Talking with Serial Killers Read online

  During this period of juvenile sadism, Shawcross learned that killing animals had one drawback; they made a noise and the excrement and urine leaking from their bodies soiled his clothing. To prevent this, he resorted to stuffing leaves and other debris into their body apertures, a bizarre practice which he later included in his modus operandi, when he took to murdering women and children. By the age of 15 the worm had really turned and Arthur became the scourge of his neighbourhood, especially where other children were concerned. He knew no fear, was very strong, and often discharged his .22 calibre air rifle at anyone he came across. If another teenager upset him, he would mercilessly pound them with a baseball bat, or beat them unconscious with his fists.

  Arthur was now uncontrollable and any attempts by his tutors to discipline him resulted in him storming out of class, shouting, ‘Shove this room up your fuckin’ arse,’ and similar obscenities. Aged 17, and much to the relief of his teachers, he dropped out of school. Now, with time on his hands, he took to petty thieving, stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down. He burgled the locality, looted summer cottages, and stole money from the cash register of a gas station, where he worked for a short time. He broke into local stores, taking food and cash, and shoplifted on an almost daily basis.

  One Sunday night in December 1963, he broke into the basement of a Sears Roebuck store, and was arrested by the police after he triggered an alarm. The judge, however, was lenient, sentencing Arthur to 18 months’ probation as a youthful offender. His mitigation, which appeared to find favour with the judge, was that he was stealing in order to buy Christmas presents, which was true.

  By now, the teenage sadist, thug and burglar was exhibiting stranger behavioural characteristics, which included speaking in a childish, duck-like, high-pitched voice. Arthur also developed a weird habit of walking ‘cross-lots’, covering long distances at a fast pace, over-swinging his arms, holding his body erect and rigid like a one-man band, and walking in the straightest line over any obstacle that blocked his path. A cousin recalled Arthur doing this, and said, ‘He’d tear his pants on a wire fence rather than use a gate several feet away. He’d walk into a swamp and have a hell of a time getting out. He really was nuts in those days.’

  Aged 20 and already known to the police, Shawcross was charged with attacking a 13-year-old boy following a snowball fight. It seemed that he preferred the company of children much younger than himself, and he was often spotted secretively playing with children’s’ toys. The budding killer was also accident-prone. Apart from occasional blackouts, he knocked himself unconscious while pole-vaulting, suffered a hairline fracture of the skull when he was hit by a discus, took an electric shock from a faulty electrical switch, was hit by a sledgehammer, fell from the top of a 40ft ladder, and was hospitalised for the fifth time when he was struck down by a passing truck.

  Around this time, although the date is not known, Arthur met Sarah Louise Chatteron. They were married in September 1964 at the Sandy Creek Baptist Chapel, and they had a son whom they named Michael. But blissful wedlock soon ended in acrimony. Sarah would later go on the record as saying, ‘Arthur was very immature, and always faking illness or injury to miss out on work. Sex with him was lousy. He just couldn’t keep it up.’ The couple separated in August 1966, with Shawcross blaming Sarah for the break-up. He complained that she refused to give him oral sex, which was his favourite, but neither of them mentioned his constant acts of adultery.

  Single once again, Shawcross hit the fast-food joints and dance halls. He wrecked his souped-up Pontiac, and then he met Linda Ruth Neary whom he started to date, but on Friday 7 April 1967, he was drafted into the Army. If anything could sort out Arthur’s psychological problems, surely the Army could, and so 22-year-old Private 52967041 Arthur John Shawcross started his training at Fort Lee, Virginia.

  The rookie soldier’s first taste of military justice occurred when a sergeant criticised him for ‘goofing off’. Official army records show that Shawcross responded, ‘What do you think I’m doing, pulling my pud?’ He was fined $27 for his insolence. He completed his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was designated a supply and parts specialist. When he failed to show up for a work detail, he was fined $11 and restricted to the post for 14 days. After that, he accepted army discipline, and his service record shows no subsequent charges. On various intelligence tests, he scored from subnormal to slightly above. His efficiency ratings ranged through ‘fair’ and ‘good’, but were mostly ‘excellent’. This was an early example of his improved behaviour in structured settings.

