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Arthur Shawcross: How Many Victims Did The Serial Killer Have? · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In a maximum security prison cell, a man just sits
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: quietly painting these bright, colorful butterflies. He paints smiling children.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: He paints vibrant fields of flowers. And, I mean, these
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: paintings don't just sit in a drawer somewhere either. They're
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: actually being auctioned off on the Internet.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes selling for hundreds of dollars.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly. To these eager collectors. And on the surface, it
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: sounds like a bizarre, maybe vaguely uplifting story about rehabilitation.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Sure, it sounds like redemption.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But, well... The man holding the brush is Arthur Shawcross,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the Genesee River Killer, a man who brutalized, mutilated, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: murdered over a dozen people, which included children.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It is a juxtaposition that honestly almost breaks the brain.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It completely breaks the brain. Because, you know, usually when
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we talk about a medical or psychological diagnosis, there's this
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: expectation of precision.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So like engineering or something. You break your arm. The
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: x-ray shows this jagged white line. And the doctor just
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: points and says, you know, there it is. It's broken.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's clean. Right.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: And we crave that. I mean, we are wired to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: want things to be visible and categorized and easily understood.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: We want the origins of monstrous behavior to just like
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: show up on an X-ray.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: But then you step into the world of criminal psychology, right?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Of severe neurodevelopment and trauma. And suddenly that X-ray machine
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: is completely broken. It's useless. We are looking at a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: diagnostic landscape that is entirely murky. And that is exactly
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: why we are plunging into this case today. Because I
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: know you, our listener, you are driven by this intense
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: curiosity to understand how things work.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Especially their really dark stuff. Right.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: The darkest, most complex mechanisms of human behavior. But you
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: don't want just like a timeline of terror. You want
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the insight. You want to know the why.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So today, we are taking a massive stack of research,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: which is primarily anchored by this incredibly detailed article over
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: at Grunge by Diana Bolko. And our mission is to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: dissect the anatomy of a Killer Hayes narrative.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Because we have to look beyond the surface level true
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: crime beats here. This deep dive is fundamentally about systemic failure.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: It is about how our structures, like the justice system,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: the psychiatric community, how they handle the stories that predators
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: tell about themselves.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Which is so crucial. Because to understand the monster that
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: terrorized upstate New York across two entirely different decades, you
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: first have to look at the stories that were told
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: about his creation.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And who was telling them.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. OK, let's unpack this. We're starting in 1946 up
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: in upstate New York. Shawcross is born into what is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: universally described in all the records as a thoroughly middle class,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: completely unremarkable family.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Just a standard post-war upbringing.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Right. But if you listen to Shawcross later in life,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: he paints a wildly different picture. I mean, he claimed
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: his childhood was just a nightmare of extreme victimization.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: He really leaned into that.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: He said he was mercilessly bullied at school, and even
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: more horrific, he claimed he was sexually assaulted by his
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: aunt throughout his youth.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And this is exactly where the x-ray machine first shatters.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Well, when a killer claims severe childhood abuse, society has
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: this heavy tendency to immediately accept it, you know?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Right, because it makes sense to us.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly, because it fits our preconceived notion of how a
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: monster is forged. Hurt people hurt people, right? But in
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: this specific case, his own parents entirely denied his claims.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Which is wild.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: They didn't just feign ignorance either. They went on the
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: record to categorically state that Arthur was prone to extreme fabrication.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, they basically called their own son a chronic
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: liar to the authorities.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I want to pause on that because I really don't
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: think we can overstate how crazy that is, given the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: context of the era.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Think about the 1950s and 60s. The social stigma for
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: parents to publicly admit that their child is fundamentally bad
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: or a pathological liar, that was immense.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Right. Parents usually cover for their kid.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Always. To publicly contradict his claims of trauma implies this
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: exhausting years-long history of dealing with his manipulations behind closed doors.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that it adds a massive layer
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: of credibility to the parent's account.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Right. They gain nothing from this.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They had nothing to gain and essentially all their
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: societal reputation to lose by calling him a liar. And
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: the official records completely back them up.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, about the bullying, right?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. There was bullying happening during his childhood, but the
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: records show Arthur was the bully. He was the one
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: beating up other kids, regularly picking fights during recess, just
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: physically dominating his peers.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: So I have to ask you about the mechanics of this,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: because I genuinely, I just don't get it. Why invent
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a trauma? Does he actually, on some bizarre delusional level,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: believe he is a victim?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Unlikely.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Or is he acting as like an unreliable narrator in
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: his own twisted psychological thriller, knowing exactly what he's doing.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: It is almost certainly the latter, and it introduces a
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: crucial psychological concept, which is the sympathy narrative.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: The sympathy narrative.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Right. Why do predators reframe themselves as victims? Because victimhood
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: is a form of social armor. It demands empathy from
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the listener.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: If a killer can convince a jury or a psychiatrist
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: or just the public that their violent actions are actually
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: just a tragically flawed response to their own unhealed trauma.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It waters down what they did.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It dilutes their personal culpability. It shifts that spotlight
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: of blame away from their own malice and shines it
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: on this phantom abuser.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: But wait, wait. Let me jump in here. If he
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: is fundamentally psychopathic-like, if he completely lacks empathy for the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: people he's actively hurting, how does he possess the emotional
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: intelligence to manipulate our empathy?
