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Serial Killer Documentary - Arthur Shawcross · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:09
Speaker 1: On the 27th of October 1989, the body of a
0:13
Speaker 1: woman was found covered in cardboard and hidden under a
0:17
Speaker 1: bush behind the Maplewood YMCA in Rochester, New York. She
0:23
Speaker 1: was the fourth woman to be discovered in a tiny
0:26
Speaker 1: area by the banks of the Genesee River.
0:29
Speaker 2: Women didn't want to go out alone at night at
0:33
Speaker 2: this point in time.
0:34
Speaker 3: There was a real sense of fear.
0:37
Speaker 1: The killer was 44-year-old Arthur Shawcross, a tall, imposing outsider
0:43
Speaker 1: whose deadly deeds had started over 15 years before, 100
0:48
Speaker 1: miles north in the small city of Watertown.
0:52
Speaker 4: He would not have stopped himself for any reason, and
0:55
Speaker 4: he didn't think of victims as people. It was business,
0:59
Speaker 4: business as usual. That was his attitude.
1:03
Speaker 1: Back in October 1972, Shawcross had confessed to killing two
1:09
Speaker 1: young children and was convicted of manslaughter.
1:12
Speaker 5: He offered no defense for them. I mean, totally unemotional,
1:16
Speaker 5: totally unconcerned with anything that was going on.
1:20
Speaker 1: Remorseless Arthur Shawcross once again started targeting innocent victims after
1:26
Speaker 1: he was released from prison. beginning a killing spree that
1:30
Speaker 1: would see the deaths of 11 women, making him one
1:34
Speaker 1: of the world's most evil killers. On the 3rd of January, 1990,
2:03
Speaker 1: detectives made a breakthrough in their hunt for a serial
2:07
Speaker 1: killer terrorizing the streets of Rochester. Senior investigator John McCaffrey
2:13
Speaker 1: spotted the perpetrator from a helicopter he was using to
2:17
Speaker 1: locate the missing bodies.
2:19
Speaker 6: Some people will say, well, you got lucky with the helicopter.
2:24
Speaker 6: Not really. We were doing good police work.
2:29
Speaker 1: John and Rochester Police Captain Lind Johnston tirelessly worked the
2:34
Speaker 1: case together in order to bring the killer to justice.
2:38
Speaker 5: When you don't work together, the bad guy wins, and
2:41
Speaker 5: that's totally unacceptable.
2:43
Speaker 1: After he was apprehended, Arthur Shawcross went on trial, accused
2:48
Speaker 1: of 11 homicides. If convicted, the man later dubbed the
2:52
Speaker 1: Genesee River Killer would spend the rest of his life
2:56
Speaker 1: behind bars.
2:58
Speaker 7: The case is exceptional simply because this is all in
3:01
Speaker 7: one place, all at once, all in one short period
3:04
Speaker 7: of time.
3:04
Speaker 8: It's that relentlessness that makes it exceptional.
3:14
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in Kittery, Maine, on the 6th
3:18
Speaker 1: of June, 1945. Arthur Shawcross, also known as Art, was
3:24
Speaker 1: born to mother Betty and father Arthur Sr.
3:28
Speaker 7: His father was a corporal, and quite shortly after he
3:32
Speaker 7: was born, he and his mother moved to Watertown in
3:37
Speaker 7: New York State. His father wasn't around a lot, so
3:42
Speaker 7: he lacked the classic father figure.
3:45
Speaker 4: Shawcross said that he had been sexually abused. First he
3:49
Speaker 4: said by his aunt, and then it was his mother,
3:52
Speaker 4: and then he added his sister. all of whom said
3:56
Speaker 4: that didn't happen. And in fact, the aunt's name, he
3:59
Speaker 4: didn't even get right.
4:04
Speaker 1: The young Shawcross was labeled a loner at school.
4:08
Speaker 7: He was nicknamed as Oddy because he was regarded as
4:12
Speaker 7: so strange and difficult. And in a way, I think
4:15
Speaker 7: he took pleasure from that. I think he enjoyed being separate.
4:21
Speaker 7: He liked being the loner.
4:23
Speaker 2: There was also cruelty to animals in his childhood. So
4:26
Speaker 2: here's somebody who enjoys the suffering of others, and the
4:31
Speaker 2: fact that this is present in his childhood is very
4:33
Speaker 2: alarming indeed.
4:36
Speaker 1: Throughout his teens, Shawcross's violent and unruly behavior marked him
4:41
Speaker 1: out as different.
4:44
Speaker 5: He never graduated from school up there. He was arrested
4:48
Speaker 5: for arsons and burglaries, and, you know, he did some
4:51
Speaker 5: other time, and then... He ended up getting married.
4:58
Speaker 1: At the age of 19, Shawcross married his first wife, Sarah.
5:04
Speaker 2: When I look at Shawcross's relationships with women, it's very
5:07
Speaker 2: clear to me that he's somebody who sees women as
5:11
Speaker 2: serving a purpose for him.
5:13
Speaker 3: So he doesn't see women as.
5:14
Speaker 2: People to have mutual, respectful relationships with. They're there to
5:19
Speaker 2: serve a purpose. So Shawcross is a misogynist. That is
5:23
Speaker 2: his value system, and that informs so much of his behavior.
5:28
Speaker 7: His child is born in 65, and he gets caught again,
5:32
Speaker 7: no master criminal, for second-degree burglary and gets six months
5:37
Speaker 7: of probation.
5:38
Speaker 8: He's got all sorts of odd jobs. He's digging graves.
5:41
Speaker 8: He's laboring.
5:42
Speaker 7: He's an apprentice butcher. He is the proverbial square peg
5:46
Speaker 7: in a round hole. He doesn't fit in very much anywhere.
5:51
Speaker 1: By August 1966, after just two years of marriage, Shawcross
5:56
Speaker 1: and Sarah separated.
