[Speaker 0] Sullivan Correctional Facility just outside Foolsburg, New York
[Speaker 0] State. It's a maximum security prison, home to
[Speaker 0] some of America's most violent criminals. One of
[Speaker 0] them is Arthur j Shawcross. Shawcross has murdered
[Speaker 0] eleven women and is serving a two hundred
[Speaker 0] and fifty year prison sentence. His case has
[Speaker 0] raised serious questions about what causes extreme violence
[Speaker 0] and what we understand about the nature of
[Speaker 0] evil itself. We've come to meet him face
[Speaker 0] to face to see if he would tell
[Speaker 0] us what made him such a violent killer.
[Speaker 1] People on the outside do not know what
[Speaker 1] evil is.
[Speaker 0] Do you know what evil is?
[Speaker 1] Sure. Are you evil? Somewhat.
[Speaker 0] Rochester, New York State, thirty miles from the
[Speaker 0] Canadian border. It's a provincial city of a
[Speaker 0] million people set set amongst the gorges and
[Speaker 0] falls of the Genesee River. It's a middle
[Speaker 0] class town, but it also has a dark
[Speaker 0] side. Lyle Avenue is a mile long drag
[Speaker 0] through one of the city's rundown neighborhoods, home
[Speaker 0] to its seedy red light district. In March,
[Speaker 0] nineteen eighty eight, women began disappearing from the
[Speaker 0] strip. Dorothy Blackburn was a twenty seven year
[Speaker 0] old prostitute and mother of three. Her body
[Speaker 0] was found in a nearby riverbed. She'd been
[Speaker 0] strangled to death. In July, Anne Marie Stephan,
[Speaker 0] a twenty seven year old cocaine addict also
[Speaker 0] went missing. Her decomposed body was found on
[Speaker 0] the banks of the Genesee River. Anne Marie
[Speaker 0] Stephan. Do you remember meeting her?
[Speaker 2] I
[Speaker 1] met Anne Marie Stephan's, I think, in front
[Speaker 1] of the
[Speaker 0] Fingerhut on Lake Avenue. Do you remember killing
[Speaker 0] her?
[Speaker 1] Yeah. Possibly. I'm not going into details here.
[Speaker 0] No. But how did you kill her?
[Speaker 1] Probably strangulation.
[Speaker 0] How do you know when they're dead?
[Speaker 1] How? I don't know. Just two. More or
[Speaker 1] less after they just relax, body relax, doesn't
[Speaker 1] fight no more. It only takes about four
[Speaker 1] minutes probably. Sometimes less than that.
[Speaker 0] To the outside world, Shawcross was just a
[Speaker 0] regular guy. He lived here in this apartment
[Speaker 0] on Alexander Street with his fourth wife, Rose.
[Speaker 0] He worked nights at the local cheese factory
[Speaker 0] and spent much of his free time fishing
[Speaker 0] the banks of the Genesee River. But he
[Speaker 0] was living a double life. He had a
[Speaker 0] mistress Clara and was a regular visitor to
[Speaker 0] Lyle Avenue. Got a wife, you got a
[Speaker 0] mistress, and you were also seeing prostitutes quite
[Speaker 0] regularly.
[Speaker 1] And other people. I guess I can say
[Speaker 1] I was enjoying myself.
[Speaker 0] For almost one year, Shawcross killed no one.
[Speaker 0] Then in July nineteen eighty nine, police found
[Speaker 0] the body of an elderly homeless woman, Dorothy
[Speaker 0] Keeler.
[Speaker 3] Dorothy was found down on, South Green Island
[Speaker 3] on the Genesee River, and, she was bones.
[Speaker 3] So we really didn't know at the time,
[Speaker 3] why he killed her.
[Speaker 1] She used to live in my house, in
[Speaker 1] my apartment,
[Speaker 4] for a while.
[Speaker 1] Is she a friend? She was till she
[Speaker 1] started stealing stuff out of the house. I
[Speaker 1] asked her why are you stealing? She just
[Speaker 1] needed money. And I said, you have a
[Speaker 1] bank account. I was paying her four dollars
[Speaker 1] and twenty five cents an hour just to
[Speaker 1] clean the apartment.
[Speaker 0] So she was thieving from you?
[Speaker 1] She was taken from me and my wife
[Speaker 1] Rose.
[Speaker 0] Does that warrant killing her? Does that warrant
[Speaker 0] killing her?
[Speaker 1] Well, to me, it did.
[Speaker 0] But Shawcross didn't just kill Dorothy Keeler. He
[Speaker 0] would later return to her dead corpse.
[Speaker 3] Annie came back and visited. He came back
[Speaker 3] and visited, and he took her skull, her
[Speaker 3] head, and threw it in the Genesee River.
[Speaker 0] After you killed her, you went back later
[Speaker 0] to see the body. Is that right?
[Speaker 1] No. I went back to clean up.
[Speaker 0] She was found with her head removed.
[Speaker 5] Did you Is that right?
[Speaker 0] How how did that happen?
[Speaker 1] He just pick it up and move it.
[Speaker 0] What? He just pulled the head off.
[Speaker 1] Yeah. It was already on.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross had now murdered three women, but his
[Speaker 0] blaze of terror had only just begun. In
[Speaker 0] Rochester, New York state, the bodies of murdered
[Speaker 0] women have begun appearing around the banks of
[Speaker 0] the Genesee River. And throughout the autumn of
[Speaker 0] nineteen eighty nine, the killings continued. On the
[Speaker 0] twenty seventh of October, Patricia Ives was found
[Speaker 0] strangled to death behind the town's YMCA. And
[Speaker 0] just four weeks later, the killings were to
[Speaker 0] take an even more sinister turn.
