Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 453 - The House of Horrors Killer Gary Heidnik

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Ever heard of Gary Heidnik? Pop culture wise, he's made a much bigger impact than most murderers, but few seem to know his story. This literal genius, who was also schizophrenic, joined the army, became a nurse, made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stock market, crushed whatever college courses he took, formed his own successful church, and dug out a pit in his basement to store women he'd kidnapped. Women he raped in an attempt to impregnate them, so that their mixed-race babies would help end racism and bring peace to the world! We gotta another wild one this week.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

It's the late 1980s in Northside, Philadelphia. A man walks into a McDonald's. He's got over a half million dollars in the bank, a Cadillac in the parking lot, and a gold Rolex on his wrist. He's also got a pit in his basement, several of them he has kidnapped in chains, and a freezer full of body parts. This is not the beginning of a sick joke. That was a typical Tuesday in the world of Gary Michael Heidnik.

From the outside, he looked like a weird reclusive stock market success story. A guy who wore cheap leather fringe jackets but made savvy financial moves. Oh, and he was a self-ordained bishop of his own strange church. From the inside, he was building a rape and breeding dungeon beneath his Philadelphia row home. Between November of 1986 and March of 1987, Hyde-Nic had kidnapped six women, imprisoned them in his basement, and subjected them to torture, sexual assault,

forced cannibalism, and electric shock. Two of them would not survive. His twisted plan? To create a breeding factory of captive women to repopulate the world with in his own warped image. You're about to hear the insane story, literally insane story, of a self-declared minister, shrewd investor, and full-blown sadist. Welcome to the

nightmare house that was Gary M. Hydenick. Hydenick's case is another reminder that evil comes in many forms. Sometimes it's your friendly, nondescript neighbor. Sometimes it's a guy in the alley who does look like a killer. And sometimes it's a nice-looking guy, smart guy, driving a fancy car, giving you stock tips and quoting scripture. Get ready for this week's sadistic, cannibalistic, DIY church building, sex slave capturing, it puts the lotion on its skin, edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck.

You're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Well happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suck Master, guy who maybe got a little too into rhyming like Dr. Seuss last week, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise me to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. One quick announcement and then we are off and running with Father's Day just around the corner. Why not get yourself into a brand new hot, hard, Father Daddy tea.

From times of featuring me, the hottest daddy of them all, just go with it. Don't think about it too hard. Don't look at pictures of me. This tea is perfect both for hot, hard father daddies, dripping in silky cotton blends and those who aren't but deeply appreciate hot, hard father daddies. Also, available now, the Department of Good Physical Health Condition Division of Sustenance Dwelling Yuri Putin's Glory of Mother Russia Digestion nibbles official work tea is in store. Hi

I'm Yuri Putin of Department of Good Physical Health Condition Division of Sustenance Dwelling Yuri Putin's Glory of Mother Russia Digestion nibbles. I am pleased to finally have shirt with pictures of myself on it But do not think I value self above a horde of comrades. We all equal. All workers will now equally wear official department shirts. No exceptions. Thumbs up for Russia's best. To check out that, all other drops at badmagicproductions.com.

And let us begin. So welcome to another disturbing case of another disturbing dirtbag. Thankfully not as fucked up as PB Gaskins. Jesus Christ. That one still makes me feel gross when I think about it. I was just talking to somebody who ran into a fan and was discussing that one and was talking about how like for the first half of it it was so like there was so much dark comedy just the weird absurdity of him in a fucking clubhouse and I don't know it felt like it kind of like took the edge off of the horror but then once he got into like his words oh my god the details of crimes like that they just they feel so much more disturbing to me when the killer is talking about them or worse, joking about them in great detail in their

own words. Don't get me wrong this week though, Gary definitely super fucked up, definitely a monster. What he did was horrific. But there are so many strange peripheral details of his life that are so absurd. They will take us out of the depravity of his worst deeds and provide some absurd levity and moments. Thank God. Gary Michael Hydenich managed to become a licensed nurse, almost a millionaire investor, I think at one point with his money was up, a self-proclaimed minister when he wasn't committed to psychiatric institutions, which he was very often. He had a genius level IQ, but was also too insane to remain in the military. However, he was sane enough to become become again, an incredibly shrewd financial investor, build himself a lucrative tax-free business, running a

bullshit church out of his home. Same home, where he kept women chained up in the basement. From November of 1986 to March of 1987, this ridiculous peckerwood abducted six black women from the streets of Philadelphia, and then held them captive in his basement where they were chained, raped, beaten, subjected to electric shock, starved and psychologically tortured. He fed them dog food. He fed them each other.

He beat them. He made them beat each other. And two women, Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley, didn't survive his fucked up games. And what was his motive? Not money, not fame, not even revenge, probably almost certainly deviant sexual satisfaction derived from long held violent sadistic fantasies, but he wouldn't admit to that. Instead he claimed he wanted to create a breeding colony. He had a twisted plan to repopulate the world with his own children to bring peace to the world by creating a bunch of mixed-race babies in a bid to end racism.

God, what a great dude. Heidnick was incredibly diluted and dangerous, but somehow also high function enough to stay under the radar of law enforcement for months and months. He evoked suspicion from family, friends, neighbors, even the cops while he was committing the worst of his crimes despite multiple past arrests for rape and kidnapping. We will be walking through this former walking horror show in chronological order in today's Time Suck Timeline, where we will take a clear look at the man the local media dubbed both the House of Horrors Killer and the Monster of Marshall Street. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline.

Gary Michael Hyde-nick transported into this world, possibly from hell, on November 22, 1943, arriving in the quaint middle class Cleveland suburb of Eastlake, Ohio, lying along the shore of Lake Erie northeast of the city. Born in the Cleveland area, a dead giveaway, this killer was destined to create a house of horrors. Because we see this door every day, every day. We eat ribs with this dude. But we didn't have a clue that that girl was in that house. She said, please help me get it out. Then I gave it away. Hadn't pushed that button in a while.

This dude predated previous Cleveland House of Horrors monster Ariel Castro. Gary's father Michael was a tool and die maker, and his mother, described as an attractive woman of Creole descent was a beautician. 18 months after Gary was born, his mom gave birth to another baby boy and named him Terry. Gary and Terry. What a combo. They sound like tag team wrestlers who literally lose all their matches. Or identical twin incels.

Or maybe two guys who run on ice cream and magic supply shop combo. Fucking Gary and Terry's cool tricks and frozen licks. I don't know why any of that popped into my mind. I don't think anyone else was probably thinking that. Gary and Terry had a rocky relationship, possibly if not probably, because both of them were quite literally insane. Almost everyone in Gary's immediate family had serious mental health struggles. In 1946, Gary and Terry's gene providers, Michael and Ellen, got a divorce according to court documents. They separated because Ellen had wanted to name their children Barry and Larry, while Michael had insisted upon Gary and Terry and had only agreed to have boys named Barry

and Larry if they had more children. But Ellen was worried that they might end up with girls as well. And she didn't want to end up with a half dozen kids named Gary, Terry, Sherry, Carrie, Barry, and Larry, which is exactly what Michael wished for. God, I wish that was the real reason they split up. No, in truth, in their divorce filings, Ellen accused her husband of, quote, gross, neglect of duty, while he accused her of being a, quote, wild woman and a boozer. Gary was only two at the time. Initially, he and his younger brother Terry went to go live with their mom.

They stayed with her for the next four years and by all accounts, those four years not super great. The boy's relationship with Ellen was a rocky one. Things got worse when she married her second husband and then didn't improve when they split and she married a third. Still wasn't great when they split and she married her fourth husband. She was an addict, alcoholic throughout these relationships. By most accounts, seemed to have been aloof and distant as a mother. So the boys didn't have a great relationship with their mom.

And they also didn't get along with each other. Gary, like most future sadistic killers of women, did not grow up in a super nurturing, well-adjusted home. Gary and Terry frequently got into fist fights, never played together, not according to Gary at least. On top of that, Gary also didn't get along with his classmates. He was bullied for having a weird-shaped skull. I don't notice it when I look at pictures of him.

Looks like he has a pretty normal-shaped head to me. Maybe he grew out of it. At some point during his early years, Gary allegedly fell from a tree, and the tumble left him with a deformed skull. And because of that, the kids at school would call him Football Head. That's a pretty good nickname. According to Football Heads, former attorney, Garibare's brother, Terbear, thought the tree accident and the unproven and unsubstantiated brain injury it caused resulted in Gary becoming a psychopath. In a recent interview, attorney Charles Peruto said, his brother Terry believes the accident was the root cause of Gary's erratic behavior.

A curious comment indeed, considering Terry himself spent much of his life in mental institutions and made numerous suicide attempts. After the boy's mother Ellen overdosed on medication and alcohol in 1950, when Gary was just six, he and Terry were sent to go live with their dad Michael. They would still see their mom, how often is not made clear. As an adult, Gary will say that he suffered severe physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father. For example, Gary was a lifelong bed wetter and he said that whatever he did or whenever he did wet the bed, his father would make him hang his piss stained sheets from his bedroom window

So everyone in the neighborhood could see what he had done That is pretty fucked up if he did. According to Ken Englert, author of Cellar of Horror, the story of Gary Heidnik Gary also claimed that when Michael thought his son was really bad He'd hang him out the window too. Grab him by his ankles, dangle him head first 20 feet or more off the ground Grab him by his ankles, dangle him head first, 20 feet or more off the ground. Okay, you know what? So, has dad prescribed to the old school window system of child rearing? Is it really that big of a deal? When your kid does something bad, you either hang a reminder of the shitty thing that they did or you hang them out of the window. And when they're good, you reward them by letting them look out that same window and admire the view from a less dangerous perspective. Right? How is that not just, I mean, I get it. It's we've changed in our parenting, but it's hard to keep up.

It's hard to keep up with the rules constantly changing on what makes a good parent, right? Okay. One day hanging my kid out of a fucking window by his feet makes me a bad dad. You know, uh, but previously, uh, I don't know what to talk about. Uh, anyway, after Gary was arrested in 1987 for his final crimes, his dad Michael Heidnik denied his abuse allegations vehemently. However, he did admit that he stopped speaking to his son shortly after Gary turned 18.

Ken Englade wrote, His father told reporters that he had no use for his son and Gary had none for him. When Gary Heidnik ended up in jail charged with all sorts of monstrous crimes, his father had no sympathy. If he did those things, his father said, he hoped they gave him the electric chair. He said he would even pull the switch himself. It's pretty hardcore. Honestly, in this case, pretty deserved.

I can't imagine one of my kids doing something as horrific as the things that Gary did. But if they did, I don't know if I'd be willing to stand by them in court, come visit them in prison. What a dilemma for a parent. Right, I'd still love them. I do believe in the concept of truly unconditional love between a parent and a child, but holy shit, I would also be repulsed by them.

Sure as shit wouldn't like them. 1966 now. By the time Gary reached the eighth grade, he had two major obsessions. And curiously, neither one of them were boners. They were getting rich and joining the military. Not sure those two often go hand in hand. Joining the military, very noble profession, not known to be a real wealth generator, I don't think, at least not when you're in active duty.

Former classmates recalled how every day Gary wore oversized military fatigues he had purchased at secondhand stores and that he frequently talked about his dream of attending West Point. During his adolescence, it appears Gary also had a pseudo catchphrase that he would say to anyone who would listen. And his catchphrase was, "'One day, I'm gonna be a millionaire.'"

I think it's weird when somebody has a phrase that they like to just use over and over and over. Once a week, maybe sometimes more, Lindsay and I go to Wendy's, grab Frosty's, regular size or whatever medium, regular, one of those two, chocolate. And this one due to the drive-through, if you ask him how he's doing without fail, he will say, another day in paradise.

He says it the same way, same inflection every time, same grin. Another day in paradise. He must say that hundreds of times a week, always with the same smile, yeah, way same inflection every time same grin another day in paradise He must say that hundreds of times a week always with the same smile Yeah, always same inflection like he's a fucking talking doll with a pull string and every time you pull that string It's just another day in paradise. I picture young Gary being like that. He's that guy. How you doing Gary? Another day in paradise one day. I'm gonna be a millionaire Okay, that's the fucking hundredth time I've heard that Gary. While Gary's peers were reading superhero comics he was reading

the financial sections of the newspaper learning how to get rich quick. That plus his misshapen pigskin noggin made him a pretty easy target for bullies as you can probably imagine. But also I wish I would have spent time learning finance as a kid. It's such important info I still don't feel like I understand enough of it. Gary did do traditional kid things as well. He joined the Boy Scouts, joined various sports teams, worked odd jobs in the summers, like painting fire hydrants for the city.

His dad, Michael, during his trial would be quoted as saying, "'He was an average kid. He went to school. He played baseball like the other kids, but Jesus, he must have lost his buttons. That's a weird phrase, especially in this context. Lost his buttons? Anyone else think that's a bit too cutesy for describing somebody who raped, imprisoned, tortured, and killed women? Imagine describing Hitler that way.

What do you think of Hitler, Michael? Ho ho, hot dog. That guy? The Fuhrer? Really seems to have lost his buttons with all the Holocaust tomfoolery. Well, what do you think of Hitler, Michael? Ho-ho, hot dog. That guy? The Fuhrer? Whew. Really seems to have lost his buttons with all the Holocaust tomfoolery. According to those who knew him back then, Gary was an exceptionally smart child. One of the most common facts people refer to to prove his brilliance is that his IQ was once tested and found to be 148, which is easily in the genius range. However, in recent decades, the validity of the IQ test has been called into question by a variety of scientists who argue that it is not actually always an accurate measure of intelligence. This is because the test measures things like memory capacity, logic, and ability to process practical information, but it doesn't and it can't measure rational thinking, real-life judgment thinking, and one's ability to weigh information against their intuitive cognitive biases.

As one expert, Shane Frederick, writing about IQ in an article published by Yale University explained, A high IQ is like height in a basketball player. It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things are not equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall. And there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ. That's a fucking great analogy. And I'm not using that analogy to argue that Gary was not smart to be clear. He certainly was in many ways very, very smart. Just thought that perspective on IQ was worth sharing.

Gary did great in school until some mental health struggles surfaced. In 1967, when Garbert was 13, he enrolled at the Stanton Military Academy in Stanton, Virginia, a private all-boys school known for rigorous academics. And on paper, Gary did fairly well while at Stanton. He had a few friends, never got into trouble, scored very well on all his exams. However, Gary later revealed that it was during his first few years at Stend that he initially sought out psychiatric treatment. The specifics of the mental health issues he was dealing with at that time are unknown, as are the type and length of treatment he allegedly received. However, his sporadic life decisions over the ensuing months pretty

good indicator that he was in fact dealing with some major mental health issues at the time. Halfway through his junior year, despite again, you know, having a good social life by all appearances, doing well academically, he just abruptly dropped out of Stanton Military Academy, moved back to the Cleveland suburbs to live with his dad and stepmom. Back at home, he enrolled in North High School in Eastlake, but then just six weeks later, he abruptly transferred to East High School in Cleveland and then just a month after that he dropped out entirely. This is 1960. Obviously something serious was going on. A little over a year later obviously he'd lost his buttons. His buttons, well he hadn't lost them but at

that point you know his buttons were, the threads were loose on his buttons. He had loose buttons. A little over a year later, after he drops out, November 29th, 1961, just a week after he turned 18, Gary enlisted in the US Army, and at first, again, he did great. He scored high on his aptitude test. His drill sergeant for basic training graded him excellent, both on conduct and efficiency.

