FBI profiling is often criticized as ineffectual or “pseudoscience,” but acting on the FBI’s assessment that the serial killing unsub would return to the bodies, Rochester Police and New York State Police began flying helicopter patrols over areas where the serial killer liked to dump bodies.
On the morning of January 3, 1990, about four months before Shawcross’s parole supervision was scheduled to end, the police helicopter spotted him eating a salad in the door of a car parked on a bridge above the body of June Cicero, a prostitute who had vanished a few days earlier right under the noses of a police surveillance team. After that it was simple: it took police a few days to squeeze a confession out of Shawcross in the deaths of eleven women. Shawcross led police to two victims who had not yet been discovered. In the end, Shawcross was charged in ten murders from the twelve he was suspected in. One murder, Elizabeth “Liz” Gibson, was in a different jurisdiction, while another murder could not be conclusively linked to Shawcross. After being convicted of ten counts of second-degree murder in late November 1990, Shawcross was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment for each of the ten murders he was charged with; a total of 250 years. He later pleaded guilty in the murder of Elizabeth Gibson. There would be no hope for parole or early release for Shawcross this time.
In each case, Shawcross would later claim, the victim did something to anger or frighten him. He said he suffocated or strangled some victims “by accident” while trying to keep them quiet because he was afraid of being discovered and having his parole revoked, or that he accidentally choked the victim with his penis during oral sex. He killed a woman for trying to steal his money, for hiding the fact that she was having her period or for mocking him when he was unable to have an erection. He said he unintentionally strangled another victim by closing an electric car window on her neck when she leaned into his car. In the case of an acquaintance, fifty-nine-year-old homeless woman Dorothy Keeler, whose head he later removed from her decomposing corpse, Shawcross claimed she tried to extort money from him by threatening to tell Rose they were having sex. It was a typical serial killer’s propensity to blame the victim for instigating her own death at his hands.
To further distance himself from the sexual sadistic rage driving him, Shawcross claimed that he could not remember most of the murders. He would describe an “aura” state of rage, where he would break out into a sweat and there would be bright light and then he would suddenly return to consciousness, and oops, there is a dead woman next to him, golly gosh gee, how did that happen? And by the way, I might as well have sex with her warm corpse while I’m here, and maybe cut it up a little and take the vagina with me and eat it.
Now the corrections, judicial, medical and psychiatric communities came together to clean up the mess and try to figure out exactly what was wrong with Shawcross. Some of the diagnoses were the same as his early diagnoses: sadistic paraphilia, sociopathy, uninhibited aggression, sexual dysfunction, no impulse control, trauma-induced rage and the usual bogeyman of serial killing: psychopathy.
The defense psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis fell for Shawcross’s Vietnam War tall tales, which by the time of his trial in 1990 were much more elaborate than the ones he first told in the early 1970s and now echoed the surrealistic Francis Ford Coppola movie Apocalypse Now. She argued, as quoted above, that Shawcross might have been a victim of CIA brainwashing experiments in Vietnam. She also suggested he had organic brain dysfunctions and believed his assertions that he could not remember his homicidal acts. She states:
Arthur Shawcross had the classic signs and symptoms of temporal lobe seizures—the auras, the stereotyped behaviors for which memory was impaired, the subsequent deep sleep. For example, just prior to a homicidal episode, he would begin to sweat and his world would explode in bright, white light. Moments thereafter his hands would close around the necks of his victims. Then, amazingly, he would fall into a deep, post-seizure sleep. When he awakened, the memory of his murderous behavior would be hazy and distorted.26
There were certain physiological and biochemical explanations offered for his killing impulse. Shawcross had had multiple head injuries as a child and adolescent, which is common in serial killers. An EEG showed brain abnormality: “paroxysmal irritative patterns in bi-frontotemporal areas—more in the right side.”27 A CT scan showed a slight asymmetry; an MRI showed a small subarachnoid cyst, a healed frontal lobe fracture and a slightly atrophied and foreshortened temporal lobe. The studies I cited above by Kent A. Kiehl do sustain a correlation between head injuries and “acquired psychopathy.”
There were biochemical abnormalities that could lower the inhibition of aggression. Shawcross was diagnosed with pyroluria, an elevated level of kryptopyrrole in the urine; his number was 200, when 20 would be considered high. Pyrolurics have severe behavior problems, can’t control their anger when provoked, have mood swings and tend to be night owls.