[Speaker 3] You know, the one that I I remember
[Speaker 3] the most and that's, stuck with me all
[Speaker 3] these years is a young woman by the
[Speaker 3] name of June Stott. And June, was not
[Speaker 3] was not a prostitute, but she was a
[Speaker 3] little slow. She had, acted much younger than
[Speaker 3] her age. I think the thing that was
[Speaker 3] most disturbing about it is that when her
[Speaker 3] body was turned over, she was on her
[Speaker 3] stomach. When they turned her over, he had
[Speaker 3] come back and eviscerated her, cut her open
[Speaker 3] right from the the neck right down to
[Speaker 3] the vagina.
[Speaker 1] That was a fit of anger. Mhmm. You
[Speaker 1] know, we spent a day down in Turning
[Speaker 1] Point Park, you know, feeding the ducks and
[Speaker 1] walking around, and we're making out. Then she
[Speaker 1] just flipped, you know, and jumped up, says,
[Speaker 1] I'm gonna scream scream. I'm gonna tell the
[Speaker 1] cops. I had snapped her snapped her neck.
[Speaker 1] Stayed there all day until dark, then, split
[Speaker 1] her open, come her neck to her groin.
[Speaker 1] I didn't go all the way deep into
[Speaker 1] that stomach area. Just split her open. I
[Speaker 1] don't know why.
[Speaker 3] Yeah. It was really disturbing because if you're
[Speaker 3] at that time, we didn't know who we
[Speaker 3] were looking for. Now you got a guy
[Speaker 3] who's certainly, we believe is the same guy,
[Speaker 3] but his his activity's increasing. His, what he's
[Speaker 3] doing at the scenes is becoming more severe
[Speaker 3] all the time.
[Speaker 0] The killing of June Stott was a turning
[Speaker 0] point for the police. A pattern was now
[Speaker 0] emerging. All of the murdered women were from
[Speaker 0] vulnerable backgrounds. Most of them had been slowly
[Speaker 0] strangled. Their bodies were being dumped around the
[Speaker 0] Genesee River and the killer appeared to be
[Speaker 0] revisiting and mutilating them. The Rochester police now
[Speaker 0] suspected they had a serial killer on their
[Speaker 0] hands, and they called in the FBI.
[Speaker 6] The situation on the ground when I first
[Speaker 6] arrived was a lot of stress, a massive
[Speaker 6] police involvement in this thing. There's no doubt
[Speaker 6] in their mind they had a serial killer
[Speaker 6] working up there. And, so you it's like
[Speaker 6] walking into a pressure cooker, you know, in
[Speaker 6] a way. It's just intense.
[Speaker 0] Police were chasing down hundreds of leads, and
[Speaker 0] yet somehow, the killer still seemed able to
[Speaker 0] blend into the background.
[Speaker 6] One of the big questions was, well, how
[Speaker 6] is he getting these women? These prostitutes are
[Speaker 6] scared to death, and they're being killed, yet
[Speaker 6] he seems to have no trouble getting them.
[Speaker 6] The answer is he's a regular client. They
[Speaker 6] know him. They go with him. They have
[Speaker 6] successful sex. He drives them back, drops them
[Speaker 6] off, no problem. So they're not afraid to
[Speaker 6] go with them. It's just some nights, it
[Speaker 6] goes terribly wrong. We're trying to think how
[Speaker 6] can these prostitutes
[Speaker 7] make these mistakes knowing that there is a
[Speaker 7] perpetrator on the street that is that's snatching
[Speaker 7] them right under police surveillance. I think the
[Speaker 7] prostitutes and maybe to a degree, some of
[Speaker 6] the investigators are looking for, like, a real
[Speaker 6] weird guy or somebody really, really out of
[Speaker 6] sync with what was going on when, in
[Speaker 6] fact, it was just the opposite. You want
[Speaker 6] to look for somebody who really was very
[Speaker 6] much attuned to that scene and very comfortable
[Speaker 6] in that environment.
[Speaker 0] But despite a massive police clampdown, the killing
[Speaker 0] continued. Undercover police officers now poured into Lyle
[Speaker 0] Avenue, posing as pimps and punters. But Shawcross
[Speaker 0] wasn't phased by their presence. He continued to
[Speaker 0] hang out on the street.
[Speaker 1] I'm sitting on a stoop and I got
[Speaker 1] shiny shoes on like a cop shoes, nice
[Speaker 1] dress. And this guy sits down beside me.
[Speaker 1] He starts talking about the case, pointing out
[Speaker 1] all the decoys. I'm laughing at him.
[Speaker 0] Why were you laughing at him?
[Speaker 3] Well, I
[Speaker 1] thought it was hilarious. You know? He didn't
[Speaker 1] know who I was, but he had to
[Speaker 1] open his mouth. He thought he was talking
[Speaker 1] to somebody on the team.
[Speaker 0] He was actually talking to the killer? Yeah.
[Speaker 7] We subsequently found out that he did hang
[Speaker 7] out at a Dunkin' Donuts, and and the
[Speaker 7] police would be in there themselves talking about
[Speaker 7] the the homicide investigation and what they were
[Speaker 7] doing, not giving up intimate details, but how
[Speaker 7] they were focused on on looking at every
[Speaker 7] vehicle that went down the road and maybe
[Speaker 7] writing down plate numbers and running datas. He
[Speaker 7] was listening to the that information and and,
[Speaker 7] even told them that, you know, that that
[Speaker 7] he had told his girlfriend to be careful
[Speaker 7] out there because there was a bad guy
[Speaker 7] out there that was picking up women and
[Speaker 7] killing them.