5:58
Speaker 7: His wife eventually asked for a divorce, not necessarily because
6:02
Speaker 7: of his unfaithfulness, though that was persistent, but more because
6:06
Speaker 7: he kept getting jobs and then losing them and being
6:08
Speaker 7: laid off and not having anything to go. He was
6:11
Speaker 7: just literally an unstable personality. But we're talking about the
6:15
Speaker 7: middle 60s. America is at war in Vietnam, and everybody...
6:20
Speaker 7: is being drafted.
6:22
Speaker 1: On the 7th of April, 1967, at the age of 22,
6:27
Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross was drafted into the American military. Just five
6:37
Speaker 1: months later, unstable Shawcross married his second wife, Linda. He
6:42
Speaker 1: spent the first year of their marriage in Vietnam.
6:46
Speaker 4: He claimed he was subjected to Agent Orange, that he
6:50
Speaker 4: had killed almost three dozen people, that he had been
6:54
Speaker 4: part of the massacre of a village, he had killed
6:57
Speaker 4: some prostitutes and cannibalized them and all that. And then
7:01
Speaker 4: it turned out that much of what he had described
7:03
Speaker 4: had come from novels about Vietnam and from a movie.
7:08
Speaker 9: Well, the truth of the matter was he was a
7:10
Speaker 9: supply clerk in Vietnam. He saw no combat. He was
7:15
Speaker 9: the one that stayed back in the supply room. He
7:19
Speaker 9: never saw combat.
7:21
Speaker 1: In the spring of 1969, Shawcross received an honorable discharge
7:27
Speaker 1: from the Army. The fantasies he created in Vietnam now
7:32
Speaker 1: started to manifest as dangerous behaviors back home in the U.S.
7:40
Speaker 9: When he had come back to Watertown after the military,
7:44
Speaker 9: He had been arrested for burglary. He was an arsonist.
7:48
Speaker 9: His wife left him.
7:51
Speaker 1: Over the next three years, volatile Shawcross served time for burglary,
7:56
Speaker 1: divorced Linda, and married Penny, his third wife. Then in 1972,
8:02
Speaker 1: Shawcross's dark desires suddenly took a more sinister turn. On
8:08
Speaker 1: the 7th of May, a young boy called Jack Blake
8:12
Speaker 1: went missing.
8:13
Speaker 9: He lived near the river in Watertown, and he was
8:16
Speaker 9: a typical 10-year-old. I think he went down near the
8:19
Speaker 9: creek and probably throwing stones in and maybe even fishing,
8:23
Speaker 9: and that's where he ran across Art. And Art was fishing,
8:29
Speaker 9: and the assumption of the investigators was that the 10-year-old
8:32
Speaker 9: was annoying to him.
8:34
Speaker 5: He claims that the kid kept following him. He told him,
8:36
Speaker 5: go home, don't follow me. He said he finally got
8:39
Speaker 5: angry with him and hit him once with his right
8:41
Speaker 5: hand right between the eyes and He said, just left
8:44
Speaker 5: them there.
8:45
Speaker 6: Jack was reported missing. So they did a search, couldn't
8:48
Speaker 6: find the body.
8:50
Speaker 9: And Art was somewhat of a suspect because he was
8:54
Speaker 9: known to fish in the area.
8:58
Speaker 4: Shawcross was questioned. He didn't know. But the police didn't
9:02
Speaker 4: much care for Shawcross because he was known to harass
9:06
Speaker 4: the kids. And sometimes he liked to step leaves down
9:09
Speaker 4: their pants, which has sexual connotations. They kind of kept
9:14
Speaker 4: denying him as a potential pedophile.
9:18
Speaker 9: He just denied it. He just denied any involvement. And
9:22
Speaker 9: they didn't have enough to arrest him.
9:24
Speaker 1: Then four months later, another child disappeared.
9:29
Speaker 7: In September 1972, an eight-year-old girl called Karen Ann Hill
9:34
Speaker 7: goes missing when she's playing outside. Again, no one really
9:38
Speaker 7: knows what's happened. She's literally disappeared from the front yard.
9:44
Speaker 1: It would be less than 24 hours before her lifeless
9:48
Speaker 1: body was located.
9:52
Speaker 7: Tragically, the following day, the police find Karen's body. She's
9:59
Speaker 7: been raped. She's been strangled. Mud and grass has been
10:04
Speaker 7: shoved into her mouth. It's a horrifying killing. And you
10:08
Speaker 7: have to say, whoever committed it has to be the
10:11
Speaker 7: most depraved of minds.
10:15
Speaker 2: The fact that Karen Ann Hill is a girl is
10:18
Speaker 2: really significant here. and I think that tells us something
10:21
Speaker 2: about the difference between the murder of Jack and the
10:24
Speaker 2: murder of Karen Ann. When you're putting dirt and twigs
10:28
Speaker 2: and debris in there, you want to demean them and
10:30
Speaker 2: humiliate them, and I think that's what he's trying to
10:33
Speaker 2: achieve here.
10:38
Speaker 1: Once again, 26-year-old Arthur Shawcross was brought in for questioning.
10:44
Speaker 2: The police immediately suspected Shawcross in the murder of Karen
10:49
Speaker 2: Ann Hill because he'd been linked to the disappearance of
10:51
Speaker 2: Jack earlier. And a member of the public had seen
10:55
Speaker 2: Karen close to a bicycle which matched the description of
10:59
Speaker 2: one that Shawcross owned.
11:01
Speaker 7: Now, Shawcross's innate cunning comes into play because he realizes
11:06
Speaker 7: he's got to be a prime suspect.
11:09
Speaker 8: So he does a deal with the police. He says, OK.
11:14
Speaker 7: I'll admit to killing Karen Hill, but I'll also take
11:19
Speaker 7: you to the remains of Jack Blake, which are now,
11:22
Speaker 7: I'm afraid, skeletonized. And he does that to lessen the charges.