There were also genetic explanations advanced. Shawcross had a rare XYY chromosome combination. As we know, these are the sex chromosomes: XX in a woman, XY in a man. It is well known that atypical chromosomal combinations can result in atypical sexual development. For example, in Klinefelter syndrome, the combination XXY results in a male body with some female characteristics. Since an “extra X” appears to feminize men, some theorists speculated that an additional Y chromosome might “hyper masculinize” men who had it. Since men are more aggressive than women, it might be that men who have XYY chromosomes, the way Shawcross did, might be more aggressive than other men and hence more likely to commit violent crimes. However, while it was eventually established that XYY men are more common in the offender population, they tend to commit nonviolent crimes, not violent crimes as the XYY hypothesis predicted.28
In the end, nobody could figure out Shawcross, not least because of his tendency to exaggerate and fantasize a range of traumas from childhood sexual abuse and parental abuse to aura states and PTSD. While it is very plausible that Shawcross endured some degree of trauma in his early life, the exact nature, extent and context of it forever remained cloaked by the constantly evolving fantasies he spun for anybody interested or needing to hear.
Finally, none of this may matter if Shawcross actually came to believe in his own lies and fantasies.
“Give Me Your Hand”
Confined in Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, Shawcross led a full and active life—perhaps the best and most fulfilling years of his life. He divorced Rose and in 1997 married his loyal mistress, Clara Neal, making her his fifth wife. He was fifty-two and she was sixty-six. Clara stated, “It was nice and all. It took 10 years to make the grade but I finally did it.” Shawcross eventually divorced Clara and sought a sixth wife for himself from the hundreds of lonely serial killer groupies who wrote him in prison.
He developed a budding prison art career, painting canvases that were sold on eBay (a violation of prison rules) and were included in an annual inmate art show. The “Corrections on Canvas” show, which had been staged for thirty-five years, was discontinued in 2002, after the public protested that Shawcross was profiting from the sale of his paintings.
While in prison, Shawcross also developed a culinary career, compiling six hundred typed pages of recipes, which he would send one by one to “murderabilia” collectors; they trade today for about fifty dollars. To a journalist interviewing him about his recipes, Shawcross said he developed a taste for human flesh in Vietnam when South Korean soldiers fighting alongside American troops offered him pieces of cooked Vietnamese casualties. He said, “One of them says, ‘Here, try it.’ And I closed my eyes and I bit into it. And I said, ‘This ain’t bad.’ It tasted like fresh ham. . . . Nobody eats my cooking. They might think there’s a finger in there.”29
He gave multiple interviews and sent out so many nail clippings and strands of his pubic hair to collectors that he created a glut in the “murderabilia” market. In several documentary and television
shoots, looking like a nice, chubby grandfather with big eyeglasses, he told his usual Vietnam War fantasies, but the stories differed slightly with every telling.
One of the last people to interview Shawcross before his death was Canadian journalist Nadia Fezzani. She described meeting him in a prison interview room:
His grey hair was combed back. Chest hair emerged from the top of his shirt. Only his eyebrows still revealed a little of the brown hair of his youth. He had a gentle, friendly looking face with a large nose and an easy smile on his thin lips. His misaligned teeth had yellowed over the years. His body language clearly revealed his joy in seeing me. . . . Because of films about serial killers, often portrayed with physical features reflecting the monstrousness of their crimes, I had imagined a man with malevolent eyes. But Shawcross looked as gentle as a lamb. . . . I relaxed my vigilance a little, until I remembered that this paunchy sexagenarian had killed more than a dozen innocent victims.30
Fezzani had interviewed a number of serial killers and was experienced with their deceptive ways, but even she found herself needing to focus on resisting the cannibal strangler’s amiable charm when interviewing him in prison.
He looked at me through his big glasses and then said to me, “Give me your hand.”
My hand? Why did he want my hand? I hesitated for what felt like an eternity. If I chose not to obey him, he would say that I had no trust in him, and so why should he trust me? I held out my hand. He took it with both his hands and turned it over to read my palm.
AS: You are going to live a long time, Nadia.31
“Arthur I Will Always Love You”
On November 10, 2008, Shawcross complained of a sudden pain in his leg and was rushed to Albany Medical Center, where he died several hours later of coronary failure at the age of sixty-three.
Dozens of his female pen pals would mourn his death, some posting last letters to him on the Internet:
Well Arthur, we were writing to each other for a while, and although many might not have agreed with me, I’ll still miss the letters we shared. Maybe you did change before the end, or maybe you were just the same as you were when you committed the horrendous acts, no one will ever no [sic], but you. I just hope you did. I hope you find some kind of peace now, and I hope the families whose lives you tore apart also can find some peace, bye Art!
Kate
Arthur,
I have been wondering if you received my letter before you past away [sic]. In the past few letters that you wrote to me you said that you had been unwell, but was getting better! I can’t believe that you are now gone. My boys have the pictures that you drew for them on the wall—thank you once again. I know we had some funny times and I know that you have changed from the person that you was—and i know the reason why you did what you did. I will miss you Arthur and the letters that we shared. May God take care of you and may you now rest in peace. I will never forget you:)
Rachael xxxx
Arthur, thanks for the countless emails, drawings, and 4 leaf clovers. We sure do miss hearing from you as we did look forward to every one of your letters . . . almost weekly.
Witter
Arthur I will always love you. I’m just sorry we didn’t get to get married like we both talked about before you went into the hospital. I will cherish the ring that you sent me.