[Speaker 0] All this time, Shawcross kept up his normal
[Speaker 0] routine, working at the cheese factory, going home
[Speaker 0] to loyal wife, Rose. But the girls kept
[Speaker 0] going missing. On the seventeenth of December nineteen
[Speaker 0] eighty nine, June Cicero, one of the street's
[Speaker 0] most notorious hookers, disappeared from Lyell Avenue.
[Speaker 7] She was the madam of the streets. She
[Speaker 7] was the meanest prostitute in the city of
[Speaker 7] Rochester, and they all respected June Cicero.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross had picked her up in the Chevrolet
[Speaker 0] Celebrity that he borrowed from his mistress Clara.
[Speaker 0] How did June Cicero die? How did how
[Speaker 0] did you kill her?
[Speaker 1] Strangle her. Mostly my left hand.
[Speaker 0] Well, so you strangle them with just one
[Speaker 0] hand.
[Speaker 1] Right. Right there. Pressure point.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross drove the dead body of June Cicero
[Speaker 0] out of town towards nearby Northampton Park.
[Speaker 1] It was snowing real bad one night, and
[Speaker 1] I went out route nineteen, I think it
[Speaker 1] was, and I crossed over on thirty one,
[Speaker 1] headed back toward the city. And there was
[Speaker 1] no cars coming, and I just opened the
[Speaker 1] door and pushed her out. She went over
[Speaker 1] the bridge over to knock some snow down,
[Speaker 1] went down in the water. And And he
[Speaker 1] just closed the door and kept going.
[Speaker 0] The police were now to get a crucial
[Speaker 0] break. While searching Northampton Park for the body
[Speaker 0] of yet another missing woman, McCaffrey made a
[Speaker 0] dramatic sighting.
[Speaker 7] We were less than two minutes in into
[Speaker 7] the flight from Northampton Park back to Rochester
[Speaker 7] when we flew over Salmon Creek. And underneath
[Speaker 7] the bridge, I could see a body frozen
[Speaker 7] in the ice.
[Speaker 0] It was the body of June Cicero, and
[Speaker 0] then McCaffrey spotted a suspicious looking car on
[Speaker 0] the bridge itself.
[Speaker 7] The passenger door was open, and it appeared
[Speaker 7] that he had been urinating out of the
[Speaker 7] car, and and that's what we could see.
[Speaker 7] And as the helicopter flew by, he closed
[Speaker 7] the passenger door and slid across into the
[Speaker 7] driver's seat and started to proceed, easterly on
[Speaker 7] route thirty one.
[Speaker 0] It was what the police had been waiting
[Speaker 0] for. FBI profilers have highlighted the killer's pattern
[Speaker 0] of returning to the dead bodies, and McCaffrey
[Speaker 0] decided to follow the Chevrolet.
[Speaker 1] As I was driving to Spencerport, the helicopter
[Speaker 1] is flying above me. It didn't dawn on
[Speaker 1] me what was going on.
[Speaker 0] But the body of June Cicero was found
[Speaker 0] You're correct. Very close to where you were
[Speaker 0] on the bridge.
[Speaker 1] Yeah. That was just down the road away.
[Speaker 1] You know? It I didn't register what was
[Speaker 1] going on. I forgot she was there.
[Speaker 7] It is my belief that Shawcross returned to
[Speaker 7] the bridge to make sure that the body
[Speaker 7] was far enough under the bridge so we
[Speaker 7] couldn't observe it.
[Speaker 0] As the body of June Cicero was recovered
[Speaker 0] from under the ice, the driver of the
[Speaker 0] suspicious car was taken into questioning by the
[Speaker 0] police. Twenty one months into their investigation, police
[Speaker 0] had now finally pulled in Arthur Shawcross. And
[Speaker 0] when they ran his name through their system,
[Speaker 0] they found an astonishing personal history, a trail
[Speaker 0] of murder stretching back almost twenty years. Shawcross
[Speaker 0] had grown up around Watertown, a hundred miles
[Speaker 0] east of Rochester. In May nineteen seventy two,
[Speaker 0] an eight year old girl, Karen Hill, was
[Speaker 0] reported missing. Fearing she drowned, the police began
[Speaker 0] searching the banks of the Black River.
[Speaker 8] And, we went over the bank, and, I
[Speaker 8] went on one side, officer passed her one
[Speaker 8] on the other side, and he says, here
[Speaker 8] she is. I walked over under the bridge,
[Speaker 8] and we saw this little body, buried in
[Speaker 8] with the stones on her and her little
[Speaker 8] feet sticking up. We knew she was dead
[Speaker 8] because the whole upper torso was buried in
[Speaker 8] rocks, and, she was dead. You know, she
[Speaker 8] was cold.
[Speaker 9] And those guys are tough policemen, you have
[Speaker 9] to understand. And they they were walking up
[Speaker 9] from the embankment and just shaking their heads.
[Speaker 9] I heard one of them say, he stuffed
[Speaker 9] her mouth with dirt and mud to keep
[Speaker 9] her quiet.
[Speaker 0] A sniffer dog led the detectives from the
[Speaker 0] body of Karen Hill to Clover Street and
[Speaker 0] the home of Arthur Shawcross. Shawcross was then
[Speaker 0] twenty seven years old and was living with
[Speaker 0] his third wife, Penny. He'd had a troubled
[Speaker 0] childhood and a history of petty criminality. He
[Speaker 0] was arrested and brought in for questioning.
