Interview With A Serial Killer (Documentary) | Real Stories

You, the Sullivan Correctional Facility outside of Fallsburg, New York State, is a maximum security prison that houses some of the most violent criminals in the United States. One of them is Arthur J. Shawcross. Shawcross murdered 11 women and is serving a 250-year prison sentence. His case has raised serious questions. about the causes of extreme violence and what we understand about the nature of evil itself, we have come to meet him face to face to see if he would tell us what made him such a violent

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. People outside don't know what evil is. Do you know what evil is?

Are you someone evil? Rochester New York State 30 miles from the Canadian border. It is a provincial city of one million inhabitants located between the gorges and falls of the Genesee River. It is a middle class city but it also has a dark side. Lyall Avenue is a mile long and runs through one of the city's decaying neighborhoods, home to its seedy red light district. In March 1988, women began disappearing from the streets. Dorothea Blackburn was a 27-year-old prostitute and mother of three. Her body was found in a nearby river. bed had been strangled in July and Stefan de Marie a 27 year old cocaine addict also disappeared her decomposed body was found on the banks of the Genesee River anne-marie Steffen I remember meeting her I met Anne Marie Stephan I think in front of the hood of the finger our league a woman do you remember killing her?

Yeah, I'm probably not going to go into details, you know, but how did you kill her? Probably strangulation, how do you know when they're dead? Oh, I'll just do more or less. after they just relaxed, the body relaxed, it doesn't play, come on, no one takes both four minutes, probably sometimes less than that, to go out into the outside world. Shawcross was just a normal guy, he lived here in this apartment on Alexander Street with his fourth wife, Rose, he worked nights. at the local cheese factory and spent much of his free time fishing on the banks of the Genesee River, but he lived a double life, he had a mistress, Clara, and was a regular visitor to Lisle Avenue, he got a wife, you had a lover and also seeing prostitutes quite regularly and other people.

I guess you could say I was having fun for almost a year. Shawcross didn't kill anyone and then, in July 1989, police found the body of a homeless elderly woman. Dorothy Keeler. Dorothy was found in a Seth Green on the Genesee River and she was bones, so we didn't

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ly know at the time why she killed her. She used to live at my house in my apartment for a while. She was a friend until she started stealing things from the house. Asked. she why she is stealing she needed money and I told her you have a bank account.

She was paying him four dollars and 25 cents an hour just to clean her apartment, so she was stealing from here. They took it away from me and my wife Rose does that. she, uh, does that justify killing her? Tamiya did it, but Shawcross not only killed Dorothy Kala, he would later return to Haddad's corpse and came back and visited her, came back and visited her and took her skull, her head and threw it into the Genesee River. After you killed her, you came back later to see her body. Now I'm cleaning again. They found her without her head.

Did you make this ring? How did that happen? He was able to pick it up and move it. What you just took out. The severed head, yes, it was already there. Shawcross had already murdered three women, but his flare of terror had only just begun. In Rochester, New York State, the bodies of murdered women began appearing around the banks of the Genesee River and throughout the fall of 1989. The murders continued on October 27. Patricia Ives was found strangled behind the town's YMCA and just four weeks later the murders were to take an even more sinister turn, you know, the one I remember most distantly that has stayed with me all these years. a young woman of name doing actions and June was not, she was not a prostitute, but she was a little slow, she had acted much younger than her age.

I think the most disturbing thing is that when they turned her body over, she was face down and they turned her over, he had to go back and Visser rated her, he cut her from her neck to her vagina, how was that? ? anger, you know, we spent a day at Turning Point Park, you know, feeding the ducks and walking and kissing, then she's turned around, don't jump, she says I'm going to scream, scream, go tell the police that I broke her, I broke his neck, I stayed there all day until it got dark and I cut his neck open from the groin.