11:28
Speaker 1: With little physical evidence to connect him to either crime,
11:32
Speaker 1: detectives couldn't guarantee a murder conviction when the case went
11:36
Speaker 1: to trial. So on the 17th of October, 1972, Shawcross
11:43
Speaker 1: pled guilty to manslaughter for the killing of Karen Ann Hill.
11:47
Speaker 1: He was not indicted with Jack's killing.
11:50
Speaker 2: So this sends out a message to Shawcross that actually
11:54
Speaker 2: he's the one that's in control.
11:55
Speaker 3: He's the one that has power.
11:57
Speaker 2: And even though he's about to go down for a
11:59
Speaker 2: lengthy prison sentence, he feels on top of the world
12:03
Speaker 2: because he feels that he's the one who's pulling the
12:05
Speaker 2: strings here.
12:09
Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross was given an indeterminate sentence of up to
12:13
Speaker 1: a maximum of 25 years. However, Shawcross once again demonstrated
12:21
Speaker 1: that he knew how to play the system when on
12:24
Speaker 1: April the 30th, 1987, he was released after serving just
12:27
Speaker 1: 14 and a half years.
12:37
Speaker 9: The reason he got out on parole is that he
12:39
Speaker 9: had met a woman by the name of Rose Wally
12:43
Speaker 9: while he was in prison.
12:44
Speaker 6: And they became pen pals.
12:47
Speaker 9: And one of the ways you get paroled is not
12:49
Speaker 9: only being a model prisoner, but you have to have
12:52
Speaker 9: somebody in the community to find you a job and
12:55
Speaker 9: some place to live. So she provided that to him.
12:59
Speaker 3: So he has this all set up for when he
13:01
Speaker 3: gets out.
13:02
Speaker 2: She's going to provide him with a veneer of respectability.
13:05
Speaker 2: but it doesn't quite work out that way initially because
13:08
Speaker 2: in the town that they moved to, people get to
13:11
Speaker 2: know about his past.
13:18
Speaker 1: 41-year-old Shawcross initially settled in the city of Binghamton in
13:23
Speaker 1: upstate New York.
13:25
Speaker 9: Basically, the people in the community, once they found out
13:27
Speaker 9: that a person who had killed two children were in
13:30
Speaker 9: the area, they chased him out of the area, really,
13:33
Speaker 9: and they relocated him to another town That town did that.
13:37
Speaker 7: This is a child killer. Even today, I have to
13:39
Speaker 7: pinch myself to think that you do allow a child
13:42
Speaker 7: killer out after only 14 and a half years to resume, quote,
13:46
Speaker 7: some normal life.
13:47
Speaker 1: After being run out of two different towns, Shawcross found
13:52
Speaker 1: anonymity in the bustling city of Rochester, 115 miles north.
13:57
Speaker 5: It's a little larger city, so you're not as well known.
14:00
Speaker 5: I mean, some of the small towns, everybody knows everybody.
14:04
Speaker 5: Rochester's a little... He'd probably just blend in a little more.
14:13
Speaker 1: Shawcross found a job preparing food on the night shift
14:17
Speaker 1: at a company called G & G Cheese.
14:20
Speaker 4: And in his free time, he trolls around looking for prostitutes.
14:26
Speaker 4: He also, at this point, has a mistress, a woman
14:29
Speaker 4: named Clara.
14:30
Speaker 1: Claire and Neil worked at a local nursing home where
14:34
Speaker 1: Shawcross would often visit her.
14:37
Speaker 7: She's 56 and has had 10 children. He's 42. But nevertheless,
14:44
Speaker 7: he strikes up a relationship with her. It wasn't blissful.
14:47
Speaker 7: I mean, they argued and fought and he would leave
14:51
Speaker 7: and come back and.
14:52
Speaker 8: She would throw him out. But it was a kind
14:55
Speaker 8: of stable relationship.
14:57
Speaker 4: So he's figured out that if he wants to kill again,
15:00
Speaker 4: he's gonna have to change his approach. He wants easy victims.
15:05
Speaker 4: Kids were easy, but they drew a lot of attention.
15:08
Speaker 4: He'll shift his victim type. We call that situational rather
15:14
Speaker 4: than preferential.
15:16
Speaker 1: Things remained quiet for over a year. Then on the
15:20
Speaker 1: 24th of March, 1988, the body of a woman was found.
15:26
Speaker 1: Detective Lind was a captain with nearby Rochester police at
15:30
Speaker 1: the time.
15:31
Speaker 5: Dorothy Blackburn was found in Salmon Creek out in Northampton Park.
15:36
Speaker 5: She was thrown into the water there by a little
15:39
Speaker 5: culvert or bridge.
15:41
Speaker 1: Dorothy was last seen nine days earlier. Her disappearance was
15:45
Speaker 1: out of character, and her worried sister had reported her missing.
15:50
Speaker 1: The post-mortem examination on the 27-year-old's body revealed that she'd
15:55
Speaker 1: been strangled and her genitals had been bitten. Her murder
16:00
Speaker 1: would remain unsolved for over a year.
16:03
Speaker 8: For a time, things go quiet.
16:06
Speaker 7: Shawcross has various problems. He has sexual problems in particular,
16:12
Speaker 7: but other things get in the way. His on-off relationship
16:15
Speaker 7: with Clara comes and goes. For me, I believe he
16:18
Speaker 7: was profoundly unsettled and was simply a ticking time bomb.
16:24
Speaker 8: Waiting to explode.
16:27
Speaker 1: On September the 11th, 1988, another body was discovered.
16:33
Speaker 5: When we first found Anna Stephan, we really didn't even
16:36
Speaker 5: know who she was.
16:37
Speaker 6: She was skeleton.
16:39
Speaker 5: It appeared that she'd been hidden. Roofing shingles, brush put
16:43
Speaker 5: over her. Her tank top was around her wrist, and
16:46
Speaker 5: the pants she was wearing was down around where the
16:49
Speaker 5: ankle was.
