Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Madman of Marshall Street” Gary M. Heidnik Pt. 1

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Estranged from his family, Gary Heidnik’s behavior grew more and more troubling as he grew older. By 1976, no one was around to notice when he started digging a pit in his basement — one big enough to hold a person... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of suicidal ideation, kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, rape, and violence that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Betty Heidnick stood facing the corner of the dingy kitchen, sobbing. Her new husband, Gary, had ordered her to stand there until she learned her lesson. but more than 12 hours had passed, and he still wouldn't let her move. Betty now knew that she wasn't ever supposed to cross him or question him. She was supposed to show total obedience or pay a steep price.

She felt trapped. She had traveled so far, from her small home in the Philippines to the busy city of Philadelphia, all to become the wife of a respectable American. She thought her life would be like a fairy tale, But now, just over a week after her wedding, she realized she'd stepped into a nightmare. Betty heard Gary moving behind her, watching over her. She shuddered. In the photos he'd sent her, she'd thought he looked warm, even handsome.

But up close, his wasn't the face of a fairy tale prince. It was the face of pure evil. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is serial killers. A Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're talking about Gary Michael Heidnick, the Madman of Marshall Street. 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, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today, we'll talk about how Gary Heidnick experienced decades of mental illness and violent episodes before his first murder. For most of his adult life, there were warning signs that he was capable of harming others, but no doctors, family members, or law enforcement officers seemed able to keep him out of trouble. Next time, we'll talk about how Gary carried out a plan of unspeakable cruelty,

in which he targeted the most vulnerable victims. Eventually, his crimes sent shockwaves through the city of Philadelphia. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for 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.

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And now, you can try it for free. At ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. 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.

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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. It's frightening to think that predators may walk among us on detecting. that our neighbors and acquaintances might be hiding a secret life of violence. But it's even more disturbing when perpetrators make little effort to conceal their sinister behavior.

It shows how we've failed as a society, when all the warning signs are there and we ignore them. The scariest stories aren't always the ones about the monsters who hide in the shadows out of sight until the perfect moment to strike. It's the ones about people who get away with their misdeeds again and again, seemingly unstoppable. Perhaps it's because the fail safes don't always work that the things set up to protect do nothing of the sort, even when the writing was on the wall from the beginning. Gary Michael Hydenick was born in November of 1943.

His father, Michael, worked as a machinist and also served as a city councilman. His mother, Ellen, was a beautician. The family lived in a quiet, working-class suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, But things were far from perfect. When Gary was two, his parents filed for a divorce. It wasn't an amicable separation. Each of Gary's parents blamed the other for the split.

Michael claimed that Ellen's alcoholism was the cause, while Ellen accused Michael of a gross neglect of duty. After the divorce, Gary and his younger brother, Terry, lived with their mother. Later, Terry would recall that at some point during these early years, Gary had a dangerous fall from a tree. He supposedly suffered a severe head injury that left his skull permanently deformed. Afterward, other children teased him, calling him football head. According to his brother, Gary's personality changed after the accident.

In particular, he developed a cruel streak. He'd once enjoyed feeding wild animals that wandered onto their property, but after the accident, he began torturing them instead. He'd trap them, tie them up, and hang them from trees. He also started getting into more fights with Terry and other kids in the neighborhood. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show.

Thanks, Greg. It's very possible that this fall affected Gary for the rest of his life. As we've discussed previously, numerous studies have linked early treatments, traumatic head injuries and a future propensity for violent crime. Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology Dr. Hugh Williams published a 2018 paper on such findings in the journal Lancet Psychiatry. He wrote that a traumatic head injury can disrupt development of the systems in the brain that control emotional regulation, which can in turn lead to impulsiveness and poor social

judgment. These behavioral problems have been linked to future crime and incarcerations. As a result, Dr. Williams concluded that these traumatic injuries are associated with earlier age of incarceration, increased risk of violence, and more convictions. That said, trauma doesn't have to be physical to leave a lasting impact. Gary's home life was somewhat unstable while he was growing up, which might also have impacted his development. His mother cared for him for a few years after his parents' divorce, but Ellen reportedly had difficulty controlling her heavy drinking. So after a few years, she returned the boys to their father. Unfortunately, this wasn't much of an improvement. Allegedly, Michael Heidnick was a harsh disciplinarian