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: That is the million-dollar question. Right.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: How does he know which buttons to press if he
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't actually have those buttons himself?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Because there is a profound difference between affective empathy and
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: cognitive empathy.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, break that down for me.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So affective empathy is what you and I feel. Like
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: when we see someone crying, our heart aches. We physically
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: feel a shatter of their pain.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's instinctual.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Psychopaths lack that entirely. But cognitive empathy is simply
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the intellectual understanding of how human emotions function. Oh, wow.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So it's data.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's like a mechanic understanding how a car engine
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: works without having any emotional attachment to the car itself. Yeah.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Shawcross doesn't feel your compassion, but he knows mechanically exactly
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: how to trigger it.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: That is... That is chilling.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: He recognized very early on that society protects victims, so
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: he tried to literally wear the skin of a victim.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: He's building a shield out of our best human instincts.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: That is terrifying. And meanwhile... The reality of his actual
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: development is so much more mundane, which honestly almost makes
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it more dangerous to me.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: It's very common, though. Right.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: He had a low IQ. He chronically underperformed in the classroom. Eventually,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: he just fails the ninth grade and drops out entirely.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So now the structure of the education system is gone.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: He's already a proven physical bully, and he has nothing
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: but time on his hands.
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  Speaker 2: And when the guardrails of the school system drop away,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the community simply becomes the new playground for that preexisting aggression.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Which perfectly explains his next phase, right? He transitions from
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: schoolyard bully to escalating criminal. Throughout the 1960s, he's committing burglaries.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: He's smashing store windows. He's dabbling in small-scale arson. He
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: gets put on probation several times for this stuff. Now,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to the average person listening, smashing windows just seems like
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a nuisance, like a huge leap away from what he
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: eventually becomes.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: It seems like a lead if you only look at
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the physical act, you know. But if you look at
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: the psychological mechanism behind it, it's a completely straight line.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: A straight line to murder.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. This is a classic escalation pattern in criminology. Smashing
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: a window isn't just about broken glass. It is the
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: physical destruction of a boundary.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I never thought about it like that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: An unlawful entry into someone's home, like his burglaries, that
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: is an intimate invasion of a safe space. But the
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: arson is perhaps the most telling of all.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Why the arson?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Because arson isn't about property damage for a psychopath. It
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: is about exerting a godlike control over an environment. You
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: start a fire and you basically dictate creation and destruction.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You're watching people scramble. Right.
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  Speaker 2: You're the cause of their panic. He is testing the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: limits of his own power and seeing just how much
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: society will tolerate.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And then society unknowingly hands him an entirely different, massively
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: chaotic landscape to test those limits. Because he ends up
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: doing a short tour in Vietnam.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, he gets drafted.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Now, the military service itself is brief, but the narrative
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: he spins out of it is huge. Later in life,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Shawcross would claim that he committed his first actual murders
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: while deployed in Vietnam.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: He was very vocal about this later on.
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  Speaker 1: Very vocal. He claimed he killed women over there and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: even went so far as to claim he cannibalized them.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: But I want to be clear here. The source material
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: is very clear to point out that none of this
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: has ever been confirmed. There is zero official record of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: these acts in his military file. Right.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It is highly likely it was entirely fabricated.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So assuming these are fabrications, what is the point of
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: this specific lie? Was the keros of the Vietnam War
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: just a convenient, uncheckable backdrop for him?