16:53
Speaker 1: 27-year-old mother of two, Anna Stephan, had been arrested in
16:58
Speaker 1: July 1988 for prostitution. She was pregnant at the time
17:03
Speaker 1: and had lost contact with her family. No one reported
17:08
Speaker 1: her missing.
17:09
Speaker 7: Anna has also been strangled and attacked and dumped in
17:13
Speaker 7: the Genesee River Gorge, but her body isn't discovered for
17:17
Speaker 7: several months.
17:18
Speaker 5: We took the skull to a forensic pathologist down in Syracuse,
17:22
Speaker 5: New York, And he was able to do a reconstruction
17:25
Speaker 5: of a skull. We then photographed it and had it
17:28
Speaker 5: put in the paper. And we got a call from
17:31
Speaker 5: her father who identified her.
17:35
Speaker 2: I think it was difficult in the beginning because he's
17:37
Speaker 2: targeting a population who are quite transient.
17:39
Speaker 3: Sex workers move around a lot. Very often they.
17:42
Speaker 2: Will go off the radar for weeks or months. And
17:45
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily because they've been murdered. It's because they're
17:48
Speaker 2: in a different part of the country.
17:50
Speaker 7: The police had very, very little to go on. no fingerprints,
17:53
Speaker 7: no fingernail scrapings, no semen. And it's impossible to know
17:57
Speaker 7: whether they were each individually raped before they were killed.
18:01
Speaker 7: But certainly there's no clear evidence.
18:06
Speaker 5: You would look at all the types of activity that
18:09
Speaker 5: happened at those crime scenes. Was he covering them up?
18:12
Speaker 5: Was he mutilating them? And then you'd start trying to
18:15
Speaker 5: prioritize all your tips.
18:17
Speaker 9: And then they found another one or two bodies and
18:21
Speaker 9: Some of the bodies had been mutilated. So by the
18:24
Speaker 9: time they got to the third and fourth body over
18:26
Speaker 9: the next few months, there were a lot of common
18:29
Speaker 9: denominators and similarities.
18:36
Speaker 1: On the 27th of October, 1989, Captain Lynn Johnston was
18:42
Speaker 1: called to the murder of another sex worker in Maplewood, Rochester.
18:49
Speaker 1: is that of 25-year-old Patricia Ives.
18:53
Speaker 5: When you stood at the scene of Patricia Ives and
18:56
Speaker 5: you look to your left and just down over the
18:59
Speaker 5: hill where the body of Anna Stephan was found, then
19:02
Speaker 5: if you look north and you went down to Seth
19:05
Speaker 5: Green Island, there was another body they found. So there
19:09
Speaker 5: was a tight bunch of them, right, all in the
19:11
Speaker 5: same area.
19:12
Speaker 9: Those were areas that fishermen frequented. They were brushy so
19:17
Speaker 9: that bodies could be hidden. There'd be building materials from
19:21
Speaker 9: the river that would have washed up to the shore,
19:24
Speaker 9: so he could cover the bodies up with those building materials.
19:27
Speaker 9: They weren't the places that the average person went to.
19:32
Speaker 5: And I got really nervous about that point, that there
19:35
Speaker 5: was certainly something very unique going on here.
19:39
Speaker 1: In just over a year and a half, detectives had
19:42
Speaker 1: found four bodies concealed, mutilated, and all within half a
19:48
Speaker 1: mile of each other.
19:51
Speaker 7: The police, to their credit, decide that they must alert
19:54
Speaker 7: the community of sex workers that they are in danger.
19:59
Speaker 7: And so in the autumn of 1989, if you work
20:02
Speaker 7: as a sex worker in Rochester, it must have been
20:05
Speaker 7: a very frightening time.
20:08
Speaker 5: And then we, for lack of a better word, we
20:10
Speaker 5: made what we call a war room. And what we
20:13
Speaker 5: did was we hung their photographs up because we want
20:16
Speaker 5: to remember who the victim is. You know, a lot
20:18
Speaker 5: of people don't care because they were prostitutes. Well, they're people,
20:21
Speaker 5: and they have mothers, fathers.
20:23
Speaker 6: Sisters, brothers.
20:25
Speaker 5: So we believed he was right down in that area
20:27
Speaker 5: of Lyle Avenue or West Main Street, all these areas
20:31
Speaker 5: where the prostitution activity took place, and we just needed
20:35
Speaker 5: to find him.
20:37
Speaker 2: This is a time when police investigations are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
20:41
Speaker 2: They're drawing on a lot of different techniques. And I
20:44
Speaker 2: think that was the key thing in this case. It
20:46
Speaker 2: was the range of different evidence that was used.
20:50
Speaker 5: We had certainly surveillance teams out, people on roofs with binoculars.
20:55
Speaker 5: Every traffic ticket was looked at. Every parking ticket was
20:58
Speaker 5: looked at. Foot beats were put down there, extra patrols,
21:02
Speaker 5: and a lot of other covert. that we did, which
21:05
Speaker 5: I won't discuss because we might use them again.
21:10
Speaker 1: As part of the investigation, field interviews were conducted with
21:14
Speaker 1: some of the sex workers on Lyle Avenue. Detectives were
21:19
Speaker 1: informed a guy called Mitch, who worked at G &
21:22
Speaker 1: G Cheese, was often seen talking to women in the area.
21:27
Speaker 5: The unfortunate part there was when the police went there,
21:30
Speaker 5: they talked to management that worked during the day Shawcross
21:34
Speaker 5: worked at night, and they really weren't connected to him.
21:38
Speaker 7: We've now got multiple victims within a very small area
21:42
Speaker 7: of upstate New York who are being killed relentlessly.
21:47
Speaker 8: Now the full weight of the police are brought to bear.
21:51
Speaker 8: It is a full-scale manhunt.
