Gary Michael Heidnik: Biography Of This Serial Killer
Gary Michael Heidnik, known as “the baby planter” He was an American murderer and rapist, known for his terrible forms of mistreatment and sexual abuse towards the women he had kidnapped in the 1980s.
We’ll see now a biography of Gary Michael Heidnik and how he committed his abominable crimes.
The life of this sexual criminal is that of a psychopath, who rather than enjoying murder, preferred to delight in the suffering of his victims, feeding on their fear and anxiety. We are going to see his personal life, how his childhood was raw and probably influenced him to do what he did as an adult.
Childhood
Gary Michael Heidnik was born on November 22, 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio, being the son of Michael and Ellen Heidnik, who later had another son, Terry. Gary Heidnik did not have an easy childhood. His parents divorced in 1946, when he was barely three years old. Gary and his brother were cared for by his mother for four years, but then they moved in with his father, who had remarried.
In the parental home where Heidnik, as he would later claim, He was physically and emotionally abused by his father The cause of this was that little Gary wet the bed and his father, to correct the problem while feeling pleasure while psychologically destroying his son, humiliated him by forcing him to hang the wet sheets on the window of his room, so that so the neighbors would know what had happened.
School was not a good place for Heidnik either. Despite having good grades, he was not good at interacting with others, and He avoided making eye contact with his classmates, since he was the object of their ridicule As a child he had suffered an accident that had deformed his head, and the children, in his cruelty, constantly reminded him of it through comparisons.
But despite his cranial deformity, his brain was intact, at least in terms of cognitive abilities. His intelligence was not below average, quite the contrary. His IQ was 148, meaning he was technically gifted
military life
On the recommendation of his father, Gary Heidnik turned 14 He enrolled at the Staunton Military Academy, in the state of Virginia, where he remained two years, and abandoned it before graduating from it. He would later return to public education, only to re-enlist in a military institution, in this case the United States Army at age 17, serving his country for 13 months.
He showed good training skills, and his sergeant described him as an excellent military student. After this military training, Heidnik would apply for different specialized positions, but he was rejected from them. Then, He managed to be transferred to San Antonio, Texas, where he would receive military medical training
In any case, he did not remain long in the Texan state, being transferred abroad, to West Germany, in the 46th Mobile Surgical Hospital of the North American Army in the city of Landstuhl.
In August 1962 Heidnik began to feel serious discomfort: nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and headaches. The hospital neurologist diagnosed Gary Heidnik with gastroenteritis, but also detected symptoms typical of a mental disorder, for which he prescribed trifluoperazine (antipsychotic).
In October of that same year he would be transferred to the military hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he would be given a diagnosis: Schizoid personality Disorder Because of this he was honorably discharged from the North American Army.
After being diagnosed with the supposed schizoid personality disorder and leaving the US Army, Heidnik would study at the University of Pennsylvania, although it only lasted one semester. He worked as a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Administration Hospital in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, but He ended up being fired due to his bad behavior towards patients
From August 1962 until his arrest in March 1987, Heidnik He went from psychiatric hospital to psychiatric hospital, because he attempted suicide up to 13 times Suicidal tendencies were something that ran in the family, since her mother Ellen, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer and was an alcoholic, ended her life by drinking mercury bichloride, a very toxic compound. His brother Gary also attempted suicide on several occasions.
In October 1971 Gary Heidnik joined the United Church of God, and in 1975 he opened an account for the church, where he deposited $1,500. Over time, by investing in the stock market, Heidnik managed to amass a total of $500,000 for the church and, by the mid-1980s, the United Church of God would be prosperous and wealthy.
First abuse of women
Gary Michael Heidnik He met his wife through a marriage agency, with which you would contact your future spouse through postal correspondence. Her name was Betty Disto, a Filipino citizen who had arrived in the United States in September 1985 and on October 3 of that same year she would marry Heidnik in Maryland.
But the marriage did not last long, as Betty had the traumatic experience of finding her husband with three women in bed. Throughout their brief marriage, Heidnik forced his wife to watch her sleep with other women. It gave him great satisfaction to hurt his wife’s feelings and sexually abuse her
Fortunately for Betty Disto, the Filipino community of Philadelphia managed to get her out of such a catastrophic, exhausting and abusive marriage, achieving this in January 1986. But despite the bad relationship, Betty became pregnant with Heidnik, giving birth to a son, named Jesse. John Disto. Heidnik discovered that he was a father when his ex-wife sued him for alimony for his child.
But this would not be Gary’s only child, obtained through sexual abuse. He would later have another with Gail Lincow, whom he would call Gary Jr. The child was placed in foster care shortly after birth. He would later have a third child with another woman, in this case Anjeanette Davidson, an illiterate woman with intellectual disabilities. The daughter of this relationship would be Maxine Davidson, born on March 16, 1978, and also taken to a foster home.
Shortly after Maxine’s birth, Heidnik He was arrested for kidnapping and raping Anjeanette’s sister Alberta, who had lived in an institution for people with intellectual disabilities in Penn Township.
First crimes
But if Gary Michael Heidnik, better known as “the baby planter,” is known for something, it is for his long life of crime, which dates back to the 1970s. In 1976 Heidnik would commit one of his first crimes, nothing serious compared to what would come later. He assaulted the tenant of a house he had offered to rent, shooting him in the face with a weapon for which he did not have a license.
But it would be two years later that he would be taken to prison for the first time, although not the last. In 1978 Heidnik removed the sister of his then girlfriend Anjeanette Davidson from an institution for people with intellectual disabilities. Gary Michael Heidnik did not do this as a nice touch to his beloved. Heidnik had a great predilection for women with intellectual disabilities and dark skin, preferably African-Americans.
