<p>If you are from Rochester NY, or at least the upstate area,you know at least part of the story of Arthur John Shawcross. "Profile of Serial Killer Arthur Shawcross." A cyst found on Shawcross' right temporal lobe was said to have caused him to have behavioral seizures where he would display animalistic behavior, such as eating the body parts of his victims. However, Lewis's theories have attracted greater attention . Eventually, he found his way to bestiality. It seemed as if each week another woman went missing and those found murdered were not close to being solved. Both Darlene Trippi and June Cicero were prostitutes that Shawcross picked up, strangled, and disposed of in December of 1989. 6 of 22. He weighed 300 pounds and stood six feet tall. After his release and discharge from the army, Shawcross and his second wife would move to Clayton, New York where Shawcross would terrorize the surrounding counties until his final arrest. On the first episode of this two-part series, we explore the grim origins of brutal serial killer Arthur Shawcross, from his incestuous childhood to his time in 'Nam to his inexplicably numerous marriages. YouTubeArthur Shawcross with his daughter (left) and granddaughter at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in 2002. Five months later, his victim's body was finally located. In 1967 he was drafted by the US Army at age 21. Arthur Shawcross, also known as "The Genesee River Killer," was responsible for the murders of 12 women in upstate New York from 1988 to 1990. A monster, whose release is still considered one of the most egregious examples of the unwarranted release of a prisoner. With the discovery of Patty Ives, investigators realized that it was a strong possibility that a serial killer was loose in Rochester. Naval Hospital in Kittery, Maine 1 month premature - weighed 5 pounds - spent 20 days in the hospital Mother Bessie was 18, father Arthur Roy was 21 Born with XYY Was first of four children In 1972 he confessed to the sexual assault and murders of two children. On October 21, 1989, the body of homeless woman Dorothy Keeler, aged 59, was discovered followed six days later by another prostitute, Patricia Ives, in the same area. They also began checking criminal records for offenders who might be living in the immediate area. Arthur Shawcross was blinking in . Cause of Death: Asphyxiation. Arthur Shawcross, also known as the Genesee River Killer, was in prison after . It did not take long for Shawcross to return to his murderous ways. Twenty-seven year old victim of the "Genesee River Killer" known as Arthur Shawcross. He hid Patricias body under scraps of construction material, Francess down a nearby embankment and dumped Maria into roadside bushes. McClusky also suggested Shawcross could have argued at trial that he was under "extreme emotional disturbance," and a jury would have been likely to arrive at a verdict of manslaughter. [12], In 2003, Shawcross was interviewed by British reporter Katherine English for a documentary on cannibalism. Shawcross, however, was a very troubled child and would often bully other children and act violently at school, even developing a habit of bringing an iron bar with him to classes. Shawcross had a reputation at school as a bully and would frequently act out violently. June 16, 2012. On October 17, 1972, he was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of first degree manslaughter for both deaths and was sentenced to an indeterminate term with a maximum of 25 years at Attica Correctional Facility. He received his first probationary sentence in December 1963 for smashing a shop window. From his birthplace of Kittery, Maine, his family moved to Watertown, a small town near Lake Ontario in New York State, when he was still a child. Jack Blake would be the first of many more victims. His apartment, 241 Alexander Street, is still there today. But while they might intuitively sound plausible . The trial was a national media event, extensively televised and widely viewed. 16. Her body was found under a bridge. 25. Released on parole in March 1987. The judge sentenced him to 25 years for each count, a total of 250 years imprisonment. Stott was mentally ill and would occasionally vanish without telling anyone. [3] On September 2, just prior to the body's discovery, Shawcross raped and killed eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill, who had been visiting Watertown with her mother for the Labor Day weekend. With the body count mounting, the police sought assistance from FBI profilers. The psychiatrist, who is the subject of HBO's new documentary Crazy Not Insane, tells us what she saw during her decades interviewing and assessing serial murders. A portrait of the late Princess Diana was among 10 sketches and paintings by him that sold for as much as $540 a piece. Arthur John Shawcross (June 6, 1945 - November 10, 2008), also known as the Genesee