In an attempt to settle into a normal routine, Arthur took a job at the Watertown Public Works Department as a handyman and married a third time. His new wife, Penny Nichol, was a school friend of his sister Jeannie and had two children from a former relationship. Shawcross claims that up to this time, he was still having a sexual relationship with Jeannie and that she had introduced him to Penny because she had fallen pregnant to her boyfriend and couldn't continue their relationship.
By his recollection, after five months, the relationship with Penny seemed to be going well and at one stage she fell pregnant but later miscarried. Sometime later, he claims that the marriage came under threat when Penny's father accused Arthur of sexually assaulting Penny's younger sister.
Shawcross said he denied the allegation but from that time on, Penny's parents spent a great deal of time around the house watching him. What makes both the miscarriage and the alleged assault interesting is the fact that, by his own admission, Shawcross was incapable of maintaining an erection or ejaculating making the possibility of him fathering a child very difficult. Secondly, regarding the assault, during his interviews with Dr. Joel Norris for the book "Arthur Shawcross: The Genesee Killer," he seems confused wether Penny's sister is named Rose or Jill.
One thing is known to be fact; Arthur Shawcross spent a great deal of his spare time fishing in the creeks and rivers around Watertown. As a result, he came to know many of the town's children and often shared the same spots with them. One of his regular fishing companions was ten-year-old Jack Blake and on one occasion, Arthur had gone to the boy's house to ask Jack's mother Mary if Jack could go fishing with him. According to Mary, when she refused, Arthur was polite and agreed that she had made the right decision.
Four months later, on the morning of June 4 1972, Jack went out to play near the Cloverdale apartment block where Shawcross lived and never came home. Later that night, while out looking for her son, Mary Blake knocked on Arthur's door to ask where her son was. He told her that he hadn't seen him since that morning. The truth of the matter was that Shawcross had taken Jack into the woods and after stripping him naked and forcing him to run through the woods, had caught him and sexually molested him before finally strangling him and battering him about the head. Later Shawcross would admit to removing the boy's heart and genitals and eating them. Although Shawcross was a suspect in the boy's disappearance, no action was taken due to lack of evidence.
Three months later, while the police were still searching for Jack Blake, eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill was found dead under a bridge near Black River, she had been raped, mutilated and strangled. When a police investigation revealed that Hill and Shawcross had been seen together earlier the same day, Shawcross again became a suspect. After they received another report that Shawcross was seen eating an ice cream at the bridge near where the body was found, the police picked Arthur Shawcross up and took him in for questioning.
He was interrogated at police headquarters for a full day before he surprised police by asking them in front of his defence attorney, "What's going to happen to me if I tell you something?"
After several more hours of interviews and plea-bargaining, Arthur Shawcross pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Karen Ann Hill. He was later convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. To this day, he has never been charged with the murder of Jack Blake even though he later admitted to the rape and murder and showed police where he had dumped the body. He later told prison psychiatrists that he had returned to the gravesite on several occasions to have sex with the corpse.
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