Don't go deep into the stomach area, just open it up. I don't know, that was

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ly disturbing because if at the time we didn't know what we were looking for, now you have a guy who certainly is us. I think he was the same guy, but his activities are increasing because what he does at the scene becomes more severe each time the June murder begins. It was a turning point for the police. A pattern was now emerging: all the women killed came from vulnerable backgrounds. most of them have been slowly strangled, the bodies were being dumped around the Genesee River and the

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seemed to be revisiting and mutilating them.

Rochester police now suspected they had a

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killer on their hands and called the FBI to get the situation on the ground. When I first arrived there was a lot of stress, massive police involvement in this, they had no doubt they had a

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killer working there, so it's like walking into a pressure cooker, you know how intense the police were. chasing We investigated hundreds of leads and yet somehow the killer still seemed able to blend into the background. One of the big questions was why, how do you get these women? The prostitutes are scared to death and are being killed, but he seems to have no problem getting them. the answer is that he is a regular customer, they know him, they go with him, they have successful sex, he drives and leaves them behind and there is no problem, so they are not afraid to go with him, it just goes terribly wrong some nights, we are trying.

Think how can these prostitutes make these mistakes knowing that there is a perpetrator on the street who is kidnapping them under police surveillance. I think the prostitutes and maybe to some extent some of the investigators are looking for a really strange guy or someone. I really wasn't in sync with what was going on when in reality it was quite the opposite. What you want is to look for someone who was really very in tune with that scene and very comfortable in that environment, but despite a massive police crackdown, the killing continued. Undercover police. The officers now arrived on Lisle Avenue posing as pimps and gamblers, but Shawcross was unfazed by his presence.

He continued hanging out on the street. I'm sitting on a porch and putting on shiny shoes like a top shoe. How cute he is in this dress. The guy sits down next to me and starts talking about the case, pointing out all the decoys. I'm laughing, why were you laughing? I thought he was funny, you know, he didn't know who I was, but he had to open his mouth. I thought he was talking to someone on the team and he was actually talking to the killer. Yes, we later found out that he frequented a Dunkin Donuts and that the police would be there talking about the homicide investigation and what they were doing. without giving up intimate details, but how they concentrated on looking at each vehicle that passed on the road and maybe writing down the license plate numbers and running, dad was listening to that information and even told them that you know that he had told his girlfriend that be careful because there was a bad guy who was picking up women and killing them all this time Shawcross kept up his normal routine working at the cheese factory going home to his loyal wife Rose, but the girls kept disappearing on December 17, 1989 June ​​Cicero one of the most notorious street prostitutes disappeared from Lisle Avenue she was the street lady she was the baddest prostitute in the city of Rochester and everyone respected her - in Cicero Shawcross had picked her up in the chevrolet celebrity he borrowed of his lover Clara how June Cicero died how you killed her strangle him mainly she left him mail what is it that he is stronger than with one hand all right there pressure point Shawcross drove June Cicero's body out of the city towards near Northampton Park it was It was snowing hard one night and I went out on Route 19, I think so, and I crossed over on Route 31, I headed back into town and there were no cars coming and I guess I opened the door and pushed her out, she came over.

At the shoulders of the bridge some snow fell fell into the water and he had closed the door and moved on the police were now going to have a crucial break as they searched Northampton Park for the body of another missing woman McCaffrey made a dramatic sighting we were less More About two minutes into the flight from Northampton Park back to Rochester when we flew over Salman Creek and under the bridge I could see a body frozen in the ice, it was June Cicero's body and then McCaffrey saw a suspicious looking car on the bridge. The passenger door itself was open and it looked like he had been urinating outside the car and that's what we could see and as the helicopter flew by he closed the passenger door and slid into the driver's seat insert to continue towards the east on Route 31.

