Who was Gary Heidnik? 'Monster Preacher' mixed cooked corpse with dog food before feeding it to Black victims
In Oxygen’s new special ‘Monster Preacher’, survivors of psychopathic serial killer Gary Heidnik open up about the gruesome torture they faced while being held captive by the murderer. Heidnik, who partially inspired the character of Buffalo Bill in ‘The Silence of The Lambs’ movie, had kidnapped six Black women between 1986 and 1987, keeping them in his house while regularly raping, beating and abusing them in the most unimaginable and horrifying ways.
Between November 1986 and March 1987, Heidnik kidnapped 25-year-old Josefina Rivera, 24-year-old Sandra Lindsay, 19-year-old Lisa Thomas, 23-year-old Deborah Dudley, 18-year-old Jacqueline Askins and 24-year-old Agnes Adams. Unfortunately, Lindsay and Dudley passed away soon, succumbing to the torture. Thanks to Rivera’s acumen, the other women were rescued by the police. Heidnik was executed for his heinous crimes in 1999 by lethal injection.
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Who was Gary Heidnik?
Heidnik presented his image to the world as a wealthy, well-respected, religious man. He even started the United Church of Ministers of God and self-ordained himself as a Bishop.
Behind the facade, he was a psychopathic murderer who wanted to kidnap women and create a harem of sexual slaves at his home, whom he can impregnate and thereby father many children. In fact, he used to host church service at his home while he kept his hostages.
Josefine Rivera
Rivera was his first victim. In 1986, she was working as a sex worker in Philadelphia when Heidnik abducted her. He choked and handcuffed her, before chaining her to a sewer pipe in his basement, which he had dug particularly as a room to keep his victims.
Rivera used her sharp wit to gain the attention and trust of Heidnik, which she later used to convince him that she was his ally. There was a time when Heidnik brought Chinese food, cake and slippers for her birthday. Ever since then, Rivera has not been able to celebrate another birthday in her life.
One of the victims, Sandra Lindsay died of starvation after he punished her by handcuffing her to the ceiling for days, and beat her regularly. To get rid of the body, Heidnik cooked the body and showed her cooked head and ribs to another woman, Dudley, warning her that her condition would be the same if she did not oblige with him. Heidnik then blended the cooked remains in a food processor with dog food and fed it to his victims, without Rivera realizing it at first.
When neighbors complained about the horrible stench coming from his house, police arrived at the scene whom he assured that it was just the smell from a roast he had burned.
Two months later, Heidnik forced Rivera to electrocute Dudley with a live wire, while making her stand in the basement filled with water. His intention was to give her shock therapy but he killed her instead. Then, Heidnik made Rivera sign a letter that they had both electrocuted Dudley together, to keep her from turning on him.
Jacqueline Askins
By early 1987, he had kidnapped four other women, barring his last ever victim Agnes Adams. Askins was his youngest victim at just 18 years of age. She was also a sex worker at that time whom Heidnik lured out for dinner before kidnapping her. He handcuffed and took her to the basement to keep with the other women. At that time, Rivera assured her that she would get them out.
In the Oxygen special, Askins has recalled how everyone was chained up separately, just leaving enough space for him to come between two of them and have sex.
She also recalled how Heidnik fooled Sandra Lindsay’s family by forcing her to write a false letter, claiming that she was safe. Later, in a desperate attempt for freedom, Lindsay told him that she was aware of how long he was outside the home. As a solution, Heidnik jabbed all the victims’ ears with a screwdriver so that all of them become impaired of hearing.
Askins had long nurtured hatred towards Rivera, feeling that she was responsible for Dudley’s death. Much later, she realized how Rivera had actually feigned loyalty with the captor to help them all to safety.
Heidnik took Rivera outside along with him to bury Dudley’s body in the woods, during which he also kidnapped his last victim Adams. As Rivera "helped" him with the kidnapping, Heidnik believed her to be "on his side". A month later, Rivera convinced him to allow her a visit to her family, during which she managed to call the police. The police did not believe her until they saw the bruises and chain marks on her body.
Both Rivera and Askins are leading better lives now with their families and children though they still suffer from trauma and anxiety from their horrific, nerve-wracking experience. The other two victims, Thomas and Adams could not recover from the trauma of the "house of horrors" and have dealt with mental health issues and addiction ever since.