The sister, Alberta, was taken to a storage room in Heidnik’s basement and locked there. Once the police learned of the incident, Alberta was taken from there and taken to the mental institution, where she would undergo a physical examination to find out if she had been mistreated, and, indeed, it had been the case. Heidnik had raped and sodomized her, in addition to giving her gonorrhea.
It was for this reason that Heidnik was arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, deprivation of liberty and taking advantage of a person with a disability and spent three years in mental institutions with state supervision.
He begins his career as a serial rapist
In 1986, after being abandoned by his ex-wife Betty Disto, Heidnik would be arrested again and accused of assault, as well as rape and deviant sexual behavior. But this would only be the beginning of his career as a serial killer. Between 1986 and 1987 he would commit his chain of murders and rapes in a row
On November 25, 1986, Heidnik kidnapped a woman named Josefina Rivera and, in January of the following year, there would have been four women in total who would have had the bad luck to fall into the hands of Gary Michael Heidnik. He kept them in a pit in his basement north of Philadelphia. All the kidnapped women were black, and they were raped, beaten and tortured
It is not known if she did it because she wanted to enjoy the experience of taking someone’s life or because of simple carelessness, like someone forgetting to water the plants, or if it was really a mistake, but one of the women, Sandra Lindsay, died. due to starvation, torture, and not having received treatment for severe fevers that he suffered during his detention.
Given this, Heidnik chose to dismember the corpse, but he had problems with the arms and legs, so he put them in the freezer, saving them with the label “dog food.” He baked the ribs in the oven, and boiled Sandra Lindsay’s head in a pot like someone boiling potatoes. The neighbors complained about the bad smell, and called the police, having no suspicion of the atrocities that were being committed in the house.
However, when they went to Heidnik’s home, far from exploring the house and trying to find out where the smell was coming from, the police settled for Heidnik’s explanation: “I was making a barbecue, I fell asleep and it burned me.” ”
It is believed that Heidnik took Lindsay’s meat and mixed it with dog food, then gave it to the other girls However, Heidnik’s defense attorney, Chuck Peruto, during the trials that would be held some time later, said that no evidence was found for these claims.
Heidnik had a predilection for electroshocks. At one point during the kidnapping, he forced three of his female prisoners to be together in a pit, chained with wires around his body. Heidnik ordered Josefina Rivera and another woman to fill the hole with water, forcing Rivera to apply electricity to the chains of the woman who was in him
The girl, who had been kidnapped a week after Lisa Thomas, on January 2, 1987, would end up dying, and Gary Michael Heidnik placed Dudley’s body in the Pine Barrens, in the state of New Jersey.
Neglect and detention
On January 18, 1987, Heidnik kidnapped Jacqueline Askins to replace the recently deceased Deborah, being the youngest of his total of six victims, at only 18 years old. When Askins was interviewed in 2018, marking the 30th anniversary of her kidnapping, she indicated that Heidnik He gagged his victims with duct tape and penetrated their ears with a screwdriver
On March 23, 1987, Heidnik and his accomplice, Rivera, kidnapped Agnes Adams. The next day, Rivera managed to convince her kidnapper to let her go temporarily to see her family. Surprisingly, Heidnik believed her and “freed” her, but Rivera was no fool. In fact, she had been cajoling her kidnapper for some time to manipulate him and free herself and her other cellmates
Heidnik took her to a gas station and waited for her there. She walked away and managed to call 911. The police, hearing that the woman had to be chained because of the metallic sound that came through the phone, went to the gas station and arrested Heidnik. Then they went to his house, discovering the tremendous scene: three women in the basement, one released on the street and two corpses, one in the refrigerator and the other buried.
Heidnik’s best friend Cyril “Tony” Brown was also arrested, although he was released after paying $50,000 bail and testifying against Heidnik. Brown confessed to witnessing Sandra Lindsay’s death and how Heidnik dismembered her. Shortly after his arrest, Gary Michael Heidnik tried to end his life by hanging himself in his cell, without success.
The judgments
Gary Michael Heidnik He tried to make the jury believe that the women who were in his basement were already there when he moved to that house. During the trial, Heidnik was defended by Charles Peruto, who attempted to prove that his client was legally insane, unaware of what he was doing.
This defense thesis was thrown to the ground by the prosecution, led by Charles F. Gallagher III. Evidence of this was the fact that, while in the United Church of God, he amassed a total of $550,000 in the bank through gambling, something that an insane person would hardly achieve.
His tax advisor, Robert Kirkpatrick, who had previously advised him on financial matters, was also used as a witness. Kirkpatrick assured that his former client was astute, aware of his financial decisions
In the wake of all this, Gary Michael Heidnik He was sentenced to two first-degree murder convictions on July 1, 1988, and sentenced to death, being incarcerated at the Pittsburgh State Correctional Facility. In January of the following year he attempted suicide with an overdose of thorazine (chlorpromazine), without success.
Gary Michael Heidnik was executed on July 6, 1999 at Rockview Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania. His body was cremated. Heidnik has been the last person to be executed in the state of Pennsylvania
Psychological profile of this criminal
Although he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder in his youth, over time The possibility that Gary Michael Heidnik had faked his symptoms so that he could be compensated began to be considered and thus earn money without working.
However, given the twisted nature of his crimes, it is difficult to think that he did not have a mental disorder that made him behave in such an inhumane way towards his victims. Despite having had depression, several suicide attempts, tics and mania, the psychologists and psychiatrists who interviewed him during his trial were unable to relate these symptoms to his very twisted mind and ability to inflict harm on other people.