Upon graduation from basic training he applied for multiple specialist positions including military police officer, heavy equipment operator, stenographic clerk, and electrician. But all his requests were promptly rejected and instead he was sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas in order to become a medic. He arrived in San Antonio January of 1962 and just like in boot camp he fucking crushed it in his medical training, passed his exams with flying colors. Top of his class. During this time in Texas Gary also started a side hustle of sorts, tried to use his finance aptitude to make a little extra money. The army was paying him more money than he had ever seen before, more than he

needed for his living expenses. He figured the best way to put it to use was to become a loan shark. According to his former friend John Francis Cassidy, Gary came up with a system where he lent out some of his pay to his fellow soldiers, charging them exorbitant interest. But was Gary willing to act as an enforcer and collect if somebody didn't pay up? Always a risk, right, if you're gonna loan shark. What if somebody who owes you money just tell you to go fuck yourself when it's time for them to make a payment? What are you willing to do to them to make it clear that that is not an option? In May of 1962, Gary was reassigned to serve as a medic in the 46th Army Surgical Hospital in Lahnstuhl, Germany. The transfer from San Antonio to Lahnstuhl happened so fast that Gary did not have time to collect

on the roughly $5,000 in loans he was owed, which sucked for him, but was great for the soldiers he had lent that money to. So he lost his ass on that side hustle. Bye, bye, loan sharking. He was a gift sharker. He was a gift shark. He would just give you money and then, you know, maybe kind of want it back but not get it. A few weeks after his arrival in Germany, Heidenich took a test that should he have passed it, the army would have granted him the equivalent of a high school diploma and Gary crushed it. Got a 96% on the test, full 28 points higher than the average.

But then, three months later, something odd happened. August 25, 1962, Gary asked his superior if he could see a doctor. He claimed he had been experiencing spells of dizziness and severe nausea, as well as occasional blurred vision in his right eye, which obviously is pretty serious. The hospital neurologist that examined Gary noticed a few very distinct things about him. The first was that Gary had a visible tick. A few times per hour, Gary would spasmodically jerk his head horizontally, though he didn't seem to notice that he did it. The second, through who knows how many things the doctor noted,

was that Gary was exhibiting clear symptoms of schizophrenia. According to the Mayo Clinic, schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people think, feel, and behave. It may result in a mix of hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and behavior. Hallucinations involve seeing things or hearing voices that are not observed by others. Delusions involve firm beliefs about things that are not true. People with schizophrenia can seem to lose touch with reality, which can make daily living very hard. However, this new concern didn't lead immediately to Gary's dismissal from the Army. schizophrenia can seem to lose touch with reality, which can make daily living very hard.

However, this new concern didn't lead immediately to Gary's dismissal from the Army. It did get him sent back to the States, though. Two months later, Gary was transferred back to the U.S. to serve as a medic at the military hospital in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. There he continued receiving psychiatric treatment for the same issues he had complained of in Germany. Additionally, during this time, Gary also started to complain of quote, seeing things moving. Gary's Pennsylvania posting would be short-lived. Only two months after his arrival, he was honorably discharged

on the grounds of having a schizoid personality disorder. Gary pushed back on the review board's decision. He didn't want to leave the military, but they wouldn't budge. The decision was final, and it was the beginning of the end for Gary M. Hydeinck. Now he really wasn't going to recover his loan sharking debt. And also, holy shit, we spiral out from here. Over the next 15 years, Gary was in and out of various hospitals at least 21 different times. 21 different times.

And that's just the documented admissions. According to biographer Ken Englade, there is a six-year gap in his official medical record that shows no hospitalizations. And Ken wrote about that in Cellar of Horror, commenting, Given his history before and after, that is virtually impossible. He almost had to be somewhere, but no one knows where. Additionally, from 1963 to his arrest in 1987, Gary attempted suicide at least 13 different times.

And again, that's just the documented times. According to Ken, once he drove his motorcycle head on into a truck, another time he tried to hang himself. Once he chopped up a light bulb, gulped down the glass. My God. Several times he tried to OD on stelazine or thorazine, his two most common medications. It was usually after such attempts that he was hospitalized more frequently than not voluntarily. So dude was spiraling. Gary would surrender himself or his brother Terry would take him in the hospital following these attempts. Sometimes he would then return the favor by then taking Terry to the hospital when Terry was suicidal, which

was also frequent. A lot of instability in this family. Within a year of being discharged from the army, Gary tried to kill himself by taking 1500 milligrams of Thorazine, and when that didn't work, he tried rat poison. Around that same time in 1963, Gary, who's still only 19 at this point, decided to stay in Pennsylvania and become a licensed practical nurse. After getting his state LPN certificate, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and he fucking crushed it again. At first, right, he earned credits in chemistry, composition, anthropology, history, sociology, biology, commercial law, and marketing in just a single semester. Heavy course load with some very tough classes mixed in there and crushed it.

But then he dropped out his second semester. Clearly, it seems to me, he had very legit mental problems. And I only say it seems to me because the prosecution later will argue that he's fake and all this. And also clearly very smart. Before moving forward, he may have lived with a married black woman and had a baby girl with her that she would raise without him. No names for either this woman or the baby are revealed in sources. They're just briefly mentioned in that seller of horror book about Gary. Gary will not only almost exclusively date black women, but he will, even though he looked very white, identify as being mixed. His mom,

although looked white, claimed some mixed ancestry. Mom, also very mentally ill, told Gary he was mixed. He would identify as quote colored. That's the box he would check on forms like the ones he would fill out when he was being checked into a psych ward. But then he would also claim that he was kidnapping black women and having sex with them because he was white and they were black and he wanted to create mixed-race babies. He's again, he's not well. Okay, so Gary starts out working at a Veterans Administration Hospital in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, here after he drops out of school. This is just 40 miles outside of Philadelphia.

And then he gets fired just a few weeks later for being rude to patients. Maybe he was loan sharking them when they wouldn't pay up. He'd refuse to give them their meds. No sources allege that. I just think it would be pretty funny to read about somebody trying to loan sharking them when they wouldn't pay up. You know, he'd refuse to give them their meds. No sources allege that. I just think it would be pretty funny to read about somebody trying to loan shark patients at a hospital. I'm sad, but also funny to read about.

With no money for rent, rather than be homeless, Gary now decided to return to the Cleveland suburbs, see if he could stay for a while with dad and stepmom. Not much info about what would be Gary's final visit with his dad, except for the fact that it just, you know, really didn't go well because they just won't speak after this. Quickly booted from his dad's house for unknown reasons,

Gary then tried to mend what at this point was a pretty broken relationship with his mom, but that didn't go well either. He couldn't stay with her. So over the next couple of years, Gary will continue to stay and at least lose contact with his mom while he crashes with different people. He knows, weaves in and out of various psychiatric facilities,

mental hospitals in Pennsylvania. There's fucking whispers that maybe he fathered another child or something. He's, who knows. 1967. At the age of 23 now, using a $2,000 a month disability pension from the U.S. Army he had finally qualified for after taking a couple years to get his payments together for reasons not specified in sources. Gary purchased his own three-story home in Philadelphia renting out two floors to other people.

Things are looking up. That same year he began hanging out at the Elwin Institute, a nonprofit organization based in the Philly metro area that still provides social and professional services to adults and children with intellectual disabilities to this day. Did he get help there? I don't think so. Sources aren't entirely clear, but I don't think so. I think he was volunteering and definitely hitting on female patients and befriending male ones. You'll see soon that Gary's social circle becomes full of almost nothing but people with intellectual disabilities. Maybe he's also loan sharking them, taking advantage. Some fucking cognitively impaired

10-year-old, right? Yeah, kid, I can loan you 10 bucks for some snack money for $3,000, for 3,000% annual interest. But you better pay me back quick. If you don't make interest payments for a year, well, you're going to owe me $310. After two years, $9,300. After three, $279,000. You don't want to fucking know how much it's gonna be after that, so don't fuck around. Get your snacks. Don't make me break your legs. February of 1968, Gary does something very weird, which again points to his mental health struggles. He walked into the Veterans Administration Hospital in Coatesville, where he used used to work and refused to speak to any member of the staff. However, he did respond to their commands but maybe a bit too aggressively. For example, when

a nurse asked him to remove his watch, he did technically do that, just not in a normal way. He violently, dramatically ripped off his watch, threw it down to the floor, smashed it into pieces by fucking stomping it. Then when they asked him to undress for his physical, took off his clothes a little too quick, a little too eagerly. And when they then asked him why he had a piece of string tied very tightly around one of his big toes, he answered by writing on a piece of paper that he wanted to induce gangrene. And why did he want gangrene? Well, he wrote that he hoped it would spread throughout his entire body and then kill him once and for all. So clearly, he needed that he hoped it would spread throughout his entire body and then kill him once and for all.

So clearly, he needed to be committed. But for some reason he wasn't. He was medicated and sent back home. And then soon his already fragile mental health status would take a turn for the worse. On May 30, 1970, Gary's mother, Ellen Heidenich, she committed, she died by suicide by drinking an entire bottle of mercuric chloride. Mercuric chloride, a highly toxic and corrosive mercury compound. No longer used in modern medicine for therapeutic purposes because it's very bad for you. It's poison. It used to be used as an antiseptic disinfectant for wounds and skin infections and also as a laxative and purgative and a treatment of syphilis and other diseases, but it does far more harm than good, medically speaking. Currently it is still used industrially, mainly in the production of wood preservilis and other diseases, but it does far more harm than good, medically speaking.

Currently, it is still used industrially, mainly in the production of wood preservatives, fungicides, and disinfectants. Ingesting it would have been an especially painful way to die. When Ellen Heidnik drank that bottle of poison, the first thing she would have experienced would have been the pain of it burning the mucous membranes of her mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach. That would have been followed by severe and probably bloody vomiting, severe also probably bloody diarrhea, and very intense abdominal cramping. The lining of her GI tract would have started to peel away like slough off, which would have led to internal bleeding and been wildly painful. And ultimately she would have suffered multiple organ failure, most significantly complete failure of her kidneys and died.

In the wake of his mother's especially brutal death, Gary's already not so great mental state declined rapidly. Before we find out how literally crazy things get with Gary, time to take this week's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, if you want to help us with donations each month, sign up on Patreon and get the entire catalog ad free and more. I'm back and now let's hear about how well or, well, I guess how not so well Gary was doing following his mother's death.

His visits to psychiatric facilities became more frequent. His behavior during treatment more alarming. Well, maybe not more alarming. It was already pretty alarming, but it remained fucked up. For example, he began wearing a leather jacket that he refused to take off. 100 degrees out? Well, leather jacket stays on. Raining out? Jacket stays on. Jacket reeks of B.O. So strong it makes other people nearby dizzy and nauseous.

Stays on. He stopped taking care of his personal hygiene completely. Began to intentionally go mute for days at a time. When he would only communicate through a series of milice messages. He stopped taking care of his personal hygiene completely, began to intentionally go mute for days at a time, when he would only communicate through a series of military salutes and signals. Like if his right pant leg was rolled up to his knees, well that was Gary's signal to the hospital staff that he wanted to be left alone. Don't fucking talk to me. Look at my pant leg rolled up to my knee and my right leg. One doctor that treated Gary during this time described his patient saying,

Gary is quite unkept in appearance, and is still wearing the same leather jacket, which is creating a social disturbance through its odiferous emanations. That was a very kind clinical way of saying, this motherfucker is ripe. This period was also littered with various suicide attempts. Gary's brother Terry also attempted suicide on a few occasions. And once in a while, the two of them would end up being treated at the same facility at the same time.

That's so weird. To be in a psychiatric hospital for attempting suicide and they're like, Oh hey, that's my brother Terry. What are you in for? Same, same thing. Speaking of Terry, at one point in the months following their mother's death, while both Gary and Terry were not in the hospital, Gary just, for reasons not made clear, just surprise attacked his brother, ambushed his brother at Terry's apartment, beat the shit out of him with a wooden plank. For fuck's sake, like really beat him. Put him in the hospital.

The stunt landed Gary in the psych ward, and yeah, and put fucking Terry in the ER When the next saw each other Terry asked his brother What if you had killed me and Gary apparently took a moment to contemplate the question and then said in all seriousness I would have put your body in the bathtub and poured acid over it to dissolve the bones I would have had to be careful while mixing the acid though because I wouldn't want to damage the drain pipes I would leave you there to soak for two or three days and if there were any big bones left, I'd saw them up and put them in a trash compactor.

Then I'd distribute them around the neighborhood in various trash cans. So yeah, so that's not alarming at all. Wasn't like he obviously put a tremendous amount of thought into that. Terry later told police that for years after this incident, he had recurring nightmares about Gary chasing him around with a wooden plank. Yeah, I bet he did.

Following this wooden plank incident, Gary, who somehow managed to get himself a living girlfriend during this turbulent period of his life, now saw that girlfriend leave him. When the two started dating, pretty unknown, but some sources say they had dated off and on, but mostly on for about a decade. She was a black woman who was over a decade older than Gary and described as quote severely mentally disabled and missing literally all of her teeth. And she had apparently spent almost a third of her adult life in mental institutions. Okay so Gary you know he's walking an interesting walk in his life right now. During a brief period of time when he was not in psychiatric care. This maybe is like my favorite part of the story and just how ridiculous it is.

Gary took an impromptu trip to California. This is 1971. He's 27 years old. And it's so strange. When he left his Philadelphia apartment the morning he started his big trip, he hadn't planned on driving across the United States. He hadn't even planned on driving across town. He hadn't packed a suitcase, a toothbrush, deodorant, change of clothes, nothing. He was just planning on driving down the street to get himself a donut. But something inside Gary urged him to go west. Go west young man, right now. So go west he did, like all the way west. Completely on a whim with zero

planning. About a week later he arrived in the west coast in Malibu, California. And while taking the vast glory of the Pacific Ocean, he would claim that God spoke to him. Which did happen. If you replace the word God with the words his schizophrenia. Gary's schizophrenia did speak to him. A Dude literally drove clear across the country over 2700 miles on a whim. I fucking came me I said are you fucking kidding me? That new button you just heard is recording My friend Carrie sent to Lindsay of her two-year-old son miles saying that he might be the funniest little kid to ever live And fuck is his favorite word

I mean, it's a great word. He used it in a variety of ways and always seems to use it correctly. The second I heard that video, I thought I have to ask Carrie for permission to use that on the show. The way he says that captures how I feel so often when I come across insane information on this show. And I'm just like, what? I fucking can't me. I said, are you fucking kidding me? I know, right Miles? Totally. Who drives almost 3,000 miles on a whim? Gary Heidnik.