River Killer, was an American serial killer active in Rochester, New York. Back in the penitentiary, he proved as enigmatic as . His first admission that he was involved in the murders was when he told police that Clara had nothing to do with it. Officials said 63-year old Shawcross complained of a pain in his leg on the afternoon of November 10, 2008, his date of death. Kevin MacLeod . Shawcross began developing a habit of looking for prostitutes and would use his girlfriend (who he was having an affair with) Claras car to go to Lake Avenue near the Genesee River which was an industrial area well known for cheap prostitutes and drug dealers. Shawcross is in part responsible for the 2001 ban of prisoners being able to sell artwork they create while incarcerated. [2], In November 1990, Shawcross was tried by Monroe County First Assistant District Attorney Charles J. Siragusa for the ten murders in Monroe County. He admitted to 11 murders (he was not officially charged with a 12th), and his confession was an astounding 80 pages long. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Ressler wrote that "[Shawcross's] claim of having witnessed wartime atrocities was patently outrageous and untrue." He then confessed to murdering the others. He bragged about slicing out and eating the vulvae of three victims, but refused to discuss his earlier claim of eating the genitals of his first victim, Jack Blake.[2]. Shawcrosss story for all three was that he saw them trying to steal from him, became angry, and killed them. After listening to hours of his self-serving saga, investigators still were unable to get him to admit to any of the Rochester murders. He explained to the detectives that the reason he mutilated her body after killing her was a kind favor he extended to her so that she would decompose faster. In this week's episode Ellen talks about Arthur Shawcross; a serial killer from upstate New York, which happens to be Ellen's favorite place in the world. He also said that while strangling her she struggled so hard she broke a gearshift in his car. The corpse was then anally mutilated, and the body was cut opened from the throat down to the crotch. A Thirteenth Century Cannibal. Shawcross's medical records show that he had a cyst and scarring on his temporal lobe, which can dramatically alter . Even more importantly, the helicopter spotted a man standing on the bridge next to a small van. Jack was never heard from again. Updated on July 03, 2019. He also admitted to his first homosexual encounter at the age of 11, which he says was followed by experimentation with bestiality. He didnt waste all of his time there. When he was unable to get an erection, Anna began to make fun of him. With Arthur Shawcross, John McCaffrey, Lynde Johnston, Geoffrey Wansell. From March 1988 to December 1989, Shawcross is believed to have killed 12 women, mostly prostitutes in the Rochester, New York, area and then dumping most of . He thanks you for reading his content. He set fires to a local paper mill and the factory where he worked before being arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. There were also human bite marks found all around her vagina. ThoughtCo, Sep. 8, 2021, thoughtco.com/profile-of-serial-killer-arthur-shawcross-973145. His early release from prison or even the fact he was even being . Just three weeks later, Shawcross married his third wife who was pregnant with his child. [11], Shawcross was held at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, where he was held until his death. Darlene Trippi, 32, was known for pairing up for safety with veteran Jo Ann Van Nostrand, yet on December 15, she like others before her, disappeared off Lyell Avenue. Known as the "Genesee River Killer," Arthur Shawcross of upstate Watertown first raped and killed two children in 1972. 15. Montaldo, Charles. Since they had no solid evidence to convict him in the Blake case,prosecutors agreed, and he was found guilty and given a 25-year-sentence. On January 2, 1990, there was finally a breakthrough in the case. In 1972, he raped and killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old in two separate incidents. Shawcross had served 12 years, roughly half of his sentence when inexperienced staff and social workers made the call to grant him parole stating he was no longer dangerous despite numerous psychiatrists warning that he was a schizoid psychopath. Arthur Shawcross, convicted of killing 10 Rochester-area women from 1988 to 1990, was sentenced today to a minimum of 250 years in prison. When asked for his driver's license, he told the police that he did not have one because he had been convicted of manslaughter. Marie Welch, age 22 was a Lyell Avenue prostitute who was reported missing on November 5, 1989. Dennis Rader, known as the BTK Killer (standing for "Bind, Torture, Kill") murdered 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Both had been