Abd*ction, t*rture, c*nnibalism – Josefina Rivera survived G*ry H*idnik

It was a cold November night in Philadelphia when Josephina’s nightmare began. The 23-year-old left her apartment after an argument with her boyfriend. She was only lightly dressed because she worked as a prostitute. After a few minutes, a silver Cadillac pulled up beside her. The driver asked if he could give her a lift.

Josephina looked him over; he seemed alright-looking—well-groomed beard, expensive watch, and the car. So she got in. The man introduced himself as Gary Heidnik. He offered to take her to his house, and Josephina agreed. Gary’s house was in a run-down part of Philadelphia, and it looked the part.

When they both went inside, she stood fascinated in the hallway. The walls were papered with dollar bills.

“This guy is kind of hot,” she thought.

And then he stepped behind her and woke her. Josephina lost consciousness. When she awoke, she found herself tied up in a cold, moldy basement. Josephina was terrified for the next few hours and days.

But then, after a few days, he said to her,

“You’re just the beginning. You’ll be my baby. You’ll give birth down here, but not just you. I want to house ten girls down here so you can all give birth to my children.”

Josephina was a young mother of three. She lived with her boyfriend Vincent in an apartment in the US state of Pennsylvania. The 23-year-old had a problem with illegal substances, and money was always tight, which often led to arguments between the two. Her children no longer lived with her. Child Protective Services had ordered her to find a job and suitable accommodation.

She had to prove to the authorities that she needed to find a job. That she could financially care for her children; only then would she get them back. Besides, she had to get clean to somehow get money. Josephina worked on the streets of Philadelphia. So, all in all, not a good life situation. But then something happened that would make Josephina’s life much, much worse.

It was shortly before Thanksgiving in 1986, more precisely November 26, 1986. Josephina and Vincent had, as so often, another heated argument that evening. It was about money, the children, and her addiction. Later that evening, she angrily left the house. She was only lightly dressed.

She wanted to go to the street where she worked. Shortly before she arrived at her workplace, a silver Cadillac pulled up beside her. The driver rolled down the window and asked her if he could give her a lift. Josephina had to ask the guy. He looked well-groomed and had an expensive watch on his wrist, so she didn’t hesitate. She got into his car.

The two of them drove off. The man introduced himself as Gary Heidenig. First, they discussed the business side of things. Once they had agreed, they drove to a nearby McDonald’s. Gary treated Josephina to a cheeseburger. She thought the guy was really nice, and besides, he seemed to have a lot of money.

Only his clothes looked rather cheap, but she wasn’t put off by that. They agreed to go to Gary’s house. When they arrived, it was a pretty run-down part of Philadelphia. Josephina thought that this dump didn’t suit him at all, but she wasn’t deterred by the appearance of the house, and so they went inside. It was a small house.

The furniture Gary owned was cheap and completely worn out. A staircase led to the second floor. Josephina was surprised because several hundred pennies were stuck to the wall where the stairs led up. The hallway leading to the bedroom was practically wallpapered with one- and four-dollar bills—real banknotes.

While Josephina was looking at the walls, totally fascinated, Gary stepped behind her and choked her with his hands. Josephina’s vision went black; she passed out. When she came to, her hands were handcuffed, and she was in a dark, moldy basement. Gary threw her onto an old, dirty mattress. Lying on the floor, he also tied her feet to a pipe under the cellar ceiling.

Josephina was terrified; she thought he would definitely take advantage of her next transgression, but he didn’t. Instead, he lay down next to her and fell asleep. Josephina was completely confused. What was all this about? What did this guy want from her? When it got light the next morning, Josephina could finally see more of the cellar.

It was empty except for a bucket and an old chest of drawers. But then she saw that in one corner, the screed on the floor had been removed, leaving a hole several centimeters deep. What did that mean, she wondered. A short time later, Gary came down the stairs. Josephina thought he was going to kill her. He had a shovel with him, and he began to enlarge the hole in the floor.

This was going to be her grave; she was absolutely certain of it now. He didn’t speak to her and was busy with the hole all day. Even the next day, he continued. But then he suddenly started talking to her.

“I want children, lots of children. I already have some, but the state keeps taking them away from me. But now I’ve found a way so that no one will take my children away anymore. And you’re just the beginning. You’ll carry my baby down here, but not just you. I want to bring ten girls here so you can all give birth to my children.”

Josephina initially felt a sense of relief; he wouldn’t kill her. But then, a short time later, she realized what Gary had actually said to her. He seemed completely insane.

He had a plan to build a baby farm in the basement. He couldn’t be serious, she thought. But then he raped her for the first time, and Josephina realized he was totally serious. She endured it all. When Gary left the basement again, all she could think about was escape. She had to get out of this hole somehow. Josephina had ankle cuffs, and she managed to free herself from one of them.

She reached the window, but her other foot was still in the cuff. She had no chance; she simply couldn’t get out. But as I said, she got to the window and started screaming for help. Surely someone must hear her. There were neighbors everywhere, but the only one who heard her was Gary. He was beside himself with rage. He stormed down the cellar stairs and beat her with a club.

When she stopped resisting, he dragged her to the hole in the floor, which was now half a meter deep. He pushed her in, then slid a board over it. To make sure Josephina couldn’t move it, he weighed it down with sandbags. After that, he brought a radio down to the cellar and turned the music up full blast. That would drown out her screams if she dared to cry for help again.

Josephina lay half-naked in the hole. She was terrified. But then, a few hours later, she suddenly heard the faint crying of a young woman. Had he actually brought another girl down here? Who was this guy named Gary who seemed to be serious and was bringing even more young women down to the cellar?

Gary Heidnick was born on November 22, 1943, in East Lake, Ohio. He was the elder of two sons of Michael and Ellen Heidnick. Gary’s mother was an alcoholic, and that’s why his father divorced her two years later in 1950. Gary and his younger brother Terry lived with their mother, but then their father got custody and they moved in with him and his new wife. Gary had problems since childhood; he was bullied at school because he had a deformed head from a fall.

He also wet the bed at night, and his father humiliated him for it, hanging his wet bedding outside his window. When he grew up, Gary was found to have an IQ of 148, making him highly intelligent. Gary was very interested in the military, so after school he enrolled at the military academy in Virginia. He then joined the US Army, where he trained as a medic in Texas.

Later, he was stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, where he worked for a while. In 1962, he often complained of headaches, vomiting, and dizziness. He was also diagnosed with a mental disorder and admitted to a military hospital in Pennsylvania, where he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.

He was honorably discharged from the Army and was entitled to a disability pension. He then worked as a nurse, but he was unable to return to that position. Gary was quickly dismissed for his harsh manner. In 1970, his mother committed suicide with poison, a shock for Gary. He couldn’t cope and subsequently attempted suicide several times, repeatedly ending up in psychiatric hospitals.

A year later, in 1971, he founded a church he called the United Church of the Ministers of God, but it only had five followers. In 1976, he first ran into trouble with the law for a shooting. In November 1978, he received a prison sentence of three to seven years and was again committed to a psychiatric hospital because he had imprisoned a woman in his basement.

This woman was the sister of his then-girlfriend. In 1983, he was released under supervision. By 1989, Gary was married and wanted to kill his wife, but she escaped and fled to a women’s shelter. The court case was dropped because the woman, fearing Gary, didn’t appear in court. Then, Gary conceived the plan to start a baby farm, which brings us back to the basement of his dilapidated house.

Gary pulled the plate off Josephina and pulled her out of the hole, and then she saw her, a young Black woman, naked except for a blouse. Gary said,

“That’s Sandra Lindsay.”

Sandra was also chained to this pipe. Gary left the cellar, and Josephina tried to talk to Sandra, but she quickly realized that Sandra was mentally disabled.

She told her that she had known Gary for a long time and that they were friends. She had met him years ago in a facility for the mentally disabled. Sandra said that he had always taken care of her, but that he had often forced her to have sex. Gary and his friend Tony… She was even pregnant once. She didn’t want to have the child.

When Gary found out, he went berserk. He desperately wanted this child. He even offered her 1000 yen if she would have it, but Sandra refused. And now he had reappeared and brought her here. He had never chained her before. Sandra cried. She slowly began to understand what situation she was in.

For the next few days, Gary abused the two young women daily. It was already winter and freezing cold. In the cellar, Josephina and Sandra were only allowed to wear blouses and socks, nothing else. The two tried to keep each other warm and tried to scream for help, but Gary caught them every time and, as punishment, brutally beat them.

Actually, Gary was after this baby farm, but over the next few days, he grew to enjoy simply exerting power and control over the young women. He demanded absolute obedience from them. If they broke these rules, they had to lie in the hole at the bottom or they would be beaten. So, the two women’s lives consisted of humiliation, beatings, rape, and very little food.

Vincent, Josephina’s boyfriend, wasn’t worried about her at all. He thought Josephina had simply run away, that she had left him, and that’s why he didn’t file a police report. Sandra’s mother, however, was extremely worried about her daughter. She made phone calls, asked friends, and searched the whole city for her.

During her search, someone mentioned seeing Sandra with a white, racy man, and Sandra’s mother immediately knew who they meant. She knew Gary. Heidnick knew that Gary kept trying to contact her daughter, so Sandra’s mother went to the police and explained what was going on. She gave the officer Gary’s address and phone number.

The officer tried calling Gary’s number, but no one answered. A patrol car headed to Gary’s house. An officer rang the doorbell, but no one answered. The police then simply dropped the case. Gary had learned that Sandra’s mother was looking for her daughter, so he forced Sandra to write a letter. She was to write that she had run away from home and that she would contact him later.

He then drove all the way to New York to mail the letter. Once he had done this, he was quite sure that no one would look for Sandra anymore. As Christmas approached, Gary went on the hunt for a new girl. Gary drove around, and then suddenly he saw her: 19-year-old Lisa Thomas. She was walking down a street. Gary pulled up beside her in his Caddy and asked the price.

Lisa was shocked and angry at the same time. She yelled at him that she wasn’t a prostitute and was merely on her way to a friend’s house. Gary apologized and then tried to charm her, offering to drive her to her friend’s house. Lisa got into the car, the next thing she remembered was waking up in Gary’s house.

Gary assaulted her and then took her to the cellar with Josephina and Sandra. Ten days later, Gary kidnapped 23-year-old Deborah Dudley, but Deborah was different. She didn’t resign herself to her fate like the others. She was defiant, ready to fight to get out of the cellar. Gary devised a new strategy, and every time Deborah broke the rules, the other three girls received the same punishment as her.

This, of course, led to arguments among the women. Gary then came up with something else. Every time he left the cellar, he designated one of the women as a warden. If the warden didn’t report any rule violations when he returned, Gary claimed she was lying, and everyone was beaten. However, if the warden revealed what had happened, she too had to carry out the punishment for Gary.

It quickly became clear that Josephina was the most obedient and loyal of them. He began to trust her more and more. After Deborah was also in the cellar, Gary had a total of four girls down there, and then he began to force them to perform acts on each other while he watched. At that point, Josephina had already been in the cellar for six weeks, and since then she hadn’t been allowed to shower or wash herself in any way.

The only thing in the cellar was a bucket that served as a toilet. Gary then seemed to take pity on the girls. He couldn’t help but notice that the women down there were becoming increasingly neglected, so they were allowed to go upstairs and shower. Most of the time, the girls were simply given bread and water to eat.

However, if Gary was in a reasonably good mood, there were sometimes hot dogs and even Nutella. But at some point, Gary became completely fed up with this constant question of food, and then he decided to buy pallets of canned dog food. The girls then had to eat.

On January 18, 1987, Gary came to the cellar of the 18-year-olds with the fifth girl. Jacqueline Askins, whom he had picked up in North Philadelphia, was in a really good mood when Gary arrived. He made everyone toast Josephina’s 26th birthday. There was even champagne and Chinese food. Josephina was now Gary’s clear favorite. He also believed that Josephina and Sandra were pregnant by now, but he was wrong.

In early February 1987, Gary had locked Sandra in the pit again as punishment. When he noticed that she had moved the slab on the pit, he chained her arms to the ceiling of the cellar, and she had to hang there for several days. Sandra developed a fever, chills, and a severe sore throat. She could no longer eat.

At that time, Gary still believed that she was pregnant, and therefore she absolutely could not die. He stuffed food into her mouth, but Sandra immediately vomited it up again. Her fever kept rising. She finally fell into a coma because Gary thought she was faking it. He punched and kicked her and then threw her back into the hole.

The next morning, Sandra was dead. Gary dragged her upstairs, and the other women in the basement shortly afterward heard the sound of a chainsaw. They couldn’t believe it; this man was truly capable of anything. Gary roughly dismembered Sandra’s body, then put body parts into a food processor where they were shredded.

Allegedly, he then gave one of his dogs a bone with bits of meat on it. The dog gnawed on the bone in front of the women, and then he supposedly mixed Sandra’s remains into the dog food that the women were forced to eat. In the following days, the neighbors noticed a foul odor coming from Gary’s house.

They called the police, and a patrol car was dispatched. But Gary, as usual, managed to talk his way out of everything. He told the police officers that he had been cooking, but then forgot about the food on the stove, and that it had burned, hence the terrible stench. The police officers believed him and drove off again. They had no idea what horrific things were actually happening in the house.

After this event, Gary had the feeling that the girls in the basement had conspired against him. He had a plan to destroy their eardrums so they couldn’t hear anymore, and he then tied them all up and stabbed each of them in the ear with a screwdriver. The only one he spared was Josephina; he truly trusted her now.

The rebellious Deborah continued to fight. One day, Gary led her upstairs into the house, into the kitchen, and there she saw Sandra’s head in a pot on the stove. Her ribcage lay in the oven. When he opened the refrigerator, Deborah saw a forearm and other body parts. Gary threatened her that she would end up the same way if she didn’t finally start obeying him.

In March, Gary escalated his torture program. Once again, the girls were now to receive electric shocks through an electrical cable. First, Josephina was to fill the hole in the ground with water. Deborah and Jacqueline had to get into the ice-cold water. The slab, into which Gary had meanwhile drilled holes, was pushed back onto the pit, and then he inserted the electrical cable through these holes.

Deborah screamed loudly, her body jerked, and then she fell face down into the water. Deborah was dead. Gary lifted the young woman out of the pit and disappeared. When he returned, he forced Josephina to write a kind of confession. He gave her a piece of paper and a pen and dictated a text to her.

She was to write that she had helped him kill Deborah with an electric shock. Both signed this piece of paper. He threatened to show the paper, or rather the confession, to the police should she even think of informing on him. Then he freed Josephina from her bonds and took her upstairs. He put Deborah’s lifeless body in his freezer.

By now, he trusted Josephina so much that she became his constant companion, going shopping with him, eating at restaurants, and sleeping next to him in his bed. Josephina went along with all of this; she didn’t want to upset him because being allowed out of the cellar again was a huge privilege, and it had to stay that way because it was the only way she could escape.

She just had to wait for a favorable opportunity, and this escape had to succeed, otherwise he would kill her too. Josephina knew this. On the night of March 22nd, Gary and Josephina drove towards New Jersey with Deborah’s body. They stopped in a remote forest where Gary dragged Deborah’s body under a tree and simply left it there.

The next day, he talked to Josephina about needing a girl and suggested driving around the area. He had become somewhat more lenient with the women in the cellar; she now had thin mattresses and even a television. Josephina and Gary set off, and they eventually found a new woman, Agnes Adams.

As always, Gary assaulted her when they arrived at his house. Agnes was to be Gary’s last victim.

On March 24th, 1987, Josephina persuaded Gary that she absolutely had to see her family. By then, Gary trusted her so much that he agreed. He dropped Josephina off at a gas station where he planned to wait for her.

Josephina ran down the street, and as she turned the corner, she sprinted off. She hadn’t even known she could run so fast. When she arrived at her boyfriend Vincent’s house, she banged on the door. Vincent thought he was dreaming when he opened it and saw Josephina standing there. Everything poured out of her. She told him that she had been held captive with other women in a basement.

She spoke of the torture, the dog food, and even the murders. Vincent couldn’t believe any of it. He wondered if his girlfriend had completely lost it. Josephina then simply grabbed the phone and called the police. She knew she didn’t have much time, or Gary would kill the other women in the basement. Police officers came to Josephina’s apartment and spoke with her.

She briefly explained what she had experienced over the past few months and that she had finally escaped. She said Gary would be waiting for her at the gas station. So, instead of Josephina, police officers set off. The officers followed the route to the gas station and indeed saw the Cadillac Josephina had described, and the man in the car also matched her description.

Gary offered no resistance when the handcuffs clicked shut. Other officers headed to Gary’s house. Josephina had described to them very precisely where the other women were in the basement. One of the police officers went down the basement stairs and saw two women sleeping half-naked on a thin mattress. The officer woke them.

The two women screamed in fright. He told them he was with the police and asked if there were any more women in the house. The two women pointed to the board on the floor, and the officer pushed the board aside. A third young woman was trapped in the hole. All three were freed, and an emergency doctor was already waiting for them upstairs.

The house was cordoned off and, of course, thoroughly searched. The severed forearm was still in the refrigerator. It took several days until all the evidence was secured. Gary was remanded in custody until his trial.

On April 23, 1987, the first hearing took place in District Court. Gary Heidnik’s bail was set at 4 million US dollars, but it was supposed to take over a year, more precisely until July 20, 1988, for the trial to begin. The prosecutor tried to portray Gary as a beast and a monster. Gary’s defense said he was the real victim because he simply didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. Furthermore, his lawyer claimed he was a victim of his military service in the 1960s, where he had been subjected to experiments with illegal substances.

The surviving women all testified in court; they told of their lives in the cellar and of the daily punishments and torture. On June 30, 1988, after 10 days of hearings, the jury retired to deliberate. On July 1, after 16 hours of deliberation, the verdict was reached: guilty of the murders of Deborah Dudley and Sandra Lindsay, guilty six times of kidnapping, five times of rape, four times of aggravated assault, and once of abnormal sexual intercourse.

On July 3, a judge handed down the sentence: death by lethal injection plus 300 years in prison. Gary was taken to the Philadelphia County Jail, where he undertook several attempts to kill himself. His lawyers appealed, but everything was rejected. Gary submitted clemency petitions to the governor, but these were also rejected.

He submitted his last petition to the Supreme Court in 1997, but the pardon was also denied. Gary could do nothing more but accept his fate. Gary’s execution was scheduled for April 15, 1999, but his now 19-year-old daughter obtained a stay of execution, citing her father’s poor mental health. Then, on July 6, 1999, Gary Heidnik was executed by lethal injection at the Rockview State Correctional Institution.

He was pronounced dead at 10:29 PM.

Jacqueline Askins, Agnes Adams, and Lisa Thomas are all almost deaf from the screwdriver torture. The nearly $500,000 that Gary had earned from stock market trading was divided among the three women as compensation. Josephina Rivera unfortunately relapsed into addiction to illegal substances after her release.

The time in the basement massively changed her, and she still suffers from the consequences today. She often panics when she walks past a construction site and sees construction workers in a hole, or when she sees a screwdriver. In the worst case, all of this can trigger weeks of depression for her. But Josephina fought on, and now she has been clean for years.

Since 2010, she has also had contact with her children. She is now a grandmother with six grandchildren. She has also published two books about the horrific events in Gary Heidnik’s basement.