According to Gary, this is what God said. Gary, you must go back to Philadelphia and start a new church. Someone needs to care of the mentally and physically handicapped, and you are just the man to do it. But was he? Was he really the man to do that? I really hope that that wasn't actually God speaking there because if it was, then God's not good at assessing people's strong suits. God fucked up when

it came to steering Gary towards tending to the mentally and physically handicapped because he will really fuck them, like literally in many cases. After thinking God spoke to him, Gary now hopped right back in his car and immediately started driving back to Philadelphia to fulfill the word of the Almighty. He didn't even take a little vacation out there. Dude went on an impromptu 5,500 mile round trip. Just so much driving. Unbelievable.

I fucking can't believe it. I know. I fucking can't believe it. Oh, I heard you. Can we please pretend that right before he finally made it home, he grabbed himself that doughnut that he'd initially set out to get and that that was all he ate on that trip. A few months later, while undergoing more psychiatric treatment at one of the mental hospitals in town for yet another suicide attempt, Gary applied to incorporate the United Church of the Ministers of God.

So cool, cool, cool, cool. Nothing bad is going to come from that. That's going to be great. On October 12, 1971, the application was approved and the United Church of the Ministers of God was legitimized in the eyes of the U.S. government so they didn't have to pay taxes. So now this guy's running a tax-free business. His founding members included Gary and his brother Terry. Why the fuck was Terry helping Gary with his church? He's still having nightmares about Gary beating him to death with a big piece of wood. The third founding member, what am I talking about? Terry's also insane. That's why. The third founding member was Terry's girlfriend. A black woman described in court documents as being severely intellectually disabled.

Awesome. The two other founding members are people Gary had met at the Elwin Institute who were also severely intellectually disabled. The five founding members of this church, the uh, what were they called? The ministers of God, the five ministers of God, um, are either people who have spent significant amount of time, amounts of time in psychiatric facilities or people unable to live on their own due to serious intellectual disabilities or both. Are you fucking kidding me. I said, I fucking can't me. I know. Gary, of course, was named the bishop of the church who under the United Church of the Ministers of God's Constitution had full control and responsibility for church funds. And of course, he will never abuse that responsibility. Oh, not ever, not once. The Constitution also imbued the bishop with God-like powers, stated that the bishop

is, the bishop's word is the final word on the interpretation of the Bible or the settling of religious disputes. Excellent. In 1975, Gary, now 31 years old, opened a bank account under the church's name with the Wall Street Investment Management Bank, Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith. This initial deposit was just $1,500, but as biographer Ken Englade put it, over the next 12 years, no matter which hospital he was in or where he went, Bishop Hydenick always made sure that Merrill Lynch's monthly financial statements got to him. He also kept in close touch with his broker.

Over the years, that $1,500 mushroomed into a $545,000 portfolio. God, that early financial obsession Gary had was paying off. Not sure if he added a lot more principal to it or somehow turned $1,500 into over half a million in a relatively short amount of time. And that's the way the sources describe it, is that he just turned the $1,500 without adding more to that principal into $545,000. Fucking ridiculous. How frustrating is it that someone with all of Gary's mental problems

still managed to make a very good amount of money, an incredible return on his investment, that most Americans, no matter how sane, will never be able to replicate? It's got to be disheartening to be struggling financially and hear about a dude crushing it, who wore a stink jacket to a psych ward so many times the staff knew him by name, a guy who beat his brother into the hospital with a piece of wood, a guy who literally drove across the country and back on a whim

when he was supposed to be out grabbing a donut. Gary's investment banker was later called in to testify at his trial regarding Gary's mental abilities, during which he said Gary was an astute investor. In January of 1976, Bishop Gereber, exalted prophet, first of his name, had his first serious brush with the law. He was charged with aggravated assault, carrying an unlicensed pistol, and carrying a firearm on public streets. At the time, Gary owned a second property on Cedar Avenue in West Philadelphia and was

rented out to a man named Robert Rogers and his girlfriend. This guy crushed in the stock market and, oh, yeah, yeah sure owns at least two homes now. Why not? January of 1976, Gary and his unnamed female tenant got into some sort of dispute while Roger was at work and in retaliation to whatever the woman had said to Bishop Heidnik, Gary stomped down into the basement of the property, turned off electricity on the breaker panel, locked to the basement and then left. When Roger came home his girlfriend told him what happened. The two tried to get into the basement to turn the electricity back on. Couldn't figure out how to unlock the door. Roger then told his girlfriend to wait in the kitchen while he climbed into the

basement from the cellar window. And then much to his horror, once he finally wriggled his way inside the basement, Roger found Garber sitting cross-legged on a child-sized mattress with a fucking rifle in his hands. The dude was just hiding, waiting down there like a ghoul. Gary laid the rifle down next to him while Rogers, you know, laid it to his right, while Rogers reacted to his presence, grabbed a pistol he'd also brought, then calmly stood up and explained, I got you and I'm going to kill you and say that you're a burglar. And that is why someone with severe mental health problems like Gary should never be allowed to own guns. Gary raised the pistol, shot Rogers, and damn near killed him. The bullet grazed the side of his face.

I kind of talked him out of shooting me a second time, Rogers would later recall. We went outside, and when the police came up, I snatched his gun and struck him. Then I'm guessing Rogers and his lady moved out. For some reason, not explained in police records, the charges of attempted murder brought against Gary for this attack would get dismissed just a week later. And he will not serve time for the lesser charges. A month after this incident, Gary sold the property he lived on in Cedar Avenue, to a member of the University of Pennsylvania's administration and his wife. The administrator apparently did not really purchase the three-story house because he wanted it, but because he wanted to get Gary the fuck away from the university's campus.

And I wish I knew more details as to why. What creepy shit was Gary doing around campus? Missionary work for his new church? Saying weird, you know? Creepy shit to female coeds? Probably. Shortly after moving in, the new tenants discovered that a big pit had been dug into the dirt floor of the concrete basement they described as looking like a dungeon. So it seems that Gary was already planning on kidnapping women and, you know, torturing them in his basement at this point in his life. They also found the house completely littered with garbage and porn, which sounds like an album name for an 80s punk band, Garbage and Porn.

In the fall of 1976, Bishop Gary now moved in with one of the few members of his congregation and current girlfriend, Anjanette Davidson. Anjanette was a black woman with, can you guess? Yes. Serious intellectual disabilities. Just not as serious as most of the others in Gary's social circle. Although she was able to live by herself, she could not read or write. Shortly after moving into her apartment, which was located at 2331 North 58th Street in Philadelphia, Gary got Anjanette, or Anjanette, pregnant, and then despite her pleas, he refused to let her give birth at a hospital. Instead, as a licensed practical nurse, he insisted he deliver the baby himself. Oh boy. Luckily, before that could happen, Anjanette's older sister intervened. She

showed up at the couple's apartment with a police escort and took her sister away from Gary's crazy ass. Around this same time, using the money he was now amassing through shrewd investments in the stock market, Gary purchased a Rolls Royce, a Cadillac, and a customized van. All three. Fuck me. I can't invest for shit. And this wildly insane motherfucker is killing it. I fucking can't believe it. I can't invest for shit. And this wildly insane motherfucker is killing it.

I fucking can't. I know. I fucking can't. Couldn't agree more, Miles. On March 22nd, 1970, Onjanette had a cesarean section at an actual hospital and delivered a seven pound, eight ounce baby girl named Maxine, who was immediately placed in foster care because Onjanette, not cognitively capable of raising a child,

and Gary is fucking Gary. This might be Gary's first child, might be his second. Or, according to like, you know, very unsubstantiated rumors, it could be his third, fourth, fifth, who knows. As it turns out, Anjanette had a large fibroid tumor that, should she have tried to deliver the normal way, would have killed both her and the baby. They would have died thanks to Gary, had Anjanette's sister not intervened when she did. But Gary still managed to do some damage. Bishop Heidnik in his infinite wisdom had prevented Anjanette from eating too much for the sake of the child.

And doctors discovered she had only gained five pounds during her pregnancy. For context, most women gain somewhere between 30 and 35 pounds during pregnancy, which is the healthy way to do it. On May 7, 1978, Gary and Anjanette, oh yeah, they're still together after that. Who cares that they had their kid taken away and that Gary almost killed her? They take a trip to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to visit Anjanette's younger sister, Alberta. Since she was 14, Alberta had been living in a mental institution called Seelands Grove Center in Snyder County, Pennsylvania.

This is fascinating. I think most of the characters we have met in this episode have either severe psychological problems, have spent time in psychiatric facilities, or have serious intellectual disabilities or some combination. I don't think that this demographic has come up as frequently before in any previous episode. According to hospital records, or demographics I guess. According to hospital records at 34, at the age of 34, Alberta had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. Man, when Aunt Jeanette and her sister caught up in the community room, Gary sauntered over to the front desk to fill out a day pass for Alberta to take her out of the facility. At around 12 30, he signed the paperwork agreeing to bring the woman back

to the center by the following morning, May 8th at 8 a.m. But Alberta did not return the next day. Or the day after that, or the day after that, or the day after that. Took the folks at the Steelings Grove Center a full nine days to take any action to find their missing patient. So clearly they're running a very tight ship. On May 16th, a representative from the center showed up at Anjanette's door, asked where her sister Alberta was. Gary answered for Anjanette, saying that they had put her on a bus back to Seelans Grove the morning of May 8th, exactly as promised. He then swung the door open wide, adding that if the woman from the center didn't believe him, you know, she could come on him, search the apartment herself.

Well, apparently the woman denied this offer, sighed and left. She had a bad feeling about walking into a room with Gary without some kind of chaperone, some kind of escort. Next day, the same woman from the center returned to Gary in Anjanet's Philadelphia apartment, and this time with a police escort. Once again, she demanded to know where Alberta was, and once again, Gary said, I don't know, not here. Invited them in, this time they accept. Police officer searches the apartment, top to bottom, finds nothing. But before they leave, the officer decided that they should take a look

around the entire apartment building. And good job to this officer while combing their way to the building's dark and damp basement, they found her. A little preview of what's to come with Gary, the first installment in a very dark fantasy he is now bringing to life. Alberta had been tucked away in the corner of the unused, or of an unused storage room. She was trembling violently and could barely speak. This poor woman. Remember, she has the mental capacity of a five-year-old. So she is interpreting the abuse she has been suffering as a five-year-old would. She hugged the woman from the center, started

sobbing. On the way out of the building, Gary tried to stop Alberta, shouting that if she went with them, she'd never see her sister, Anjanette, ever again. Alberta didn't respond. She just clutched the woman from the center tighter, looking terrified, hurried her step towards a police car. When she was safely returned to the center, Alberta then underwent a physical examination. And according to biographer Ken Englade, doctors discovered a tear on the vestibule of her vagina, which indicated recent intercourse. Even more upsetting to center officials, a chemical test showed traces of sperm in her

mouth and gonorrhea in her throat, a condition that could result only from oral genital sex. The self-proclaimed bishop was now a kidnapper and a rapist, if he wasn't already. Three weeks later, Gary was arrested by Philadelphia police in his apartment, charged with kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, involuntary, deviant sexual intercourse, interfering with the custody of a committed person, and recklessly endangering another person. And he pled innocent to all counts. Gary's trial took place in November of 1978. While taking the stand, he maintained he had done

nothing wrong and was completely innocent. He stated to the court, when we left the Center on May 7th, we went to a restaurant named Gary's. Oh, Gary took them to a restaurant named after himself where we stayed for an hour and a half. From there, we went to get ice cream and a Dairy Queen. Then when we were driving Alberta back to the center, she started crying. She said she wanted to be with her sister, so we brought her back to Philadelphia. He said that later that day Alberta started sobbing profusely, begging him to let her stay with him and her older sister. According to his testimony, Alberta did not want to go back to the center

because she felt imprisoned there. So Gary, he did what any good hearted person would do. He bought her a wig, two new dresses, a purse, a watch, and he fucking locked her up in the basement. I mean, he didn't add that basement part. To prepare her for life outside of the center, he said he taught her how to count, handle money. Oh man. Gary swore under oath that he thought he was helping her and that he did not keep her captive or force her to have sex with him. I mean, they did have sex because, you know, he's a fucking stallion. Gary had waived his right to a jury trial, so the decision of what to do with him now was entirely up to common please court judge Charles P. Maracci Jr.

Maracci, who had been made aware that the defendant was being treated on and off for schizophrenia, found Gary guilty of three misdemeanors. Recklessly endangering another person, interfering with the custody of a committed person, and unlawful restraint. While the judge later said he would have of course like to have found Gary guilty of the felony charges against him of rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment, involuntary, deviant sexual intercourse. He was unable to do so without Alberta's testimony and Alberta was deemed mentally unfit to testify. So what a bullshit catch-22. Apparently anyone could kidnap and rape Alberta and get nothing more than misdemeanors unless somebody else,

somebody without an equivalent cognitive capacity, witnessed the crimes. That's terrible. In this report, the judge wrote, Gary M. Hydenick appears to be an extremely insecure and confused individual. Records indicate he is suffering from a major mental illness, which apparently has been of long standing. He is also psychosexually immature.

He appears to be easily threatened by women whom he would consider to be equal to him either intellectually or emotionally. His defense cannot tolerate criticism. Gary needs constant acceptance and self-assurance that he is an intelligent, worthwhile human being. In another report written by the pre-sentenced criminal investigator Joseph Tobin, Gary was described like this, Heidnik appears to be manipulative, and he is certainly lacking in judgment.

He impresses me as one who sees himself as superior to others, although apparently he must involve himself with those distinctly inferior to himself to reinforce this. It is my opinion, based on my extensive investigation, that he is not only a danger to himself but perhaps a greater danger to others in the community, especially those who he perceives as being weak and dependent. Unfortunately, it seems to me that he will not significantly change his aberrant behavior pattern in the near future. All in all, despite not being found guilty of the felonies, Gary would receive seven

years in prison, more than I expected. A decade after the fact, Judge Maracci was quoted as saying he wished he would have made the sentencing longer as he sensed something evil and dangerous in the man. Gary's attorney disagreed with this sentencing. He appealed to court's decision saying it was far too severe given that Gary had no trouble with the law before and that he hadn't been found guilty of any truly violent crime involving weapons. In his appeal, Gary's attorney wrote, The crime that Gary committed is a crime which would lead a court, in my opinion, to believe that he is not dangerous to society.