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: In a word, yes.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Like, is he floating a trial balloon to see how
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: people react to him bragging about being a monster, but
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: giving himself the built-in excuse of, well... You know, war
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: is hell.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: The trial balloon concept is exactly what's happening here. But
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: the environment he chose for the lie is deeply, deeply significant.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Because it's unverifiable.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Partly. The fog of war in Vietnam in the late
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: 60s and early 70s was an environment of immense chaos and, frankly,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: state-sanctioned violence. For a budding predator claiming horrific acts in
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a jungle halfway across the world, makes those acts practically untraceable. Right.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Nobody's going to be able to go check the records
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: on some random village.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So he gets to try on this identity of
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: a terrifying, cannibalistic predator. He gets to see the horror
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: in people's eyes when he tells the story, which feeds
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: his ego. Right. But he gets to do it without
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: handing American law enforcement any actionable evidence.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So he gets the thrill of the confession. Without the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: risk of the conviction.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And strategically, it lays the foundation for a narrative
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: he will use with devastating effect later on.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: The PTS.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Right. The idea that the horrors of war fundamentally broke
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: him and turned him into something he wasn't.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Man, he's just myth building. He is. But that myth
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: becomes an inescapable, terrifying reality when he comes back to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: American soil. Because Vietnam proved to him that chaos could
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: be a cover.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: But when he returns to the structured civilian world of
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: upstate New York, He has to find a new way
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: to exercise that dominance. And this brings us to 1972.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And I just want to warn you, listening right now,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: this is where the reality of Shawcross's actions loses any
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of that abstract psychological padding we've been talking about.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: It gets incredibly grim here.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It is brutally dark.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: In 1972, he claims his first confirmed victim, a 10-year-old boy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Shawcross strangled the child, mutilated his body, and abandoned him
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: out in the woods.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: The acceleration there, going from property crime and unconfirmed war
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: boasts to the extreme mutilation of a child, it is staggering.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: It's zero to 60.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: It suggests that whatever fantasies he was nurturing, whatever trial
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: balloons he was floating about Vietnam, they had fully calcified
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: into a biological imperative. He couldn't hold it back anymore.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't take years for him to strike again either.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: It takes less than four months. He targets an eight-year-old girl.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: He rapes her, kills her, and then. The specific detail
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: from the source... He stuffed leaves and mud down her
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: throat before throwing her body in the Genesee River. Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I know as an expert you look at these details clinically,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: but just as a human being, my visceral reaction is
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: utter revulsion. It's so horribly specific. Why the mud in
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the throat?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: It is entirely valid to feel that revulsion because the
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: act is explicitly designed to be repulsive.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It's meant to shock. Right.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the mechanics of that specific desecration.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Stuffing leaves and mud into the throat of a child
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: is not a mechanism of death. She was already being killed.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: It's a symbolic.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: It is an act of total unadulterated degradation. Think about it.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: The throat is a source of the voice, right? It's
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: where breath comes from. By packing it with dirt, he
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: is symbolically and literally erasing her humanity. He is treating
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: a human being as refuse, returning them to the dirt
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: in just the most violating way possible. It is about
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: total domination and the absolute silencing of innocence.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: The ultimate silencing. It's sickening. But here is the one
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: tiny sliver of hope in this horrific timeline. He didn't
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: get away with it cleanly.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: He was sloppy.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Very. Witnesses actually saw him with the little girl. They
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: reported it. The police moved in and Shawcross was arrested
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: almost immediately.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Which is how the system is supposed to work.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So let's look at the board here. The police
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: have a suspect with a known history of violence. They
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: have eyewitnesses connecting him to a murdered 8-year-old. And they
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: have a missing 10-year-old boy from just months prior in
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the exact same area. The system worked.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: On paper, yes.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Any rational person looking at this assumes he is going
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: away in a concrete box for the rest of his
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: natural life.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to one of the most catastrophic legal
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: compromises in the history of the modern justice system.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Here's where it gets really interesting and infuriating. Because
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that ironclad life sentence didn't happen. Despite all the evidence,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: despite a double child murder, Shawcross managed to arrange a
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: plea deal.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: It's hard to even stomach.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Let me walk you through the mechanics of this trade
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: because it is just mind-blowing. He agreed to a 25-year sentence.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: But not for murder. For manslaughter. For the 8-year-old girl. Manslaughter.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Let that sink in.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And in exchange for pleading guilty to manslaughter, he would
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: face absolutely zero charges for the 10-year-old boy. His only concession.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: He literally took the police out into the woods and
