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Arthur Shawcross, Serving Life for Strangling 11 Women Around Rochester, Dies After Complaining of Leg Pain

A state review later found that grossly negligent medical care at Sullivan Correctional Facility contributed to his death from a blood clot.

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Illustration of a quiet hospital corridor at night with an empty gurney and a nurse walking away. Not an actual scene from the case.

Arthur Shawcross was serving life in prison for strangling 11 women in the Rochester, New York, area. On November 10, 2008, he died at an Albany hospital, aged 63, after complaining of leg pain at the Sullivan Correctional Facility.

The cause was at first under investigation. The New York State Commission of Correction later found that Shawcross died of a pulmonary embolism caused by a large blood clot, and that "grossly negligent, incompetent and inadequate medical evaluation and treatment" had contributed to his death.

Shawcross's victims, most of them prostitutes, were killed between March 1988 and January 1990. He was on parole at the time after serving 15 years for killing two children in Watertown, New York, in 1972. He was arrested in January 1990, a day after state police spotted him near the body of one of the women. In December 1990, after a 13-week trial, a jury convicted him of killing 10 of them, rejecting his insanity defense, and three months later he pleaded guilty to strangling an 11th woman, whose body was found in Wayne County.

The Associated Press reported that Shawcross complained of leg pain earlier on the day he died, while the Commission of Correction found that he had first complained of leg pain on November 7.

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