What the police had been waiting for, FBI profilers had highlighted the killer's pattern of returning to dead bodies and McCaffrey decided to follow the Chevrolet while we were driving in Spencerport, the helicopter was flying overhead, I didn't notice of what was happening, but June Cicero's body was found very close to where you were on the bridge, you know, that was right at the end of a road, you know, and I didn't register what was happening. I forgot she was there. I believe Shawcross returned to the bridge to make sure the body was far enough under the bridge that we couldn't observe it while June Cicero's body was recovered from under the ice.

The driver of the suspect car was questioned by police 21 months after their investigation. The police had finally apprehended Arthur Shaw Cross, and when they ran his name through the system they found a surprising personal story: a trail of murder stretching back nearly 20 years. Shawcross had grown up around Watertown, 100 miles east of Rochester, in May 1972, eight years away. Karen Hill, a one-year-old girl, was reported missing for fear she was drowning. The police started searching the banks of the Black River and we crossed the bank and I went one way. The bystander officer went to the other side and he says here it is.

I walked underneath. On the bridge we saw this little buried body and we were left with the stones on top and its little feet sticking out. We knew she was dead because his entire upper torso was buried in the rocks and she was dead. You know he was cold and those guys are tough cops. you have to understand and they walked from the embankment shaking their heads. I heard one of them say she filled his mouth with dirt and mud to keep her quiet, and a sniffer dog led detectives from Karen Hill's body to Clover Street. and the house of Arthur Shawcross Shawcross was then 27 years old and he was living with his third wife, Penny.

He had had a troubled childhood and a history of petty delinquency. They arrested him and took him in for questioning. Well, he was very different from what he was. thin just out of the army he was in good shape it seems like he had very strong arms restoring his hands and when he was agitated really agitated it was scary you wouldn't want to be alone in the room with him he looked a little strange Honestly with you, I didn't go into the cell with him as I normally would. I always stayed outside the cell, so we still had parties between us and I talked to him.

There the police spent three days trying to get Shawcross to admit guilt. and it seems like he made some kind of confession, it wasn't airtight compassion, he said something to the effect that he might have done it or he might have done it, what did you do to young Karen? I told you I wouldn't talk about it. He wasn't talking about anything that happened in Watertown. Why not? Because I'm there. I'm not talking about anyone in Watertown. You can accept it, believe it, but another child also disappeared four months ago. Previously, 10-year-old Jack Blake had also gone missing.

Shawcross had frequently gone fishing with the young man and the police suspected him of being responsible, but they had no hard evidence and with only one confession linking him to Caron Hill's death, the police decided to offer Shawcross up. a deal told them what he had done to Jack Blake and he was facing a lesser charge for the murder of Karen Hill, so we had a conference where mr. Shawcross explained to them what happened, what he did and how he killed the boy Blake. This was part of the plea agreement in which he would explain that case to them.

Shawcross directed police to the young man's body which they found next to the train tracks. Just out of town he was naked and appeared to have been raped before being strangled to death, but as part of his plea deal, Shawcross did not.he was charged with the murder of Jack Blake and faced a reduced charge for the murder of Karen Hill. . Shawcross pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was given the maximum sentence of 25 years. Oh, the public was outraged, they were furious and very upset about the plea deal. I'm sure the public wanted a murder conviction, the people wanted justice and the law didn't matter.

It could be maintained and nothing more could be done than what was done, but it was terribly frustrating for everyone that more could not have been done. Shawcross served less than 15 years of his sentence before being paroled in April 1987, just 15 months later he had settled in Rochester and his murder trial had begun again, but Grassman was found responsible for second-degree murder. and received what would have been a well-deserved maximum sentence of 25 to life in prison at the time. One thing I'm sure of. As I sit here he wouldn't have committed these other murders. Now armed with the knowledge of the Watertown murders, the police in Rochester were convinced they had their man and began to tighten the screws on Arthur Shawcross.