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: pointed to where he had hidden the boy's body.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I am genuinely struggling to understand the legal mechanics of this.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I know you, the listener, are probably screaming at whatever
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: device you're listening on right now. How does a district attorney,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: a judge, a system fundamentally designed to protect society, justify
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: trading a life sentence for a map to a hidden body?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It's a dark calculus.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: How is the rape and murder of a child plead
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: down to manslaughter? It feels like negotiating with a hostage taker,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: but the hostage is already dead.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It is an incredibly dark reality of the legal system,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: particularly when you contextualize it in the early 1970s. We
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: have to look at the immense burden of proof and
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: that terrifying utilitarian calculus that prosecutors have to make every
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: single day.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: OK, take me back to 1972. What are they facing?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: In 1972, we are decades away from the DNA forensic
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: that we rely on so heavily today. Cases were built
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: on circumstantial evidence, witness testimony and confessions.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: So they were scared they couldn't actually win in a trial.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Put yourself in the prosecutor's chair for a second.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: You have circumstantial witnesses who saw him with the girl,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: but a really good defense attorney might poke holes in
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: that timeline.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: They could say, well, he was just walking near her.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Right. And you have a missing boy, but absolutely no
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: physical evidence tying Shawcross to the boy's disappearance other than
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: proximity and a gut suspicion.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So no smoking gun.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: None. And the prosecutor is looking at a grieving family
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: whose 10-year-old son has just vanished. The family is in
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: an agonizing, unending limbo. They just want their boy back.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Shawcross holds the only key to ending that specific pain.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: He weaponizes the body.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yes. So the prosecutor makes this horrific math equation. Do
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: we risk a trial where a jury might acquit him
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: based on reasonable doubt, leaving the family without a body
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: and letting a monster walk completely free?
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Or do we make a deal with the devil? We
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: guarantee a conviction on one charge. We bring the boy's
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: body home to his mother, and we bank on the
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: assumption that a 25-year sentence will keep him locked up
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: long enough to protect the community.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So the manslaughter charge for the girl, that it's just
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: legal fiction.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Pure legal fiction. It was the highest charge they could
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: get him to agree to without forcing a trial. They
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: traded future abstract safety for present tangible certainty. They basically
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: bought closure for one family at the ultimate expense of society.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And that extents comes due so much faster than anyone
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: could have ever predicted. Because, okay, a 25-year sentence sounds substantial.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: You figure, well, he'll be an old man when he
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: gets out.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: But the source highlights a very bizarre numerical quirk in
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the penal records. He was sentenced to 25 years, but
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the records state he served in, I quote, 14 of
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: those 22 years.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the math is fuzzy there.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Regardless of how the internal math was officially adjusted by
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the parole board from 25 to 22, the terrifying bottom
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: line is that he only served 14 years. A man
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: who mutilated two children Walked out of prison a free
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: man in 1987.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And the mechanism behind that early release is arguably a
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: more profound systemic failure than the plea deal itself.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Because he didn't break out. He actively convinced them to
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: open the front door.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, he did.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: He claimed he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: stemming from his time fighting in Vietnam. Trained psychiatric professionals
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: evaluated him. They listened to his stories, wrote down that
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: he was no longer dangerous. and authorized his release.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: It's staggering.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I have to push back hard on this. How? How
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: do highly educated, rigorously trained evaluators in the penal system
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: get conned by Arthur Shawcross?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: It seems impossible.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: His own parents said he was a pathological liar when
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: he was a child. He lied about his aunt. He
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: lied about school. He fabricated the cannibalism in Vietnam to
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: build his myth, using his self-reported trauma to gauge his
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: danger to society. I mean, it's like running a malware
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: scan on a computer. But the virus itself has rewritten
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the antivirus software to recognize it as a critical system file.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: That malware analogy is actually the perfect way to understand
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: what happened.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I just can't wrap my head around professionals falling for it.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, to understand
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: how the psychiatrists were duped, You really have to look
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: at the diagnostic climate of the 1980s.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene for me.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: PTSD was only formally added to the Diagnostic and Statistical
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-3rd, in 1980.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So it's brand new as an official diagnosis.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. For the psychiatric community and for American society at large,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: acknowledging PTSD was this massive, long-overdue reckoning with the psychological
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: toll the Vietnam War had taken on veterans. We were
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: culturally desperate to be empathetic to these returning soldiers.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: We had this open cultural wound and we just desperately
