Against Their Will

by Nigel Cawthorne

  She had about given up hope when a brand new white and gray Cadillac Coupe de Ville pulled up. The trick was a stranger, but she was glad to see him. She was freezing her butt off on the street that night. She named her price. He offered $20. She took it. Then she would quit for the night.

  The john’s name was Gary Heidnik. He took her to a nearby McDonald’s where he had a coffee. He bought her nothing, but while he drank his coffee, she examined him closely. He wore a Rolex watch and expensive jewelry. These clashed oddly with the cheap, fringed cowboy jacket he wore. He was not especially clean either, and his blue eyes were as cold as marble. They sent a shiver down her spine, she said later.

  Heidnik suggested that they go to North Marshall Street, which was known, at that time, as “OK Corral” because of a recent shoot-out between drug dealers. He had a house there.

  When Heidnik parked his new Cadillac in the garage, Josefina was surprised to see that Heidnik had several other automobiles, including a 1971 Rolls Royce. He also had an unusual door-locking system, which, he explained, he had devised himself. Only he could work it, he said.

  Inside the house, Heidnik asked if she wanted to watch a pornographic video to put her in the mood. She said she was a professional—she did not need to be in the mood. She looked at her watch and said she had to be getting home. Anger flashed across his face. To calm him, she said that she had three children at home. She needed to be quick as she had to relieve the babysitter.

  They went upstairs. The stairway, she noted, was papered with $1 and $5 bills. In the bedroom, there was a water bed. Heidnik flung a grubby $20 at her, stripped off his clothes, and jumped onto the bed. She stripped too, and the sex act was over in a few minutes. Relieved, Josefina reached for her blue jeans, to get dressed and go home.

  Suddenly, Heidnik grabbed her by the throat. Josefina had been a prostitute long enough to know not to risk antagonizing a violent client. Half-strangled, she gasped her surrender. Heidnik handcuffed her and dragged her naked from the room. On the way, he grabbed back his $20.

  He pulled Josefina down the stairs to the cellar and chained her to a pipe. The room was cold and damp. The walls and floor were filthy, the light was dim, and there were tiny windows high above the floor.

  In the middle of the floor, a pit had been dug. Josefina feared that it would be her grave. She began to scream. Heidnik slapped her and threw her down on a filthy mattress. He lay down, rested his head on her naked lap, and slept like a baby.

  The next day, she found that her chain was long enough to allow her to reach one of the basement’s boarded up windows. It was at about head height, but she managed to pry the boards off and squeeze her way out. Out in the garden, she began to yell, but the neighbors were used to screaming, loud music, and even the sound of gunshots coming from Heidnik’s house, day and night. They took no notice. Heidnik heard her, too, and came running. He dragged her back into the basement by her chains. He slung her in the pit, covered it with boards and heavy sacks, and turned the radio up full blast.

  It seems that Gary Heidnik wanted to have babies and he would do anything to get them. He was born in 1943. His parents separated when he was seventeen months old. His father accused his mother, a Creole, of being a drinker and wild woman. His mother accused his father of gross neglect of his marital duties.

  Gary and his older brother, Terry, stayed with their mother until they were school age; then they moved in with his father, who had remarried. Gary’s father was a strict disciplinarian. When Gary wet the bed, his father would show the soiled sheets to their neighbors. Sometimes he would even dangle Gary feet-first from an upstairs window as punishment.

  Gary Heidnik’s reaction to this mistreatment was to embrace the American dream. He joined the Boy Scouts and told friends that he was going to become a millionaire. He had an IQ of around 130—not far from genius level. But, in his early teens, he fell out of a tree and landed on his head, and suffered permanent brain damage. Later, Gary tried to kill his brother.

  After a number of suicide attempts, Gary was committed to a mental hospital. When he was discharged, he went to a military academy but he was still suffering from psychiatric problems. He made at least three more suicide attempts. He flunked out of the academy, but life was so intolerable back with his father that he enlisted in the army. In his army papers, he described himself as “colored” like his mother. She had gone on to marry twice more and had become an alcoholic by the time she committed suicide in 1971. After joining the army, he never spoke to his father again.