There were several prostitutes. that they were still missing and the

interview

ers played with that and said look art there there are girls out there that are missing that we know that you killed they had a stack of photographs of the victims like a stack of cards and he took the stack and like a deck of letters, they handed out the ones he was responsible for and then they came back and talked to him about each one in David's confession to each and every one of why you confessed it why I got tired of it after 14 16 hours later, tired out of the water, everything that was coming out he just couldn't stand it, the police now had his confession and Shawcross was accused of the murder of 11 women when he was sent to trial, there was no doubt that he had committed the murders, but why had he done when medical experts began examining him?

Serious doubts were raised as to whether Arthur Shawcross could really be mad. Arthur Shawcross has now been arrested and was awaiting trial for the murder of eleven women. There was no doubt that he had killed them. But his defense team now set about exploring a fundamental question: what made Arthur Shawcross act so violently. Everyone knows there's something wrong with Arthur's short clothes. He is not a normal person. Everyone knows it from the beginning. What is it? Could there be something neurologically wrong? With it, eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus has examined the brains of numerous serial killers and believes that damage to certain areas of the brain is a major factor in causing extreme violence.

Arthur Shawcross's brain scan fits this pattern, if you have a lesion on the MRI I have an abnormality on the EEG coming from exactly the same place and quite strange behavior coming from this part of the brain. I think it's likely that the brain abnormality has so much to do with his behavior that I think if he hadn't been neurologically abnormal, I think he probably wouldn't have been a serial killer, but brain damage alone is rarely decisive. Shawcross was also subjected to an in-depth examination by a senior Yale psychiatrist, which we discovered and can later verify.

It was the fact that he was horribly sexually abused when he was a child. During the

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s, he relived part of that experience that was outside of his conscious awareness. Lewis guided Shawcross through a series of interviews, some conducted under a form of hypnosis, what's going on, what are you doing, Ryu, moaning, peanut, Bart, what's going on, what happened, what did mom do, mom got you there, what is he doing, what and what happened, why are you crying. And what do you say, friend, oh, what did your mother do? My mother gave me oral sex. She gave me oral sex for several years and I was 14.

A dead intercourse and I ran away. I put her pen and signed a note. My pillow, my room. I'm going to Syracuse and I I turn around I went to Canada I just didn't want to go home because you were being abused yes I'm sure he was very young he ran away from home he used to hide under the teacher's desk he was an extremely strange and problematic child from a very early age so There is a consistency in this story of abuse of Dr. Lewis argued that the brain damage had caused him to suffer a phenomenon known as a partial seizure.

Just before the murder, very often there would be some event, some disagreement or some threat to him, where the woman could have said: I'll tell your wife about this. . or something like that and then he would see a bright white light and the next thing he knew he would wake up and he would wake up often in his car and he would look next to him and there was a body that he had no conscious knowledge of. . what he was doing or conscious control over what he was doing Defense experts argued that, like many other serial killers, Shawcross suffered a toxic combination of physical and mental damage.

I would say it's three things that interact: brain damage, mental illness, and the experience of being abused. each of those things is a factor in it they interact so that if you didn't have one of them the likelihood of violence would be reduced tremendously the defense pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in essence they argued that Shawcross was not responsible for his actions, he was an argument that provoked ridicule from both the prosecution and the police. Few things are more tragic than the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts and I think that is the answer, it is a beautiful theory, but it was the facts they just left it in the background, they claim that their mother put it the handle of a broom, inserted it into his anus and pushed it up.

It was the description of him that clearly would have resolved him into a major trauma. There was no evidence of such trauma during the trial. I received a call from his mother she asked why she says these things. I never know why they say these things. Your mother has obviously denied that anything like this ever happened. Everyone could tell what would happen to a person. She admitted that she did that to me. I mean, them. They say they said you know, I score the Shockers, they say well, there was no sexual abuse and you, younger, how do you know.

I know because I was there. I know what I had to go through. Well, they say they reviewed all the medical records. I did not have. records when my mother was abusing me, do you think my mother took me to a doctor because he was giving me oral sex, that if he was lying and had not been sexually abused, that would confuse you, in fact it is almost inconceivable that he was not having been sexually abused crucial to the defense case was the argument that sure cross mental convulsions meant he had no knowledge of what he was doing if he didn't know what he was doing at all, why would he go out of his way to hide something ? why do you deposit? bodies in a Genesee Gore jury pool where they are least likely to be found.