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: wanted to heal it.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And a sociopath like Shawcross, as we established, is
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: fundamentally a predator of empathy. He operates like a chameleon.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: He gives them what they want.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. When he sits down for a parole evaluation, he
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't present his pathology. He recackages it. He knows that
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: if he just sounds crazy and violent, they keep him
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: walked up. But he realized that Vietnam PTSD was the
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: new magic buzzword.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: The golden ticket.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: It was a recognizable symptom that psychiatrists were eager to
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: treat and parole boards were eager to excuse. He mimicked
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: the symptoms of a traumatized veteran. The fundamental flaw in
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: the psychiatric evaluations of that era, and frankly, sometimes even today,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: is treating the clinical interview as gospel, totally divorced from
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the hard data of a subject's behavioral history.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: So they listened to his words, not his actions.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: They evaluated the performance he gave in the room rather
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: than the monster he had proven to be out in
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: He weaponized the system's own compassion against it. He didn't
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: hide from the light. He stood right in the middle
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of it and held up a mirror reflecting exactly what
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: they wanted to see.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And the consequences of that blind spot were catastrophic for
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the city of Rochester. Because almost immediately after he is released,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: we enter the era where he truly earns the name
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the Genesee River Killer.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: The darkest chapter.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Between March of 1988 and December of 1989, which is
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: just a two-year window, he murders at least 11 women.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: He is heavily suspected of a 12th, though not convicted. Wait.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: But when you look at the research, there is a
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: massive deviation here. In 1972, he hunted children. Now, in
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the late 80s, the 11 victims he is convicted of
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: killing were entirely different.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: A completely different demographic.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: They were predominantly sex workers, and many were unhoused women.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And the source notes, he frequented sex workers himself, which
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: made it very easy for him to select targets. So
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: what does this all mean? Help me understand this shift.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Did his underlying psychological urges... literally mutate during those 14
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: years in prison? Did he go from desiring the dominance
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of children to desiring the dominance of adult women? Or
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: is this just him realizing, you know, he couldn't pull
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: off hunting kids again?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It is not a mutation of his urges. It is
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: an adaptation of his tactics. This is entirely about predatory calculus.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the mechanics of his 1972 crimes. Children
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: are targets of opportunity. But the moment a child goes missing,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: what happens?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: The world stops. Witnesses come forward. The police swarm. The
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: media goes wall to wall.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Society reacts to murdered children with overwhelming immediate force.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: The heat is instantaneous, which is why he was caught
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: so quickly in 72.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Shawcross had 14 years in a prison cell to ruminate
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: on why he failed. He didn't feel remorse for the kids.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: He felt regret that he got caught. So he refined
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: his geographical and sociological profiling.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: He upgraded his methods.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: His core urges, the need for absolute domination, the mutilation,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: the control, those remained exactly the same. But he recognized
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: a dark truth about systemic bias.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: He targeted the women that society doesn't look for.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. He exploited the marginalization of sex workers and unhoused women.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: He knew that law enforcement, the media, and society at
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: large are tragically slower to mobilize for a missing sex
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: worker than they are for a missing child.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: It's like a predator in the wild adapting to hunt
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerable, isolated part of the herd.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. These women lived on the fringes, navigating high-risk environments daily.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Shawcross used our societal indifference as his camouflage. He knew
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: he had a massive head start before anyone even noticed
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: they were And.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: What he did to them in that blind spot is
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: just absolute depravity.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: It's horrific.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: The M.O. is chilling. He strangled them. He mutilated them.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And he was so completely detached from the horror of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: it that during an interview after he was sentenced, he
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: casually confessed to a reporter that he would partly cannibalize
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: most of these women biting or eating parts of their genitals.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Before dumping their bodies in the Genesee River.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Just unbelievable brutality.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: It's a level of violence that completely defies comprehension.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: But in this incredibly calculated string of murders, there is
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: one glaring exception, one break in the pattern.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: June Stott.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: June Stott. Out of all the victims during this tree,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: she was the only one who was not a sex worker.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: She was a local resident. And according to the source,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: she was the first victim that Shaw crossed sexually mutilated
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: after he'd already strangled her. He cut her chest and
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: stomach open.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: This is a massive physical and psychological deviation from how
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: he handled the other women. So what is that deviation signal?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: If he's this hypercalculated predator who figured out the perfect
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: low-risk victimology, why target a local resident whose disappearance would
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: immediately trigger alarms?