What the fuck was he talking about here? He kidnapped and raped a woman with serious intellectual disability, like the capabilities of a five-year-old, kept in a basement dungeon. Because of the appeal, Judge Mariachi ordered another report on Gary, this one to be conducted by court psychiatrist Dr. Wayne C. Blodgett. And in his assessment, Wayne thankfully wrote that there was a high possibility Gary would commit similar, if not even more severe crimes in the future. He wrote, quote,

"...of particular concern is the defendant's potential for engaging in sexually assaultive crimes against females. In order to avoid such a tragedy in the future, it will be necessary for him to be very closely supervised and for him to receive continuing surveillance over a long period of time. After reading the new report, the judge decided to keep Gary's original sentencing, seven years in prison. But, of course, he will not serve the full seven years. And because of his mental state, instead of serving time in an actual penitentiary, Gary

flipped-flopped back and forth between the psychiatric ward at Waterford Prison, the state hospital in Norristown, and a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane in Fairview. I always pause on the word penitentiary. I think I'm finally getting it right. I added a syllable for most of my life. I think I said penitentiary correctly. If I didn't, I'm sure I'll hear about it. In 1980, about halfway through his sentencing, Gary went mute like he had in previous years. Now he's solely communicated with the hospital staff through signals and written notes. At one point during this period, one of his doctors asked Gary why he stopped speaking

and he wrote his answer on a whiteboard saying, quote, a devil shoved a cookie down my throat. That made me laugh out loud so hard when I first read it. It's just so absurd. It feels like a mad lip. It so feels like a mad lip. I need a noun. Uh, devil. Okay, okay, now I need a verb.

Um, shoved. Another noun. Cookie. Okay, now I need a place. Down my throat. Okay, great. A devil shoved a cookie down my throat. Also feels like a part of like some weird Dr. Seuss thing. I have to, I have to, I must write a note. I can't talk, you see. The devil shoved a cookie down my throat. Crazy, I know what I wrote, what I wrote. But it's true, I tell you. The devil shoved a cookie down my throat.

Not two cookies, not three, just one, don't you see? The devil shoved a cookie down my throat for he, he doesn't want me to communicate with you properly. He wants to guarantee that I never walk free, instead stuck in this prison where I foresee that I will spend my time ever so quiet, Lee." The doctor following Gary's devil cookie talk, I love that he did this, he asked Gary to open his mouth and say, ah, you know, so he could check his throat for the Devil Cookie. After a few seconds of examining, he sighed for a claim that,

ah, I couldn't see any cookies down there. And now Gary responded on his whiteboard with, pray for eyes. Mm, totally. Were you expecting that answer? Yeah, me too. Instead of praying for eyes, the doctor now played some striper to clear the room.

Gotta get those cookies out there somehow. Okay, maybe he didn't do that. But probably only because that song wouldn't come out for another few years, not until 1986. After four years, two months, and 14 days of serving time, Gary was released on parole April 12th, 1983. Upon his release, he decided it was high time he settled down and found himself a wife. To do this, he decided to consult the folks down at the Philadelphia Matrimonial Bureau,

aka his local matchmaking agency. He created a dating profile and instructed the bureau to find him, quote, an Oriental virgin. Literally the words he wrote, an Oriental virgin. And instead of replying with, fuck off creep, the matchmaking service did as he asked. They advertised the basics of his profile in a Filipino pen pal brochure and it immediately caught the eye of a desperate 22 year old woman named Betty Disto. Gary is now 39, 17 years her senior.

Betty wrote her first letter to Gary that same afternoon. Gary was overjoyed. He responded with a color photo of himself from five years prior and on the back of the photo he wrote, Dear is Betty, greetings from the land of ice and snow. Your friend, Gary. What a wordsmith. What a regular Don Juan. September 25th, 1985 after two years of corresponding via letters with more words written in them than that, I'm assuming,

Betty Disto got on a plane headed for the US so she could marry her pen pal. Gary had purchased her the ticket. She flew from Manila to Tokyo initially, Tokyo to New York, then New York to Philadelphia. When she finally met Gary face to face in the airport, Betty was disappointed. She later stated in an interview, he looked old. He looked like Dracula. That also made me laugh out loud. Oh, fuck that guy. I got to fuck that guy for citizenship? That pale old ghoul? Do I really need to live in the U.S.? Gary, on the other hand, was delighted when he first met Betty. He kissed her on the cheek, which she later said made her very uncomfortable,

then promptly drove her back to his apartment. Once they arrived, he ushered her to the bedroom to show her where she would be sleeping, and to Betty's surprise, there was already another woman in the room sleeping in the bed. On Jeanette. Yeah, oh yeah, they're still together. Dude went to prison for kidnapping and raping her intellectually disabled sister, but they're still together. But to be fair to her, she is also intellectually disabled. Gary now explained to Betty that Anjanette was just a tenant who was renting out the room for $250 a month. And now he asked Betty if it was... if this was going to be a problem, if it was going to be a problem for her to share her bed with his tenant.

Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me? Like, as if that's normal. Oh, what? You seem weirded out by this. Wait a minute, wait, do roommates renting a place together in the Philippines not sleep in the same bed together? That's not normal? Betty said she was fine with it, even though she definitely wasn't fine with it, but she felt like what else could she do? She had no money, no job, no return plane ticket, no way of contacting her parents back

in the Philippines for help at the moment. All she had was this weird vampire dude who said he wanted to marry her, and she felt like she had no choice but to trust him. Before learning more about poor Betty's arranged marriage from hell, let's take today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Now let's return to 1985 check back in with poor Betty. On October 3rd, 1985, about a week after her arrival in the US, Gary and Betty were married in the nearby town of Elton, Maryland. And then a week later, Betty found her new husband, the bishop, in bed with three naked women. Hey babe, I went ahead and started our honeymoon without you. Hop in here,

catch up you silly old goose. Maybe it was a special sermon. I'm sure everything was on the up and up with this situation. Maybe the heat had gone out in the building, they were huddled together for warmth, maybe they took the old biblical prohibition of mixed fabrics, particularly wool and linen, very seriously. And literally every article of clothing they all owned was a wool linen combo. I mean that had to have been it, right? Could have been something nefarious. Betty freaked out for some weird reason, as opposed to joining them. What a prude. Must be a Filipino thing. Gary the bishop, her sweet loving husband, her knight in shining armor, he chased her outside and when he caught up with her she begged him to buy her a ticket to the Philippines

so she could just go back home and be done with him, but he refused. He said that what she saw was not weird. It was actually beyond common. He said this was the norm in the US. It's what people did and she had to get used to it. Betty now saw it uncontrollably as Gary walked back up the stairs. And then for the next three months, Betty was living in hell. And Gary's infidelities were only part of her problems. He started to beat her whenever she refused any of his demands.

He routinely would punch her in the jaw, stomach, and chest, force her to engage in his orgies. In addition to physical violence and what amounts to gang rapes, since she didn't consent to these orgies, otherwise Gary punished his new wife, was forcing her to stand in the corner of the room for up to 12 hours at a time, hitting her when she tried to sit, as well as withholding access to food, water, and the bathroom. She might not be locked up in the basement, but Gary clearly viewed Betty as a sexual slave.

And while all this was going on, Gary is also holding Sunday Masses in his living room. Of course he is. I mean, he's a holy man. He's a fucking bishop, you guys. If you don't recognize his glory, well, because the devil has blinded you. In addition to the Church of Stocks at Merrill Lynch, you know, he gets to have his tax-free money. The size of his congregation had grown significantly over the last five years. Every Sunday now, somewhere between 24 and 30 people are crowed into Gary's house on North Marshall Street, listening to his next sermon. And man, I wish I had audio of one of these sermons or even a transcript. There had to have been a bunch of unintentional comedy woven into his preaching. His congregation exclusively made up of people with serious mental disabilities

and often physical disabilities as well. Gary convinced him to join his church by saying that they would be, they would not be judged like they would be at other churches. Every Sunday, Gary would have a man named Cyril Tony Brown, a man with serious intellectual disabilities himself, but who was able to drive. He'd have Tony go around, pick up the other parishioners, and bring them back to his house. Sometimes he'd take them all out to McDonald's, maybe Roy Rogers. Every once in a while they'd go out to an amusement park for like a field trip of sorts. It should be noted that the people Gary was having his super cool orgies with, also his parishioners who had these disabilities,

it's like he was a fucking cult leader who only preyed on people with disabilities. I'm not sure we've come across a specific kind of dirtbag before. We've definitely come across dirtbags who have sexually assaulted and or murdered women with intellectual disabilities. Can't recall another killer slash cult leader who only went after people with intellectual disabilities. Almost only. January 16th, 1986. Betty bravely escapes for American help. She got away from her abusive psycho husband by putting her passport and a spare set of clothing in a plastic bag and then hiding that bag in the bushes outside the front door. A few hours later, she told Gary she wanted to go shopping,

slipped to the front door carrying nothing so he's not suspicious and then she grabbed her bag of plastic belongings and she was fucking out. She literally ran to the nearest police station. Gary completely caught off guard. I mean Betty was the only person in his circle of friends and lovers this time not intellectually disabled so he wasn't ready for somebody to outsmart him. Eleven days later, January 27th, 1986, the Philadelphia District Attorney charged Gary Hydenck with spousal rape, involuntary, deviant sexual intercourse assault, and indecent assault. Gary was arrested two days later, which also happened to be the exact day that his parole ended, so how lucky for him to avoid additional charges.

The trial's preliminary hearing was set to take place following week, but then for reasons unknown, probably fear, Betty Disto didn't show up. And without her testimony, the judge was forced to dismiss the charges against Gary and he was set free. Damn it. Betty was able to take refuge at least in the home of some other members of Philadelphia's Filipino community. Eight months later, September 15, 1986, Betty gives birth to Gary's son. She was not able to escape that hell without getting pregnant.

She names her new baby boy Jesse John, aka JJ, and sends Gary a letter informing him of the birth. Even though they were not officially divorced, Betty expected Gary to help with finances and surprisingly he did agree to pay her $135 a week in child support. Also around this time, Gary has another child he will not raise. His third kid, maybe fourth kid, has a boy with a woman named Gayle Lincau, a boy named Gary Jr. According to Gary's friend John Cassidy in an interview with Philadelphia Magazine, Gayle was not surprisingly a black woman who was intellectually disabled. Two months later, the night before Thanksgiving, November 26, 1986, Gary's most

heinous spree of crimes begins. He has just turned 43 years old. Josephina Rivera, a 25-year-old black sex worker, all the women he will take to his basement rape dungeon, will be black, was making her rounds on the corner of 3rd Street and Girard in North Philadelphia. She was in a bad mood. She just had a big fight with her 33-year-old boyfriend, Vincent Nelson. I just stomped out of his apartment.

Given the impending holiday, the cold, damp weather, it was a slow night for Josephina and the other girls working the street. She had barely seen any cars drive by, except for this one shiny new Cadillac Coupe De Ville just kept circling the block. She assumed they were trying to decide whether or not to come talk to her. Eventually, the Cadillac did pull over. Driver was a tall white man she found handsome.

He rolled down the window, asked her if she was turning tricks. His voice, Josefina recalled, was soft, low, disarming. Josephina bent down to get a better look at this dude, immediately noticed the glint of a big, expensive-looking Rolex on his wrist. She nodded, told him she was. He asked her if she would take a 20. She said yes, and then she got in the car. The man who then introduced himself as Gary took Josephina to McDonald's. But then, because he was a fucking dick, offered her nothing to eat, only talked quietly about how his car was an inconvenient place for sex, and that they would probably have to go back to his place in order to get it on.

Although she'd normally refuse such requests, this one time Josephina agreed, after Gary ate his McDonald's in the parking lot in front of her. What an asshole, not offering her anything on top of everything else he would do. They headed to his modest but still high-end, at least in Josephine's approximation, three-story home in North Philly at 3520 North Marshall Street. Once inside, Rivera noticed the strangest of the place, walls covered in pennies, dollar bills used as wallpaper, a Rolls Royce with a broken down engine parked in front, an eerie cluttered

interior filled with a bunch of porn tapes and horror movies. He must have really had to do some house cleaning before his sermons. Or who knows, maybe he was weaving his porn tapes into his sermons that would just weave into orgies. Brothers and sisters rejoice, for the Lord has blessed us today with this holy video, Black Throat, deep throat and with an ethnic flavor. A tale about a righteous white man with a godly hunger for chocolate sexual thunder. And behold, here is the holy VHS tape. Let me tell you about Black Chicks. A fine heavenly film

about four dark, sexy maids slash angels in a hotel room sharing all their fantasies of white, righteous cock. Or how about Black Valley girls? A gang of black women who talk like valley girls. Go to work at a combo rib shack and sushi bar and get so much white sacrament. Those are real porn titles from the 80s, by the way. And real plot summaries. When Gary saw Josephine, look at his, and not from like my,

not from my collection too. I searched. Not that you have to believe me. But I was like 80s, multiracial or biracial adult film titles. When Gary saw Josefina look at his collection of films, he asked her if she wanted to watch a movie before they got down to business. And she said no.

She said she had three kids at home. Her babysitter left at midnight, which was a lie. But you know, how is he going to know that? She was just getting weirded out and wanted to make it clear that she didn't want to stay long. For a moment, she said intense, violent anger flashed across Gary's face, but then he regained his composure, said the bedroom was upstairs. Josephina followed him into the master bedroom where they had unremarkable sex on the waterbed. After the detached sexual encounter, Josephina silently got out of bed,

went to the dresser, started putting her clothes back on, and Gary made his move. He attacked her from behind, squeezing her throat until she promised to obey him. He cuffed her wrists, took back the 20 he paid her, led her through the kitchen to a narrow staircase descending down into a cold foul-smelling basement. In that basement, Josephina was chained to a pipe using homemade clamps and super glue that he had dried with a hairdryer, It was chained to a pipe using homemade clamps and super glue that he had dried with a hairdryer. A system Gary had invented to ensure she couldn't escape. And she was made to lay down on a dirty mattress. She screamed, begged for him to let her go, but he said nothing.

When he was done chaining her up, he laid his head in her naked lap and fell asleep. Very strange. In case you forgot, he is legitimately not well. Long history of serious mental health problems. Who the fuck knows what was going through his head here? In his upcoming trial, again, the prosecution will argue that he had been faking mental illness his entire adult life. I don't think so.

At some point, Josephina fell asleep that first night as well. And then the next day, she woke cold, half-naked and disoriented. She was just wearing a shirt, nothing else, t-shirt. The basement was dark, moldy, cluttered with old furniture, a freezer, broken pool table, and a pit, a freshly dug pit. The area dug into and through the concrete. This pit, she would soon find out, was meant to imprison her. Eventually, Gary returned to the basement, gave her an egg sandwich and a juice box,

which he refused. That's a ridiculous combo, something you expect to, you know, give to somebody to give to a kid for school lunch. I wonder if he expected her to be super grateful for it. Oh, thank you, Gary. Oh, so thoughtful. I love eating sandwiches. Mm-mm. Just like mom used to make. He then began digging the pit deeper while rambling about his master plan. He explained that all his children had been taken away from him by the state and he would not let that happen again. So he intended to kidnap 10 black women and force them to bear his children forming a multicultural

family under his control. A family that would help make the world less racist thanks to the kids being mixed even though he considers himself to be black so they wouldn't be mixed but whatever. And you know any fun he would have making these kids that would just be a nice bonus. He told Josephine as she was his number one. What an honor. And then before leaving, Gary raped her. While alone, Josephina managed to free one ankle after this sexual assault, and she attempted a desperate escape through a window, almost pulled it off, but the chain was too short. She yelled for help, but no one responded. Well, no one but Gary.

