Gary M. Heidnik

In 1976, Heidnik was charged with aggravated assault and carrying an unlicensed pistol after shooting the tenant of a house he offered for rent, grazing his face.

In 1978, Heidnik signed out the sister of his then-girlfriend Anjeanette Davidson, Alberta, from a mental institution on day leave and proceeded to imprison her in a locked storage room in his basement. After she was found and returned to the hospital, examination revealed that she had been raped and sodomized and that she had contracted gonorrhea. Heidnik was arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and interfering with the custody of a committed person.

The original sentence was overturned on appeal, and Heidnik spent three years of his incarceration in mental institutions prior to being released in April 1983 under the supervision of a state-sanctioned mental health program.

After his wife Betty left him in 1986, Heidnik was arrested yet again and charged with assault, indecent assault, spousal rape and involuntary deviant sexual intercourse.

On November 25, 1986, Heidnik abducted a woman named Josefina Rivera. By January 1987, he had kidnapped another four women, whom he held captive in a pit in the basement of his house at 3520 North Marshall Street in North Philadelphia. The captives, who were all black women, were raped, beaten, and tortured.[3][12]

One of the women, Sandra Lindsay, died of a combination of starvation, torture, and an untreated fever. Heidnik dismembered her body but had problems dealing with the arms and legs, so he put them in a freezer and marked them "dog food". He cooked her ribs in an oven and boiled her head in a pot on the stove. Police came to the house due to the complaints of a bad odor, but left the premises after Heidnik's explanation: "I’m cooking a roast. I fell asleep and it burnt."[4][13]

Several sources state that he ground up the flesh of Lindsay, mixed it with dog food, and fed that to his other victims.[8][14] His defense attorney, Chuck Peruto, said that upon examination of a Cuisinart and other tools in his kitchen, they found no evidence of this. Peruto said that he made up the story to support the insanity defense.[4] The defense attorney said that he started the rumor of cannibalism in public and that in fact there was no evidence of anyone eating human flesh.[4]

Heidnik used electric shock as a form of torture. At one point, he forced three of his captives, bound in chains, into a pit. Heidnik ordered Rivera and another woman to fill the hole with water and then forced Rivera to help him apply electric current from a stripped extension cord to the women's chains. Deborah Dudley was electrocuted, and Heidnik disposed of her body in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.[3][13]

On January 18, 1987, Heidnik abducted Jacqueline Askins. The youngest of the six victims, Askins was only 18 years old at the time of her abduction. During a TV interview for the May 5, 2018, special report "Gary Heidnik's House of Horrors, 30 years later",[15] Askins stated that Heidnik wrapped duct tape around the mouths of the victims and stabbed them in their ears with a screwdriver.

On March 23, 1987, Heidnik and Rivera abducted Agnes Adams. The next day, Rivera convinced Heidnik to let her go, temporarily, in order to visit her family. He drove her to a gas station and said he would wait for her there. She walked a block away and called 9-1-1. The responding officers, noting chafing from chains on her leg, went to the gas station and arrested Heidnik. His purported best friend, Cyril ("Tony") Brown, was also arrested. Brown was released on $50,000 bail and an agreement that he would testify against Heidnik. In part, Brown admitted to witnessing Lindsay's death in the basement and Heidnik dismembering her.[16] Shortly after his arrest, in April 1987, Heidnik attempted to hang himself in his jail cell.[17]

At Heidnik's arraignment, he claimed that the women were already in the house when he moved in.[18] At trial, Heidnik was defended by A. Charles Peruto, Jr., who attempted to prove that Heidnik was legally insane.[4] Heidnik's insanity was successfully rebutted by the prosecution, led by Charles F. Gallagher, III. The fact that he had amassed approximately $550,000 in his bank and brokerage accounts was used to argue that he was not insane. Testimony from his Merrill Lynch financial advisor, Robert Kirkpatrick, was also used to prove competence. Kirkpatrick called Heidnik "an astute investor who knew exactly what he was doing."[19][20] Convicted of two counts of first-degree murder on July 1, 1988, Heidnik was sentenced to death and incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh.[21] In January 1989, he attempted suicide with an overdose of prescribed thorazine.[22]

In 1997, Heidnik's daughter, Maxine Davidson White, and his ex-wife, Betty Heidnik, filed suit in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking a stay of execution on the basis that Heidnik was not in fact competent to be executed. After two years of legal proceedings in various courts, on July 3, 1999, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued its final ruling clearing the way for Heidnik's execution.[23]

Heidnik was executed by lethal injection on July 6, 1999, at State Correctional Institution – Rockview in Centre County, Pennsylvania, and his body was cremated.[24] As of 2019, he is the last person to be executed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.[25]