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Was this his ego inflating like an intentional escalation because
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: he felt invincible? Or did he just lose control because
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: she didn't fit his script?
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: That is the central debate when a highly organized predator
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: suddenly fractures his own MO. Both theories carry weight, but
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: they point to the same underlying reality of serial murder,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: which is that it is inherently unstable.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: You can't maintain it forever.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. On one hand, you have the escalation theory. Serial
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: killers require more and more stimulation to achieve the same
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: psychological high over time.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Like a drug tolerance.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Precisely. Hunting marginalized women may have become too routine for him,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: too easy. Targeting a local resident someone society would immediately
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: search for might have been his way of raising the stakes,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: testing his own perceived invincibility against the police.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: He wanted to prove he could beat them on hard mode.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the second theory, the loss of control, is
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: equally compelling. Predators rehearse their crimes meticulously in their fantasies.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: When he interacted with sex workers, there was a transactional
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: script he could manipulate to get them into an isolated,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: vulnerable position.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: He knew how that exchange worked. Right.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: But June Stott didn't fit that script. The interaction likely
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: didn't go the way he had rehearsed it in his head.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: The extreme post-mortem mutilation cutting opened her chest and stomach
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: speaks to a profound explosion of rage.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Because he lost control of the scenario.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yes. It suggests she defied his control, and the mutilation
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: was his way of resurting absolute physical dominance over her
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: body because he failed to dominate the situation beforehand. It
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: completely shatters the illusion he held of being a master-controlled hunter.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: The mask slips, and underneath is just this chaotic, pathetic rage.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: And it's that exact inability to fully control himself that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: ultimately leads to his capture. And I have to say,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the way this reign of terror ends is one of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the most macabre, unbelievable scenes in true crime history.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: It really is something out of a movie.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It's late 1989. The police locate the body of what
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: would be his last victim. She is floating in a
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: half frozen river. Standard protocol, obviously, is to secure the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: scene recover the victim, and preserve the evidence.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Get the body out of the water. Right.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: But the investigators make a highly unusual, incredibly risky tactical
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: decision here.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: They leave her there.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: They literally use a murder victim in a freezing river
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: as bait. It is the grimest stakeout imaginable. They set
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: up surveillance, waiting in the freezing cold, betting everything on
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the killer returning.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Which is such a massive gamble.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is a massive ethical and procedural gamble.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: If a reporter finds out, if an animal gets to
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the scene, But the truly shocking part is that the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: gamble actually works.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Unbelievably so.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: They spot a car parked on a bridge directly overlooking
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the victim's body. They approach the vehicle and they find
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Arthur Shawcross. And he isn't just looking at the scene.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: When the police apprehend him, he is actively masturbating in
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: his car while staring down at the corpse in the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: frozen river.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: It's staggering.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: We have all heard the cliche, right? It's in every
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: detective novel, every police procedural ever made. The killer always
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: returns to the scene of the crime.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: But seeing it play out with this specific twisted act,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: what does that tell us about him? Does this completely
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: destroy the myth of the calculated mastermind? Does it prove
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: that despite his ability to profile marginalized victims and con
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: psychiatric boards, he was ultimately just an animal driven by
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: biological compulsion?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, and it absolutely demolishes the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: mastermind myth. It provides a profound look into the mechanics
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: of compulsion.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Explain that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: The police intuition here was incredibly astute. They understood that
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: for a highly psychopathic serial killer, the act of murder
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: is not a means to an end. The act itself
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: is a psychological fuel.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: The kill doesn't satisfy the urge. It just feeds the addiction.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Serial murder operates on an addiction cycle. During the
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: actual murder, the killer experiences a peak of absolute control, power,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and adrenaline. But once the victim is dead... that high