asphyxiated and the press started to show an interest as the cases were linked. But from 1988 to 1990, Shawcross killed 11 women in upstate New York, earning the nickname "Genesee River Killer." cause of death. Police were able to piece together a description of a regular client called "Mitch" or "Mike." Polly Flinders. On April 7, 1972, he took a 10-year-old boy named Jack Blake, a neighbor at the time, fishing. His wife filed for divorce soon afterward, stating that he was abusive. [4], A grand jury indicted Shawcross for murder in Hill's death. The case studies selected were those of Carroll Edward Cole, Jeffery Lionel Dahmer, Edmund Emil Kemper III, Henry Lee Lucas, and Arthur Shawcross. Arthur Shawcross was an American serial killer born in April 1945. It was discovered that Shawcross had an extra Y chromosomewhich somehave suggested (although there is no proof) makes the person more violent. He confessed and agreed to a plea-bargain in which he revealed the location of one of the boys . Elizabeth Gibson was merely waiting in Shawcrosss car to keep warm while Shawcross was getting a cup of coffee at a nearby diner. 5 of 22. manner of death. After working out a plea deal, Shawcross confessed to murdering Hill and Blake and agreed to divulge the location of Blake's body in exchange for a charge of manslaughter in the Hill case and no charges for murdering Blake. Arthur Shawcross certainly fit Greg McCrary's criteria of being "extraordinarily ordinary." He was a forty-four-year-old white male, a Vietnam veteran, a blue-collar factory worker, and a regular customer of Lyell Avenue. Shawcross was born on June 6, 1945 in Kittery, Maine to an English immigrant . This Hiking Photo Has A ChillingBackstory, She Met A Man Online And Ended Up Taking Down An Active SerialKiller. Shawcross also removed her genitals and consumed them as well as the removed organs. Shawcross came under immediate suspicion. ", "Serial killer Arthur Shawcross dead at 63", Crime Library article on Arthur Shawcross, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthur_Shawcross&oldid=1133486829, American people convicted of manslaughter, American people who died in prison custody, Crimes against sex workers in the United States, People convicted of murder by New York (state), People with antisocial personality disorder, People with schizoid personality disorder, Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by New York (state), Prisoners who died in New York (state) detention, Serial killers who died in prison custody, United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War, Violence against women in the United States, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2022, Articles with dead external links from August 2018, Articles with permanently dead external links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Life in prison without parole (or a term amounting to 250 years), This page was last edited on 14 January 2023, at 01:31. He dropped out of high school in 1960. Good Guy Arthur and his daughter and granddaughter . It turned out that he was a regular customer of many of the women on Lyell Avenue. Post-traumatic stress disorder from his year in Vietnam was also anted up as a reason why he went insane and murdered women. While in Vietnam, along with killing 39 menduring combat (which was a proven lie) Shawcross also used the venue to describe in grotesque detailshow he murdered, then cooked and ate, two Vietnam women. After the criticism, the Department of Correctional Services banned the Corrections on Canvas in 2002. Shawcross killed most of his victims from 1988 to . He lived in Watertown, New York (NY) in his youth, and was relocated to Rochester, NY later on in his life. At the beginning of November, Jo Ann Van Nostrand told police about a client named Mitch who paid her to play dead and then he would try to strangle her, which she did not allow. Arthur Shawcross was an American Postwar & Contemporary artist who was born in 1945. He served a tour of duty in the .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Vietnam War in October 1967, and he later claimed that he murdered and cannibalized two young Vietnamese girls and several children while there. Then there were two in late October of that year, followed by a fourth on Thanksgiving Day. He was a pathological liar and it was difficult to determine what was truth and what was not. heart failure. Born in Kittery, Maine, and raised in Watertown, N.Y., Shawcross was an awkward child who frequently fought with other children, a practice that earned him a reputation as a bully. When police threatened to implicate her in the killings, Shawcross capitulated and admitted to most of the murders, giving detailed excuses about why he had been "forced" to kill each one. The Most Notorious Serial Killers in History. The body was not Felicia Stephens but that of missing prostitute June Cicero. His records were sealed so he could settle in a new town without causing a panic. He served two years in prison, was paroled to his respectable parents - and murdered a boy and a girl. 12. Charles Montaldo. He was arrested . Nicknames like The Genesee River Killer, The Monster of the Rivers, and The Rochester Strangler began popping up. The couple produced a son in October 1965. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Thats why we started Creepy Catalog in 2015 as a place for creepy content and creepy people to congregate. He later boasted of grotesque combat exploits, such as "beheading mama-sans and nailing their heads to trees as a warning to the Vietcong" and engaging in cannibalism; in reality he never served in a combat position. Nostrand went to the police and gave them the information along with a description of the man's vehicle. Despite the warnings of prison psychiatrists, after less than 15 years behind bars, social workers and prison staff members incorrectly determined Shawcross was no longer dangerous and granted him early parole in April of 1987. In this study, five serial murderers were identified as having engaged in childhood animal cruelty. [2], On May 7, 1972, he raped and killed his first known victim, 10-year-old Jack Owen Blake, after luring the boy into a wooded area in Watertown. During the trial, Shawcross defense attorneys tried to say he was insane but the court didnt agree. Life for Shawcross and Rose became routine. The mass murderer took up painting bright visages of butterflies, wildlife and water features. Weve created a community powered by horror fans like you and we need you in it. Shawcross paintings in prison bring new meaning to the phrase still waters run deep. If Arthur Shawcross developed a love of art earlier on instead of killing, perhaps his paintings of rivers and lakes would have been a healthier outlet for his emotions. Police were confident they had their killer, and further questioning revealed the earlier child deaths and a grandiose account of his Vietnam War service, which was later discounted. An autopsy revealed that she had suffered severe wounds from a blunt object. Her body was found under a bridge near the Black River and she had been raped, mutilated and strangled. It was the second time that the man with the same physical description, named Mike or Mitch, had been mentioned in reference to the murders. Interviews with many of the Lyle prostitutes indicated that he was a regular and that he had the reputation of being violent. However, he was declared sane and fit to stand trial and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. ", "Is this why Ted Bundy became a murderer? He says he also exhibited behavioral problems at an early age, including bed-wetting and bullying. 'It Was A Flooring Moment,' Says Woman On Learning Serial Killer Arthur Shawcross Was Her Dad. Arthur Shawcross, known as the Genessee River Killer, killed at least 14 people in the 1980s. People like Arthur Shawcross, the Rochester, NY based killer who killed 12 women . Shawcross' sealed criminal record meant that he shielded him from police scrutiny. But what interested me was a photos of Shawcross in a prison visit with his daughter and granddaughter. His daughter was apparently instrumental in Shawcross's conversion to Catholicism while in . 20. Hunters found her body in the Genesee River. According to Shawcross, he did not get along with his parents and his mother was domineering and extremely abusive. John Paul Fay was a murderabilia dealer with a troubled past. Dietz told the producers of "Crazy, Not Insane" that he believes multiple personality disorder, generally speaking, is "a hoax." Arthur Shawcross, also known as "The Genesee River Killer," was responsible for the murders of 12 women in upstate New York from 1988 to 1990. All were young women and all were prostitutes. Road patrols were also sent out, and on New Year's Eve, they found a pair of black jeans belonging to Felicia Stephens. He claims he was molested by an aunt at age nine, but his family disputes that claim. Arthur Shawcross. A common trait of serial killers is the desire to show they are still in control and can reach through the prison walls and still do damage to those outside. The last victim, Elizabeth Gibson, had been killed in neighboring Wayne County. Judge Donald Wisner sentenced Mr. Shawcross to the . Without facts to support, he alleges that he was sexually abused by his mother until he decided to run away in the ninth grade. The F.B.I. Later, when Shawcross served in Vietnam, he claimed, although he had never served in combat, that he had . 0 references. Arthur Shawcross confessed to killing and mutilating 11 women in Rochester, N.Y., and is suspected of killing at least 19 more women. They saidthat the killer showed characteristics of a manin his 30s, white, and who knew his victims. Arthur Shawcross is a man that committed his life to killing people.