  In the army, Gary learned he could make money without working for it. He became a loan shark, making more than his army pay in extortionate interest rates. But then he lost everything when he was suddenly posted to Germany before he could call in his debts. Still in the army, Heidnik began to exhibit strange psychiatric symptoms. He was discharged with a 100 percent disability pension of $2,000 a month. He never had a permanent job again.

  From childhood, Heidnik had followed the stock market reports. For him, it was a splendid mathematical puzzle. He quickly turned his army pension into vast sums of money. But, apart from his collection of cars, he did not flaunt his wealth. He bought pornographic magazines and books featuring black women. He preferred to live around African-Americans. It gave him access to black prostitutes. He was addicted to them. He liked to buy them fancy wigs and flamboyant clothes. Best of all, he liked mentally challenged girls who had no defense against his intellect. And he wanted to have children by them.

  One of his girlfriends, an illiterate black girl called Anjeanette Davidson, had an IQ of just 49. When he got her pregnant, he refused to let her see a doctor, saying that he would take care of her himself. But he beat and starved her. Rescued by her sister, she was rushed to the hospital. She was so emaciated that she had to give birth by Cesarean section. She was unable to look after the child, which was put into foster care.

  Heidnik also tried to shoot a man who rented a room in his house. The bullet grazed the tenant’s cheek, but the charges were inexplicably dropped. When he moved away, the owners of his old place found stacks of pornographic magazines and a pit he had dug in the basement. They had no idea why the pit had been dug.

  Though otherwise not a religious man, Heidnik started a church called the United Church of the Ministers of God. It performed a double function. It gave his enterprises tax-free status, allowing him to keep more of the money he made on the stock market. Its funds grew from $1,500 to $545,000 in twelve years. And under the guise of doing good works, the church gave him seemingly innocent access to mentally challenged black girls.

  Heidnik thought having his own church also gave him a direct line to God, and God said that he must make babies.

  The run-down neighborhood Heidnik lived in was a good cover for his activities. It was full of drug dealers and prostitutes, and the police were so stretched, they took no notice of his strange antics. One neighbor filed a complaint about his activities, but they gave an incorrect spelling of his name and the police did not follow up.

  Heidnik already had a criminal record. In 1978, he had been charged with kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment, and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse. He had taken his girlfriend Anjeanette to visit her sister Alberta, who had an IQ of just 30 and had been an inmate of the state mental hospital for twenty years. Heidnik suggested that thirty-five-year-old Alberta go on an outing with them. She was found, days later, locked in a garbage bin in Heidnik’s basement. Alberta was deemed unfit to testify, but Heidnik was sentenced to three to seven years for the lesser charges of abduction and assault.

  Heidnik spent most of his sentence in state mental institutions. Periods of hospitalization continued after he was released, but no one kept an eye on him when he was on the street. Even when Anjeanette Davidson disappeared, no one suspected Heidnik, though he was later thought to be responsible for her murder.

  In 1985, he married Betty Disto, a Filipina whom he contacted through a marriage agency. But when she ar
rived in the U.S., she found a black woman sleeping in Heidnik’s bed. The woman was a lodger, he explained. A week after their wedding, Betty found him making love to three black women in exotic positions in their bedroom. This was an American custom, her new husband said.

  Other women were brought to the house, and his bride was forced to watch him have sex with them. He also beat her, refused her food, and forced her to have anal intercourse. She left after just three months, charging him with indecent assault, rape, and other felonies. When she did not turn up in court, the charges were dropped. She was pregnant and only dared tell Heidnik by postcard. He refused to support the child, claiming that he did not have a job. The family court investigated. But with Betty gone, he still did not have the children he craved.

  Three days after re-capturing Josefina, Heidnik went out looking for twenty-five-year-old Sandra Lindsay, a good-looking black girl and a former lover he had known for four years. Like his other lovers, she was classified as mentally handicapped and he had a grudge against her. He had made her pregnant and he had offered $1,000 if she would let him keep the child, but she had gotten an abortion.