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: begins to fade rapidly.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So they have to chase it. Yes.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Returning to the scene, physically viewing the body he placed there,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: allows him to mentally reenter that fantasy. It triggers the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: neurological recall of the dominance he felt. The fact that
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: he was caught masturbating confirms this was entirely about self-gratification
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: and reliving the power dynamic.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: But to do it on a bridge, knowing the police
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: have to be looking for the body.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: That is the defining nature of compulsion. His need to
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: re-experience that power completely overrode his basic evolutionary instinct for self-preservation.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: A mastermind calculates risk and avoids it. An addict ignores
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: the risk to get the fix. He knew the body
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: might be found. He knew a car parked on a
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: bridge was suspicious. But the psychological pull of his own
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: violence was vastly stronger than his fear of a prison cell.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: He was caught because he was a slave to his
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: own pathology.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And that pathology finally lands him exactly where he belongs.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: He is arrested. And this time, there was no DA
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: desperate enough to offer a plea deal. No. There are
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: no bodies to trade for manslaughter charges. He's convicted and
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: sentenced to 250 years in prison. He is locked away,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and he ultimately dies of cardiac arrest behind bars in 2008.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: A very quiet end for someone who caused so much
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: noise and pain.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Right. And the story should just end there, right? A
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: monster locked in a box until he dies. But the
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: bizarre postscript of his life in prison... is almost as
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: infuriating as the systemic failures that enabled him in the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: first place.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It's completely surreal.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Because during his decades in prison, this man, who strangled women,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: who cut them open, who shoved mud down an eight-year-old
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: child's throat to silence her, takes up a hobby. He
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: starts painting. And what is the subject matter he chooses
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to dedicate his time to? He paints bright, colorful images
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: of butterflies. He paints smiling children. He paints fields of flowers.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: When I read that in the source material, It felt
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: like looking at a split screen of two entirely incompatible realities.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: It's cognitive dissonance in its purest form.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: What is happening in his brain when he paints a
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: smiling child? Is he genuinely delusional? Does he somehow compartmentalize
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: his brain so completely that the guy painting... the butterfly
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: truly forgets the guy who mutilated the 10-year-old boy? Or
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: is this just the ultimate narcissistic troll job?
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Well, severe compartmentalization is a real psychological phenomenon. Applying it
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: to Shawcross ignores his entire behavioral history.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: You have to look at the track record.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to look at his lifelong pattern. From childhood,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: he was a fabricator. He lied about his aunt to
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: seem sympathetic. He lied about Vietnam to seem formidable. He
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: mimicked PTSD to seem curable. The paintings are just his
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: final manipulation.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: So you think it's mockery?
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: It is absolute calculated mockery disguised as rehabilitation. He is
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: still trying to control the narrative from inside a concrete box.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: That is infuriating.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: By painting butterflies and innocent children, he is implicitly saying
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: to the world, look at the gentleness inside me. Look
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: at what I produce. How could I possibly be the
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: monster you say I am? It is a performance designed
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: to generate dissonance.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: He wants us to be confused.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: He knows it will upset people, and that ability to
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: reach beyond the prison walls and emotionally affect the public,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: that is the very last vestige of power he has left.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: But here is the thing that truly disturbs me about
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: this whole final chapter. The performance only works if there
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: is an audience.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: And he had one.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: He had one. Because according to the research, this art
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: didn't just pile up at the corner of his cell.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Some of these paintings were actually auctioned off on eBay.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Now, thankfully, it sparked massive criticism and outrage when it happened.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: But the fundamental fact remains. They sold. People used their
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: own money to buy paintings made by the Genesee River Killer.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they really did.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Which opens up this entirely different, deeply unsettling conversation about
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the ethics of what is known as murderabilia. Explain the
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: mechanics of this market to me.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: It's a very dark subculture.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Because I understand buying a piece of history, even dark history,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: but buying a serial killer's painting of a butterfly, that
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: isn't historical, it's personal. Why is there a market for this?