I think all of those facts really speak to someone who knew exactly what he was doing. The prosecutor thinks that his upbringing was completely normal. This is just a man who was bad. He is evil. and he killed those women because he wanted to do it and he enjoyed doing it, but that's not normal, I don't know, no matter what the prosecutor feels is normal, that's not normal, someone who kills a mentally ill person is probably someone who kills 11 people. here and he has killed two children before he absolutely has problems, but that is not the claim, it is not the argument that they are somehow not, the problem is that you do not qualify for consent, an insanity defense.

Shawcross knew what he was doing and if you know it's wrong then you're responsible for your ass, that's how it works during the trial, the defense also argued that Shawcross had been brutalized by his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, which happened in Vietnam, a lot of things happen in Vietnam, yes, I went to Vietnam as a weapons specialist and I had my own bunker and on the outskirts of Khartoum, Vietnam Central Highlands Shawcross states that he often ventured into the jungle as a single unit man hunting enemies through Cong and I see a woman in her 30s coming down this hill carrying two eight K on this side towards aks on this side barrel down so I extend my hand over my shoulder like this right behind my neck and I took out a new machete when she backed away and I approached behind her and grabbed her head right there I received a couple of blows but the head came off she the body fell to the ground you just bled to death he claims that then he started to cook the body the dead woman to extract information from her friend I cut the body in half I opened a bag and it had some C4 plastic explosives I lit a cigarette, I just touched it and it started to light up like a miniature sun and I just put the meat on top of that stick and I bit them into the flesh itself, you know, just looking at her eyes and she urinated and defecated on herself and she talked to me and spoke broken English so she told me everything I wanted to know I went in and informed her in greeting to Lila Carp the colonel and he stands up and says you, a sick son of but I love you, none of that we can say is true, these experiences in Vietnam are very inflated and exaggerated, there is no indication that you ever went out and shot someone and much less cannibalized, did you do any of the things he claims to have done, but despite his vivid combat memories Shawcross found few comrades in Vietnam, but I don't remember anyone's name in Vietnam and that confuses me.

War often forms a very close relationship. She did not film friendships with anyone. No, you must remember no one's name. It doesn't matter how long they lasted. you were there for thirteen months what was your official position in Vietnam I was a weapons specialist we were able to track down in preparation your commanding officer Sergeant I think I even remember his name Sergeant Weaver he was a supply clerk he wasn't in these secret missions you know I'm not a liar, nothing, I take facts from life, don't you believe it, that's your prerogative, you can do what you want, you know, everyone reads what they want, believes what they want, you know, this It's what they do.

After hearing three weeks of evidence, the jury was not convinced by the argument that Shawcross was insane. He was found guilty on all counts of murder. He was sentenced to 250 years in prison. Shawcross has spent the last 18 years in a maximum security prison. He confounded numerous attempts by psychologists to understand him and, like many other serial killers, his crimes have given him a McCaw notoriety. He received letters from all over the world. I get a lot of college students, professors, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, you meet all kinds of people. all walks of life do you see yourself as a celebrity here?

Of course, it won't weigh well. Everyone knows what I'm here for. Do you enjoy the attention? Sometimes you become a nuisance sometimes, and from his prison cell, Shawcross continues. invent more and more imaginative justifications for the murder of the women in Rochester, when I picked up those women I thought I had grown old because one of the women who stopped in the car told me that one of the women I tested HIV from was positive. I don't know which one of them it was so I went back and picked up everyone they were dating on two streets in Rochester and started killing them and while I was doing it I took vagina a three and I hate it why I don't know it probably just accelerated the idea of ​​the AIDS disease, so he heard it could kill him faster.