He hurt her, stomped back into the basement, and then beat her into submission, and then forced her into the pit to punish her further. He covered the top of the hole with a board, which he piled dirt on top of. She must have been terrified. He was going to bury her alive. He didn't, but when her cries continued, he beat her again, then sealed the pit with more weight. Then to muffle any sound, he placed a radio next to it and cranked it up to full volume. For two days Josephina remained in this pit, unable to lay down, listening to the blasting music, half standing or sitting in pain and fear in the dark surrounded by cold moist dirt. Kind of like that girl in the pit from Silence of the Lambs, right?

It rubs lotion on its skin. It does what it's told. It rubs lotion on its skin. It does what it's told. It rubs lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again." When Gary finally returned to the basement two days later, he was not alone. Josefina heard the two approaching before she saw them. The sound of chains dragging across the floor and a young woman's voice asking to be let go. He had found his number two.

A few minutes later, Gary dragged the board off of the pit and lifted Josephina up out of it. Then he left her alone in the basement with his newest captive. The new woman who said her name was Sandy Lindsay appeared confused and emotionally flat. Josephina soon understood why. Sandy was severely mentally disabled. Sandy told Josephina that she had known Gary for years, that she had met him at the Elwyn Institute, as old as hunting grounds. She described him as a friend, somebody who would look out for her when no one else would. She spoke in an emotionless voice about having had sex with Gary and another man named Tony,

Tony as in Gary's old church driver, and explained that at one point she became pregnant with Gary's baby before having an abortion. When Gary found out about the abortion, he became enraged. He offered her $1,000 to have his child, and when she refused, he kidnapped her and brought her to the house. Then she began to understand her, or as she began to understand her situation, that there was no way out. Sandy erupted in violent, desperate sobs. That night, Gary returned to the basement with water and crackers. He then got to work digging out the hole in the basement further in order to make it big enough to hold ten women eventually, while the two terrified women watched him in horror.

The next morning, Gary was startled by the sound of somebody pounding on his front door. Outside, he found Sandy's sister, Teresa Lomax, and two of her male cousins. Gary ignored them, just returned to the basement, handed Sandy, who was still crying profusely, a piece of paper and a pen, said that she had to write a note for him and Sandy nodded. Dear Mom, Gary instructed her to write, do not worry, I will call. Then he snapped, now sign it. Sandy did as she was told. Gary snatched a note out of her hand, went straight to the post office, not sure if he just walked past her family or if they had already left. As the days turned into weeks things got even darker for Sandy and

Josephina. Gary began feeding them less, raping them more, keeping them naked in the cold so he could use them whenever he wanted. And they were cold, you know, the only clothing they were ever allowed to wear was just thin shirts. He would come and go at all hours, leaving them huddled together in the dark, scared out of their minds, never knowing what was going to come next. If they tried to scream, they would get beaten. If they broke a rule, whatever his definition of a rule was that day, they would get thrown in the hole or hung up by one arm from this ceiling beam seven feet off the floor for hours.

As biographer Ken Englade explained in his book, the two women were totally subject to Heidnick's sexual whims, which were more patterned than bizarre. He preferred the first contact to be oral, genital, but he did not want to climax in their mouths. His aim was not sexual gratification but a single-minded desire to get them pregnant. Every day, at least once a day, he would visit them in the basement and demand sex from one or both of them they didn't even think of refusing. Heidnik warned them over and over not to scream, not to yell, not to do anything that

would alert anyone to their presence. His threats were not always heeded. When Heidnick took to beating them, Rivera and Lindsay howled and shrieked, cursing and begging for mercy, and that usually made Heidnick beat them harder. He wasn't particularly worried about the neighbors taking notice, but just in case, he tacked sound-proofing material to the ceiling to help deaden any noises they might make. But the best remedy was to convince them not to make any noise at all. If they did, he beat them with a shovel handle.

Or he put them in the pit, the hole, and covered it with a board and put sandbags on top. Dang. As if all that wasn't horrible enough, Sandra's mom was looking for her. She went to the cops, told them about a man named Gary who lived at 3520 North Marshall Street. Thought her daughter was there, which she was. Gave this officer Gary's phone number. She had all the info she needed to locate her daughter, but it wouldn't matter.

The officer tried the number, went to the house, no one answered the door, no one answered the phone. The officer did follow Sandra's mom, her tip to go down to the local McDonald's where Gary, where his preyed upon congregation slash fuck buddies were hanging out. He found Gary's driver there, Tony, who spelled out Gary's last name for him. Then he went back to the station, searched for Gary's name in the department's new computer database, but nothing came up because Tony hadn't even come fucking close to spelling Gary's name correctly because he was seriously intellectually disabled.

Damn it. Now the police didn't follow up. Case closed. Meanwhile, Sandra is chained up in the basement and fading fast. On December 22nd, 1996, Gary found a third victim to add to his harem of sex slaves, a 19-year-old girl named Lisa Thomas. Gary had met Lisa when he was cruising the streets in his Cadillac, had catcalled her from his window, had yelled, Hey you, wanna see my Peter? Not kidding, that is literally what this genius yelled. Hey you, wanna see my Peter?

Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me? Exactly. Lisa cursed back at him, yelling that she was not a prostitute. Gary then pulled over, apologized for being so rude. He asked if he could make it up to her by giving her a ride to her friend's house, and she said she was going to, mollified by his apology and intrigued by his fancy car. Lisa agreed, but she of course would never make it to her friend's house.

Instead, Gary drugged her, carried her into his house, raped her in his bedroom, then threw her into the basement with Josephine and Sandy. There, in front of the other girls, he made sure Lisa knew that he was in charge. After making some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before anybody could eat one, there was a ritual he wanted completed. He told Lisa, kiss my behind. And she did. Then he asked her, who's the boss?

And she said, you are. Then he commanded, suck my balls, and waited until she did. Then he actually said the words, suck my Peter, and she did that too, and then he raped her. And then he, you know, as far as intercourse, he already was raping her. And then he let the women have their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now. What the fuck. Gary's three sex slaves would spend Christmas of 1987 together in that psycho's basement. Man, never get into a car with a dude you do not know, especially if you're a woman out alone.

There's too many creeps out there. Less than two weeks later, January 1st, 1987, a fourth edition is made to Gary's cellar of horrors. Deborah Johnson Dudley, a local 23-year-old black woman. Her origins in this case remain a mystery to this day. Authorities do not know where or how Gary abducted her. He never said and she would never get the chance to. What we do know about Deborah is that from the very beginning she fought back. She questioned Gary's authority at every turn, undermined him whenever she could, physically tried to fight off his abuse and because of

that Deborah became Gary's enemy number one. By now the basement had become a non-stop nightmare of psychological games, physical violence and sexual abuse. The four captives, Josephine and Rivera, Sandra, Lindsay, Lisa Thomas and now Deborah Dudley, all were developing a pecking order, one that Gary was carefully manipulating. Josephine, the most streetwise of the four, began working to earn his trust, which reduced her physical punishment and allowed her to survive by subtly manipulating him. Gary was developing a twisted system of self-policing that he imposed on the women.

He would assign one of the women to quote be in charge when he was away, then demand a report on who had misbehaved when he got back. And if nobody was named, he would punish the woman in charge. And that of course created a lot of fear, paranoia, and distrust. He also started forcing the women to beat one another, having them switch roles. he would punish the woman in charge. And that of course created a lot of fear, paranoia, and distrust. He also started forcing the women to beat one another, having them switch roles if the hits weren't being dished out hard enough. Gary's sexual assaults continued almost daily. He'd moved from one captive to the next demanding sex. Eventually he escalated to forcing the women to engage in sexual acts with each other while he watched, threatening them with death if they were to refuse and making this even worse, hygiene non-existent for these women.

Gary provided them with a porta potty, a box of baby wipes and tampons, but denied them access to food or water. They would only eat or drink when he was bringing them food or water. Gifts he would withdraw as another form of punishment. He was loving just controlling these women in every way he possibly could. One day when he caught Lisa accidentally using two wipes at once, when he had told them they can only use one wipe at a time, he flew into a rage, beat her with a fucking shovel handle, accusing her of quote, wasting his property. Eventually, Gary would allow the women to bathe, but only one at a time upstairs,

and that privilege came with conditions. The women were still chained even in the tub and afterwards, now that they were clean, he would immediately rape them. Also by the time they had occasional access to the bathtub, their food became much worse. One day while feeding his two dogs, Bear and Flaky, Hyde-Nic had an idea. As punishment, he cracked open a can of chicken flavored dog food, ordered the women to eat it. When they refused, he threatened to beat them. And then they did eat it. Heidnick enjoyed this new form of punishment, and now going forward, the women would mostly only be fed dog food.

January 18th, 1987 now. A petite and soft-spoken 18-year-old named Jacqueline Askins becomes Gary's number five. That day, the young sex worker had been working the streets outside of a rundown Northside hotel looking to make quick cash during the lunch hour. A blue Dodge van with a fuzzy faux fur interior nicknamed Bugs Bunny by its driver pulled up and she got in. And the driver was of course Gary Heidnik.

Following his now established pattern, he brought her home, dragged her straight into the basement. Upon arrival he beat her with a plastic rod, striking her ten times, five to punish her in advance, five more just to make his point. He yelled at her, that's what you're going to get if you don't do what I tell you. When he attempted to secure her with his usual muffler clamp shackles, he realized Jackie's ankles were too small, so now he resorted to using handcuffs, adapting his system to ensure that she could not escape, and then he raped her. By early February of 1987, prisoner Sandra Lindsay's health is rapidly declining.

His number two, the severely mentally handicapped woman, had been hanging by one wrist from a chain attached to a hook in the ceiling, seven feet off the ground for nearly a full week, punishment for trying to push the plywood off of the top of the basement pit. Can't imagine how badly that was hurting and fucking up her shoulder. She had to stand that entire time or just hang there by her wrist. Gary, operating under the delusion that she was pregnant with this child, even though she wasn't, tried to force feed her some bread. He'd hold his hand over her mouth until she swallowed. She did swallow some bites of bread bread but her body was given out. She was vomiting, feverish, unable to stand. She had some sort of infection from all the beating

she'd received and just, you know, true exhaustion from never being able to sit down, lay down, properly sleep. Josephine and the other captives tried to help her, shouting encouragement when Sandra collapsed. When Gary saw her slumped over, he demanded she get up. And she did, briefly, but then collapsed again. This time he unhooked her and then kicked her into the pit, dismissing her illness with the words, she's faking. He left the basement fuming with anger.

When he returned a short time later, Sandra still hadn't moved from where she had fallen. He checked her for a pulse and there wasn't one. She had died from a combination of malnourishment, dehydration, physical abuse, and infection. Sandra's death was a serious problem for Gary. Not just because it disrupted his fantasy of creating a baby farm, but because it risked exposure. Her family was still searching for her, right? They knew who he was, they knew where he lived, and they thought that he had taken her. He decided that her body needed to be destroyed. After a moment of contemplation, he threw Sandy's lifeless body over his shoulder, went upstairs. Shortly afterwards, the woman heard what sounded like a power saw.

Later that day, Hyde-Nic's dog Bear came down to the basement, dragging a big bone with meat still attached to it. It was Sandy's bone. Utterly terrifying to the women. Police later found no blood on the saw recovered from Heidnick's house, leading investigators to believe he disposed of the original tool. Days after Sandra's death, Gary perched a food processor and while no biological traces of Sandy will be found on this either, authorities would be convinced that he'd used it to grind up Sandra's remains, which he then mixed with dog food and fed both to his dogs and to the

other women. Unbelievable. Her head, hands, feet, and rib cage were too large to grind, so he tried to cook them, and the smell from doing so was unbearable, so strong it filled the house, clung to the women's clothes in the pit, soaked into a hide-nick himself, and alerted the neighborhood. Neighbors called the police over the terrible smell coming from Gary's home, and when a rookie officer arrived, Gary claimed he just burnt a roast. Whoopsies, sorry about that. The cop who had spotted the Rolls-Royce in the driveway believed him and left. Meanwhile, above the basement in the house, Gary throughout all of this, living a full life with lots of

visitors. Not sure if he was still holding church services. He may have been, from what I've gathered from sources. Definitely still having orgies with a lot of black intellectually disabled people who used to attend his sermons. And he's bringing over sex workers for more sex. This fucking guy's libido. And dating random women who will sometimes come to his house. This church driver, Tony Brown, he's living in the house while the women are down in the basements. Tony will later get charged as an accomplice to many of Gary's crimes, but the women in the basement will say that he never hurt them, that they never even saw him. My God, crazy that Gary did not get caught sooner than he did.

After Sandra's death, he does become a bit more cautious, or Sandra, convinced that the remaining basement women are plotting against him. He instituted a system of informants, promising better food and freedom from punishment in exchange for loyalty. And that system probably saved his life, because the women had in fact been putting the plan together to attack him. They had found an iron pipe in the basement, were preparing to ambush Gary with it. But according to Jacqueline Askin's later testimony, Josephina tipped him off. Gary also developed a strategy to keep the women disoriented.

He wanted them to never know if he was in the house or not to stop them from listening for his footsteps or car. So he implemented one of his most grotesque tortures. One by one he took Deborah Dudley, Lisa Thomas, and Jacqueline Askins, cuffed their hands and feet, stuffed plastic bags into their mouths as gags, and then duct taped those bags in place. And then wrapping his arm around their necks, put him in a headlock, he used a series of screwdrivers, small, medium, and large, to gouge into their ears in an attempt to deafen them, to destroy their ability to hear.

Jesus! He would twist until blood and or pus came out. Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me? Josephina was the only prisoner exempt from this. Doesn't seem any of his victims will be left deaf from this somehow. Even with all his terror, Deborah Dudley, number four, refused to break. She argued with Hyde and it constantly. Finally he dragged her upstairs to try and scare her and it worked. When she came back down she was pale, silent, and docile. Josephina Rivera, number one, asked what had happened and Dudley whispered,

he showed me Sandra's head in the pot. Right? She said her ribs were in a roasting pan. He had her other parts in the freezer. He said if I didn't listen that's what was gonna happen to me. While this terrified Deborah into compliance for a few days, she would return to her defiant ways. So Gary decided to punish her in a new way, electrical torture. Annie went ahead and tortured all of them, in this way just to be sadistic. He stripped the end of a power cord, plugged it in, touched the live wire to the women's chains and then laughed as they screamed and convulsed in pain. Sometimes for added cruelty, he would throw buckets of water on their naked bodies before

he would shock them. On March 18th 1987, roughly 16 weeks into this fucking madness, Gary was in a particularly shitty mood one day. Or this day. None of the women were pregnant and all of them except Josephina were being combative. So he decided that everyone excluding Josephina deserved to be taught a lesson. He forced Deborah, Lisa, and Jacqueline into the pit, covered it with a wooden board, then he ordered Josephina to fill the hole with water using a garden hose he had dragged in. Again, I think of Silence of the Lambs, right? It rubs lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.

Josephina did as she was told. Gary had drilled air holes into the plywood covering so the women could just barely see what was happening. As they crouched in the rising water, terrified, they saw what was coming next. A bare electrical wire snaking towards their metal chains. Oh my God, with all that water. When the wire touched a link, the women howled in pain. Deborah Dudley took the strongest jolt.