[Speaker 4] Well, he was a lot different then. He
[Speaker 4] was thin. He just out of the army.
[Speaker 4] He was in good shape. It looked like
[Speaker 4] he had very strong arms, very strong hands.
[Speaker 4] And when he was agitated, really agitated, it
[Speaker 4] was scary. You wouldn't wanna be in
[Speaker 1] the room with him alone.
[Speaker 4] He looked a little strange, to be honest
[Speaker 4] with you. And, I did not get in
[Speaker 4] the cell with him like I ordinarily would.
[Speaker 4] I would always stay outside the cell, so
[Speaker 4] we had to steal parties between us and
[Speaker 4] talk from there.
[Speaker 0] Police now spent three days trying to get
[Speaker 0] Shawcross to admit his guilt.
[Speaker 4] And it appears that he made, some sort
[Speaker 4] of a confession. It wasn't a airtight confession.
[Speaker 4] He said something to the effect either I
[Speaker 4] could have done it or I might have
[Speaker 4] done it.
[Speaker 0] What did you do to young Karen Hill?
[Speaker 1] I ain't saying. I told you I wouldn't
[Speaker 1] talk about that. I wasn't talking about anything
[Speaker 1] that happened in Watertown.
[Speaker 0] Why not? Because I
[Speaker 1] make that I'm not talking about anybody in
[Speaker 1] Watertown. You can either take it or leave
[Speaker 1] it.
[Speaker 0] But another child was missing too. Four months
[Speaker 0] earlier, ten year old Jack Blake had also
[Speaker 0] disappeared. Shawcross had often gone fishing with the
[Speaker 0] young boy and police suspected that he was
[Speaker 0] responsible, but they had no hard evidence. And
[Speaker 0] with only a vague confession linking him to
[Speaker 0] the death of Karen Hill, police decided to
[Speaker 0] offer Shawcross a deal. Tell them what he'd
[Speaker 0] done to Jack Blake and face a lesser
[Speaker 0] charge for the murder of Karen Hill.
[Speaker 4] So we had a conference in which, mister
[Speaker 4] Shawcross explained to them what happened and what
[Speaker 4] he did and how he killed the Blake
[Speaker 4] boy. This was part of the plea bargain
[Speaker 4] arrangement that he would he would explain that
[Speaker 4] case for them.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross directed police to the body of the
[Speaker 0] young boy, which they found by train tracks
[Speaker 0] just out of town. He was naked and
[Speaker 0] it seemed he'd been raped before being strangled
[Speaker 0] to death. But as part of his plea
[Speaker 0] bargain, Shawcross wasn't charged with the killing of
[Speaker 0] Jack Blake and faced a reduced charge for
[Speaker 0] the killing of Karen Hill.
[Speaker 4] Mister Shawcross plead guilty to to manslaughter. He
[Speaker 4] was given the maximum sentence, twenty five years.
[Speaker 1] Oh, the
[Speaker 4] public was outraged. They they were furious, and
[Speaker 4] they were, very upset about the plea bargain.
[Speaker 4] I'm sure the public, wanted a murder conviction.
[Speaker 9] People wanted justice. And no matter the law
[Speaker 9] had to be upheld, and nothing could be
[Speaker 9] done more than what was done, but it
[Speaker 9] was terribly frustrating for everybody. There's not more
[Speaker 9] could have been done.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross served less than fifteen years of his
[Speaker 0] sentence before being released on parole in April
[Speaker 0] nineteen eighty seven. Just fifteen months later, he
[Speaker 0] had settled in Rochester and his trail of
[Speaker 0] murder had begun again.
[Speaker 10] Had Shawcross been held responsible for murder in
[Speaker 10] the second degree and received what would have
[Speaker 10] been a well deserved maximum sentence of twenty
[Speaker 10] five to life at the time, I know
[Speaker 10] one thing as sure as I'm sitting here,
[Speaker 10] he would not have committed these other homicides.
[Speaker 0] Now armed with the knowledge of the Watertown
[Speaker 0] killings, the police in Rochester were convinced they
[Speaker 0] had their man, and they began to put
[Speaker 0] the screws on Arthur Shawcross.
[Speaker 7] There were several of the prostitutes that were
[Speaker 7] still missing, and they played on that, the
[Speaker 7] interviewers. And they said, look, Art, there's there's
[Speaker 7] there's girls out there that are missing that
[Speaker 7] that that we know you killed.
[Speaker 3] They had a stack of photographs of, the
[Speaker 3] victims, like a bunch of playing cards.
[Speaker 10] And he took the stack and, like, a
[Speaker 10] deck of cards dealt out the ones that
[Speaker 10] he was responsible for.
[Speaker 3] And then they went back and talked to
[Speaker 3] him about each one, and he gave a
[Speaker 3] confession to each and every one.
[Speaker 0] Why did you confess to it?
[Speaker 1] Why? I just got tired of it after
[Speaker 1] fourteen or sixteen hours later.
[Speaker 0] Tired of what?
[Speaker 1] All the what was coming at me, I
[Speaker 1] just couldn't handle it. You are charged with
[Speaker 1] the violation of area one twenty five.
[Speaker 0] Police now had their confession, and Shawcross was
[Speaker 0] charged with the murder of eleven women.
[Speaker 1] Darlene Trippie, June Stock, Anna Stevin, Dorothy Blackburn.