Problem, but not many people I've talked to have eaten human meat. The reason why the raw state, the greedy Stig, got fat in the extreme now similar. But when he was detained by the police, did he make any mention of HIV? No sir, I didn't realize that some people would say, well, isn't that just an excuse to justify murder? Believe what you want to believe. I told you how I killed. Why did I kill you? Don't you want to believe it? That's up to you. One thing, however, is still a taboo subject. The murder of the two children in Watertown.

Are you prepared to talk about what happened in Vietnam and killing all these prostitutes? But I just wonder? Why did you prepare to talk about that and not Watertown? I don't want to talk about you. Say one more question. I leave. He certainly knows how we all feel about the murder of children. You obviously know what is probably the most reprehensible thing anyone can do. He understands that, but the problem is that he can't justify it, he can't find a selling point or a way to mitigate it, so he's just not going to talk about it, but in 2001 someone was going to walk into Shore and he crossed his path. life, who would force him to face his darkest demons the daughter he never knew he had in 2001 Arthur Shawcross received dramatic news while on leave from the army in the early 1960s had a brief affair with a woman in Hawaii 40 years later the son of that relationship Maggie Deming found out who his father was and decided to contact my husband, that for us was like, you know, don't go there, you know, do you realize that he killed the children and I told him Well, can't I just close the door on this?

You know, you know, this is a part of my life that I just can't close the door, what did you feel when you met him for the first time when he went to prison, ha, ha, ha, apprehensive, nervous, I didn't? you know what to think you know whatsay hello dad he was very gentle he spoke very softly um very grandpa with my daughter he joked a lot what about your daughter Maggie she is great? I saw it just before you showed up. Does your daughter Maggie know what you did? Does she know the details? He has the information of everything I told him.

Things you want to know but you won't understand what you know what you're talking about. in another place, well, what is the city?, the children, that he had killed the children, that their ages are approximately the same age as my children are now. What he did to them, like I said, was pretty graphic and that will be between him and his creator. Maggie has seven children of her own and has been interested in making sure they have a relationship with their incarcerated grandfather. My older children know what he did. My younger children don't, and my father is kind.

As he told me, you know it's best that the younger ones don't know that sooner or later they'll find out that they don't really advertise the fact that her grandfather was a serial killer that both Maggie and her grandchildren have become. . regular visitors to show cross in prison do you love maggie very much? You loved your grandchildren, right? I write to them all the time, they send their grandchildren again, the children at school send me their school exams and different things they are doing at school, they send me, I draw drawings and make portraits. This is a horrible thought, but I mean, if someone knew how to rape and kill their grandchildren, what should happen to them?

That depends on the law, but what do you think should happen to them? the law, but what would you think of them as a parent or grandparent? I would be devastated. Do you have any understanding of the suffering you caused the families of the people you killed? I don't have any remorse for some reason, but it seems strange to me that you can clearly feel affection for your daughter and your own children, it's strange, but you can't feel any empathy for all those people, the families of all the people you killed and it's not there. there like me. one told him saying that is to say I know something inside me is strange these events happened a long time ago in time these things that you can't really forget these kinds of things that you can't really forgive from those parents that you know they have to live with that I don't regret the fact that he is my father, I can't change him and I don't see all the Shawcrosses from Watertown with my children in 2008 in Sullivan Correctional Facility, totally different people, totally different, there's always a bad man. on me you can never get rid of it he's just behind a door somewhere I'm trying to keep him there I don't want to hurt anyone else really just one last question on that, I mean, what, why don't you do it? talk about the two young men, it's over, no, because you're embarrassed, he signs off, since this is over, okay, thank you very much for your time, he put his arms around us and just did exactly what I told him.

He put his arm around my mouth, lifted me up, and put me on this bed. I was paralyzed. I couldn't talk, I couldn't scream, I couldn't do anything, but the whole time I was looking at Lisa and her face was bright red and