21:54
Speaker 5: And every day that we didn't find this person, somebody
21:57
Speaker 5: else might die. So there's a lot of internal pressure
22:01
Speaker 5: on ourselves. We put it on ourselves.
22:06
Speaker 1: As more bodies were found along the banks of the
22:09
Speaker 1: Genesee River and women continued to disappear from the streets,
22:14
Speaker 1: Rochester detectives combined with forces from the New York State
22:17
Speaker 1: Police and threw everything they had at catching the mysterious killer.
22:23
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before he struck again. On the 11th
22:27
Speaker 1: of November, another body was found matching the killer's MO.
22:32
Speaker 1: Captain John McCaffrey coordinated the joint operations.
22:37
Speaker 9: We had done several investigations together, and it wasn't until
22:41
Speaker 9: the end of 1989 when the Rochester Police Department thought
22:46
Speaker 9: there was a strong possibility that the unknown killer would
22:49
Speaker 9: start to deposit the bodies outside of their jurisdiction.
22:53
Speaker 6: So they invited the New York State Police in.
22:56
Speaker 1: In the wake of these brutal killings, detectives became concerned
23:01
Speaker 1: that the perpetrator's behavior would continue to escalate.
23:05
Speaker 7: In October, late October 1989, a young woman called June
23:10
Speaker 7: Stott went missing, and her body was found months later
23:15
Speaker 7: in November 1989.
23:17
Speaker 1: 30-year-old June had mild learning difficulties. She was found along
23:28
Speaker 1: the banks of the Genesee River at Turning Point Park.
23:32
Speaker 8: But this time, it was much worse.
23:35
Speaker 7: He has eviscerated June's body, cut it from sternum to
23:39
Speaker 7: pubic bone, removed some of the body parts in what's
23:43
Speaker 7: known locally as a deer hunter's cut.
23:46
Speaker 2: June was somebody Arthur Shawcross knew. They were on friendly terms.
23:51
Speaker 2: So when he targeted her, this is quite an interesting
23:54
Speaker 2: turn of events. He is targeting women who are available
23:58
Speaker 2: to him, not just because they're sex workers, but because
24:01
Speaker 2: they're in his social circle.
24:04
Speaker 5: June Stott, it's probably the, they're all tragic, but it
24:08
Speaker 5: really was a sad scene because she was a young girl,
24:13
Speaker 5: not a prostitute at all. I remember walking down the
24:16
Speaker 5: path with some of the other investigators and we're just thinking,
24:20
Speaker 5: what's he going to do next?
24:22
Speaker 1: As well as the mutilation and concealment of the bodies,
24:26
Speaker 1: another pattern had emerged linking all the victims.
24:30
Speaker 5: So we came up with a list of all these
24:32
Speaker 5: different categories that we wanted to start comparing. And then
24:36
Speaker 5: we're finding that most of them were found either in
24:39
Speaker 5: creeks or near water.
24:41
Speaker 9: The exception to that was a lady by the name
24:43
Speaker 9: of Elizabeth Gibson, whose body was found out in an
24:46
Speaker 9: apple orchard in Wayne County.
24:51
Speaker 1: With concern mounting for the safety of women across the city,
24:56
Speaker 1: an FBI profiler was brought on board.
24:59
Speaker 2: So during the 1980s, the concept of behavioral profiling became
25:03
Speaker 2: very prominent. Looking at what we could see from a
25:07
Speaker 2: crime scene that would tell us about the personality of
25:10
Speaker 2: the killer.
25:11
Speaker 5: If we could have somebody else come in and just
25:14
Speaker 5: look at the cases to make sure we didn't miss anything,
25:18
Speaker 5: maybe offer some suggestions.
25:20
Speaker 7: This is long before the full weight of the behavioral
25:23
Speaker 7: science unit has grown into what we now recognize on
25:27
Speaker 7: television programs.
25:28
Speaker 8: This is the early days of profiling.
25:31
Speaker 7: But nevertheless, the FBI do come up with a preliminary profile.
25:37
Speaker 6: A lone middle-aged man, 30s.
25:39
Speaker 5: They believed he was a menial type worker, just the
25:43
Speaker 5: kind of guy that would be on the assembly line
25:45
Speaker 5: or just some menial job. He drives a lot, which
25:48
Speaker 5: turned out to be the truth. He frequents the river
25:51
Speaker 5: area because he liked to fish. He was all around water.
25:55
Speaker 5: He was familiar with the river gorge, certainly, because of
25:57
Speaker 5: the fishing. He was capable of a relationship with a female.
26:01
Speaker 5: The relationships would be unstable, and certainly it was. Possibly
26:05
Speaker 5: he would be sexually dysfunctional, which he was, and he
26:09
Speaker 5: had a potential to return to the scene.
26:11
Speaker 6: Shawcross was not educated. He was not a good-looking guy.
26:15
Speaker 6: He was overweight.
26:17
Speaker 9: He was just a person out there that took advantage
26:20
Speaker 9: of the girls by befriending them, providing them with some food,
26:25
Speaker 9: and using that to get close to him.
26:31
Speaker 1: By late December, detectives had linked seven bodies to the
26:35
Speaker 1: killer and a further three women were thought to be missing.
26:39
Speaker 7: We're talking about a relentless spate of killings within a
26:42
Speaker 7: six-month period.
26:44
Speaker 8: Preying on vulnerable women. There is no real explanation for it.
26:48
Speaker 9: He not only started escalating by the mutilation, his frequency
26:52
Speaker 9: of abducting and killing them escalated, and that's what really
26:57
Speaker 9: concerned everybody.
26:59
Speaker 1: Then on New Year's Eve 1989, a uniformed trooper was
27:04
Speaker 1: handed a vital piece of evidence.
27:07
Speaker 6: It was a winter day.