[Speaker 0] As he was sent for trial, there was
[Speaker 0] no doubt that he had committed the murders,
[Speaker 0] but why had he done it? As medical
[Speaker 0] experts began to examine him, serious questions emerged
[Speaker 0] as to whether or not Arthur Shawcross might
[Speaker 0] actually
[Speaker 1] be insane.
[Speaker 0] Arthur Shawcross had now been arrested and was
[Speaker 0] awaiting trial for the murder of eleven women.
[Speaker 0] There was no doubt he had killed them,
[Speaker 0] but his defense team now set about exploring
[Speaker 0] a fundamental question. What made Arthur Shorcross act
[Speaker 0] so violently?
[Speaker 5] Everybody knows there's something wrong with Arthur Shorcross.
[Speaker 5] He's not a normal person. Everybody. You know
[Speaker 5] that just from the beginning. So what is
[Speaker 5] it? Could there be something neurologically wrong with
[Speaker 5] him?
[Speaker 0] Eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus has examined the brains
[Speaker 0] of numerous serial killers and believes that damage
[Speaker 0] to certain areas of the brain is a
[Speaker 0] major factor in causing extreme violence. The brain
[Speaker 0] scan of Arthur Shawcross fitted this pattern.
[Speaker 5] If you have a lesion on the MRI,
[Speaker 5] you've got an abnormality in the EEG coming
[Speaker 5] from exactly the same place and behavior that's
[Speaker 5] rather bizarre that comes from this part of
[Speaker 5] the brain. I think it's likely that the
[Speaker 5] abnormality of the brain has something to do
[Speaker 5] with his behavior. So much that I think
[Speaker 5] that had he not been neurologically abnormal, I
[Speaker 5] think he probably would not have been a
[Speaker 5] serial murderer.
[Speaker 0] But brain damage alone is rarely decisive. Shawcross
[Speaker 0] was also subjected to an in-depth examination by
[Speaker 0] a senior Yale psychiatrist.
[Speaker 11] What we discovered and then were able to
[Speaker 11] verify was the fact that he was, horribly
[Speaker 11] mistreated sexually as a child. In the course
[Speaker 11] of the interviews, he relived some of that
[Speaker 11] experience, which was out of his conscious awareness.
[Speaker 0] Doctor Lewis led Shawcross through a series of
[Speaker 0] interviews, some conducted under a form of hypnosis.
[Speaker 11] What are you doing now? What's happening? What
[Speaker 11] what are you doing now? Art, why are
[Speaker 11] you holding your penis? Art, what's happening? Mom.
[Speaker 11] What's happened? What does mommy do?
[Speaker 1] Mom's got me.
[Speaker 11] Mom's got you now? What does she do?
[Speaker 11] Playing. Okay. And what's
[Speaker 1] happened? She started kissing me.
[Speaker 11] And what's happened? Why are you crying, ma'am?
[Speaker 11] It hurts.
[Speaker 1] What hurts, ma'am?
[Speaker 11] She's squeezing me. And what do you say
[Speaker 11] to mom? What do you say to mom?
[Speaker 11] No.
[Speaker 1] What do you say? Stop. No.
[Speaker 0] What did your mother do?
[Speaker 1] My mother gave me oral sex. She performed
[Speaker 1] oral sex on me for several years.
[Speaker 2] Mhmm.
[Speaker 1] And when I was fourteen years old, my
[Speaker 1] dad had intercourse, and I ran away. I
[Speaker 1] put a sign, note on my pillow in
[Speaker 1] my bedroom. I'm going to Syracuse, and I
[Speaker 1] turned around and went to Canada. I just
[Speaker 1] didn't wanna go home.
[Speaker 0] Because you were being abused?
[Speaker 1] Yes, sir. I was.
[Speaker 11] He very young, he ran away from home.
[Speaker 11] He used to hide under the teacher's desk.
[Speaker 11] He he was an extremely bizarre and troubled
[Speaker 11] child very, very early on. So that there's
[Speaker 11] a consistency to, to this history of, of
[Speaker 11] abuse.
[Speaker 0] Doctor. Lewis argued that the brain damage had
[Speaker 0] caused him to suffer a phenomenon known as
[Speaker 0] partial seizure.
[Speaker 11] Just prior to the murder, there would be
[Speaker 11] some event, very often some disagreement or some
[Speaker 11] threat to him where, the woman may have
[Speaker 11] said, I'll tell your wife about this or
[Speaker 11] something. And then he would see bright, bright
[Speaker 11] white light. And then the next thing he
[Speaker 11] know, he would wake up and he would
[Speaker 11] wake up often in his car, and he
[Speaker 11] would look beside him and there would be
[Speaker 11] a body. He did not have conscious knowledge
[Speaker 11] of what he was doing or conscious control
[Speaker 11] over what he was doing.
[Speaker 0] Defense experts argued that like many other serial
[Speaker 0] killers, Shawcross suffered a toxic combination of physical
[Speaker 0] and mental damage.
[Speaker 5] I would say it's three things interacting. It's
[Speaker 5] brain damage, mental illness, and the experience of
[Speaker 5] having been abused. Every one of those things
[Speaker 5] is a factor in it. They interact so
[Speaker 5] that if you didn't have one of them,
[Speaker 5] the likelihood of violence would be tremendously reduced.
[Speaker 0] The defense entered a plea of not guilty
[Speaker 0] by means of insanity. In essence, they argued
[Speaker 0] that Shawcross was not responsible for his actions.
[Speaker 0] It was an argument that provoked derision from
[Speaker 0] both prosecution and police alike.
