanding citizen he wanted to be. Either way, he didn't plan to wait around for the ideal woman to cross the same. his path. He was leaving nothing to chance. So just a few months after his release, Hydenick met Betsy Disto, a young woman living in the Philippines, through a mail-order bride service. After two years of exchanging letters, Betsy moved to the U.S. and married Heidnick. But her American dream soon became a nightmare.

Heidnick made it clear that he saw Betsy as a possession, not a partner with needs or desires of her own. The marriage was violent. violent almost from day one, and after just a few months, Betsy accused Hydenick of raping her. This is another important distinction between Hydenk and the fictional gum. Heidnick had a history of sexual violence before he ever killed anyone. Even during his spree, his main intention was to rape his captive victims, rather than murder them. By contrast, sex doesn't come into the equation for gum at all. However, gender does play a key role in his psychology, and this aspect of the character is perhaps

perhaps the most controversial element of the silence of the lambs. But we'll come back to that idea a little later. For now, let's stay with Heidnick, who escaped justice by the skin of his teeth. After Betsy went to the police with the rape allegation, he was arrested. But the charges were dropped after Betsy failed to show up in court. We're not sure why she didn't show up. It's possible she was terrified of her husband and went into hiding rather than risk facing him. Though this was good news for Heidnick, he was still furious.

said Betsy for disappearing on him. She had no right to deprive him of his dream. He'd worked hard, built a thriving business, and he deserved a perfect family. And he decided then and there that he was going to get one, whatever it took. Coming up, we'll explain how Hydenick

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Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection only at Sephora. Now back to the story. There's no shortage of unforgettable moments in the silence of the lambs. but the image of Buffalo Bill's basement pit might be the most indelible of all. Clarice Starling's dogged pursuit of the killer wouldn't have half the tension it does if we weren't also seeing Catherine Martin's horrific ordeal play out in real time. And just as the character of Gumm is based on Hydenick, Catherine is based on a real survivor of his spree.

After Betsy divorced him in 1986, it took only months for Hydenick's misplaced rage to bubble over. On November 25th, he pulled over on a street corner in Philadelphia and picked up a 25-year-old sex worker named Josephina Rivera. After settling on a price, Heidnik brought Josephina home and had sex with her in his bedroom. So far, so ordinary. But as Josephina began to get dressed, Hydenick came up behind her and grabbed her by the throat. He squeezed so hard that she lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was handcuffed.

Hydenk told her if she did as he said he wouldn't hurt her. Then he shoved her out of the room and led her downstairs into his basement. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Josephina felt dread flood through her entire body. There was a sizable hole dug into the floor, surrounded by plastic bags full of dirt. It looked like a grave. Heidick forced Josephina into the hole and shackled her to the wall. He told her that he was going to get her pregnant, and she would have the baby there in the basement.

Then he left her alone in the pit. Shortly after, Hydenick abducted another woman, 24-year-old Sandra Lindsay, and imprisoned her in the basement with Josephina. Over the next two months, he kidnapped three more young women, 19-year-old Lisa Thomas, 23-year-old Deborah Dudley,

and 18-year-old Jacqueline Askins. He held all of the girls captive in the basement pit where he beat, tortured, and raped them. He told them that they were all part of his, quote, birthing harem, and that their sole purpose was to give him children. In the film, Gump's motivations are never this clear cut. But because Hattabell Lecter was once Gump's psychiatrist, he's able to offer some insight into his psychology. And what we learn is disturbing on multiple levels. In both the book and the movie, Gum is depicted as having symptoms of gender dysphoria.

The DSM-5 uses this term to refer to psychological. distress that results from an incongruence between a person's sex assigned at birth and their gender identity. It's important to note that the filmmakers have stated, Gum is explicitly not transgender, and on the screen, not according to Lecter either, who was once a psychiatrist. Lecter claims that Gum wants to be trans, because he sees it as a way to escape his own identity. During the same scene, Clarice notes that there's no link between transgender identity and violence. It seems that screenwriter Ted Talley knew that he needed to tread carefully to avoid doing further harm to a marginalized community.

But nonetheless, Gum harbors deep anger because he was denied gender confirmation surgery. He's shown wearing women's clothing and wants to make himself a woman suit out of his victim's skin. Based on the limited information we get, he believes himself to be trans, though others disagree. All of this adds up to a complicated picture. the depiction of GUM has been criticized as transphobic and accused of perpetuating negative stereotypes about the LGBTQ plus community on screen. In the years since the movie's release, Director Jonathan Demi has emphasized that Gumm is neither

gay nor trans, but also admitted that this should have been made much clearer on screen. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Demi explained that because of the abuse in his past, Gumm's life had become a series of efforts to not be himself anymore. In contrast, though Heidnik was also abused as a child, he never seemed to have any qualms about being himself. His grotesque crimes were motivated by a deep sense of entitlement, to sex, to children, and to the lives of the women he kidnapped. At some point during her captivity, Sandra died from a combination of starvation and injuries. Heidnik hadn't planned for this eventuality. Sandra was the first person he'd killed, albeit inadvertently.

But he wasn't phased by her death. death, and he certainly felt no remorse. He didn't see any of his victims as human beings, purely as vessels, a means to an end. Still, he had to figure out what to do with her body. In the end, Heidnick dismembered her and boiled her head in a pot on the stove. It's unclear why he did this. It may have been an attempt to make Sanders remains harder to identify. It's also possible that it was a way of psychologically torturing his remaining captives. According to some reports, Hydenick forced his victims to eat parts of Sandra's body. But this seems to be untrue. There's also no evidence

that he was a cannibal himself, despite many rumors to the contrary. But even without this detail, Heidnick's captives were subjected to an utterly nightmarish ordeal that went on for months, and Sandra wasn't the only one who didn't make it out. In March of 1987, Hydenick murdered Deborah by electrocution. He did this because she was a fighter, because she refused to be quiet when he told her to. He couldn't stand to be disobeyed. Josephina had picked up on this. Heidnik might be a monster, but he wasn't particularly complicated. He was insecure, desperate for control. Despite her exhaustion and terror, she started to think about how she might outsmart him. When Heidnick ordered Josephina to come on an errand with him on March 24th, she agreed without hesitation.