Her chain was the first to be hit and she cried out, He's killing me. And she was right. Seconds later, she slumped forward, face down in the water. Lisa Thomas screamed, she's dead, you've killed her. Gary didn't hear her. Thinking the wire was faulty,

he went upstairs to get a backup. When he came back, Josephine had told him that Deborah wasn't moving. He waved it off saying, nothing's wrong with Debbie. I don't want to hear that bullshit. But then Lisa Thomas lifted the board and said, something's wrong with Debbie. She's dead. Gary looked into the pit, saw her lifeless body. With chilling calm, he removed the other women from the hole, pulled out Dudley's body, then began making dog food sandwiches for the survivors

as if nothing had just happened. Aren't you glad it wasn't one of you? He finally said to one of the others that he prepared their insulting meal. A meal still partially composed of his previous victim, Sandy, by the way. Then gesturing at Deborah's corpse, he added, that's the asshole that caused Sandy's death. A few hours later, Gary returned to the basement with paper and pen, ordered Josefina to write a false confession. She was told to date, time it, March 18th, 1987, 6.30 p.m. She was instructed to write, I, Josefina and Gary Heidnick killed Debbie Johnson Dudley by applying electricity

to her chain while sitting in a pool of water in a hole in a basement at 3520 Marshall Street. Gary signed the paper himself, then made Askins and Thomas sign as witnesses to the confession. And then he told Josephina the letter was essentially her leash. He said, if you ever go to the cops, I can use this as evidence that you killed Debbie. Then for the first time in nearly four months, he unlocked Rivera's shackles, told her to put on some real clothes, pants and a clean shirt, and the other woman watched in silence as she walked upstairs unchained. According to biographer Ken Englade, Gary Heidnik left Deborah Dudley's body on the floor overnight.

The next morning, he wrapped her head and feet in plastic and carried the body over to the freezer. After shuffling some of his cartons of ice cream and other foodstuffs, he laid the body inside, closed the lid, put several bags of dirt on top, then he started making plans to dispose of it. Since no one could connect him to Dudley, as they could have to Sandra Lindsay, he was not faced with the same constraints. This body he would simply dump as soon as he found a suitable spot. With her safely in the freezer though, there was no hurry. He went upstairs to find Rivera. That night, he would give her a treat. They would go out to eat. And now, Josephina feels like soon she's going to be able to make her escape. She would have screamed for help the first time she was able to leave the house with Gary, but she was a bit worried that somehow what she had signed really would somehow lead

her to getting arrested for murder, and she was scared that he would choke her out, drive her back to the house, and kill her if she tried to escape or alert people to what he had done. The following morning, after Gary put Debbie's body in the freezer, he took Josephine out to eat again. He was beginning to treat her like she was his actual girlfriend. They would head out together a number of times, eating at fast food spots like McDonald's, Denny's, Roy Rogers, Wendy's. Even bought her a new wig. Isn't that fucking crazy?

Like these two were sitting at a Denny's in Philadelphia, around a bunch of other people who had no idea that she had just been let out of her fucking dirt pit Where she'd been tortured and raped for months to come to this Denny's to eat. That's fucking wild Sometimes I think about that shit when I'm at a restaurant. I'm like what is going on with other people here? Anyway, and a McDonald's near the Elwood Institute He ran into friends who asked about Sandra Lindsay and he casually replied I think her family has her stashed away so they can cash her social security checks. He took her very shopping for car parts one day, talked about his Rolls Royce repairs, took her out, bought some records, you

know, with her at the record shop. One night they crossed into New Jersey, drove through the Pine Barrens and he told her this place would be a perfect place to dump Debbie's body. Oh the Pine Barrens. Been so long since I've talked about the pineys. Remember that little jingle from the Jersey Devil Suck? Long time ago. Well look here now, got some pig, tasty pig, I already lick, add him a woman's beard. Well look here now, with a full belly, made up a baby with a woman of mine and the governor's wallet we got.

Yeehaw! Refocusing on Gary now. He revealed his legal strategy to Josephina. He said if he ever got caught he would quote act crazy in court. He said I'll salute everyone. I know how to beat the test. I've studied them. So was he faking all those mental health episodes including the suicide attempts? I mean again the prosecution will say this is possible but I doubt it. On the night of March 22, 1987, Gary brought Josephine upstairs, told her to lay a blanket on the kitchen floor.

He then hauled Debbie's frozen body upstairs, unwrapped the plastic from her face. Look at her, he commanded. Rivera refused. He insisted. It'll make you strong, he said. And she looked just briefly. Then after they wrapped the body in the blanket, Gary carried it to the trunk of his old Dodge Dart, less conspicuous vehicle than his caddydy and drove back to the Pine Barrens.

He's got so many vehicles. I will not torture you with that piney song again. In the darkness of the Pine Barrens, Gary carried Debbie's body off into the trees while Rivera sat frozen in the car listening to the crunch of twigs beneath his boots. When he returned, he threw his gloves on the dash like nothing had happened. On the way home, they stopped at a convenience store and he grabbed a newspaper because he wanted to check his stock, see how the market was. On the evening of March 23, 1987, Gary and Josephina rode around town in his Cadillac

looking for new victims to replace Debbie and Sandy. They only had three women, still wanted 10. Standing on a street corner that night was Agnes Adams, a petite 25-year-old black woman known on the street as Vicki. Josephina recognized her immediately. They knew each other. They'd once worked together at a strip club called Hearts and Flowers. And they knew each other under their street names of Nicole and Vicki. Gary also recognized Agnes. He had picked her up twice before. Once in January when he had offered her $35 for oral sex. However, after Gary couldn't find a suitable parking lot to get his dick sucked, he gave up on the endeavor.

He gave Agnes $10 for her time, dropped her off on the same street corner he'd found her on. He also met with her again in February when he had brought her back to his house, let her play a few fucking games on his Mr. Do arcade machine, paid her for sex, then let her leave freely. And she had no idea that several women were trapped in the basement beneath her while she's playing Mr. Do. Also, Mr. Do? I don't remember this this game. See if you recognize the music. Mr. Do. Mr. Do was a civil circus clown clown and you would play as him, try to score as many points like Dig Dug. Very popular in the early to mid 80s. And that's enough.

How fucked up? Gary bringing in sex workers over for sex in video games just a floor or two above. You know, these women chained in the basement, trapped in the bottom of his Silence of the Lambs style dirt pit. Agnes' third encounter with Gary would feature no video games, no money. He and Josephina, they told her that they would pay her $30 to join them in a threesome, and Agnes agreed and then hopped into the Cadillac. When they arrived, Gary gave Josephina the keys, instructed her to lock up the house, wowed that she still hasn't tried to escape, but she just must figure that he would run her down and grab her if she did. Maybe a little bit of Stockholm syndrome too. After they get her in the house, he takes Adams upstairs. After they have sex,

he enacts what will later become known darkly and disturbingly as the Heidnick maneuver, where he chokes her, handcuffs her, drags her into the basement, and throws her into the pit with the others. While that happened, Josephina stayed in kitchen, sipping on a fucking wine cooler. When it was over, Gary returned and said, that was easy. We could do it again tomorrow. And Josefina just nodded. The next day, March 24th, 1987, Josefina will strike a deal with her captor. She had spent the day carefully persuading Gary to let her visit family, arguing that

she had been gone for so long somebody might come looking for. If he let her out, she promised she would bring him another woman. Gary initially hesitated, but eventually and unbelievably he did agree. Only because he had that fake confession letter. Thought he had control. And that kind of shit does make me think he was legitimately mentally ill. Just because somebody talks about pretending to be crazy in court to get out of trouble doesn't mean they're not also actually crazy. If you try to run Gary Warren Josephine, I'll kill the others. So he adds that.

Josephine swore she wouldn't try anything stupid. Later that night two of them got in his caddy. Meanwhile in the basement Agnes Adams now in the pit Lisa Thomas Jacqueline Askins curled up together on the dirty mattress above the pit. After Dudley's death Gary had lightened up a bit, provided the girls pillows, clean blankets, a TV, almost made things more torturous for them. These poor women, he'd given them just enough comfort to make escape seem possible, or that much more possible. Gary and Josephina's plan was simple. Gary would drop her off to visit her kids. She would then find a new woman, meet him at a gas station at 6th and Gerard around midnight. As soon as he drove away, Josefina, not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, sprints four blocks

to the apartment of her boyfriend Vincent Nelson. Same boyfriend she'd been fighting with the evening before Thanksgiving when she was abducted. When Josefina arrived banging on the door, ringing the bell, taking a mile a minute, Vincent is stunned. His girlfriend had vanished in the middle of an argument four months prior. Now she's back rambling about rape, chains, dead women, cannibalism. He later told reporters, she said he was beating them, raping them, had them eating dead people like he was a cold-blooded nut.

Dogs were in the yard eating people's bones, and he didn't believe her. Not at first, it was too much. But then when she begged him not to confront Gary, because it might cause him to kill the others, well now Vincent listened. And then the two of them went to the nearest payphone and called the cops. Vincent dialed 911, handed the phone to Josephina. The officers who took the call were skeptical. Her story sounded unbelievable.

She sounded like she was insane. But they told her to stay put and that a unit was on the way. Officers David Savage, John Cannon pulled up minutes later. They were skeptical too until they saw the scars on Rivera's ankles where the chains had hurt her. She explained what had happened, who was still in the basement, and exactly where Gary would be waiting. And now the officers raced to the lot at 6th and Girard and sure enough they spotted the pewter over white Cadillac engine running,

Heidnik behind the wheel right where she had said he would be. Officer Savage approached the driver's side, gun drawn. Cannon took the pass near your side. Heidnik raised his hands and asked calmly, what's this all about, officer? Didn't I make child support? Savage studied him and replied, no, it's a little more serious than that. They cuffed him, brought him in for questioning. Throughout the night, Heidnik clung to the same line, it's child support, right? This is about child support.

I missed a payment, didn't I? David Savage eventually told him flat out, no, it's about kidnapping, rape, and homicide. Hours later, early in the morning of March 25, 1987 at 4.30 a.m., after they had secured their warrant, the police raided Gary M. Hydenick's House of Horrors on 3520 North Marshall Street. The following is an excerpt from the court documents of Gary's ensuing trial with the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Proceeding upon the information Ms. Rivera had supplied, police officers entered Hyde-Nick's home in North Philadelphia.

In the basement of the home were two females lying on a mattress. The women were naked from the waist down and their bodies were bruised. On the ankle of each woman was a heavy shackle with a long chain. In a corner of the basement, the officers removed bags of dirt from a board covering a hole. In the hole lay a naked woman with her hands handcuffed behind her back and her ankles shackled. On returning to the first floor, the officers found in the kitchen six plastic bags containing

human body parts. Josefina Rivera and the women, found by police in Hydenyck's basement on March 24, 1987, had been brought there by Hydenyck under similar circumstances, over a period of four months. Each had agreed to accompany Hydenyck to his home after being approached by him as he drove along the streets of North Philadelphia. Each had engaged in consensual sex with him before being choked until unconscious. While unconscious, each was carried to Heidnik's basement and chained to a sewer pipe. As many as three women at a time were confined in the hole Heidnik had dug in the basement floor.

Each of the women were beaten by Heidnik, and with the exception of the last woman taken captive, each was raped by Heidnik repeatedly. Although Josefina Rivera and the three women rescued on March 24, 1987 survived the brutalities inflicted on them by Heidnik, two other captives, Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley, did not. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Gary Michael Heidnik. In May of 1987, Gary met with his lawyer, Charles Perruot Jr. for the first time. At the time, Charles was one of the most renowned, respected criminal defense attorneys in the state, known to take on sensational cases.

In later interviews, Charles said that his first impression towards Gary was that he believed 100% that he had done nothing wrong. His take on the case, his attitude towards the whole thing, was that he hadn't even committed a crime. But did Charles believe that? Or does saying he believed that make him look a little less like a dirtbag for choosing to represent one of the lowest most vile forms of life on the planet? I mean, it is a pretty convenient take. As the two men spoke, Charles did soon realize that Gary was guilty as fuck.

Despite Gary's convoluted way of retelling the story of the last six months, eventually Charles was able to ascertain what he had been thinking, why he did what he did. He said, he was trying to enslave ten girls to have a baby with all of them. And he was going to create a perfect race. He believed that the races eventually, hundreds of years from now, would all be mixed and there would only be one race. And that's when we would find peace. He believed white people should mix with black people and vice versa so we could get closer to a perfect race. He believed tall people should mate with short people and short people should never mate

with short people. He had theories and thought he was going to improve society. If you remove the lack of consent in prison and torture, the whole mixing races thing, it would be a great way to evolve the world, right? If in just one generation everybody had kids with people of other races, that actually would do a lot to put an end to racism. But then the pessimist in me believes that we'd probably find other reasons to discriminate against one another. But maybe not. Maybe we'd be down the road, you know, much more peaceful, equitable times are awaiting.

Also, no fucking way Gary did what he did for any altruistic reasons. If that was his motivation, why was he keeping these women in a dirt pit? Electrocuting them, feeding them dog food in the flesh of a previous victim. for any altruistic reasons. If that was his motivation, why was he keeping these women in a dirt pit? Electrocuting them, feeding them dog food in the flesh of a previous victim. Also, again, he identified as black. So in his mind, how was he mixing races? By having kids with black women if he's black. It's almost like he was insane.

It's almost like he did what he did because he was a manipulative, insane, sadistic sexual predator. Even though Gary didn't meet the legal threshold for insanity, he did meet the clinical one. So for obvious reasons, Charles decides to pursue the insanity defense for Gary's upcoming trial. He said, the more I got into it, the more I realized this guy was really nuts. He was severely schizophrenic.

His mother was insane, his father was insane. And other than him saying this, I don't know, I didn't come across any information about like why his dad might have been mentally ill. No reports of him, you know, being sent to psychiatric centers or anything. But anyway, he said his father was insane. His brother was insane. He had an excuse for every illegal thing he did. A perfectly logical excuse and a calm demeanor. In the months preceding the trial, Charles told Gary he wanted to make him look as insane as possible.

And that is the kind of shit that makes me really hate some, not all, but some defense attorneys. There's no integrity with this move. Not to me. He's viewing this trial as an opportunity to win only even if that win will put a person that he knows is a dangerous predator back on the streets. Or at least not get them off of the streets for as long as they should be off. Anyway, Charles told Gary to try and manipulate the jury. He said, I told him I didn't want him to bathe for months. I didn't want him to trim his beard whatsoever. I wanted his mustache grown into his mouth. And he did it. The reason for all that, Charles explained, was that a lay jury didn't necessarily have the ability to identify insanity if it didn't match their mental picture of it. A neatly trimmed beard, a Rolls Royce, a juror wasn't going to buy that, that he was insane.