[Speaker 6] Few things are more tragic than the murder
[Speaker 6] of a beautiful theory by a gang of
[Speaker 6] brutal facts. And I think that's the answer
[Speaker 6] there. It's a beautiful theory, but it was
[Speaker 6] just laid low by the facts.
[Speaker 10] Claimed his mother put a broom handle, inserted
[Speaker 10] it into his anus, and shoved it up
[Speaker 10] was his description.
[Speaker 11] He had indeed worked
[Speaker 10] That clearly would have resulted in major trauma.
[Speaker 10] There was no evidence of any such trauma.
[Speaker 10] During the trial, I received a call from
[Speaker 10] his mother. She questioned, why is he saying
[Speaker 10] these things? I never why why are they
[Speaker 10] claiming these things?
[Speaker 0] Your mom has obviously denied that anything like
[Speaker 0] that happened.
[Speaker 1] Everyone would. Can you pitch what would happen
[Speaker 1] to a person if she admitted she did
[Speaker 1] shit like that to me?
[Speaker 0] I mean, they say they've said you know,
[Speaker 0] ask Arthur Shorcutt say, well, there was no
[Speaker 0] sexual abuse when you were younger.
[Speaker 1] How'd they know? I know because I I
[Speaker 1] was there. I know what I had to
[Speaker 1] go through.
[Speaker 0] Well, they say they checked all the medical
[Speaker 0] records.
[Speaker 1] I didn't have medical records when my mother
[Speaker 1] was abusing me. You think my mother took
[Speaker 1] me to a doctor because she was giving
[Speaker 1] me oral sex? That's bullshit.
[Speaker 0] If he was lying and he hadn't been
[Speaker 0] sexually abused, that would confound you?
[Speaker 5] It would. It would indeed. It's almost in
[Speaker 5] inconceivable that he was not sexually abused.
[Speaker 0] Crucial to the defense case was the argument
[Speaker 0] that Shawcross's mental seizures meant he had no
[Speaker 0] knowledge of what he was doing.
[Speaker 10] If you didn't know what you were doing
[Speaker 10] at all, why do you make efforts to
[Speaker 10] hide anything? Why do you deposit the bodies
[Speaker 10] in a Genesee gorge area where they're less
[Speaker 10] likely to be found? I think all those
[Speaker 10] facts really speak to someone who knew exactly
[Speaker 10] what he was doing.
[Speaker 5] Prosecutor thinks that his upbringing was completely normal.
[Speaker 5] This is just a man who was bad.
[Speaker 5] He's evil. And he killed those women because
[Speaker 5] he wanted to do it, and he enjoyed
[Speaker 5] doing it. That's not normal. I no matter
[Speaker 5] what the prosecutor feels is normal, that's not
[Speaker 5] normal.
[Speaker 10] Is somebody who kills a person mentally ill?
[Speaker 10] Probably. Is somebody who kills eleven people here
[Speaker 10] and has killed two kids before got issues?
[Speaker 10] Absolutely. But that's not the claim. It's not
[Speaker 10] the argument that they're not in some way
[Speaker 10] disturbed. The issue is you don't qualify for
[Speaker 10] an insanity defense. Shawcross knew what he was
[Speaker 10] doing. And if you know it's wrong, then
[Speaker 10] you're responsible for your acts. That's the way
[Speaker 10] it works.
[Speaker 1] Much as that's the
[Speaker 0] case. During the trial, the defense also argued
[Speaker 0] that Shawcross had been brutalized by his experiences
[Speaker 0] as a soldier in Vietnam. What happened in
[Speaker 0] Vietnam?
[Speaker 1] A lot of things happened in Vietnam. And
[Speaker 1] I went to Vietnam as a weapons specialist,
[Speaker 1] and I had my own bunker in just
[Speaker 1] outside of Canton, Vietnam, Central Highlands.
[Speaker 0] Shawcross claims he often ventured out into the
[Speaker 0] jungle as a one man unit, hunting down
[Speaker 0] enemy Viet Cong.
[Speaker 1] And I see a a woman in her
[Speaker 1] thirties is coming down this hill carrying two
[Speaker 1] AKs on this side and two AKs on
[Speaker 1] this side barreled down. So I reach over
[Speaker 1] my shoulder like this right behind my neck,
[Speaker 1] and I pull out a brand new machete.
[Speaker 1] When she backed out, I come up behind
[Speaker 1] her and took her head right there. I
[Speaker 1] took a couple of hits, but the head
[Speaker 1] came off. She body dropped to the ground.
[Speaker 1] She just bled out.
[Speaker 0] He claims he then set about cooking the
[Speaker 0] dead woman's body to extract information from her
[Speaker 0] friend.
[Speaker 1] I split the body in half, opened up
[Speaker 1] a pouch, and I had some c four
[Speaker 1] plastic explosives, lit a cigarette, just touched it,
[Speaker 1] and it started lit up like a miniature
[Speaker 1] sun. Mhmm. And I just laid the flesh
[Speaker 1] up on top of that stick. Alright? And
[Speaker 1] I bit into the into the flesh itself,
[Speaker 1] you know, just staring at her eyes, and
[Speaker 1] she urinated and defecated on herself. And she
[Speaker 1] talked to me in broken English, so she
[Speaker 1] told me everything I wanted to know. Mhmm.
[Speaker 1] I go in. I report it in, saluted
[Speaker 1] the the colonel. And he gets up, and
[Speaker 1] he says, you weren't sick, son of a
[Speaker 1] bitch, but I love you.