  Heidnik found Sandra and brought her back to the house. She, too, was stripped naked and chained up in the basement. Josefina was hauled from the pit and introduced to her. Heidnik then spelled out his plans for a baby farm. Soon there would be more naked black women chained up in the basement and Heidnik would move between them like a butterfly pollinating beautiful flowers. He then forced the two women to perform various sexual acts with him. The rest of the night, he spent digging out what he called the “punishment pit,” making it deeper and wider.

  The following morning, there was hammering at Heidnik’s door. It was Sandra’s sister Teresa and two cousins. Heidnik did not answer the door and, eventually, they went away. Sandra’s mother believed that Heidnik was holding her daughter and went to the police. They scarcely bothered to look into it. Sandra was just another black whore who had gone missing. Heidnik forced Sandra to write a postcard to her mother, telling her not to worry, that she would call. Then he took it to New York where he posted it. Later he sent a Christmas card, enclosing a $5 bill.

  As good as his word, Heidnik captured other sex slaves. He planned to have ten in all. He told Josefina and Sandra that they were all going to give him babies that would grow up in “one big happy family.” He got to work on this project immediately, demanding sex from his captives. They were in no position to refuse. The routine was always the same. First they would have to stimulate him orally. But he had no desire to ejaculate in their mouths. Once he was ready, he would put his penis in their vaginas.

  On December 22, 1986, he picked up nineteen-year-old Lisa Thomas. She was not a prostitute, but she let him give her a ride to her friend’s house where she had left her gloves. He then took her for a meal at TGI Friday’s and asked her to go with him to Atlantic City the following day. When she said she had nothing to wear, he gave her $50 and took her to Sears, where she bought two pairs of jeans and two tops. She went back to his house to try them on. There, he gave her a drink and she passed out. When she came to, she found herself naked on his water bed. They had sex, but when she tried to leave, he began choking her. Then he handcuffed her and dragged her down to the basement. She was sure that he was going to kill her. Once in the cellar, he lifted some boards covering a hole in the floor and out clambered two other naked black girls, Josefina and Sandra.

  After they had been introduced, Heidnik brought his captives some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But before the starving girls could eat, they had to go through a humiliating routine. First they had to kiss his ass, then lick his balls, and suck his penis. After that he would have sex with them. Then they could eat.

  He did not confine his sexual activities to the basement. He had a regular arrangement with a girl named Jewel. She came to his house for sex once a week. There would usually be another girl there. Gary liked to have sex with Jewel while biting on the other girl’s breast; then he would have sex with the other girl while biting on Jewel’s breast. Jewel was happy to accommodate him but had one caveat. He had to have sex with her first. She did not want him to put his penis inside her after it had been in the other girl.

  On New Year’s Day 1987, he picked up and imprisoned twenty-three-year-old prostitute Deborah Dudley. He imposed discipline by putting one of the girls in charge while he was away. When he returned, he would ask who had committed any misdemeanors, then hand out the appropriate punishment.

  On January 18, he picked up eighteen-year-old prostitute Jacqueline Askins. Again, after sex, he dragged her down to the basement where he chained her up with the others, then beat her buttocks with a plastic rod to ensure future compliance.

  The following day was Josefina’s birthday. He let her pick a meal from the menu of a local Chinese restaurant. He also brought champagne for the girls. He did not drink himself; it was not one of his vices. However, he believed there was reason to celebrate. He thought both Josefina and Sandra were pregnant, though this proved not to be the case.

  All the girls were shackled and chained, and Heidnik forced them to have sex with him every day. He would penetrate them one after the other, until he climaxed or grew tired. For entertainment, he would force them to have sex with one another. Being half-starved, they did not get pregnant. This made Heidnik angry and he beat the girls.