Essentially, Charles wanted to make Gary look as fucking crazy as he thought he was. Or crazier. In order to help him get away with what he did to those women and for that, fuck Charles Perruitto Jr. Gary's trial took place in late June of the following year. Tony Brown, Gary's old church driver, intellectually disabled man, had also been charged with murder, rape, and kidnapping, but had agreed to testify against Gary in exchange for having the charges dropped.

He was only charged because he also lived there. The charges would be dropped because he didn't have shit to do with the crimes. Also, when he took the witness stand, it quickly became clear how serious his disability was. He had to be asked several times to state his name because he didn't understand what he was supposed to do when he was asked to state his name. The entire trial essentially revolved around one question. Was Gary M. Hydenick truly insane? Criminally so. Well, obviously he's clinically insane. While the judge, jury, lawyers, and

spectators all considered this question, Gary sat emotionless in the front row of the courtroom, looking like he just got back from fucking collecting tolls from his troll bridge. Big ass beard, fucking all dirty and stinky. During his testimony, Gary maintained his innocence, blamed the other women he had kidnapped for Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley's deaths. Before the jury, he said, I think they killed Mrs. Lindsay. It's possible that they killed her because she was lesbian. And I didn't know that. And you know up until that time. The reason I mention this was because they killed her the day after they found out she was lesbian. Which suggests that they either killed her because she was lesbian or this gave the excuse they were looking for. Rivera was the brains behind it.

But Ms. Thomas, I'm pretty sure to the actual killing. Mm-hmm. That's fucking ridiculous to even like have to listen to that. Somebody kidnaps a bunch of people and then some of them die and they're like, I'm pretty sure some of the people I kidnapped did the killing. So let's put them on the stand. During his closing arguments, Charles described Gary as an insane quote fruitcake, pretty sure that's not a legal term, who suffered from a severe case of schizophrenia,

which was diagnosed back in 1963. Assistant District Attorney Charles Gallagher refuted that claim saying that Gary knew exactly what he was doing when he raped and murdered those women. But you know, both things can be true. He can be a fucking beyond insane schizophrenic, but also know what he's doing criminally. But the D.I. says, this man conducted repeated sadistic acts on six defenseless persons. What he did was premeditated, deliberate murder. He knew what he was doing and he knew what was wrong. In the end, the jury thankfully sided with Gallagher. And on June 30, 1988,

Gary Michael Hydenek is convicted of two counts of murder in the first degree, six counts of kidnapping, five counts of rape, four counts of aggravated assault, and two counts of involuntary, deviant sexual intercourse. Assistant DA Gallagher was quoted in the newspaper as saying, the jury did an excellent job. I was always optimistic that the jury would find the defendant guilty of first degree murder. It's a difficult task for a jury to perform, that is to sit in judgment upon one's peer. This case, you know, presented very difficultly, very complicated legal issues, all of which the jury pondered for quite a bit of time and they came to a just decision.

On July 1st, 1988, the jury returned to court to decide if Gary should spend the rest of his life in prison or if he should die, you know, via capital punishment. After only a few hours of deliberation, they sentenced him to death. Against Gary's wishes, he repeatedly stated sentenced him to death. Again scary as wishes. He repeatedly stated he wanted to be executed as soon as possible once he was found guilty. As soon as the trial had ended, well like once he knew he was going to be sentenced to die. And his attorney then filed a direct appeal to that sentencing though.

And why? Because one of his kids did not want him to die. Maxine Davidson White. The little girl he had had with Anjanette Davidson back in 1978. The baby who was taken from them both and placed in Fosker, this young girl, you know, she's 10 years old now, she's not even 10, I guess 9 years old. She started to visit him in prison and felt that due to his mental illness, he didn't deserve to die. Six months later, December 31st, 1988, Gary successfully attempts suicide in prison, or I'm sorry, unsuccessfully, big difference, attempted suicide in prison by

overdosing on thorazine. While he did fall into a temporary coma, he ultimately recovered. December 3rd, 1990, Gary's appeal is argued in court. His attorney, Charles Prudeau, had called upon three psychiatrists to testify on behalf of his client's insanity. The first psychiatrist to take the stand was Dr. Clancy McKenzie, who testified that Gary was a paranoid schizophrenic who had an infant brain, so he couldn't have possibly known right from wrong when he committed those crimes. Okay, Dr. McKenzie argued that when Gary's estranged wife, Betty Distow, informed him

that she had just given birth to his child in October of 1996. It brought Gary back to the time that his brother Terry was born and when he was neglected. Dr. McKenzie said, quote, "'This took him back to the first time when the most important woman in the world to him, his mother, left him and had a baby.'

And at that point, the trauma in the present, being told that his estranged wife had born him a child, returned him to a trauma at age 17 months, and he began to experience the world to the eyes of a 17-month-old. The reality is that mommy is never going to go away and leave me again. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what was that, Dr. Quack? Did Charles Peruto pay you to say that dumb shit, or did you come up with that fucking nonsense all on your own?

Dr. McKenzie sounds like he should have been receiving therapy, not giving any. And a little side road on Dr. fucking dipshit here, McKenzie. In 2009, that dude published a book titled, Babies Need Mothers, How Mothers Can Prevent Mental Illness in Their Children. Oh yeah, totally, totally. Moms can just rearrange kids' genetic codes. I hate that I bought that book so I could verify that it was as crazy as I suspected it would be and it is. Chapter 2 is literally titled, Having Schizophrenia is Unnecessary. Great insight, doctor. Why are you suffering from schizophrenia? It's so unnecessary.

You also have cancer? Why? Cancer is even more unnecessary. Just stop having that shit already. Before moving on, this grifting fucking quack actually wrote in this chapter of House Schizophrenia, it's unnecessary. He wrote, I have found that when a patient has provided a clear understanding of the disorder and is able to follow the primary treatment recommendations, then psychotherapy becomes highly effective, with or without medication. In fact, medicine most often has to be reduced or eliminated altogether because as patients recover, it makes them far too drowsy. It is not surprising that many who just listened to my audio recordings reported gaining more benefit and understanding than from all previous years of therapy. Ah, totally. Don't take meds for schizophrenia. No, get off your meds. Listen to the voices in your head. They're like, you don't need this.

They're right. Just get off of it. You don't need to see a therapist. You just need to listen to Dr. Dipchit's audiobook. Fortunately, Franny would be future patients of his. I think he died. I think he died in the last couple years based on some comments under videos of him on YouTube. And you know what? Fucking good. He doesn't need to be giving therapy to anybody. And I couldn't find his audiobooks. So maybe they're not for sale anymore. The second psychiatrist to take a stand for the defense, Dr. Kenneth Kuhl, that's a pretty sweet name for a therapist, Dr. Kuhl. He spoke to Gary's schizophrenic illness and how it prevented him from fully understanding his actions. Literally, Dr. Kuhl said that Gary's actions were based on his systematized delusion that God wanted him to produce a number of children, and this was essentially to him like a pact with God.

Okay? So, you know, if you just say that God told you to do some horrible shit, well then, you know, you're not really that accountable for your actions, You know, because you're following God. The third witness called upon by the defense was Jack Apsh, a Ph.D., an expert in the field of counseling psychology. Dr. Apsh had reviewed the entirety of Gary's documented medical history and records of treatment and concluded like the others that he did not, could not know right from wrong. He's pretty good at hiding what he did though. While the psychiatrist's testimonies were compelling, at least to some,

the Commonwealth also called upon expert witnesses of their own to testify to Gary's mental capabilities in prowess. They produced seven witnesses in total, and here is how each of their testimonies were summarized in the appeal. And the appellant referred to here is Gary. Appellant means, because I didn't know this, I forgot. An appellant is a person who applies to a higher court for a reversal of the decision of the lower court.

Lower court. Witness number one, Ernestine Simpson, a social worker at a state hospital in New Jersey, testified that she interviewed appellant in the fall of 1986 in order to determine whether appellant was sufficiently responsible to escort a patient, appellant's ex-wife, off hospital grounds. Ms. Simpson determined that the appellant was sufficiently responsible and recalled that she viewed Appellant as being neat, clean, courteous, calm, rational, and intelligent. Witness number two, Robert Kirkpatrick. That guy has fucking three first names all crammed together.

Robert, Kirk, and Patrick. Robert Kirkpatrick. Appellant stockbroker since 1974, testified that appellant was an astute investor who had raised his portfolio from $1,500 to $531,702 and that appellant had last placed an order for purchase of stocks November 17, 1986. Witness number three, Shirley Carter, an acquaintance of appellant since 1978, testified that she had conversed with the appellant in October and November of 1986. She testified that appellant's behavior appeared to be the same as it had been over the

previous eight years. Witness number four, Harold Wexler, a court reporter who had recorded proceedings involving appellant in family court in January of 1987, read the entire transcript of these family Court proceedings to the within jury. The within trial court, in its opinion, in support of its order denying appellants post-trial motions, characterized appellants' behavior during the Family Court proceedings as cunning and deceptive in answering questions about his true worth and his obligation to support his wife and son, both of whom were on welfare. Witness number five, David Plinner, a car or a pleiner, a car salesman who recalled a pellet coming to his showroom in November of 1986 to purchase a Cadillac,

testified that a pellet acted just like any other customer and that a pellet had offered him advice on investing. Witness number six, Richard W. Hull, MD, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Outpatient Clinic in Philadelphia, testified that in December 1986, a pellet who had last been seen by Dr. Hull in February 1986 asked to have his treatment reinstated. A pellet denied having any psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, hallucinations, depressions, or delusions. Dr. Hull, nevertheless, prescribed Thorazine, a tranquilizer widely used in managing schizophrenia, although he saw no ongoing problems at the time or when Appellant returned in January and February of 1987,

while he has all those fucking women in the basement. And before moving on, you do know what I have to comment on right now, right? I got to talk about Dr. Dick Hull. Dr. Dick Hull. Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me? If we had a time suck Hall of Fame for the best-named dicks, Dr. Hull is a fucking first ballot Hall of Famer. Dr. Dick, Dr. Dick, he'll cure you quick. Feeling out of control? Hurry, make an appointment with Dr. Hull. No tricks, nothing slick, just attaining healthy goals with good old Dr. Dick.

So don't stay sick. Find Dr. Dick, you silly prick. Run, don't stroll. You should make it your goal. To find Dr. Hole, hear his shtick and get cured quick. It appears that Dr. Dick Hole is still practicing in the Philadelphia area today. And you should see him. Just because of his name. And report back. Based on a quick web search, his practice is located at 1601 Walnut Street. Dr. Dick Hull's office has the address.

The address has the word nut in it. It just keeps getting better. His middle initial is W. Why don't you go take some appointments with him? Find out what it stands for. Whacker? Wanker? Warm? Dr. Dick Warmhole? I'll stop. Witness number seven, Eva Ho-boy. Wojkowski. Wojkowski? This is a fucking, this is a long name. W-O-J-C-I-E-C-H-O-W-S-K-I.

Witness number seven, Eva Polish. Eva Wojciechkowska. Not nearly as fun of a name as Dr. Dickel. A court psychologist testified that she had administered an intelligence test to a peasant incidental to his attempt to gain partial custody of his son in March of 1987. Oh my God, that's crazy. He was trying to gain custody of his son. Appellant's test showed that his IQ was 148. Ms. Wichekoski testified that the appellant's score placed him in the upper half of 1% of the entire population.

After reviewing all the evidence and hearing all the testimonies, the court decided to uphold the jury's original decision to sentence Gary Hyde-Nich to death. Hail Nimrod. Gary would now remain on death row for over eight years. Then July 6, 1999, Gary Michael Heidnik is executed via lethal injection. His last meal, two slices of cheese pizza, cup of coffee, black. He had no last words.

Spent about an hour talking to his daughter Maxine, who is now 20 years old and going to school at Temple University. She was devastated that he was being killed. She did not stay for his execution. She did not speak to reporters when she left her dad. And she has not, as far as I am aware, spoken about her dad's sins publicly, which is understandable. Those who did stay to witness Gary's execution cheered when he was pronounced dead. One woman's voice, believed to be the sister of one of his victims, was heard shouting,

Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Gary remains today the last person to be executed by the state of Pennsylvania. And now let's get out of here. Good job soldier. You've made it back. Barely. So, yet another crazy true crime tale. Some people's choices, right? Gary Heidnik. I mean, definitely insane. But also definitely insane enough to make over half a million dollars in the stock market, take advantage of countless intellectually disabled people, rape, imprison, torture half

a dozen women, kill two of them on top of previously torturing, imprisoning, raping his wife, raping and imprisoning the sister of one of his girlfriends. I can see how many will disagree with him being executed because of his insanity. Doesn't bother me after what he did, but I can understand that sentiment. Hopefully everyone can agree that at the very least the man who built his own prison should have never have been released from prison. Yes he was you know mentally ill but I don't find that that excuse I can see how the mental

illness could have pushed him into thinking that he was going to make the world more peaceful by creating all these mixed race babies. But then what does that have to do with like just you know electrocuting women down in the fucking basement with a you know a wire that he had cut to the end off of and and Attaching that to the metal that's just fucking cruel that hasn't has nothing to do with you know building this this This new race of which not new but you know in his mind his crazy mind has nothing to do with you know I'm gonna make the world more peaceful because there's not gonna be anybody of just one race anymore I feel especially bad in the story for 23-year-old Debra Dudley,

electrocuted just a few days before she would have been freed. Especially because she was the lone woman who refused to submit to Gary's torturous attempts to break her spirit. I feel for her more. I would have loved to have known what she ended up doing with her life. I would have loved to have known what she had to say about Gary at his trial, at his execution, right? That motherfucker. God, most of that guy's life was just one big... Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me? Let's check out the takeaways and learn a little bit more about him. Time Shuck Top 5 Takeaways. Number one, Gary Michael Hydeinck, obsessed with making money.

From the time he was in 8th grade, he was poring over the financial columns in the newspaper, trying to figure out how one day he could get rich quick. Surprisingly, as insane as he was, he was actually able to do so because he was incredibly intelligent, top half of the top 1% of the country in terms of IQ. And he was able to make a lot of money off of a very small initial investment. Number two, in the 1980s, Gary Heidnik, who had never expressed an interest in religion before, found God and God told him to start his own church. He obeyed, created the United Church of the Ministries of God,

and his congregation was exclusively made up of mentally and physically disabled people, who Gary lured into his Sunday masses by saying at his church that they would never be judged, and then he would fuck most of them in orgies. Number three, Gary had a history of severe mental health issues and violent assaults. He was discharged from the army for being schizophrenic, was in and out of psych wards a full 21 times, at least in 15 years, previously been arrested for kidnapping, raping, holding captive his intellectually disabled girlfriend's more intellectually disabled younger sister. Number four, between 1986 and 1987, Gary M. Hyde-Nich kidnapped, tortured, and sexually assaulted six women in a dungeon he had created in his basement over a period of just four

months. Two of the women did not survive his horrendous abuse, one of their bodies Gary disposed of in the woods and the other he Dismembered and put through a meat processor and he fed her remains to his other captives Claiming the mushy meat was dog food and number five new info. Did you know that? Jamie gum aka Buffalo bill in silence of the lambs By Thomas Harris was partially based on cool guy Gary The idea of imprisoning the harem of women in his basement

was taken directly from Gary's attempted baby farm slash house of whores in Philadelphia. Previous Time Suck subjects, Ed Gein and Ted Bundy also serves inspiration behind the infamous character. And the industrial metal band, Skin, released a song called Gary Hyde Nick, featuring Jonathan Davis of Korn. And the lyrics essentially tell the story that you heard today

Here is an excerpt of the lyrics God. He would be amused to see you at my feet 3520 North Marshall Street the dog food looked good enough good enough to eat and here's how it sounds sounds. Tons of views, seven and a half million views in six years. I mean pretty disturbing video as you can probably imagine but if you're curious about this case or fascinated especially especially fascinated about this case definitely worth checking out. The House of Horrors killer Gary Heidnik has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time. Thanks to Little Miles for providing a new button.