  While on leave, he married Linda Neary in October 1967, after which he was flown in a c-130 transport to South Vietnam where he served a somewhat indifferent 12-month tour of duty with the Supply and Transport Company of the 4th Infantry Division based at the South Vietnamese city of Pleiku. At this time, South Vietnam was suffering the Tet Offensive when the VC/NVA launched co-ordinated attacks on virtually all the major cities and towns. With seemingly no end to the war in sight, US forces were stretched to the limit, needing every serviceman they could muster for duty.

  An examination of Arthur’s service record reveals that he saw no action apart from dodging the occasional incoming shell. But he tells us an entirely different story, claiming that he was based in the Central Highlands, and was a ‘Rambo-type’, one-man, first-strike weapon, fighting in the heat of the action. In one of his letters to the author, he wrote enthusiastically:

  Another time I went on patrol and shot a kid chained up into a tree. He killed one GI, with an M1 our own weapon, too. That made three. Again on petrol [sic] I killed two women in a river, after they had killed two GI’s. They had a map of base camp, plus AK47 rifles and ammo, food and $280,000 in money belts. I split the money with some guys, smashed the AK’s and ammo, took everything else back to camp. We let the bodies drift in the current downstream.

  In another handwritten account, this erstwhile ‘Rambo’ described how he allegedly committed other atrocities. These are disgusting accounts which must be taken with a pinch of salt:

  I shot one woman who was hiding some ammo in a tree. She didn’t die right off. I tied her up, gaged her [sic], then search the area [sic]. Found the hut with another girl inside of the age about 16. Knocked her out with the butt of the gun and carried her to where the other girl was. There was a lot of rice, ammo and other stuff in the hut. I tied the young girl to a tree, still gaged, tied her legs too. They didn’t say anything to me at all. I had a machete that was very sharp. I cut the girl’s throat. Then took off her head and placed it on the pole in front of that hut.

  That girl at the tree peed then fainted. I stripped her then … First I gave her oral sex. She couldn’t understand what I was doing but her body did! I untied her, then retied her to two other small trees … She fainted several times. I cut her slightly from the neck to crotch. She screamed and shit herself. I took my M16, pulled on a nipple then put the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger. Cut off her head and placed it on a pole where they got water.

  On reassignment furlough in Oklahoma, Specialist Fourth Class Shawcross, repaired weapons and made reluctant visits to the camp psychiatrist. He was honourably discharged in the spring of 1969, and moved with his wife to Clayton, on the St Lawrence River. He promptly put in a disability claim for war injuries and although a Veterans Administration examiner found no substance to Arthur’s claim, the former soldier’s constant badgering won him a $73-a-month disability pension for leaving the examiner in peace.

  Seven months after leaving the Army, Arthur Shawcross was divorced again and soon in trouble with the police. He had found employment at a paper factory, the city’s largest employer, and he repaid the firm for giving him a job by setting fire to the place, causing $28,000 worth of damage. Within three months a hay barn mysteriously caught fire, and it was Arthur who raised the alarm. Three days later, he set fire to a milk bottling plant. This was the city’s second-largest employer and, this time our community-minded Arthur was a
t least considerate enough to telephone the fire brigade, then stand back admiring the red vehicles as his handiwork reduced the building to ashes.

  Shortly after melting the milk depot, he bungled a robbery at a gas station. The proprietor, who knew Shawcross by sight, called the Sheriff and he was arrested, confessing to all of his crimes, which included the arson attacks. Hauled before the Court, Jefferson County Judge Milton Wiltse, who was an irate old judge from the ‘whip ’em and hang ’em school’, sentenced Arthur to five years imprisonment in Attica.

  * * *

  At the start of his prison sentence, Shawcross was subjected to a psychological evaluation. He was assessed as ‘an immature adolescent with a schizoid personality who decompensated [disintegrated or broke down] in ego functioning under the influence of unemployment stress, employment stress, rejection by wife. He should be viewed as a schizoid arsonist who requires supervision, emotional support and immediate referral to a mental clinic on parole later projected homicidal attempt of at least two of his arsons should not be underestimated. He is a fair parole risk … will require psychiatric treatment plus close supervision.’