[Speaker 6] None of that, that we can tell is
[Speaker 6] true. His Vietnam experiences are greatly inflated and
[Speaker 6] exaggerated. There's no indication he ever went out
[Speaker 6] and shot anyone, much less cannibalized or did
[Speaker 6] any of the things that he claims to
[Speaker 6] have done.
[Speaker 0] But despite his vivid recollections of combat, Shawcross
[Speaker 0] found few comrades in Vietnam.
[Speaker 1] But I can't remember nobody's name in Vietnam,
[Speaker 1] and that messes me up.
[Speaker 0] War often forms very close relationships. You didn't
[Speaker 0] form friendships with anyone out there? No. You
[Speaker 0] don't remember anyone's name?
[Speaker 1] No. How long were you there for? Thirteen
[Speaker 1] months.
[Speaker 0] What was your official position in Vietnam?
[Speaker 1] I was a specialist, weapons specialist.
[Speaker 10] We were able to actually track down in
[Speaker 10] preparation his commanding officer, sergeant. I think I
[Speaker 10] even remember his name, sergeant Weaver. He was
[Speaker 10] a supply clerk. He didn't go out on
[Speaker 10] these secret missions.
[Speaker 1] You know, I'm not a bullshitter. Anything I
[Speaker 1] tell you is facts of life. If you
[Speaker 1] don't believe it, that's your prerogative. You can
[Speaker 1] do what you want. You know, everybody reads
[Speaker 1] what they want, believes what they want, you
[Speaker 1] know, and hears what they want.
[Speaker 2] Members of the jury, have you agreed upon
[Speaker 2] the verdict? Yes, ma'am.
[Speaker 0] After hearing three weeks of evidence, the jury
[Speaker 0] were unconvinced by the argument that Shawcross was
[Speaker 0] insane. They found him guilty on all the
[Speaker 0] counts of murder. He was sentenced to two
[Speaker 0] hundred and fifty years in jail. Shawcross has
[Speaker 0] spent the last eighteen years in a maximum
[Speaker 0] security prison. He's confounded numerous attempts by psychologists
[Speaker 0] to understand him. And like many other serial
[Speaker 0] killers, his crimes have given him a macabre
[Speaker 0] notoriety.
[Speaker 1] I get letters all over the world. I
[Speaker 1] get a lot of college students, college professors,
[Speaker 1] doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists. Yeah. All kinds of
[Speaker 1] people from all walks of life.
[Speaker 0] Do you see yourself as something of a
[Speaker 0] celebrity here?
[Speaker 1] Of course. In what way? Well, everybody knows
[Speaker 1] what I'm here for.
[Speaker 0] Do you enjoy the attention? Sometimes.
[Speaker 1] Sometimes it gets to be a hassle.
[Speaker 0] And from his prison cell, Shawcross continues to
[Speaker 0] invent ever more imaginative justifications for his killing
[Speaker 0] of the women in Rochester.
[Speaker 1] When I picked those women up, I thought
[Speaker 1] I had AIDS because one of the women
[Speaker 1] who stopped in the car told me one
[Speaker 1] of the women I took out is HIV
[Speaker 1] positive. I didn't know which one of them
[Speaker 1] were, so I went back and picked up
[Speaker 1] all the ones I dated in two streets
[Speaker 1] in Rochester, and I started killing them. And
[Speaker 1] while I was doing that, I took the
[Speaker 1] vagina of three and ate it. Why? I
[Speaker 1] don't know. Probably to speed up the the
[Speaker 1] idea of, the AIDS disease.
[Speaker 0] So you thought it might kill you quicker.
[Speaker 1] Probably.
[Speaker 0] Just not a lot of people that I've
[Speaker 0] ever spoken to have eaten human flesh.
[Speaker 1] They're eating raw steak. They're eating steaks. They
[Speaker 1] got the fat on the end of it.
[Speaker 1] Yeah. Similar.
[Speaker 0] But when you were hauled in by the
[Speaker 0] police, did you make any mention of the
[Speaker 0] HIV? No, sir. I did not. Suppose it's
[Speaker 0] because some people might say, well, isn't that
[Speaker 0] just an excuse to justify killing?
[Speaker 1] You believe what you wanna believe. I told
[Speaker 1] you how I killed, why I killed. You
[Speaker 1] don't wanna believe it. That's up to you.
[Speaker 0] One thing, however, remains a taboo subject, the
[Speaker 0] killing of the two children in Watertown. You're
[Speaker 0] prepared to talk about what happened in Vietnam
[Speaker 0] and killing all these prostitutes. But I just
[Speaker 0] wondering why you're prepared to talk about it
[Speaker 0] and not Watertown.
[Speaker 1] I don't wanna talk about it. You say
[Speaker 1] one more question, I leave.
[Speaker 6] Certainly, he knows how we all feel about
[Speaker 6] murdering children. It's just, obviously, you know, probably
[Speaker 6] the most reprehensible thing anyone anyone can do.
[Speaker 6] And he he understands that, but the problem
[Speaker 6] is he can't justify it. He can't come
[Speaker 6] up with a selling point or a way
[Speaker 6] to mitigate that. So but he's just just
[Speaker 6] not gonna talk about it.
[Speaker 0] But in two thousand and one, someone was
[Speaker 0] to enter Shawcross's life who would force him
[Speaker 0] to confront his darkest demons, the daughter he
[Speaker 0] never knew he had. In two thousand and
[Speaker 0] one, Arthur Shawcross received dramatic news. Whilst on
[Speaker 0] leave from the army in the early nineteen
[Speaker 0] sixties, he had a brief romance with a
[Speaker 0] woman in Hawaii. Forty years later, the child
[Speaker 0] from that relationship, Maggie Deming, discovered who her
[Speaker 0] father was and decided to make contact.
