The House of Horrors: Gary Heidnik’s Basement
In the fall of 1986, a self-proclaimed bishop in North Philadelphia began kidnapping women off the street and chaining them in a pit he dug in his basement floor.
Over the next four months, Gary Heidnik held six Black women captive at 3520 North Marshall Street. He raped them, beat them, starved them, and tortured them with electricity and screwdrivers. Two of the women died. One was dismembered in the kitchen upstairs.
When police finally raided the house in March 1987, they found a scene so extreme it later helped inspire the character of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
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