The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers

by Trevor Marriott

  The case went cold. However, the police did investigate the killings of several more prostitutes during the summer of 1989, although none of the cases seemed clearly linked to one another and none seemed unusual. One woman had been dumped along the roadway on an exit ramp, another shot and a third one killed by a car in a way that looked suspicious.

  On 9 September 1988, a man looking for empty bottles to sell came across another set of remains. He spotted a bone sticking up and believed it was from a dead deer, but on closer inspection saw a pile of clothing. He immediately contacted the police who found it to be the decomposing body of a woman. This woman had apparently floated upriver and debris had snagged her body. No one had seen her there and she had decomposed considerably, making it difficult for the medical examiner to offer a cause of death, although he listed it as probable asphyxia. There were no knife or gunshot wounds evident in the bones. Who was she?

  The police found 138 possible matches for identity purposes from reports of missing women, but all were eventually eliminated. Unable to identify her or to find someone like her reported missing from the area, the police enlisted the help of a forensic anthropologist to reconstruct what her face had looked like from the skull. It was a long, involved process, but he produced a clay bust and added a wig and fake eyeballs, and the police photographed the final product and published it in the local papers. The victim’s distraught father identified her as Anna Steffen and dental records confirmed this. The police believed a drug dealer or pimp had killed her. Her body had been discovered far away from where Blackburn’s had been found, so while their manner of death and disposal may have been similar, the police were not linking them and no one was talking about a serial killer.

  On Saturday, 21 October, six weeks later, three fishermen went into the gorge and came across the remains of a decomposing headless corpse, mostly bones, hidden in tall grass along the riverbank. The body was that of a female; her neck was broken and the cause of her death was difficult to determine, but she seemed to have been killed by blunt impact with something. An employee of the county jail read about the discovery and reported that a homeless woman named Dorothy Keeler, aged 60, had not been seen in some time. The remains were again given to the forensic anthropologist and an identification was made.

  Six days later, a boy retrieving a ball saw a foot sticking out from beneath a pile of debris and cardboard near a YMCA hostel not far from the gorge. He summoned the police, who uncovered a decomposing, maggot-infested body dressed in black trousers and a sweater. The dead woman was identified as Patty Ives.

  The number of victims was rising; four apparently dead by asphyxia, with three in quick succession. The pressure was now on to stop the killer. It was suggested that the strangler killed quickly and that he was probably quite strong; he appeared to strangle the women without much effort and little sign of a struggle on their part. As the victims were prostitutes, the police tried to enlist the help of the other working girls. On average, around 35 women worked the area at any given time, though many came and went. The police sat in unmarked cars, watching them and allowing them to ply their trade. They were told about a transvestite who seemed to get the most action, but there was nothing overtly suspicious about him. The women were tentative about this unusual arrangement, not altogether trustful that the police watching them wouldn’t just arrest them. Neither side was used to working with the other. Yet the prostitutes also felt safer. Despite all of this, other prostitutes soon went missing. One such person was blonde Maria Welch, who resembled Patty Ives in build. Then the body of a petite blonde was discovered dumped in the gorge, down a steep slope, wearing only a pair of boots. Her cause of death was asphyxia and bruises on the body indicated that she’d been beaten. Everyone assumed this victim was Maria, but they were wrong. Her name was Frances Brown. Enquiries revealed that she had met a man named ‘Mike’ prior to her death.

  The police thought they had a series of six to eight women who had been killed by the same man. Checking files of sexual predators who’d been paroled from upper New York prisons, they found nothing to indicate that they had one living in their area.

  On 15 November, Kimberly Logan, a black prostitute, was discovered dead beneath a pile of leaves in the back yard of a house. She’d been battered and kicked in the abdomen. The medical examiner found leaves stuffed down her throat. She had not been found near the gorge. Eight days later, a man out walking his dog went into a marshy area near an industrial estate. He came to a clearing where he spotted a piece of stiff carpeting, iced over. Walking closer, he saw a bare foot beneath it. The police’s worst fears had come true. It was the body of another victim of the mysterious killer.

  The woman, who had been preserved somewhat by the cold weather and the covering, lay face down. Spots on her skin suggested decomposition, so she had been killed as much as two or three weeks earlier. A considerable amount of blood had settled into her back, which meant that she had been lying on her back after death for a period of time, and now here she was on her face. Someone had come and turned her over. Her position suggested that she’d been anally penetrated after death. She’d also been strangled, but that wasn’t all. When they turned her over, they saw that some time after she had died, she’d been cut from the top of the chest between her breasts all the way into the vaginal area, like a gutted deer. Upon close inspection, it looked as if the vaginal lips had been removed. This killer had returned for some perverted pleasure. Yet the analysis at the morgue indicated that there was no semen in or on the body. In the weeds, the police found a knife and a bloody towel, but there were no fingerprints and very little physical evidence.

  The victim was soon identified as the missing June Stott. As far as anyone knew, she was not a prostitute and had never taken drugs. This made investigators wonder whether this murder was part of the series or something new. She had also been found seven miles downriver from where other bodies had been left. Did they have several killers on their hands, or was just one killer disposing of bodies all over the place? This victim had been covered, like some of the others, and asphyxiated.