  Shawcross was paroled on Monday, 18 October 1971, after serving just 22 months in prison. At first, he worked with Frink Sno-Plows in Clayton but he was laid off four days later when it was learned that he was a thief and arsonist with a criminal record. Just after Christmas, the Watertown Public Works Department hired him under the Federal Emergency Employment Programme. A supervisor assigned him to a far corner of the 60-acre landfill at the end of Water Street. As it transpired, his first murder victim lived a mile away.

  Early in 1972, Shawcross attacked and raped a 16-year-old girl in an underground room of Watertown’s old railroad station but, luckily for him, the victim failed to report the incident to the police. Then he met an old school friend called Penny Nichol Sherbino. She was a short woman with a good figure, lively brown eyes, tawny hair and a rural vivacity that took the form of a ready laugh and a giggle. They dated for a short while before taking their wedding vows on Wednesday, 22 April 1972, and setting up home in a neat, two-storey apartment at 233 Cloverdale Apartments in Clover Street.

  On Sunday, 7 May, 15 days after the wedding, Arthur was shuffling along Clover Street with the intention of fishing Kelsey Creek. Set into a triangle of woods and marshland bordered by Interstate Highway 81 and State Routes 37 and 12E, the creek was just a mile from his home. It was about mid-morning when 10-year-old Jack Blake rushed up to him asking if he wanted any worms as bait. Jack went out fishing that day with Shawcross and was never seen alive again.

  The Blakes were a rough family, but they loved their children, and Mary Blake had warned her impressionable son not to associate with Arthur Shawcross. She didn’t like the cut of the man who was always boasting about his service in Vietnam, and showing the boy photographs of naked women.

  ‘He was a weird sort of guy,’ she said. ‘He rode around on a white, woman’s cycle.’

  When Jack didn’t return home later that day, Mary reported to the police that her son was missing, explaining that Jack had wanted to go fishing with Shawcross and, despite her warning, had probably gone against her wishes.

  Suspicion, therefore, fell upon Shawcross from the outset. He denied being with Jack that day, and with no other evidence to suggest otherwise, Shawcross was released following two interviews with police who now thought that Jack was a runaway from home.

  On Friday, 26 May, Shawcross was again in trouble with the police. This time he was caught stuffing grass cuttings down the shirt and shorts of a six-year-old boy, and spanking him. For this offence, Shawcross received a $10 fine and a reprimand from the Court.

  Tragedy struck Watertown again on Wednesday 2 September 1972, when Shawcross raped and strangled eight-year-old Karen Hill. The blonde-haired child had been staying with family friends in Pearl Street because her parent’s home, had, ironically, been destroyed by fire.

  The chances against any American citizen falling into the clutches of a predatory homicidal sexual psychopath are about 350 million: 1. However, Karen’s chances increased considerably when such a monster came on the scene as she played on her front lawn during this beautifully clear Sunday.

  At about 3.30pm, a man answering Shawcross’s description was spotted by children leading Karen across the iron Pearl Street Bridge over the Black River, just a short downhill walk from where Karen had been staying. Although the children didn’t know the man by name, they, and specifically a teenage girl, recognised his distinctive white cycle with its brown mudguards and a basket, which he had leaned against the south parapet wall. From a distance, the curious children watched as the man lifted Karen over the railings and gingerly led her down the precipitous bank ostensibly to show her the fish.

  When the alarm was raised that Karen was missing, the children came forward to tell the cops what they had seen. At 10.00pm, search officers equipped with flashlights discovered a crumpled body. It was covered by a slab of concrete and laying face down, crammed into a sewerage outfall pipe on the south bank of the bridge.

  Police dogs were called for. They tracked a scent up Pearl Street to Starbuck Avenue, and eagerly tugged their handlers left into Clover Street, straight to the stoop of Arthur’s front door. He was arrested immediately. At the autopsy, the medical examiner discovered that Karen had been raped vaginally and anally. She had died as a result of suffocation under a mound of silt. Apart from those particularly disturbing aspects of this homicide, Shawcross had also stuffed weed and debris into the child’s nose, mouth, vagina and rectum.