27:07
Speaker 9: I was working in the office, and I received a
27:11
Speaker 9: call from the trooper, and he said that a passing
27:14
Speaker 9: motorist had just located the pair of boots on a
27:18
Speaker 9: snow-covered highway in Northampton Park. So he went there, and
27:23
Speaker 9: in the field, he found a pair of blue jeans.
27:27
Speaker 9: And lo and behold, in the blue jeans, in the
27:30
Speaker 9: rear pocket, was a birth certificate of a young lady
27:35
Speaker 9: by the name of Felicia Stevens.
27:37
Speaker 1: 20-year-old Felicia Stevens was a sex worker in the Lyle
27:44
Speaker 1: Avenue area of Rochester. Her jeans were found 13 1⁄2
27:48
Speaker 1: miles west in Northampton Park.
27:52
Speaker 9: So I immediately called the crime analysis unit with the
27:55
Speaker 9: RPD that was working this case, and I said to
27:59
Speaker 9: the investigator, is Felicia Stevens a missing person?
28:03
Speaker 6: Is she a subject of your investigation?
28:05
Speaker 5: And we got people over to her mother's house, and
28:09
Speaker 5: she indicated she hadn't seen her since December the 26th.
28:13
Speaker 5: And she hadn't lived with mom because they had a
28:15
Speaker 5: big falling out because of drugs and her being a prostitute.
28:19
Speaker 9: So at that point, we assumed that it's connected to
28:22
Speaker 9: the case, and the state police started our own missing
28:25
Speaker 9: persons investigation.
28:27
Speaker 5: So all the agencies all got together and formed a
28:31
Speaker 5: massive search out in that area, bringing in the horses
28:33
Speaker 5: so you could see higher, canine dogs, troopers and city
28:37
Speaker 5: police walking the lines together, trying to find her.
28:42
Speaker 1: As the ground search got underway, John and the New
28:45
Speaker 1: York State Police took to the skies.
28:49
Speaker 9: We have our own helicopter, and it was based in Rochester.
28:52
Speaker 9: So we immediately put the helicopter in the air, and
28:56
Speaker 9: for three days, we flew that area searching for the body.
29:01
Speaker 9: And I told the pilots, I says, let's fly from
29:04
Speaker 9: Northampton Park back to where Felicia Stevens was last seen
29:09
Speaker 9: or would have been working on Lyle Avenue. That is
29:12
Speaker 9: Route 31. And the distance from Northampton Park back to
29:16
Speaker 9: the city It was probably 12 or 15 miles. So
29:20
Speaker 9: as we left Northampton Park in the helicopter, we were
29:23
Speaker 9: only probably two minutes into the flight. As we were
29:26
Speaker 9: flying over Salmon Creek, underneath the bridge, frozen in the ice,
29:32
Speaker 9: was a body.
29:35
Speaker 1: John had a hunch this was a victim of the
29:38
Speaker 1: Genesee River Killer. But that wasn't his only discovery.
29:44
Speaker 9: Now, on top of the bridge was this gray celebrity.
29:47
Speaker 9: And the passenger door was open. And this guy was
29:51
Speaker 9: actually urinating out of the passenger side. And as we
29:55
Speaker 9: flew over with the helicopter, he slid over into the
29:57
Speaker 9: driver's seat and proceeded in an easterly direction towards the
30:02
Speaker 9: village of Spencerport.
30:04
Speaker 5: We had discussed with the profilers before, these guys like
30:07
Speaker 5: to come back to the scene. Of course, we didn't
30:09
Speaker 5: know who the body was yet, but we had a
30:11
Speaker 5: list of potentials.
30:13
Speaker 9: My immediate assumption was that because this was the first
30:17
Speaker 9: time that the state police had used a helicopter in
30:19
Speaker 9: the investigation, that possibly this person came back to relocate
30:24
Speaker 9: the body, so we couldn't find it because it was
30:27
Speaker 9: so easily seen.
30:30
Speaker 1: John immediately scrambled troopers from Rochester to Northampton as he
30:35
Speaker 1: continued to follow the grey celebrity car from the air.
30:40
Speaker 9: He pulled into the rear parking lot of a nursing
30:42
Speaker 9: home and we hovered. I had radioed for a uniformed
30:46
Speaker 9: trooper to come to the location and as the person
30:50
Speaker 9: got out of the car, they just walked into the
30:52
Speaker 9: nursing home in the back door.
30:55
Speaker 1: With a potential suspect in sight, John waited for news
31:00
Speaker 1: from forces on the ground as the state trooper entered
31:03
Speaker 1: the nursing home.
31:04
Speaker 9: The trooper radioed and told me that the person that
31:07
Speaker 9: he was interviewing was Arthur Shawcross. And the first questions
31:12
Speaker 9: any uniformed trooper usually ask is, can I see your
31:15
Speaker 9: license and registration? And Art told him, well, I don't
31:19
Speaker 9: really have a driver's license.
31:21
Speaker 6: I'm on parole.
31:26
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for investigators to learn that the
31:30
Speaker 1: man they had in front of them, 44-year-old Arthur Shawcross,
31:34
Speaker 1: had killed two children in Watertown in the 1970s. This
31:40
Speaker 1: obvious red flag set alarm bells ringing for John and
31:44
Speaker 1: the team, who were hopeful this was the Genesee River
31:47
Speaker 1: Killer in their grasp at last. As New York State
31:51
Speaker 1: troopers conducted an initial interview with Shawcross, the forensics team
31:56
Speaker 1: got to work identifying the body under the bridge.
32:05
Speaker 9: It was when we were on the ground that we
32:07
Speaker 9: discovered that the body underneath the bridge was not that
32:11
Speaker 9: of Felicia Stevens, but of another missing prostitute by the
32:15
Speaker 9: name of June Cicero.
32:18
Speaker 1: 34-year-old June Cicero had been missing since the 17th of December.
32:24
Speaker 9: Now, the unique thing about June Cicero was she was
32:27
Speaker 9: kind of known as the queen bee of the prostitutes.