who frequently beat his sons and kept them in line through humiliating punishments. During sessions that he later had with psychologists, Gary said that when he wet the bed, his father made him hang the soiled sheets from his second-story bedroom window for all the neighbors to see. And when his father was really angry, he'd grab his son by the ankles and dangle him out the window. Gary's brother Terry described similar abuse. He said that when he and Gary misbehaved, their father liked to paint a bullseye in the seat of their pants before sending them to school so that their classmates would kick them. At some point, Michael Heidnick remarried, but the children found little comfort in their new stepmother, Dorothea. According to Gary,

she had no interest in parenting. In fact, Gary said that she hated him and singled him out for more of Michael's punishments. Unsurprisingly, the abuse took its toll. Gary's life may have appeared normal to most outsiders. He was in the Boy Scouts and held a paper route like other kids. But some members of the community noticed that he seemed more withdrawn than his peers. One of his father's coworkers commented that Gary never seemed to go to dances or play sports like other boys. he was more of a loner.

As teenagers, Gary and Terry even tried to run away to California, but they were caught by the police and sent back home. Sometime after this, Gary's father enrolled him in a school in Virginia, Stanton Military Academy. Gary attended Stanton for two years. He did well there, earning good grades and staying out of trouble. But he left suddenly after his junior year. For some reason, he went back to live with his father,

enrolling in the local high school. It's not clear why Gary left Stanton, but things didn't improve when he returned home. It's possible that around this time, Gary failed an entrance exam to West Point Academy. Michael likely would have been furious at such an outcome, but his son had had enough. At that point, Gary decided it was time to leave his father's house for good. He dropped out of high school in October of 1961. Then the 17-year-old joined the army. Initially, Gary seemed to get along well there, training to become a medic.

In May of 1962, he was assigned to the 46th Army surgical hospital in Launstool, West Germany. He was there to provide medical support, but it wasn't long before Gary began to experience health problems of his own. Gary claimed that while he was in Germany, the Army performed experiments on him using LSD, and that he suffered a nervous breakdown as a result. There aren't any records of such testing in his file, but it's possible that Gary was right. The U.S. Army did conduct secret hallucinogenic drug research on American soldiers during the Cold War, most famously at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Whatever the case, Gary went to visit a doctor.

He was experiencing dizziness, headaches, blurred vision, and nausea. His doctor referred him to a neurologist who noted that he displayed signs of mental illness, possibly schizophrenia or schizzoid personality disorder. Soon afterwards, 18-year-old Gary was transferred back to the United States. He was sent to a military hospital in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and treated for mental health problems. His doctors found that he was experiencing hallucinations on top of his other symptoms. Meanwhile, an Army board reviewed Gary's case and determined that he should be honorably discharged.

With that, Gary's military career was over after just a lot. 14 months. When he left the Army, Gary was issued a 100% disability rating, which meant he was entitled to the maximum amount in monthly benefits. According to one source, this certification is usually reserved for individuals who are virtually unemployable. Even so, Gary did try to get work. In February of 1964, he moved to Philadelphia and enrolled in a nursing school. He completed the program in a year and then spent some time working as a home care nurse. Between that income and his disability checks, he saved enough to purchase a house. But his mental health problems made it difficult to lead a normal life.

Over the next few years, Gary attempted suicide several times. He tried everything, overdosing on tranquilizers, ingesting rat poison. He even drove his motorcycle straight into an oncoming truck. He also tried more indirect methods. During one doctor's exam, the physician found a string wound tightly. around his toe. Gary explained that he wanted to cause gangrene. He hoped it would spread and become fatal. Because of this erratic behavior, Gary spent the next several years in and out of psychiatric hospitals. He developed a number of idiosyncrasies, such as selective mutism. Sometimes

he'd go weeks without speaking. During this period, Gary's younger brother lived in Philadelphia. Like Gary, Terry had also been discharged from the military due to mental illness. And like Gary, he was frequently suicidal. The brothers often leaned on each other for support, but they could be one another's worst enemy. And when things turned, it could get violent. In December of 1968, Gary and Terry got into a fight. Enraged, Gary smashed his brother's head with a wooden carpenter's tool, leaving a wound that needed 16 stitches.

When Terry was recovering in the hospital, Gary came to visit him. Terry bitterly railed against Gary, accusing his brother of nearly killing him. Gary calmly responded that if he had killed Terry, he wouldn't have just bashed in his head. He would have placed the body in the bathtub and dissolved his bones in acid. But despite Gary's threatening remarks, Terry forgave him. After all, his brother was one of the few people he could talk to, and vice versa. By this stage, the brothers had cut off contact with their father, and neither had spent time with their mother in years.