  But what about Jack Blake? During his interrogation for the murder of Karen Hill, Shawcross hinted at the disappearance of the young boy, although he made no admissions. Nevertheless, this hint was enough to prompt the police into renewing their searches. Their efforts were rewarded on Wednesday, 6 September, following their first sweep of Kelsey Creek which took four hours. Detective Gordon Spinner, along with Under-Sheriff John Griffith, noticed that long strips of bark had been peeled from a tree and neatly laid over a mound of spongy earth. Easing the bark away with his boot, Spinner recoiled in disgust as bluebottles rose from a lump of rotting flesh. The almost skeletal corpse was unclothed and a scrap of blonde hair was attached to the skull. Several of the bones were out of position, which indicated that animals had been feasting on the gruesome remains. Police also found a broken tooth, and Jack’s clothing in the woods. His blue dungarees, black sneakers, green jacket with its arms tied together in a knot, and a T-shirt marked ‘Blake’ with a pen, with the slogan ‘I act different because I am different’, were all neatly folded some 30ft from the shallow grave.

  Shawcross had never admitted this murder until he was interviewed in prison by the author. Piecing together what information is now available, the following scenario emerges of what happened on that fateful date.

  Jack accompanied his killer to Kelsey Creek to go fishing. They walked across a railway track and into the marsh and trees nearby. Suddenly, the monster in Shawcross surfaced and he ordered Jack to strip naked. Reluctantly, and in fear of his life, Jack did as he was told, but then the terrified lad made a run for it. What happened next must have amounted to a cat and mouse chase through this remote marshy area.

  Jack proved to be no match for the agile ex-soldier. Barefoot, the boy made it to the railway line – cinders were found embedded in the soles of his feet – and in a frantic attempt to climb over a four-strand barbed wire fence, he fell back into Shawcross’s grabbing hands. Now, the lad was doomed. He was punched in the face and beaten unconscious. Shawcross says he raped Jack, cut off his penis and testicles, then ate them. He has since told psychiatrist, Dr Richard Theordore Kraus, that he had cut out the heart and eaten part of that, too. There is no evidence to confirm that he was being truthful or otherwise.

  On Tuesday, 17 October 1972, Shawcross pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter and, after proceedings, which lasted 20 minutes, he was sentenced to the
maximum term of 2–25 years for the murder of Karen Hill by a disgusted Judge Wiltse, who had had the misfortune of having had Shawcross in front of him before.

  * * *

  Shawcross served 14½ years in prison where he experienced a rough time from the other inmates whose brotherly admiration for each other’s crimes did not extend to the rape and murder of children. The beatings and abuse started for Shawcross on his admission to Attica, and this treatment followed him through the penal system until he arrived at the notoriously tough Greenhaven Correctional Facility, at Stormville, New York.

  Set into rugged hill country between the Hudson River and the Connecticut border, some 40 miles north of New York City, this prison houses many of the State’s most evil criminals where 742 prisoners (33 per cent of population) are rapists and murderers. For Shawcross, a convicted paedophile murderer, this was simply not the safest place to be. The prison psychiatrists diagnosed him as, ‘a dangerous schizophrenic paedophile, suffering from an intermittent explosive personality’, and it was noted that ‘he heard voices when he was depressed, and engaged in fantasy as a source of satisfaction. He also has an oral-erotic fixation for the need of maternal protection.’

  Placed in the A-1 protective segregation unit for his own good, Shawcross was a troublesome inmate in a unit of 41 men. For the greater part of his sentence, he continually faked illness or psychiatric problems to gain attention. However, Shawcross was no one’s fool and, like thousands of convicted felons, he soon learned that the probable key to early parole lay in sucking up to the welfare officers, the prison shrink and the Church. Consequently, Shawcross started to behave himself and he became a model prisoner. He earned his high school equivalency certificate, and qualified in carpentry.