[Speaker 2] My husband at first was like, you know,
[Speaker 2] don't go there. You You know? Do you
[Speaker 2] realize that he killed children? And I said,
[Speaker 2] well, I can't just shut the door on
[Speaker 2] this. You know? You know? This is a
[Speaker 2] part of my life that I just can't
[Speaker 2] close the door.
[Speaker 0] What did you feel when you met him
[Speaker 0] for the first time when you went to
[Speaker 0] prison?
[Speaker 2] Apprehensive, nervous. I didn't didn't know what to
[Speaker 2] think, you know, what to say. Hi, dad.
[Speaker 2] You know? He was very genteel. He was,
[Speaker 2] very soft spoken, very grandfatheredly to my daughter.
[Speaker 2] He he joked around a lot.
[Speaker 0] What about, your daughter, Maggie?
[Speaker 1] She's cool. I seen her just before you
[Speaker 1] showed up.
[Speaker 0] Does does your daughter Maggie know what you
[Speaker 0] did? Does she know the details of what
[Speaker 1] you did? Has the information of everything. I
[Speaker 1] told her things that you wanna know, but
[Speaker 1] you're not gonna get.
[Speaker 0] Like what?
[Speaker 1] You know what you're talking about. Things that
[Speaker 1] happen in that other place.
[Speaker 0] What's the town? Right.
[Speaker 2] The children that he had killed, the chill
[Speaker 2] the their ages are about the same age
[Speaker 2] as my children are now. What he did
[Speaker 2] to them, like I said, was a pretty
[Speaker 2] graphic thing, And that's gonna be between him
[Speaker 2] and his maker. That's gonna be between him
[Speaker 2] and his maker.
[Speaker 0] Maggie has seven children of her own, and
[Speaker 0] she's been keen to make sure that they
[Speaker 0] too have a relationship with their imprisoned grandfather.
[Speaker 2] My older children know what he'd done. My
[Speaker 2] younger children don't. And my father kinda, like,
[Speaker 2] said to me, you know, it's best that
[Speaker 2] the younger ones don't know. But sooner or
[Speaker 2] later, they're gonna find out. They don't really
[Speaker 2] advertise the fact that their their grandfather was
[Speaker 2] a serial killer.
[Speaker 0] Both Maggie and the grandchildren have become regular
[Speaker 0] visitors to Shawcross in prison.
[Speaker 1] Do do you love Maggie? Very much.
[Speaker 0] And do you love your grandchildren?
[Speaker 1] Right. I write to them all the time.
[Speaker 1] They send the the grandchildren, the kids, and
[Speaker 1] the in school, they send me their, school
[Speaker 1] tests and different things, What they do in
[Speaker 1] the schools, send me pictures, and I draw
[Speaker 1] their picture. I do portraits.
[Speaker 0] This is a horrible thought, but, I mean,
[Speaker 0] if someone were to, you know, rape and
[Speaker 0] kill your grandchildren, what should happen to them?
[Speaker 1] That's up to the law. But what do
[Speaker 1] you
[Speaker 0] think should happen to them?
[Speaker 1] That's up to the law.
[Speaker 0] But what would you think of them as
[Speaker 0] a father, as a grandfather? I would be
[Speaker 0] devastated. Right? Do you have any comprehension of
[Speaker 0] the suffering that you've brought the families of
[Speaker 0] the people that you killed?
[Speaker 1] I don't have any remorse for some reason.
[Speaker 0] But I find it strange that you can
[Speaker 0] have you clearly feel affection for your your
[Speaker 0] daughter and your grandchildren. Strange. But you can't
[Speaker 0] feel any empathy for all those people that
[Speaker 0] the families of all the people that you
[Speaker 0] killed. Yeah.
[Speaker 1] It's not there. Like I said, on one
[Speaker 1] side and the other side, I know something
[Speaker 1] inside me is weird.
[Speaker 2] These events happened so far back in time.
[Speaker 2] These these things you really can't forget. These
[Speaker 2] sort of things you can't really forgive on
[Speaker 2] the part of those parents, you know, having
[Speaker 2] to live through that. I don't regret the
[Speaker 2] fact that he's my father. I can't change
[Speaker 2] it. And I don't see Arthur Shawcross from
[Speaker 2] Watertown with my children in two thousand eight
[Speaker 2] in Sullivan Correctional. Totally different people. Totally different.
[Speaker 1] There's always a bad man in me. You
[Speaker 1] never can get rid of it. He's behind
[Speaker 1] a door somewhere. I'm trying to keep him
[Speaker 1] there. I don't wanna hurt nobody else.
[Speaker 0] Really?
[Speaker 1] Really.
[Speaker 0] Just a final question, Arthur. I mean, what
[Speaker 0] what why won't you talk about the the
[Speaker 0] two young people? It's over. Disconnect. Not because
[Speaker 0] is it because you're ashamed of it?
[Speaker 1] It's disconnect if this
[Speaker 0] is over. Okay. Oh, thank you very much
[Speaker 0] for your time.
[Speaker 12] And he put his arms around us and
[Speaker 12] was just do exactly what I say. He
[Speaker 12] put his arm around my mouth and picked
[Speaker 12] me
[Speaker 13] up and put me in his boot. I
[Speaker 13] just froze. I couldn't talk. I couldn't scream.
[Speaker 13] I couldn't do nothing. But the whole time,
[Speaker 13] I was just looking at Lisa, and her