All they had was each other. Then tragedy hit. In 1970, their mother Ellen died by suicide. She'd been suffering from cancer and decided to enter life by drinking a bottle of mercuric chloride. Despite their estrangement, Gary saw to her cremation and spread her ashes in Niagara Falls. After this, Gary fell into a depression. He went back into the hospital, this time for a lengthy stay. He seemed directionless with no plan for the future.

In his file, one of his doctors wrote, The patient seems to be settling in for life. But he was soon to find a new purpose. Not long after he was discharged in the spring of 1971, Gary left the house to get a cup of coffee and decided to just keep driving. He drove all the way to California, finally coming to a stop at the beach in Malibu.

There he heard the voice of God talking to him, The voice told him to start a church, one that catered towards people with intellectual disabilities. Gary didn't question it for a moment. He returned to Philadelphia and filed articles of incorporation for his church, which he called the United Church of the Ministers of God. He and Terry launched the new church in October of 1971. From then on, he went by a new title, Bishop Gary Heidnick. Now a religious leader, Gary found something he'd been lacking for most of his life.

a feeling of control over others. And he found he liked it. Coming up, Gary develops a taste for power in his new religious role. Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa from Parkast. If you haven't had a chance to check out my series mythology, you don't know what you're missing. Heroes, gods, monsters, and mayhem.

This podcast has it all. Every Tuesday, take a deep dive back in time. exploring the history, origins, and meaning behind the myths that have shaped the Earth. Each episode of mythology dramatizes a story pulled from beliefs from around the world, giving insight into how our ancestors saw the universe and how those stories resonate in our lives today. Recent episodes include the epic battle between Hercules and Theseus, the grieving spirit known as La Yorona, and a treacherous journey to the land of the dead. new episodes every Tuesday and binge the classics anytime.

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only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U-N.Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Now back to the story. After leaving the Army in 1963, Gary Hydenick spent the next several years in and out of hospitals, seeking treatment for hallucinations, mental breakdowns, and suicidal ideation.

However, in 1971, the 27-year-old seemed ready to turn his life around. Gary founded a church which he named the United Church of the ministers of God and made himself a bishop. In this role, he had absolute power over the organization. According to the church's constitution, Gary had, quote, the final word on interpretation of the Bible or the settling of religious disputes. With those rules in place, Gary went to work holding services each Sunday for a small congregation. Nearly all of them had intellectual disabilities, and most couldn't read. But Gary spent hours with his flock, teaching them to memorize hymns.

It's possible that Gary had a genuine interest in helping people. However, this new lease on life made some of the people who knew him suspicious. One friend initially assumed that it was some kind of scam, a tax dodge, and to be fair, Gary did seem to have a particular interest in using the church to acquire wealth. Gary had always been fascinated by the stock market. He watched it obsessively and learned. In 1975, he used church funds to open an account with Merrill Lynch. Gary proved to be an astute investor. Over time, his investments earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. The money belonged to the church, but Gary retained total control over it.

Money concerns aside, there were other reasons to doubt Gary's commitment to religion. Outside of Sunday services, he wasn't so pious. In fact, his behavior revealed that he still had a violent side, always simmering below the surface and ready to boil over at any moment. This side of Gary showed up in his dealings with a couple named Linda and Robert Rogers. They were Gary's tenants and rented the second floor of his house. The Rogers weren't sure what to make of their landlord. It seemed to Robert, who was black, that 32-year-old Gary Heidnick was obsessed with race.

He heard him make predictions that a race war would someday sweep the nation and also saw him read racist literature from an Aryan organization. Robert found this strange, particularly because Gary, a white man, seemed to date black women almost exclusively. But Gary's odd attitudes on race weren't the only concern. At that time, Gary was living with a girlfriend named Dorothy May Knight. Dorothy was a black woman who, due to an intellectual disability, had spent much of her life in and out of care facilities.

