"It Only Takes About Four Minutes": Arthur Shawcross in Prison

Name: "It Only Takes About Four Minutes": Arthur Shawcross in Prison
Uploaded: 2019-11-10
Duration: 1 min 28 s
Description: In two short excerpts from a prison interview, Arthur Shawcross talked about Anna Marie Steffen, how he knew when his victims were dead, and a Vietnam beheading story that his service record does not support.

In two short excerpts from a prison interview, Arthur Shawcross talked about Anna Marie Steffen, how he knew when his victims were dead, and a Vietnam beheading story that his service record does not support.

Subject: Arthur Shawcross
Runtime: 1:28

Content warning: A serial killer describes strangling a woman and how long it takes his victims to die, and tells a story of beheading a woman.

The Interview

This 88-second video, posted online by a student for a school project, joins two short excerpts of an on-camera prison interview with Arthur Shawcross. In the first, an off-camera interviewer asks him about Anna Marie Steffen, one of the women he killed in Rochester in 1988. He appears to say he met her in front of a business on Lake Avenue, says "possibly" when asked whether he remembers killing her, and describes how he knew when his victims were dead. In the second excerpt he tells a story of beheading a woman with a machete in Vietnam.

Historical Context

In 1972, in Watertown, New York, Shawcross killed two children, Jack Blake, 10, and Karen Ann Hill, 8. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Hill case and served about fourteen years before being paroled. Settled in Rochester, he killed women there between 1988 and 1989, many of them sex workers, leaving several bodies near the Genesee River and Salmon Creek. He was arrested on January 5, 1990, after police watched him on a bridge over Salmon Creek near where June Cicero's body was found. At his Monroe County trial in late 1990 he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; the jury convicted him of ten murders. He later admitted an eleventh killing in Wayne County and was sentenced to a total of 250 years. He died in custody on November 10, 2008.

Circumstances of the Interview

Shawcross gave many interviews in prison to journalists, film-makers and psychiatrists. The source of these excerpts is not credited. The most likely candidate is the British documentary "Interview with a Serial Killer", released in 2008, which was made around prison interviews with him; this has not been confirmed. The interviewer is not identified.

What the Interview Covers

Shawcross appears to say he met Ann Marie (Anna Marie) Steffen in front of a business on Lake Avenue in Rochester. Asked whether he remembers killing her, he says "Yeah, possibly", and appears to refuse to go into details. Asked how he killed her, he appears to answer "strangulation". Asked how he knew when his victims were dead, he says the body relaxes and stops fighting, and that it takes "about four minutes, probably". In the second excerpt he describes seeing a woman in her thirties carrying rifles down a hill in Vietnam, coming up behind her and cutting off her head with a new machete.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The excerpts show Shawcross speaking calmly about a named victim and the method of killing, and repeating the Vietnam story that he told many interviewers and psychiatrists. Experts who reviewed his claims, including former FBI profiler Robert Ressler, who called them "patently outrageous and untrue", regarded his war stories as false.

Archival Importance

Shawcross's claims about Vietnam were central to the insanity defence at his trial, where his lawyers argued that war trauma had damaged him. Recordings of him telling those stories in his own words are useful for comparing what he claimed with what the record shows.

Important Caveats

The Vietnam story is Shawcross's claim. He was drafted in 1967 and served one tour in Vietnam with a supply and transport unit; he did not serve in combat, and his accounts of atrocities are not supported by his service record. The video is a student's compilation of two edited excerpts, not an interview in full, and its source is not confirmed. There are no YouTube captions, and two key words (whether he says "met" and whether he says "strangulation") rest on machine passes that disagree; they are marked in the transcript.

Arthur Shawcross: I [unclear: "met" / "'m at"] Ann Marie Steffen, I think, in front of the Fingerhut on Lake Avenue.

Interviewer: Do you remember killing her?

Arthur Shawcross: Yeah, possibly.

Arthur Shawcross: We're not going into details here.

Interviewer: No, but how did you kill her?

Arthur Shawcross: [unclear: "Probably strangulation" / "She strangle at you"].

Interviewer: How do you know when they're dead?

Arthur Shawcross: [unclear: "No" / "I"], I don't know, just do. More or less after they just relax, the body relax, it doesn't fight no more. It only takes about four minutes, probably. Sometimes less than that.

Arthur Shawcross: And I see a woman in her thirties coming down this hill carrying two AKs on this side and two AKs on this side, barrel down. I reach over my shoulder like this, right behind my neck, and I pull out a brand-new machete. When she [unclear: "backed out" / "passed"] and I come up behind her, I took her head right there. I took a couple of hits, but the head came off. The body dropped to the ground, and she just bled out. ---