Courtney
Arthur and I were friends for 10+ years. I don’t condone his killings but I felt he was a great individual deep down inside. He was always a cool person to me and I’ll miss our visits and his letters.
Michigan Ghoul
Arthur I’m going to miss our communications, you truly were one of the good guys, misunderstood and punished for acts you had no control over. You are now safely in the arms of Jesus, away from the wicked and cruel world of satan who used you as a tool for evil. Wait for me at the pearly gates my darling.
Julia
Shawcross’s death was lamented and memorialized much more than the deaths of his fourteen known victims. In her University of Rochester essay “The Tragic Death of Felicia Stephens,” Katie Karp explored the lamentable circumstances of Shawcross’s last victim, one of the two “less-dead” African American street prostitutes he had murdered. Karp writes:
Amongst cover photos and full page stories covering every aspect of the notorious serial killer’s life, it was difficult to find as much as a small blurb mentioning Felicia. . . . Ms. Stephens was largely overshadowed by “the bigger story” and the only information available is her age and skin color. To this day she is often not even mentioned as a victim on many websites and video documentaries. . . . She is also the only woman without a picture of her to associate with her stories.32
Nor was Shawcross’s first victim, the ten-year-old Jack Blake, memorialized. A statue of an angel erected on his grave shortly after his burial was stolen by some souvenir-collecting asshole.
It was only forty-one years later, and five years after his killer’s death, that a former classmate of Jack’s, Janet A. Fish, realized that Jack’s grave was unmarked and decided to do something about it, raising the funds among Jack’s former schoolmates to erect a headstone for the murdered little boy. Jack’s classmates had been traumatized by his murder in 1972. Fish recalled, “It was a scary time for children in Watertown. Before that, kids were allowed to go out on their own.”
Another former schoolmate now in his fifties recalls, “He was the first person who I knew who died. Jack was my friend. He was killed by this monster. That was a lot for an 11-year-old to handle.”33 A headstone was finally erected for Jack Blake on November 26, 2013.
* * *
—
Arthur Shawcross was but one of the 768 serial killers in the 1980s cataloged in the Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database. That was a horrific number. The good news was that the surge had ended; for the first time since the 1940s, the number of new serial killers was about to begin receding.
In the 1990s, there would be 669 serial killers, 13 percent fewer than in the 1980s.
CHAPTER 7
The Last Serial Killers: Twilight of the Epidemic Era 1990–2000
We bury our dead and walk away.
Danny Rolling, serial killer
You might as well call Elizabeth Taylor a serial bride.
Dennis Nilsen, serial killer
The 1990s started off looking a lot like the 1970s and 1980s, with new and increasingly crazy serial killers coming at us with every year, just as before. While the average number of victims per serial killer began to decline, the serial killer scripts continued to push the envelope further and further into the realm of unimaginable horror as we slipped out of the 1980s into the 1990s.
The decade opened with a series of shocking unsolved murders in the college town of Gainesville, Florida. The murders garnered national attention and eventually inspired Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher black-comedy movie Scream. But there was nothing funny about what was happening in Gainesville.
Danny Rolling, “The Gainesville Ripper,” Gainesville, Florida, 1990
Gainesville, the capital of Alachua County, is located in the middle of the northern part of the state, and the University of Florida has a large campus there. In August 1990, Gainesville was a frenzy of activity as students arrived to begin the fall semester. Many students choose the University of Florida as a place of study because of its sunny climate and party-time reputation. Students from all parts of the country were unpacking their belongings and moving into various dormitories and off-campus apartments and houses.
On August 24, two female freshman students, eighteen-year-old Sonja Larson and seventeen-year-old Christina Powell, were found brutally stabbed to death in their apartment. The killer had apparently walked in through an unlocked door during the night. Powell was found nude on the carpet of the living room floor near the couch, with a tight grouping of five stab woun
ds to her upper back. One stab wound was driven into her back with such force that it traversed her torso, the tip of the knife emerging below her right breast. She had been raped. Her nipples had been cut away, leaving behind circular wounds about two and a half inches in diameter. The absence of hemorrhaging indicated that this occurred postmortem. Her head was turned toward her right shoulder, and her hair fanned out from the right side of her head, deliberately placed in that position by her killer. Both of her arms extended above her head, and both legs were spread wide apart, bent at the knees, fully exposing her pubic area. A half-empty bottle of green Dawn dishwashing soap had been left between her knees on top of a damp towel. The soap coated her vaginal area and left a layer of foam around her vulva. Her cotton bra had been cut and ripped off her and tossed nearby, but her semen-stained underwear was neatly folded next to her left foot.
The room was strewn with crumpled paper towels that the killer must have used to clean himself up. The contents of Powell’s purse were spilled out on the floor and devoid of paper cash; police would find none in the apartment. A photo from the purse of a young man and woman was cut in half, the woman’s part missing.
American Serial Killers Page 35