32:30
Speaker 6: She kind of controlled the whole area.
32:33
Speaker 9: Whatever corner she wanted to work on, the rest of
32:35
Speaker 9: the prostitutes would let.
32:37
Speaker 6: Her work there because she was mean and aggressive.
32:42
Speaker 1: June's body had been cut to the bone on both
32:45
Speaker 1: sides of her crotch. and the killer had tried to
32:48
Speaker 1: remove her sex organs.
32:51
Speaker 2: I think for Shawcross, she represented a bit of a challenge, actually.
32:54
Speaker 2: She is the kind of woman that he really despises,
32:57
Speaker 2: so I think this one was quite seminal, really.
33:01
Speaker 7: The fact that he'd gone back to the site, was
33:04
Speaker 7: that evidence of him taking pleasure in his trophies, thinking,
33:09
Speaker 7: what a clever boy I am? It's difficult not to
33:12
Speaker 7: think there might have been an element of that in it.
33:15
Speaker 1: Whilst talking to state troopers, Arthur Shawcross claimed he knew
33:20
Speaker 1: nothing about the body under the bridge.
33:23
Speaker 5: He said that he had to urinate, and he had
33:25
Speaker 5: a bottle, and he was starting to pee in the bottle,
33:28
Speaker 5: and the helicopter came, so he put the cap back on,
33:31
Speaker 5: swung around, and just drove down to where Claire O'Neill
33:35
Speaker 5: was working. He said, I don't know why they're following me,
33:38
Speaker 5: because all I was doing was taking a pee on
33:40
Speaker 5: the bridge.
33:41
Speaker 1: Shawcross remained cool, shrugging off the initial suspicions of detectives.
33:47
Speaker 5: I think he thought he could kind of bluff his
33:50
Speaker 5: way out, you know, just cooperate and not talk of
33:53
Speaker 5: anything of any real substance.
33:55
Speaker 9: The more he talked, the more viable of a suspect
33:58
Speaker 9: he became. We provided him with a lunch, actually took
34:02
Speaker 9: him to a restaurant and bought him dinner. And all
34:06
Speaker 9: this time he was talking to us. Unbeknownst to him,
34:10
Speaker 9: He was providing us a lot of significant information.
34:14
Speaker 1: That evening, investigators conducted a preliminary search of Shawcross's apartment.
34:21
Speaker 5: We found under the sink these handy wipe, dusting type
34:24
Speaker 5: of material that was found at the scene of June
34:27
Speaker 5: Stott and also at the Dorothy Keeler scene. And overnight,
34:31
Speaker 5: we contacted the company in Ohio, the manufacturer, and they
34:35
Speaker 5: told us that the only place in Rochester that has
34:38
Speaker 5: them was G & G Cheese, and that's the place
34:40
Speaker 5: he worked.
34:41
Speaker 1: Detectives knew if they were to corner their man, they
34:45
Speaker 1: needed to conclusively link Shawcross to his victims. Lind and
34:50
Speaker 1: the team went back over their old field interviews to
34:54
Speaker 1: see if anyone would be able to identify the killer.
34:58
Speaker 1: One woman, another sex worker called Joanne Van Nostrum, provided
35:03
Speaker 1: just that.
35:05
Speaker 5: So Joanne Van Nostrum said she saw this person in
35:09
Speaker 5: this car that went across the bridge with Elizabeth Gibson
35:13
Speaker 5: in the car.
35:16
Speaker 1: 29-year-old Elizabeth Gibson's body had been found amongst some trees
35:20
Speaker 1: in neighboring Wayne County five weeks earlier.
35:24
Speaker 5: Elizabeth Gibson was taken out to a vacant field with
35:27
Speaker 5: a small stream and strangled. When we finally knew who
35:31
Speaker 5: Arthur was and we got a hold of Van Nostrum again,
35:35
Speaker 5: She was able to identify his picture.
35:38
Speaker 1: Now they had a positive identification of Shawcross, the investigation
35:43
Speaker 1: was really starting to come together. But the search team,
35:47
Speaker 1: meticulously going through the car that Shawcross was found driving,
35:52
Speaker 1: had also made excellent progress.
35:54
Speaker 5: In the car, there was an earring. That earring belonged
35:58
Speaker 5: to June Cicero, and the other one was on her body.
36:02
Speaker 5: And forensically, I believe they found some fibers that matched
36:05
Speaker 5: from the towel or the blanket that was in the
36:08
Speaker 5: back of the trunk of the car. There was just
36:11
Speaker 5: a variety of good physical evidence that linked him to
36:15
Speaker 5: these crimes.
36:17
Speaker 1: The following morning, on the 4th of January, 1990, 44-year-old
36:22
Speaker 1: Shawcross was officially arrested.
36:26
Speaker 9: So we took him to Rochester Police Department headquarters, put
36:30
Speaker 9: him in an interview room, and We had two teams
36:32
Speaker 9: of investigators, state police and RPD, teamed up, and they
36:37
Speaker 9: started talking to Art.
36:39
Speaker 2: What for me was the most striking moment of the
36:42
Speaker 2: entire case was when he was arrested and the period
36:45
Speaker 2: after that.
36:46
Speaker 3: He was very calm. He was emotionless about it.
36:49
Speaker 9: The turning point was they asked him, is your girlfriend
36:52
Speaker 9: Claire O'Neill involved in killing the girls? And he emphatically says, no,
36:58
Speaker 9: Claire is not involved. Well, you have to tell us.
37:02
Speaker 9: or we're going to think that Claire is involved. He said, no,
37:05
Speaker 9: Claire has nothing to do with this.
37:07
Speaker 6: It was me.
37:14
Speaker 1: After an investigation lasting nearly two years, thousands of hours
37:18
Speaker 1: in manpower, and many sleepless nights, the Genesee River Killer
37:23
Speaker 1: had been caught at last. But with women still missing,
37:29
Speaker 1: detectives needed Shawcross to start cooperating.