Thank you to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins for giving me the space to create and record. Thanks to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode, designing the merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Got new stuff in there. Thank you to Molly Box for the initial research. Also thanks to the all-seeing eyes, moderating the culturallyious private Facebook page,

the Mod Squad for making sure Discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck Subreddit and Bad Magic Subreddits. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Updates! Get your Time Sucker updates. Okay, first up, a Dr. Seuss update from last week from a radical leftist, Rourke Hansen, who sent an email to Bojangles at time suck podcast.com with the subject line of simply Dr. Seuss and then wrote, Hey there, Bad Magic team went to want to start off by prefacing that I love the show. Been working to the backlog of Is We Dumb?

Couldn't help how you resonated with Dr. Seuss' first wife always, or couldn't help notice how you resonated with Seuss' first wife, always feeling like her shoes were too short. I wanted to chime in as a self-assigned leftist on the topic of the removal of harmful stereotypes in Seuss' old literature. First, I've never heard from any circles that I'm in orbit with that are also leftist and it never came up about Dr. Seuss. Most leftists, or at least the ones that I generally know, realize that it was a bad look now, but that it was a product of its time. Frankly, at least right now and back then we had slash have far more pressing

things to worry about than perhaps outdated views. Truthfully, I'd love to keep those books around and have good and proper discussions on what these kind of illustrations meant back then. There was a similar situation about Aunt Jemima's syrup, I believe. And again, never heard a peep about that kind of stuff from the left. I feel like a lot of this stuff doesn't really happen as far as the outrage. And sometimes it feels like forced, you know, outrage bait. Maybe the brand is falling out of style and they make up something to get some free advertisement. Truthfully, I don't know. But that's just where I stand as a modern leftist.

We do see things like statues of Confederate soldiers as being different because those are distinctly inveneration of a person that wouldn't have stood for the American values that we have now. I don't think they should be destroyed, they should be put in a museum. Where they can be properly contextualized. Or, you know, do it like Germany does with the Nazis. They never forget the Holocaust. But not because of Hitler statues or swastika banners everywhere, but with memorials to the people who died in the Holocaust. Maybe we could put statues of folks who fought for freedom in the Confederacy instead of in the city square and leave

statues of Confederate soldiers in museums where context can be provided better again. Anyway that's my view. I don't speak for all leftists but I'd like it if we can have the dialogue of you know where we stand and stood on issues. There's no need to be delicate about it. Thanks for always being a real one to look at the world through curiosity and wonder instead of harsh cynicism and fear. Not sorry for the size or girth of this email. Just sit back and enjoy it. Three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing. Rorke. Well, thank you, Rorke. Yeah, I'll first make sure everybody understands the shoe reference you made.

Yes, I talked on Is We Dumb about how I wore the wrong size shoe for over 15 years. Never had my shoes properly fitted until I was like 35 or 36. Didn't realize that your toes were not supposed to touch the end of your shoe or be a bit crammed into the end of your shoe because I was raised poor and taught to accept, you know, whatever I got and not complain. My mom was, she would get so fucking annoyed if I complained about my shoes being too small as I grew because then she had to buy me more shoes and she wanted to spend the money. So I just wore fucking tight ass shoes for for most of my, I mean a good chunk of my childhood off and on and then from the age of about 18 to the age of around

35. Yeah, a little slow there to adapt. And second, yes to your message. Yes, yes. We should not hide from history. We just have to be able to properly contextualize it. We need to be able to have discussions about shameful aspects of history and not bury them, right? There should be no reason to hide from it, to pretend that it didn't happen. We need to not be afraid to discuss things like that. We have to be able to talk about uncomfortable stuff to progress as a society. So thank you for that. Next up, more food for thought regarding that Dr. Seuss suck from a sweet space-litter by the name of Damon Tanner,

who sent in a message with the subject line of Dr. Seuss vs. Mel Gibson. And they wrote, I already commented about this on Patreon, but because I've thought about it for days, I wanted to say a little more. Been around the post office long enough that I have a driving route and this incredible podcast is what I do and think about all day. That's so nice. Biggest thing I took away from this episode is Dan's quote, or great quote, separate

the art from the artist. Been thinking if I'm allowed now to watch the new Lethal Weapon when it comes out. I loved the movies in my 20s, but after Mel Gibson's troubles later, could no longer stand to watch them or anything else that he was in. Sorry, his incident really soured me on him. I keep thinking you have to care somewhat and respect an artist to enjoy him in a movie or book. As an example, Keanu Reeves is such a great actor who cares about his fans and his movies,

amplify all the good he does in the world and for his fans. I try and apply that to Mel Gibson and all I can think about is him blaming everything bad in the world on a group of people. I want to be able to enjoy them again but don't know if it's possible. Just curious on your thoughts about it. I said it before but thanks again for this incredible life edition. Really spurred me on to wanting to learn more about everything. Thanks to my Twitter friend, Bree, who turned me on to this as it has improved me as a meat sack. Able to pass it on to my friend

Donovan at work as he's hooked now too. Thank you, Suck Master and crew. I'm sorry I'm going to have to go five out of five stars and everything. Lucifina is the hottest woman on the internet. I praise her every day. Thanks, Damon in Utah." Well, Damon, you're very kind. And you know what? I'm glad you made me actually think more about what I said. And while I do like that quote, separate the art from the artist, quote that really isn't assigned to anyone in particular, you know, everybody or almost everybody, I believe, does have a line where they can no longer do that. So, you know, I guess like, it depends on what they've done

if you're able to separate the art from the artist. Depends on the situation. Dr. Soush, from everything I can tell, did not set out to intentionally demonize Japanese people in his children's books. In his political cartoons, he certainly did. But that was because we were at war at that time with Japan. Not because, at least from what I've read, not because he was super racist towards Japanese people. For me, pretty easy, you know, through an innocent kind of ignorance, to unintentionally do something that could offend others.

I think that's a pretty easy thing to do. I think that's a very common human thing to do. And when somebody does it, I don't feel it's necessary to demonize them. Not that anybody's necessarily really demonizing him. But also regarding his first wife, well, it sure looks like he cast her aside towards the end of her life and that he cheated on her with a mutual friend, a friend who was his best friend at the time.

Oh my God, cheated on her with that best friend's wife. And that is pretty fucking gross. And that did happen. I also don't know all of the details of both people's marriages. And even if I did, and it was still just as disgusting as I'm assuming, while that definitely would not make me a fan of what he did there, I can still enjoy his work because, you know, love is complicated. And again, that's a pretty human thing to do, even though it's shitty, you know, not condoning it, by the way. But for me, he didn't cross some

not condoning it by the way, but for me, he didn't cross some, some moral line that you just can't come back from, you know, and now I just can't enjoy his work. And again, that line is going to be different for every person. So circling back now to Mel Gibson, I also have trouble enjoying Mel Gibson. I have not enjoyed Mel Gibson since his, his rants in 2006 and 2009, or another one came out in 2009. When Gibson was pulled over for a DUI in 2006, here is some of what he said to his arresting officer. He said, you motherfucker, I'm going to fuck you. You're gonna regret you ever did this to me.

He repeated that threat over and over. Said he owned Malibu. He was gonna spend all his money to get even with his officer for just doing his job. And then he said said the fucking Jews. He yelled the Jews are responsible for all the wars we're in. He asked the officer, are you a Jew? He called another officer sugar tits.

Then to his girlfriend and mother, one of his daughters, Oskana Grigorieva. Oh my gosh, her name is tough for me. Grigorieva. He said on the phone, and this is in 2009, this, you know, he said some shitty things at the time to her, but then also this stuff came out later, three years later. Your life, I gave you shit. You gave me nothing but fucking grief. Alright?

And bad publicity, you c the meanest person I know. You're the meanest person. You're very mean. You've always been. You're very jealous and you're very mean know you know what you are too. Look at yourself and look at you done. Look at your son. He's a fucking mess. You fucking excuse for a mother. You're a fucking bitch. So you know, uh, that's pretty rough to hear now. And you know, and he claimed he was drunk there. A lot of people have done when he's drunk, you know, when he obviously we got

arrested with the DUI, a lot of people have done stupid shit when they're drunk say things they regret But that's pretty wild. You know makes me feel like he really is somebody who abuses privilege and wealth I mean threatening to destroy an officer's career. You know because he's what fucking he's famous Yelling shit about Jewish people calling his fucking baby mama all the horrible shitty caller Doesn't paint a good picture of somebody. And then a few years later, Raider Online released another recorded phone call of Mel Gibson threatening Oksana in it amongst other vile shit. He told her that she quote looks like a fucking bitch in heat and if you get raped by a pack

of N-bombs, it will be your fault. Can you really blame alcohol on saying that? Winona Ryder said Mel Gibson referred to her as an oven dodger in regards to her Jewish heritage and there's more. Our Jewish character. When I looked at a total picture I see a guy who is not somebody I would ever want to spend time with. I don't see a good person having some off days. I see a racist entitled misogynist so for me you know he's crossed the line that I don't see a good person having some off days. I see a racist entitled misogynist. So for me, you know, he's crossed the line that, ah, I don't know.

He'd have to do so much fucking PR. He's released statements, you know, apologizing, but they seem very just like a PR agency wrote them to me. So for me, I can't enjoy his shit anymore. I can't enjoy Woody Allen's work. I can't enjoy Roman Polanski's stuff because of things that they have done. And I say all this to say that, you know, well, sometimes I can separate the art from the artist. Other times, yeah, I can't enjoy Roman Polanski's stuff because of things that they have done. And I say all this to say that, you know, well, sometimes I can separate the art

from the artists. Other times. Yeah, I can't. So maybe that wasn't the best quote to use, uh, with you and Mel Gibson, you know, it's, uh, it's up to you if you can separate the two. I won't, I won't judge you if you can different for everybody. Maybe, maybe, maybe he'll die soon. Now I'm not wishing him death, but if he, if he does die soon, then you can enjoy your shit again, right? Cause now the money's not going to go to him. It's kind of like how I can you can enjoy your shit again, right? Because now the money's not gonna go to him. It's kind of like how I can enjoy Michael Jackson's music now, right?

He's not profiting off it anymore, so why not enjoy some good pop songs? Hopefully my ramblings explain my position a little better. Now for one more about the recent video, Nasty Suck. Front-butt fiddler Sarah Casey sent in a message with a subject line of the nasties and baby Jesus. She writes, Greetings Lord Suckington and the Bad Magic Crew. Front Butt Fiddler, Sarah Casey, sent in a message with a subject line of the nasties and baby Jesus. She writes, Greetings Lord Suckington and the Bad Magic Crew. When you mentioned Child's Play 3 during episode 451, Panic on the TV, I knew I had to ride in with this funny little story.

My mother is a Pentecostal pastor. I grew up in the 80s and she fully bought into the Satanic panic. I wasn't allowed to watch the Smurfs, Rainbow Bride, Care Bears, Gummy Bears, Heme... I forget Gummy Bears had their own show. Basically anything that involved magic because it was going to corrupt my soul. At my Christian high school I even had to write a book report on why knock rock about all the evils of rock and roll. Gotta watch out for those devil drums. Anything considered corrupting media was completely off-limits and so of course video nasties were out of the question. Now fast forward 15 years.

My older sister had gotten married and was visiting from out of town with my 3 year old niece Katie during the month of October. The sci-fi channel was doing back to back horror movies, oh hell yeah, for Halloween. And I had left the TV on that channel after sneaking in some video nasties the night before while my mom was asleep. Wanting to spend some quality time with my sister, my mom decided to entertain her granddaughter with what she proudly called a Baby Jesus movie. She sat Katie down on the couch, turned on the TV, and started fiddling

with her three remotes to figure out which one changed the input to the VCR. The entire time, she was not looking at the screen, just going on about how great it was going to be to learn about Baby Jesus. As she bent over to put the tape in, she had no idea Child's Play was on and Chucky covered in blood, knife in hand, was front and center. Katie, now little Katie, now started whimpering. She began to cry, baby Jesus, scary. Baby Deed is scary. My mom finally looked up, saw Chucky stabbing somebody, blood flying everywhere and Katie crying now with her hands over her face. She panicked her now the TV rushed to come for her say, no, no Katie. That's not baby Jesus. No, no, I'm so sorry.

That's not baby Jesus. She was absolutely horrified convinced. She had traumatized Katie for life. I just laughed like an asshole. As far as you know, Katie turned out fine. She probably doesn't even remember the incident. Oh, but I do and I still love teasing my mom about it. Now that I know the term I can tell her that she showed my niece a video nasty.

Thanks for the entertainment. Keep on suckin'. PS your Bob's Bountiful Bonsai Fruit Skit at the very end of this episode. Gave me great joy. I don't know why, but I love that silly screeching fucker. Also, if you can find a way to sneak in the Dead Giveaway song sometime in the future, I know a lot of us space lizards would appreciate it. That song lives rent-free in my head. Your loyal, degenerate, front-butt butt fiddling space lizard, Sarah Casey. Thank you, Sarah. And I think I feel like I didn't have the button queued up right earlier, so I'm going to do a clean take.

Every day. Oh, there we go. Yeah, thanks Sarah. That is very funny. That for a few moments at least, your little niece Katie thought that baby Jesus was a blood-covered, knife-wielding, chucky doll. I wonder at different points over the next few years when baby Jesus was brought up, she would feel a moment of panic, get worried about being stabbed. And now because my brain is so fucked up, I imagine a wildly blasphemous slasher flick that is child's play meets the Antichrist, with the slasher being somebody who people think at first is the second coming of Christ. But this baby Jesus isn't giving you his blood,

he's taking yours. Hope you loved that little taste of dead giveaway. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusophina, both. You silly old front, butt, fiddler you. I love that We all did Thanks for listening to another bad magic productions podcast scared to death time suck each week Short sucks a nightmare fuel on the nights on the time suck and scare to death podcast feeds twice a month

sucks and nightmare fuel on the nights on the time suck and scared to death podcast feeds twice a month please do not dig out a breeding pit in your basement this week to try and have babies with 10 scared women you've kidnapped just i don't know try try tinder or something you fucking weirdo and keep on sucking TARGET OF SPECIAL! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH And magic productions And now one more time because you know you love hearing sweet sassy little miles just as much as I do. Are you fucking kidding me? I said, are you fucking kidding me?