  He found Sandra the most troublesome. He tied her wrists to an overhead beam and left her dangling there for a week, force-feeding her. Eventually, weakened, she choked on a piece of bread and died. He cut her down and kicked her dead body, then he left it lying on the floor while he fed the other girls ice cream.

  When they had finished, he put Sandra’s body over his shoulder and carried her upstairs. Later, they smelled cooking flesh. The odor was so strong that neighbors complained. A young policeman knocked on the door and peered through the kitchen window. There was a pot on the stove, but the cop could not see what was in it. The crowd in the street told him to break in, but Heidnik opened the door a few inches and explained that he had just burned his dinner.

  Deborah fought back against Heidnik. She would not easily submit to his sexual demands. As a punishment, he unchained her and took her upstairs. When she returned to the basement, she was dazed and silent. Josefina asked what had happened. Deborah said that she had seen Sandra’s head boiling in a pot. Her ribs were in a roasting pan, and her other body parts were being prepared for the freezer. The meat was fed to his captives. The bones were given to his dogs. Heidnik told Deborah that if she did not submit to his will, she would end up that way too. Later he added dog food to their meals of minced body parts.

  Occasionally, one of the girls would be taken from the basement and washed in the tub. Then she would have to perform a sexual act with Heidnik before he would return her to her shackles.

  In the meantime, Heidnik went about his regular business. He stayed in touch with his broker and kept up with his stock transactions, and all the time he had the girls in his basement. He visited car showrooms and went to court over his maintenance payments. He even went out on dates with his latest girlfriend, a black nurse.

  When he was out, he would put the girls in the pit and cover it over with planks, which he weighed down with heavy sacks. They found it hard to breathe in there and would scream. This gave him another excuse to beat them. To hide their screams from neighbors, he would play religious music loudly day and night.

  Despite what she had seen, Deborah remained defiant, and Heidnik devised a new punishment for her. He pushed Deborah, Jacqueline, and Lisa into the pit and got Josefina to pour water over them. Then he touched their bodies or their chains with live electric wires. Deborah was electrocuted and killed.

  Heidnik decided not to dismember Deborah. Instead he forced Josefina to sign a letter saying that she had killed Deborah, then he unchained her. Together, they drove out into the wilds of New Jersey, where they dumped Deborah’s body.

  Josefina
had seen Heidnik kill two other girls by then. There was only one way to get out of the basement alive, she realized. She would have to get him to trust her completely. Her plan was to maneuver herself into the position of his confidante.

  To flatter his ego, she began to flirt with him. This bothered the other girls. They thought she was conspiring with their sadistic jailer. But Josefina was smarter than they were—and she, a common prostitute, was smarter than Heidnik with his IQ of 130.

  First, she consented to join in his regular sexual encounters with Jewel. Soon Heidnik began to take her out to McDonald’s and buy her wigs. But he never let her out of his sight. He warned her that if the police ever caught up with him, he would plead insanity and she would get life for murdering Deborah because of the confession she had signed. He also said that if she tried to escape, he would kill the other two girls.

  With two of his harem now dead, Heidnik took Josefina to look for new candidates. On March 23, they saw twenty-four-year-old Agnes Adams, whom Josefina knew from a strip club where they had both worked. Heidnik knew her too, but not by name. In the sex trade, she went by the name “Vicky.” He had picked her up before; the first time had been in January. He’d offered to pay her $35 for oral sex, but when he got her back to his house, someone had parked across his driveway, so he gave her $10 and took her back downtown.

  Then in February, he had taken her back to his house. This time he parked and they went inside. She gave him oral sex. He paid her the $35. Then he let her leave, locking the door behind her. So when he picked her up with Josefina in the car, Agnes had no reason to be wary. Back at his house, she went upstairs and had sex with him. Afterward, Heidnik choked her, handcuffed her, and dragged her down to the basement.

  As Josefina was seemingly free to come and go, the other girls grew suspicious of her. They plotted to attack Heidnik with the broken glass and lengths of pipe that littered the floor of the basement. But when Heidnik discovered the plan and beat them viciously, they assumed Josefina had betrayed them.