It seemed to Robert that Gary targeted Dorothy because of her disability. Troublingly, this isn't uncommon for predators. According to the Justice Department, people with intellectual disabilities become targets of sexual assault at rates more than seven times higher than those without them. Disability advocate Nancy Thaler says that these victims, quote, are people who often cannot speak or their speech is not well developed because of the people who often cannot speak or their speech is not well developed because of the intellectual disability, people tend not to believe them, to think that they're not credible. And so for all these reasons, a perpetrator sees a safe opportunity to victimize

people. For Gary, this was also an opportunity to reinforce his feelings of superiority. In one of his many psychiatric reports compiled over years of treatment, the doctor wrote that Gary was, quote, easily threatened by women whom he would consider to be equal to him, either intellectually or emotionally, Gary needs constant acceptance and self-assurance that he is an intelligent, worthwhile human being. But while Gary craved approval and respect, he wasn't capable of giving it to others. Dorothy seemed devoted to Gary, but he repaid her with cruelty. Linda Rogers said that Gary berated Dorothy, criticized her, beat her, and even deprived her of food.

Linda and Robert tried to help, but they weren't sure how to protect her. They were wary of crossing their volatile landlord, and with good reason. In the fall of 1976, Gary got into an argument with Linda. In retaliation, Gary decided to shut off all the utilities in the building. When Robert found out, he tried to get into the basement to turn the power back on, but found the door locked. Annoyed, Robert went outside and found a window leading to the cellar. He opened it and started to climb in. Once inside, he found himself face to face with Gary.

His landlord had been lying in wait for him, armed with a rifle and pistol. Gary told Robert that he was going to shoot him and tell the police he'd caught a burglar. Before Robert could retreat, Gary raised the pistol and fired. The bullet grazed Robert's cheekbone just below his left eye. He wasn't seriously injured, but he wondered if Gary was about to start his predicted race war, with Robert as his first victim. Robert managed to talk Gary into letting him go. Then he reported the incident.

But for some reason, not listed in public records, the aggravated assault charges were dropped. Gary never faced any consequences for the attack. But it seems he was keen to move on. Shortly after this incident, Gary sold the house. When the new buyers took their first tour of the property, they were dismayed to find the place littered with garbage, pornography and spent bullet casings. But they found something even stranger in the basement.

A large hole excavated in the concrete floor with a depth of about three feet. It was just large enough for a person to fit inside. They wondered what on earth Gary had intended to do with the hole. But since it was empty, the new owners decided to fill it in and forget about it. Meanwhile, Gary's behavior took an even more disturbing turn. Once he'd sold to the his house, he moved in with another girlfriend, Angenet Davidson. Like Dorothy, Angenet was a black woman with an intellectual disability, and she was reportedly unable to read or write. This made her an easy target for Gary, who seemed to exercise total control over her life. Sometime in 1977, Anne Jeanette became pregnant. Gary refused to let her seek medical treatment for months,

until her family called the police to intervene. When her older sister finally took her to a doctor a month before her due date, they learned that Dorothy had only gained five pounds during her pregnancy because Gary had put her on a strict diet. Despite Gary's destructive caregiving, Anjanette delivered a healthy baby girl in March of 1978. Authorities immediately placed the baby in foster care due to her mother's disability and Gary's history of mental illness. Gary was furious. As far as Gary was concerned, Angenet and the baby belonged to him. Nobody had the right to take his family away. After his baby was placed in foster care, Gary began plotting another way to have children. In May, Gary and Angenet drove to the Seelands Grove

Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Anjanet's sister, Alberta was a resident. Alberta was a person with significant intellectual disabilities and wasn't capable of living on her own. Gary and Angenet obtained a day pass to allow Alberta to leave the facility for a short family visit. But they never came back. When they hadn't returned by the following morning, officials at the center grew worried. When Alberta still hadn't returned over a week later, her caregivers were frantic. They went looking for her at Gary and Anjanette's apartment in Philadelphia, hoping to find her safe. It was Gary who answered the door. He told the center employees that he had given Alberta a bus ticket and sent her back to Harrisburg. Then he invited them to look around to

prove that she wasn't there. The employees couldn't find her anywhere, but they didn't believe Gary was telling the truth. They decided to return to the apartment the following day, this time, with police. When the authorities arrived, they searched the entire building. They even looked through the basement. When they got to an empty storage room in the back, they finally found Alberta trapped inside. She was shaking in terror. When she spotted her caregivers from the center, she rushed over and clunked them, refusing to let them go. Doctors on the scene gave the terrified woman a physical examination and found clear evidence that she'd been raped.

