THE GENESEE RIVER KILLER

The year was 1968, then twenty-three year old Arthur Shawcross was drafted into the army. He was another brave solider going into the realms of hell for his country in Vietnam. If he were to die, he would have been remembered as another great American hero. Instead, Shawcross would eventually be remembered as a much more sinister figure. Things become fuzzy right off the back and one is left to decide what is fact and what is fiction. Shawcross claimed that he took the lives of two young peasant women working with Vietcong. He bragged that he raped, tortured, murdered, and cannibalized the two women. He also enjoyed telling about the string of preadolescent prostitutes in Saigon that he slaughtered. This was all he had from his service for he won no medals, no rewards, and according to the army had no kills. Shawcross was discharged from the army after serving one tour. After his short lived military career, Shawcross was having trouble settling back into the reality of life in the states. He sought help through an army psychiatrist who recommended a stay at the army mental health hospital for the violent flashbacks he was experiencing. There is great speculation as to whether or not Shawcross truly suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. However, he had a religious wife who at the time felt that he did not need a stay at the hospital and would not sign the consent papers.

This was a bad decision on his wife’s part. For soon after this, Shawcross started setting fires. One fire in particular, a paper factory where he was employed. This caused an estimated $280,000 worth of damage, no one was killed. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Lucky for Shawcross, he decided to save the life of a prison guard during a riot. For this he was released from prison after serving only two years.

Less then one year after parole, Shawcross’ malign side could not be contained. The day was June 4th, 1972 and Shawcross claims he was walking in some open lots near his home when he found a neighborhood boy, ten year old Jack Blake, stuck in a mud hole. Shawcross being the good citizen he liked to pretend to be helped the boy out of the hole and then told him to get home and clean up. The boy, according to Shawcross wanted to follow him instead. Shawcross then lost his temper and hit the boy savagely with a blow to the neck. He then raped and strangled the boy. At one point Shawcross claimed that he removed the child’s penis, testicles, and heart which he consumed. After his arrest, he told a psychiatrist that he put the boy in a shallow grave. In turn, he dug the body up and had sex with it. He would later deny cannibalizing parts of the boy. Three months after this murder, he was thirsty again and found the perfect victim in eight year old Karen Ann Hill. He was fishing in one of his spots when he laid eyes on her. He raped the girl and then buried her alive. He forced leaves and mud into her throat and nostrils until she suffocated. He then covered her with debris and left her there in her shallow grave underneath a bridge. Then he made a mistake, a mistake that he would not learn from. He returned to the spot where he had left her body. He brought an ice cream cone with him. He was noticed and immediately became the main suspect.

Shawcross was no fool, he decided to make a deal with the prosecutor in order to lighten his sentence. He confessed to Karen Hill’s murder and led them to her body. He also led police to Jack Blake’s body, but was not charged with his murder. There was lack of evidence and the body was to badly decomposed for examination. Shawcross was given the maximum sentence of twenty-five years with the possibility of parole in fifteen years for manslaughter in the 1st degree.

In March 1987, Shawcross was released on parole against many prison psychiatrists’ objections. There was even a comment left by a parole officer that stated, “this man is possibly the most dangerous individual to have been released into the community in many years.” Shawcross found it quite hard living outside the prison walls. No one wanted to live or work next to a child rapist and murderer. So he sought protection and he got it. His file was no longer accessible and he was sent to Rochester, New York in January 1988 where no one knew his name. Over the course of two and a half years Shawcross indulged in his malice ways.
He needed easy prey, but missing children are noticed too quickly. He eventually decided on Lyell Avenue, a district known for prostitution. The men and women that worked in this type of business came up missing for numerous reasons. Many cases remained unsolved with no one worrying about it either way. Shawcross took advantaged of this. All together he would claim the lives of eleven women.

Shawcross was an average looking man. He even had a friendly demeanor to him, which helped to get the women in his car so easily. His method for murder was strangulation and battery. Police knew that he was fast and strong. The victims didn’t have many signs of putting up a defense. It also appeared that he strangled them with little effort. Once he got the first victim, he didn’t waste a lot of time on the next two. This is when he was given his notorious title of The Genesee River Killer. For his victims were dumped into or around the Genesee River. This got the attention of police. When a prostitue ends up dead it is not a shock but when many are turning up dead by the same method, back to back there was something more dark happening. After starting to identify victims, the police began figuring out who these women were, they decided to try and talk to co- workers of these women.

Jo Ann Van Nostrand was a larger women who could take care of herself quite well, she was a professional at her game. She decided to talk to the police. She told them about a man that gave her the name of “Mitch”. She told them that he had talked about the strangler and wanted her to play dead during intercourse. She mentioned that he was very nervous and that he attempted to grab her throat several times. She was quoted in The Mind of a Serial Killer, “He was real nervous and that made me nervous. Little things kept clicking and the hairs on the back of my neck started standing up." The police also looked into prisoners that had been released from the upper New York prisons with histories of violent sex crimes. They found nothing.

Shawcross did not just kill prostitutes during his reign of terror. He also killed an acquaintance of his family. Her name was June Scotts. She was thirty years old and mildly retarded. The story that Shawcross told police went like this. He offered June a ride to the beach, it was a abnormally warm day in the fall. He took her to an isolated area, he strangled her and then raped her lifeless body. Shawcross was quoted as saying, “(he) cut her wide open in a straight line from neck to asshole. Cut out her pussy and ate it. I was one sick person.”

Shawcross’ nasty habit for returning to the dumping sites of his victims finally caught up with him. In June 1990, the police had left the last victim were they found her. Through a profiler, they assumed that the killer would return and that was when they would get him. They were right. A police helicopter spotted Shawcross either urinating or masturbating on a bridge over the place where they found that last victim. They wanted an interview with him.

Shawcross was a man who put up no fight when it came to talking. He basically spilled his guts to police shortly after they took him in for questioning. However, though the whole interview he showed no signs of remorse. At one point, he even blamed his victims for their own demise stating that they ridiculed him over his sexual inadequacies.

In November 1990, Shawcross went to trial for the murder of ten women. All of the women had been killed in Monroe County except for one, Elizabeth Gibson who was murdered in Wayne County. Shawcross plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis was on the defense team and testified that Shawcross was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, multiple personality disorder and that there was a chance he was abused as a child. Shawcross claimed he was molested by an aunt. That he was sodomized by his mother and raped by a pedophile. He claimed that he regularly had sex with a sister and cousin. He stated that he was forced to perform oral sex on his then girlfriend’s brother. Finally, he stated that he had practiced bestiality. Many people involved in the case felt that these claims were stories that Shawcross made up to help his insanity plea. One is left to decided for themselves whether or not these situations really happened or not. None of this actually helped Shawcross, he was found to be sane and guilty of his crimes. He was sentenced to serve ten consecutive twenty five year terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

A few months later, Shawcross was taken to Wayne County for the murder of Gibson. This time Shawcross had lost the will to try and fight it so he plead guilty, in which he was found of and sentenced to serve a twenty five year term without the possibility of parole. Shawcross was sent to the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York. On November 10th, 2008 Shawcross complained about leg pain. He had complained three days before of the same pain. He was sent to Albany Medical Center were he went into cardiac arrest and died.