  Local police decided to enlist the help of the FBI. There were now 11 unsolved cases of prostitute murders in and around Rochester in a 12-month period. The average number of murders per year was three or four. Yet before the FBI even arrived, a hunter found the body of Elizabeth Gibson, a prostitute, on 27 November in a swamp in a neighbouring county. She had been strangled. What linked her to the others was a witness. Jo Ann Van Nostrand, a prostitute, had happened to see a regular client whom she knew as ‘Mitch’ the day before with a prostitute whom she recognised as Elizabeth Gibson. A newsflash that day on television told her a woman had been found murdered. Jo Ann went directly to the police to tell them about Mitch. They took her to the station, but Jo Ann did not know Mitch’s real name or where he worked. However, police believed that she had given them a solid lead. At the very least, they knew how the man operated and what kind of car he drove. What they did not know was that the killer would change cars and still remain in the shadows.

  Towards the end of December, several more women were reported missing and one of them was someone everyone had felt certain would never fall victim to a killer. June Cicero was one of the most streetwise prostitutes in Rochester, and another prostitute, Darlene Trippi, had teamed up with Jo Ann Van Nostrand for safety. Just before she disappeared, June Cicero had boasted to the police about how she wasn’t afraid of the man. It was he who ought to be afraid of her. They had believed her. Also missing at this time was a black prostitute named Felicia Stephens and the long-missing Maria Welch.

  On 31 December, a state trooper on road patrol in a rural area outside Rochester spotted a pair of black jeans discarded and frozen along the roadside. He stopped to investigate and went through the pockets. He found an identification card in the name of Felicia Stephens. With this discovery, everyone assumed that she was dead. It was also clear, since the jeans had been found not far from Salmon Creek, that the ki
ller was returning to former dumping grounds. Then Stephens’s boots were found in separate areas. She could not get along in the freezing temperatures without those. A thorough search was almost impossible at that time of year, even with search dogs. Everything was under snow or frozen over, and trying to walk out on the water proved treacherous. Four missing women and no one had found a body; it was frustrating for the police. They decided to fly over the areas where bodies had been found in an attempt to locate more. They flew low over Salmon Creek, scanning back and forth, alert to anything unusual. Suddenly they saw something near a bridge. They flew closer and saw what appeared to be a human figure lying splayed out and face down on the surface of the ice. She was wearing a white top, as Felicia Stephens had been when last seen, but nothing else. They hovered for a closer look and made out a female with darkish skin, but not black. It could not be Felicia Stephens, but they had three other missing women, so it could be one of them. Then they noticed a Chevrolet Celebrity on the bridge, so they radioed to patrol units on the ground to check it out. A large, overweight man was there and he appeared to be urinating. Then he got into his car and drove away.

  When officers arrived at the location, they found the body was that of the streetwise prostitute, June Cicero. She had been asphyxiated by strangulation and then mutilated post-mortem. Her genital area had been sawed clean through, probably while she was frozen. Now the investigators had to learn who this man was who had been on the bridge and find out what he had to say for himself. Perhaps he’d seen something that would help.

  Patrol units were hot on the trail of the man in the vehicle and the helicopter team followed. They watched as the car pulled into a car park across the street from the Wedgewood Nursing Home in Spencerport. The driver went into the nursing home, and a check on the registration number revealed that the car belonged to a woman named Clara Neal. The troopers took over while the helicopter team returned to protect the crime scene. They saw that there were fresh footprints in the snow. Those would be good evidence. They preserved the scene and called for more support.

  Police went to the nursing home and asked the man in the Celebrity for ID, which he produced. His name was Arthur John Shawcross, aged 44 (although with his greying hair he looked much older), and he said he thought that they’d followed him because he’d urinated out in the woods. That was his story, anyway, and he agreed to cooperate with the police. When asked for his driving licence, he admitted he did not have one and then revealed that he had been in jail for manslaughter.

  That revelation struck everyone at once. This was no ordinary citizen who’d happened to get close to a crime scene. This was a one-time killer. The profilers had told them that this offender was returning to his victims, and that could very well be what they’d caught him doing. By a sheer stroke of luck, they had flown over the scene at the very time he’d decided to have another look at his brutal handiwork.

  Despite what they now knew, the police weren’t sure that they had the killer. They had to be careful. Interrogators often make mistakes by showing their eagerness and trying to rush someone into a confession. They had spent too many hours on this case to go in blind. Shawcross was persuaded to accompany the police to the State Police Barracks for further questioning. He was happy to oblige and even signed forms that gave the police permission to search the car and his home. The police then took both him and Clara Neal (in a different car) to Brockport.