Following the horrifying episode, in June 1978, 34-year-old Gary was arrested and charged with a litany of crimes, including kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, and unlawful restraint. But Gary didn't spend the months leading up to his court. date in jail. Instead, he was admitted for psychological treatment at the Veterans Hospital. By the time he faced trial in November, many of the most serious charges had been dropped because Alberta was deemed not competent to testify against her attacker. Prosecutors felt they couldn't prove the case without her testimony. Nevertheless, Judge Charles Marrake found Gary guilty of three lesser charges, interference with the custody of a committed person,

recklessly endangering others and false imprisonment. He sentenced Gary to three to seven years in prison. But he also said that if it were in his power to sentence him to a longer prison term, he would have. He sensed something evil and dangerous in the defendant, and he worried that it would only get worse. He was right. Coming up, Gary gets his freedom and more opportunities to prowl for victims.

Now back to the story. In January of 1979, 35-year-old Gary Heidnick was facing up to seven years in prison after trapping his girlfriend's sister who had an intellectual disability in his basement. It seems he intended to hold her hostage, potentially forcing her to bear his children. Luckily, he was caught and brought to justice. Gary began his sentence at the state correctional institution at Greaterford, Pennsylvania. Around this same time, he was subjected to a range of psychological testing and evaluations. Records show that he was intelligent, with an IQ of at least 130, close to genius level.

But these records also indicated that he was highly manipulative, insecure, and confused. Dr. Wayne C. Blodgett was one of the psychiatrists who examined Gary just before his sentencing. He wrote that he considered Gary highly dangerous, stating that he had a, quote, high probability for serious or even bizarre offenses against relatively helpless members of the community. Dr. Blodgett said he hoped his report would raise a warning flag and force someone in the criminal justice system to pay special attention to Gary. However, that didn't happen. In prison, Gary seemed to fly under the radar.

One prison official said that he was easy to overlook because he retreated into mutism for much of his sentence. For about 30 months, he rarely spoke, even to the doctors sent to treat him. When guards asked why he wouldn't talk, he scrawled out a note telling them that the devil had stuck a cookie down his throat. Gary only began speaking again when officials told him they were terminating his parental rights so that his daughter could be adopted. Upset, he expressed a wish to visit her and provide support. Ultimately, his rights were terminated anyway.

While Dr. Blodgett seemed concerned for the danger Gary posed to other people, others were more worried about the danger he posed to himself. While in custody, he attempted suicide on several different occasions. Once, he even smashed a light bulb and tried to eat the crushed glass in an effort to self-harm. At several points, he was sent to state hospitals for psychiatric treatment when prison officials worried that he would harm himself. Ultimately, Gary was released three years short, of his full seven-year sentence. His parole was conditioned on him getting inpatient care at the VA hospital in Coatsville, Pennsylvania.

But when he got there, his doctors didn't see any need to keep him for long. He only stayed for three weeks. By April 12, 1983, he was out of the hospital and back in society, and he had no real friends or family to welcome him. His mother was dead. He wasn't on speaking terms with his father, and by that point, he and his brother Terry had drifted apart.

That meant there was nobody around to notice when his behavior took an even more sinister turn. After his release, he bought a home on North Marshall Street in Philadelphia. It's not clear whether he worked at this time, but he often told people he was a professor at University of Pennsylvania. He liked the way that sounded. It's most likely that he was living off his disability benefits, though he still had access to potentially hundreds of,

of thousands of dollars from his investments through his church. With this money, he purchased a Rolls-Royce, a Cadillac, a Lincoln Continental, and other luxury vehicles. He used the cars and the money to try to impress women, who were usually individuals with intellectual disabilities. He'd drive to a fast food restaurant near the Elwyn Institute, a non-profit servicing persons with various types of disabilities. Then Gary would hang around, waiting for women from the Institute to stop by the restaurant. Neighbors said they often saw Gary bringing women back to his house, sometimes two or three at a time for group sex.

But these activities didn't satisfy all of Gary's desires. It seems he still expressed an interest in fathering as many children as he could. Perhaps he viewed a family as another sign of power, like he did his cars, stock accounts, and bishop title. It's a familiar pattern that can be seen in men around the world, writing about gender dynamics in developing countries, sociologist Constantine Sophilios Rostschild described how impregnating women is viewed as a status symbol in patriarchal environments. She wrote that for some men, fathering many children is reassuring proof of their masculinity, potency, and virility.