But once they were in the car, she realized this was no ordinary errand. Heidnik had brought her hunting with him. Hydenick forced Josephina to help him abduct 24-year-old Agnes Adams. Though Josephina felt sick throughout the whole thing, she knew this was her chance. If she could keep Hydenick happy, she saw a way to get them all to freedom. After the pair brought Agnes back to the basement, Hydenick asked Josephina if she knew another girl they could kidnap. She did, and Hydenick eagerly drove Josephina to the same area of town as before.

But Josephina told him that she had to do this by herself. She told him to wait at a gas station while she walked to the girl's house and lured her out. Hydenk was skeptical, but Josephina told him he had to trust her. After Agnes, she'd proven herself. Eventually, Hydenk agreed. Perhaps Josephina flattered his ego, pretending that she was in his thrall. But she was full. far from it. As soon as she was out of sight of Hydenk's car, Josephina broke into a run. She sprinted

to a phone booth and called the police. By the third act of the Silence of the Lambs, Josephina's fictional counterpart, Catherine, has hatched a similarly ingenious escape plan. She manages to lure Gumm's beloved Bijon Fris-Pretches into the hole with her. Despite his total lack of regard for human life, Gum loves his dog. In contrast to the dehumanizing language he uses for Catherine, he always calls precious by her name. And sure enough, when Gum realizes that she has precious, he's distraught. She tells him she'll break the dog's neck unless Gum lets her use the phone. We never find out of this plan would have worked. Before Gump can respond, Clary shows up at his doorstep. But it's clear that Catherine has successfully

identified Gums Achilles' heel, just as Josephina worked out how to manipulate Hydenick. Within minutes of Josephina's call, cops came to meet her, and she directed them to Hydenick's house. Inside, the officers uncovered a scene they'd never forget. They found Lisa, Jacqueline, and Agnes chained to a pipe in the basement, malnourished and traumatized. And once they searched the house, they discovered the horrific evidence of what he'd done with his other victims, including body parts in his freezer. Josephina's bravery and resourcefulness is astonishing. Without her, there's a good chance that she and all of Hydenk's other victims would have died in that basement. But instead, they survived, and Hydenick was arrested.

When his trial began in the summer of 1988, Hydenick was almost unrecognizable to the people who knew him. In contrast to the clean-cut pastor they knew, he looked disheveled and unwell. But this may have been part of a larger ruse. Hydenick's defense attorney worked hard to paint him as insane and therefore incapable of being responsible for his actions. Psychiatrist Jack Apshey argued that Hydenick had been hospitalized more than 20 times over the years, all for legitimate mental health problems. He attempted suicide at least once and had reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia at one

time. Apshi also claimed that Heidnik experienced paranoid delusions, but it's not clear that there's any evidence of this, and in the end, none of this testimony was enough to convince the judge that Heidnick was insane. In July of 1988, Heidnick was convicted of a litany of charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, six counts of kidnapping, five counts of rape, and four counts of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to death and executed just over a decade later. In The Silence of the Lambs, Gum gets a more immediate and cinematic kind of death sentence. Clarice unknowingly walks right into the lion's den when she's sent to interview a woman who she believes is an old boss of Jamie Gum's first victim.

But midway through the conversation, she realizes that she's actually face to face with the killer himself. After an unbearably tense chase sequence through the darkened basement, Clarice shoots gum in the chest and sets Catherine free. Once you know the extraordinary true story of Josephina's escape, it's hard not to wish that Catherine, had gotten to triumphantly slip out of Gumm's clutches in a similar way on screen. But although she doesn't end up saving herself, it's not for lack of trying. Clarice and Catherine both emerge from Jamie Gumm's house forever changed by what they experienced inside. In many classic horror movies, women are invariably left to cope with the trauma of male violence. This is where the final girl trope comes from.

The Silence of the Lambs is far from a typical horror movie, but Catherine, definitely qualifies as a final girl. Though she's rescued before she can see her plan through, she makes a meaningful effort to save herself. And crucially, she outsmarts her villainous capture. We talked a little about the significance of the final girl archetype in our last episode. She's a comforting and cathartic figure in horror cinema, a flicker of light in the darkest corners of fiction, and a way for us to safely process our feelings about real trauma. No matter what bloody atrocities take place on screen, the final girl survives. Every classic villain has his final girl counterpart, but that hasn't always been the case.

The trope of a sole female survivor emerged during the last half of the 20th century, as a welcome alternative to the doomed damsels of previous horror movies. And to understand why that happened, we need to take you all the way back to 1974 to an abandoned homestead in the middle of a sleepy Texas farm town. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back next time with the final episode in our Halloween series about the real stories behind beloved horror movies. In episode three, we'll circle back to tell the full story of Ed Gein

and how his obsession with crafting objects out of human skin inspired one of the most vicious slasher movie villains of all time. You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Happy Halloween. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast, executive produced by Max Cutler. Our head of programming is Julian Borrow. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production,

and Trent Williamson as our senior production specialist. Ben Bishop is our supervising editor. and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Joel Callan and Greg Castro, fact-checked by Kevin Johnson, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, produced by Bruce Kitovich,

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