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: The psychology of the murderbilia collector is complex, but it
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: usually centers on the concept of proximity to darkness. Think
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: about why humans tell ghost stories around a campfire.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Right, to get scared in a safe place.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We have an innate desire to encounter things that
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: terrify us, but only if we can control the environment.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Buying a painting by Arthur Shawcross isn't about appreciating the brushstrokes.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: It is about capturing a piece of profound, incomprehensible evil
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: and domesticating it.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Domestication. Like putting a wild animal in a cage.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a collector hangs that painting on their wall,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: they are reducing a terrifying predator into an object they own.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: They get to feel the thrill of being adjacent to
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: extreme danger without ever actually being in harm's way.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: It is safely contained on a canvas.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Yes. However, the ethical failure here is that by participating
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: in this market, they are actively validating the killer's ego.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: They're feeding the monster.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: They are funding his notoriety. They are essentially telling him, yes,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: you are a dark god and we want a relic
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: of your power. It completely subverts the justice system's goal
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: of removing his influence from society.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Which is, honestly, it is a lot to process. Because
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I have to turn to you, the person listening to
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: this right now. We have to look in the mirror
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: for a second here.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: It's a tough mirror to look into.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: It really is. Because our own fascination with true crime,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the exact reason you clicked play on this deep dive today,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: technically sits on that very same psychological spectrum.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: That proximity to darkness. Right.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Now, obviously, wanting to intellectually understand the psychology of a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: systemic failure is worlds apart from spending your hard-earned money
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: to buy a serial killer's painting to hang in your
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: living room.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Vastly different, yes.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: But the root is similar. It's our human need to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: look at the incomprehensible, to understand the dark so it
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: can't hurt us. We just have to be incredibly vigilant
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: that we're looking at it to learn, to expose the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: flaws in our systems, to protect ourselves.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: We cannot just consume it to be entertained by the
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: monster's performance because the moment we do, we become part
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of his audience.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: That is the vital distinction. The line between education and
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: exploitation in this space is incredibly thin. Studying the failures
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: of the plea deal or the psychiatric missteps arms society
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: against the next predator. Buying the artwork merely strokes the
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: ego of the current one.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: So let's step back and look at the incredible, horrifying
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: arc we've just mapped out today.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: It's been a long road.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: We started with a kid in 1946 who realized early
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: on that fabricating trauma was a tool he could use
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to manipulate the adults around him. We watched him escalate
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: from breaking windows to breaking human lives.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Straight line.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: We walked through the tragic utilitarian loophole of a 1972
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: plea deal that traded a community's long-term safety for immediate,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: agonizing closure for one family.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: And the devastating cost of that.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And then we witnessed the ultimate manipulation of an evolving
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: psychiatric system where a killer used a society's desperate empathy
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: for Vietnam veterans as a get-out-of-jail-free card. And finally, we
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: saw his downfall, driven not by some mastermind criminal intellect...
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: but by his own pathetic twisted compulsion on a freezing bridge.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering sequence of events.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: It is a dark timeline, but an absolutely necessary one
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: to dissect because it leaves us with a lingering systemic
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: question that extends far beyond the life of Arthur Shawcross.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: What is that final thought for us to chew on?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: If we look at the totality of his crimes, Shawcross's
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: greatest weapon wasn't his physical strength or his ability to
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: stalk a victim. His greatest weapon was his cunning ability
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: to exploit the very systems that our society designed for empathy.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: He used a plea bargain meant to give a grieving
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: family closure to escape justice. He hijacked a PTSD diagnosis
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: meant to heal truly traumatized veterans to secure his freedom.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: He recognized that our systems want to believe the best
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: in people. They want to believe in rehabilitation and trauma recovery.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: We want to be the good guys.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the question we have to grapple with is this.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: How do we build a justice and psychiatric system that
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: remains truly compassionate to the genuine victims without leaving the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: back door wide open for the monsters who know exactly
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: how to mimic them? Does our societal desire to be
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: understanding and forgiving inherently make us prey?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: That is the thought we leave you with today. Thank
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: you for going on this intense, heavy intellectual journey with us.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Staying well informed isn't just about reading the daily headlines.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: It means having the courage to look at the darkest
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: parts of the human condition and the blind spots in
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: our own systems with clear, critical eyes. That is how
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: we ensure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep digging.