Gary seemed obsessed with these kinds of status symbols, and he looked for them everywhere. Not long after leaving prison, he began corresponding with a young woman in the Philippines. named Betty Distow, who we met through a pen pal brochure. Over the next two years, Gary courted Betty by mail and occasionally by telephone. He told her he was a clergyman looking for a wife. To Betty, he seemed ideal, and in September of 1985, she received a visa and flew to the United States. She and Gary married three days after her arrival. But almost immediately, Betty found herself living in a nightmare.

A week into her marriage, she caught Gary having sex with three women he'd brought back to their home. He told her that this was how marriages worked in America. He explained that he was always going to sleep with other women, but she should consider herself lucky since he had chosen her to marry. When Betty objected, he punched her and forced her to stand in the corner for 14 hours. For the next few months, Betty endured Gary's horrific treatment. He beat her, raped her, forced her to sleep on the dirty floor, floor, deprived her of food, and mocked her as she watched him have sex with other women.

It was relentless. Then, Betty discovered she was pregnant. At this point, she realized she couldn't bear Gary's abuse anymore. In mid-January of 1986, Betty placed her passport and a change of clothes in a bag and hit it behind some bushes in front of the house. A little later, she told Gary she was going shopping. Instead, she grabbed the bag and escaped to her. a women's shelter. Two weeks after her escape, Betty obtained a protection order, which barred

Gary, now 42, from physically striking, harassing, or threatening her in any way. In her petition, she stated that by calling himself a bishop, Gary used his position of authority to seduce women. It was an astute observation. Betty also reported Gary to the police, so the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office charged Gary with spousal rape, indecent assault, and simply assault. But on the day of the preliminary hearing, Betty never showed up. Perhaps she was too frightened. But without her testimony, the charges against Gary were dropped. In September of 1986, Betty gave birth to a son, and understandably, she didn't want Gary anywhere near them. Once again, Gary felt he'd been denied his right to a family. He became more determined to

take what he desired by any means necessary. Two months later, he made his move. On the night of November 26, 1986, a 25-year-old sex worker named Josephina Rivera stood on a corner near northeast Philadelphia, scouting out potential customers. As she shivered in the cold, a gleaming white Cadillac pulled up beside her. Gary Hydenick was behind the wheel. He beckoned to her. Gary complimented Josephina, telling her she looked like Diana Ross. He offered to pay $20 for her company, and she joined him in the car. Gary drove to a nearby McDonald's and ordered coffee. Then he asked Josephina if she'd come back to his place. Josephina usually didn't like going home with her clients.

She would have preferred a brief encounter in his car, but she was a single mother to three children and desperate for the cash. So she agreed. But they got to his house on Marshall Street, she felt apprehensive. It was a strange place. Pennies were glued to the walls in the kitchen, and one in five-dollar bills were pasted on some of the walls upstairs. Despite her trepidations, she followed Gary to his bedroom.

He paid her the $20 he'd promised, then they got into bed and had sex. Afterwards, Gary got up to get dressed, and Josephina turned to reach for her own clothes. But as she grabbed her jeans, she felt Gary's hands on her, wrapping around her throat. Gary was throttling her. Then just as she was passing out, he left her. go. By the time she was able to understand what was going on, he had ordered her to stand up and put her hands behind her back. Terrified, Josephina obeyed. A moment later, she felt the cold metal of a pair of handcuffs lock around her wrist. Gary forced her down one set of stairs

and then another, all the way into the basement, where he guided her to an old mattress lying on the floor. He then reached into a nearby cardboard box and pulled out a pair of of metal muffler clamps, meant to fit around a car's exhaust pipe. Gary tightened the clamps around Josephina's ankles. Then he grabbed a metal chain and secured one end to the clamps, then looped the other around a pipe running along the ceiling. Josephina was trapped, chained up like a prisoner. She was frozen in fear, and one sight was more terrifying than anything else. A large hole hollowed out of the concrete floor. Josephina didn't know what the The whole was there for, but for all she knew, she was staring at her own grave.

Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back soon with Part 2 of Gary Heidnick's story. We'll talk more about his horrific scheme of kidnapping and torture and about the victims who endured his evil plot. For more information on Gary Heidnick, amongst the many sources we used, we found Cellar of Horror, The Story of Gary Heidnick, by Ken Englade, extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify

Originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Nick Johnson with production assistants

by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Christina Pammy's, with writing assistance by Joanna Philbin and Joel Callan. Fact-checking by Bennett Logan and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed, is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer

avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some Monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession.

Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very simple. Snake light lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.