37:33
Speaker 9: They had all the photographs of the victims, and they
37:36
Speaker 9: put the photographs on the table, and Art picked the
37:40
Speaker 9: photographs up, and.
37:42
Speaker 6: It was like a deck of cards.
37:44
Speaker 9: He says, I killed her, this is so-and-so, and admits
37:48
Speaker 9: to 10 homicides.
37:49
Speaker 5: But every one of these, it was always their fault.
37:52
Speaker 5: They did something that made them die. broke the gear
37:55
Speaker 5: shift of his car, tried to take his wallet, bit him.
37:59
Speaker 5: It was always somebody else's fault instead of his. Although
38:02
Speaker 5: he admitted him, I don't think he ever took full
38:05
Speaker 5: responsibility for why he did them.
38:08
Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross agreed to assist the police with their remaining inquiries.
38:14
Speaker 5: After his confession, he said he wanted to take the
38:17
Speaker 5: police to recovered the bodies of a couple that we
38:20
Speaker 5: haven't even found yet. And he took the police down
38:23
Speaker 5: to Island Cottage Road to recover the body of Maria Walsh.
38:32
Speaker 1: Investigators now had 11 victims they believed Shawcross had murdered.
38:38
Speaker 1: But despite his confessions, Arthur Shawcross wouldn't admit to killing
38:43
Speaker 1: Felicia Stephens.
38:45
Speaker 9: The only homicide that he would not admit to was
38:48
Speaker 9: that of Felicia Stevens. The unique thing about Felicia Stevens
38:52
Speaker 9: was that she was an Afro-American female. And we assumed
38:58
Speaker 9: that he did not want to admit that he had
39:00
Speaker 9: had sex with a Afro-American. She had been strangled in
39:05
Speaker 9: the same manner that the other girls had.
39:09
Speaker 1: Despite his denials, Shawcross was charged with Felicia's murder. His
39:18
Speaker 1: trial began on the 17th of September, 1990.
39:21
Speaker 5: Now, the world, according to Arthur, isn't actually probably all
39:26
Speaker 5: the truth. You've got to be very careful about what
39:28
Speaker 5: Art says because we're really believe he's a pathological liar,
39:32
Speaker 5: and he serves himself to make it look like it
39:35
Speaker 5: was other people's fault.
39:37
Speaker 9: His defense was insanity, and that was easily disproved because
39:42
Speaker 9: he took us to the bodies that he had disposed of.
39:45
Speaker 6: So you couldn't be insane and know where you left
39:47
Speaker 6: the bodies.
39:48
Speaker 7: And at this point, he introduces the fact that his
39:50
Speaker 7: mother abused him as a child.
39:53
Speaker 8: It's all fantasy.
39:55
Speaker 7: I very much doubt he suffered anything at the hands
39:58
Speaker 7: of his mother, just as he'd ever saw any action
40:01
Speaker 7: in the jungle in Vietnam.
40:02
Speaker 8: It's just an excuse.
40:06
Speaker 1: First Assistant District Attorney Charles J. Siragusa led the prosecution.
40:12
Speaker 9: He systematically laid out the case of how each body
40:17
Speaker 9: was discovered, how each body had been killed, and tied
40:22
Speaker 9: all the bodies together. The jury deliberated less than eight
40:26
Speaker 9: hours after two or three weeks of testimony and found
40:30
Speaker 9: him guilty of all 10 homicides.
40:37
Speaker 7: Shawcross is sentenced in the Monroe County cases to 25
40:42
Speaker 7: years in prison for each of the 10 victims, a
40:45
Speaker 7: total of 250 years in prison. He is later to
40:50
Speaker 7: be tried for the one victim in Wayne County.
40:55
Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross received an additional life sentence in Wayne County
41:00
Speaker 1: for the murder of Elizabeth Gibson on top of the
41:04
Speaker 1: 250 years he'd already been sentenced to in Monroe.
41:09
Speaker 9: This was all about the families of the girls. Just
41:12
Speaker 9: because a person becomes involved in drugs and a prostitute,
41:16
Speaker 9: they're still somebody's daughter, somebody's sister.
41:20
Speaker 6: So there was a great deal.
41:21
Speaker 9: Of satisfaction and relief that we had brought closure to
41:27
Speaker 9: these families.
41:28
Speaker 6: Unfortunate closure, but closures.
41:32
Speaker 1: Shawcross was sent to Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York.
41:38
Speaker 1: After complaining of leg pain, he died of a cardiac
41:41
Speaker 1: arrest behind bars in 2008 at the age of 63.
41:46
Speaker 5: I didn't know how emotionally tied up you could be
41:50
Speaker 5: in something like this. I remember coming home after he
41:54
Speaker 5: was arrested, walking upstairs and crying. Just because I was
42:00
Speaker 5: so tired and put so much effort, all of us
42:03
Speaker 5: put so much effort into this case, it was the
42:06
Speaker 5: only time in my that I had those feelings.
42:11
Speaker 2: What really angers me about this case is that there
42:14
Speaker 2: was a chance to stop him. He killed two children,
42:17
Speaker 2: and yet he was still released from prison. It really
42:20
Speaker 2: saddens me to think that there are women who would
42:23
Speaker 2: still be walking around today had Shawcross been dealt with
42:26
Speaker 2: properly the first time around.
42:29
Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross was a dangerous loner who targeted vulnerable women
42:35
Speaker 1: in order to satisfy his deadly urges. He brutally murdered
42:39
Speaker 1: and mutilated 11 women. 16 years before this depraved killing spree,
42:47
Speaker 1: Shawcross had also savagely taken the lives of two young children.
42:52
Speaker 1: Belligerent and unremorseful, Arthur Shawcross maintained his actions were entirely
42:58
Speaker 1: the fault of his victims, making him one of the
43:02
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers.