Beginning in November 1986, Heidnik, a former soldier who had made a small fortune on the stock market, abducted five women and held them in the basement of his house in Philadelphia. The captives were sexually abused, beaten and tortured in front of each other. When the first one died of her mistreatment, Heidnik dismembered her body. Heidnik ground it in a food-processor mixing it with dog food, which he then fed to the surviving victims.
Heidnick had a problem dealing with the arms and legs so he put them in a freezer and marked them "dog food". Heidnik cooked her ribs in an oven and her head was boiled in a pot on the stove. A second woman bound in chains died when she was thrown in a filled bathtub and house current applied to those chains. She was electrocuted for not cooperating.
Heidnik would torture and sexually abuse the women individually or in groups. He dug a four-foot-deep pit that he would throw a "misbehaving" victim in. The pit would then be covered with plywood and heavy weights. The victims were also encouraged to inform on each other in return for better conditions.
One of the kidnapped women managed to escape on March 24, 1987. She had convinced Heidnik to let her go out, promising to bring back another captive for him, but instead she went straight to the authorities who secured a search warrant. Heidnik was arrested.
At his arraignment, Heidnik used a unique, and ultimately unintelligent, defense: he claimed that the women were already in the house when he moved in. Clearly, this argument failed to impress the judge.
Convicted of two counts of murder in 1988, Heidnik was sentenced to death. In January 1999 he attempted suicide with an overdose of prescribed thorazine. Heidnik was executed by lethal injection on July 6, 1999.
During his trial, Heidnik repeatedly denied all allegations of mistreatment of his captives, and claimed that Sandra Lindsay was killed by the other captives for being a lesbian. Before his execution, Heidnik reportedly went on a tirade, claiming that he wanted to be executed because the execution of an innocent man would stop executions in America.
Heidnik's method of keeping his captives in a deep hole in his basement was emulated by the character "Buffalo Bill" in the Thomas Harris' novel The Silence of the Lambs, which was later adapted into a motion picture.
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