  Shawcross openly admitted that he’d been arrested 16 years earlier in Watertown because ‘two kids died’. He would not elaborate on these crimes. He insisted it was just a coincidence that he was parked over the body on Salmon Creek, that he was just driving around and had stopped to urinate when the helicopter flew over. He hadn’t seen anything. Though excited by what they heard and by the feeling they finally had the killer right in front of them, the investigators continued to build a rapport rather than press for details. They wanted Shawcross to feel comfortable talking with them, because they intended to question him again and they wanted it to be voluntary. They had him in the interrogation room for about five hours, and took Clara home before they released him. He did finally tell them more details about how he had killed the children, raping the little girl anally before he’d strangled her. Everyone was disgusted but they tried not to show their feelings. Shawcross also told them how he’d had sexual relations with his younger sister, and he thought that had something to do with why he had assaulted a child, as well as why he had killed so many people in Vietnam. He liked to talk about his ‘accomplishments’ there. He’d been quite the soldier. The police decided to release Shawcross in order to make further enquiries. Before they released him, they asked to take his photograph, which Shawcross allowed.

  Police then showed it to several of the prostitutes working Lyell Avenue. One was Jo Ann Van Nostrand, who had told the police about ‘Mitch’. She immediately identified Shawcross. Several other prostitutes identified him as well. They all knew him as a regular customer who’d never been a problem.

  The police quickly built up a profile on Shawcross and his background before talking with him again. They also wanted to know how a sex offender who’d been imprisoned for manslaughter and paedophilia had been released into their area without anyone finding the records. This last part was on everyone’s minds, since they had done a thorough search several times. They were stunned when they discovered the truth.

  It would appear that, following his release and the constant hounding he was receiving everywhere he went, the parole board decided to cover up his trail and made his file inaccessible (even to other police departments), settling him in Rochester with his wife. During the flurry of publicity surrounding this decision in the weeks that followed, the board defended its decisions by saying that Shawcross would have been released the following year anyway. A year was insignificant. Yet it was a year that had resulted in many deaths.

  When officers asked Clara to show them where she and Shawcross had been for their lovers’ rendezvous, each place was significant: they were all areas where bodies had been dumped.

  Following Shawcross’s release, the police kept him under surveillance, and then there was a new development in the enquiry. At a spot not far from where June Cicero’s body had been found, a deer hunter stumbled across the frozen body of Felicia Stephens, whose ID and clothing had been found previously on the roadside. She was lying face down, with her buttocks slightly elevated, the way many of the other victims had been found.

  The police again went to see Shawcross and asked if he would mind going with them again to clear some things up. In the amiable manner he had adopted with them, he agreed to go and they drove him to places where bodies had been found. They talked with him about Jo Ann Van Nostrand, letting him know what they knew: Shawcross seemed unfazed, even when they said they knew what he’d done. When they told him that he’d been spotted with one of the victims on the last day she was seen alive, he shrugged it off as coincidence. The police reminded him of his legal rights, but he said he didn’t have any problem talking to them. As they pressed a little more with evidence they had, Shawcross reacted in anger, but then settled down again. They feared the interview might reach an impasse, yet when Shawcross mentioned how concerned he was about Clara Neal the police knew they had his attention. They suggested that since the car belonged to Clara, she might be involved. Shawcross became agitated by this. He was asked again if Clara was involved. His reply stunned the police momentarily. ‘No,’ he admitted, hanging his head, ‘Clara’s not involved.’

  The police now knew they were on the brink of Shawcross confessing. Within 28 minutes of starting the interview, he’d come close to admitting what he’d done. In another minute, he was talking about killing Elizabeth Gibson and, as they suspected, he offered reasons of provocation. She’d tried to steal his wallet, so he’d slapped her again and again. (Later he would say that the police had provided this excuse so he had used it.) At one point, he said, she had looked just like his rejecting mother, s
o he’d continued to hit her. She’d kicked at him and broke the gearstick of his car, which further angered him. He put his wrist against her throat and held it there until she went still. When he let go and checked, she was dead, so he’d driven around with her for a while, looking for a place to dispose of her. When he found one, he’d removed her clothes and placed her face down in the woods. Then he drove home, throwing her clothing out of the car window as he drove along.

  Then the police got another vital break in the investigation. A search of Clara’s car had revealed an earring that matched one they had found on June Cicero. Shawcross then went on the defensive. He did not believe the police actually had evidence. They brought in his wife and Clara for questioning and then pressured him to spare these two the anguish of a long-drawn-out investigation. He considered this and then asked for a map and the photographs of the victims that they had shown him before. They laid out 16 open cases and he eliminated those that were not associated with him.

  For each murder, Shawcross had a reason. Some victims had ridiculed him, some had tried to steal, one would not shut up, several had threatened to turn him in as the killer, and one, the homeless woman, had said she’d tell his wife about their affair. The first victim, Dorothy Blackburn, supposedly had bitten his penis during oral sex. ‘There was blood everywhere,’ he said. ‘I thought I was gonna die.’ So, in retaliation, he had grabbed her by the throat and bit into her genital area and then later had strangled her to death. ‘I choked her for a good ten minutes.’ Some of them he smothered with something over their faces and with others he’d pressed his arm across their throats. As for the mutilation of June Stott, a woman he had known and had welcomed to his home for meals, it was to ‘aid in decomposition’, because he had ‘cared’ about her. His explanations were hollow, but at least he was offering details and solving the mysteries.