Interview With A Serial Killer (Documentary) | Real Stories

you [Music] Sullivan Correctional Facility just outside Fallsburg New York State it's a maximum-security prison home to some of America's most violent criminals one of them is Arthur J Shawcross Shawcross was murdered 11 women and is serving a 250 year prison sentence his case has raised serious questions about what causes extreme violence and what we understand about the nature of evil itself we've come to meet him face to face to see if he would tell us what made him such a violent killer people on the outside do not know what evil is do you know what evil is shirk are you evil someone [Music] Rochester New York State 30 miles from the Canadian border it's a provincial city of a million people set amongst the gorges and Falls of the Genesee River it's a middle class town but it also has a dark side Lyall Avenue is a mile long dragged through one of the city's rundown neighborhoods home to its seedy red light district in March 1988 women began disappearing from the strips Dorothea Blackburn was a 27 year old prostitute and mother of three her body was found in a nearby river bed she'd been strangled to death in July and Marie's Stefan a 27 year old cocaine addict also went missing her decomposed body was found on the banks of the Genesee River anne-marie Steffen remember meeting her I met Anne Marie Stephan's I think in front of the finger hood our league a woman do you remember killing her yeah possibly I'm not going into details you know but how did you kill her probably strangulation how do you know when they're dead oh I'll just do more or less after they just relaxed body relax doesn't play come on no one takes both four minutes probably sometimes less than that to the outside world Shawcross was just a regular guy he lived here in this apartment on Alexander Street with his fourth wife Rose he worked nights at the local cheese factory and spend much of his free time fishing the banks of the Genesee River but he was living a double life he had a mistress Clara and was a regular visitor to Lisle Avenue got a wife you got a mistress and you were also seeing prostitutes quite regularly and other people I guess I could say I was enjoying myself for almost one year Shawcross killed no one then in July 1989 police found the body of an elderly homeless woman Dorothy Keeler Dorothy was a found down on a Seth Green out on the Genesee River and she was bones so we really didn't know at the time why he killed her she used to live in my house in my apartment for a while she a friend she was till she start stealing stuff out of the house I asked her why he's stealing she needed money and I said you have a bank account I was paying her four dollars and 25 cents an hour just to clean the apartment so she was thieving from here she was taken from me and my wife Rose does that warrant killing her huh does that warrant killing her well Tamiya did but Shawcross didn't just kill Dorothy kala he would later return to Haddad corpse and he came back and visited he came back and visited and he took her skull her head and threw in on Genesee River after you killed her you went back later to see the body is that right now I went back to clean up she was found with her head removed did you does this ring how did that happen he could pick it up and move it what you just pulled the head off yeah it was already on Shawcross had now murdered three women but his blaze of terror had only just begun in Rochester New York State the bodies of murdered women have begun appearing around the banks of the Genesee River and throughout the autumn of 1989 the killings continued on the 27th of October Patricia Ives was found strangled to death behind the town's YMCA and just four weeks later the killings were to take an even more sinister turn you know the one that I remember the most remote stuck with me all these years his young woman by name doing stock and June was not it was not a prostitute but she was a little slow she had a acted much younger than her age I think the thing that was most disturbing about it is that when her body was turned over she was on her stomach and they turned her over he had to come back and Visser rated her cut her open right from the neck right down to the vagina how was it fit anger you know we spent a day down Turning Point Park you know feeding the Ducks and walking around and making out then she is flipped don't jumped up says I'm going to scream scream go tell the cops I had snapped her snapped her neck stayed there all day until dark and split her open her neck from groin I didn't go all the way deep into that stomach area just split her open I don't wine that was really disturbing cuz if you're at that time we didn't know what we're looking for now you got a guy who's certainly we believe was the same guy but is his activities increasing because what he's doing at the scenes is becoming more severe all the time [Music] the killing of June starts was a turning point for the police a pattern was now emerging all of the murdered women were from vulnerable backgrounds most of them have been slowly strangled the bodies were being dumped around the Genesee River and the killer appeared to be revisiting and mutilating them the Rochester police now suspected they had a serial killer on their hands and they called in the FBI the situation on the ground when I first arrived was a lot of stress a massive police involvement in this thing that there's no doubt in their mind they had a serial killer working up there and so you it's like walking into a pressure cooker you know what it's just intense police were chasing down hundreds of leads and yet somehow the killer still seemed able to blend into the background one of the big questions was why how's he getting these women the prostitutes are scared to death and they're being killed yet he seems to have no trouble getting them the answer is he's a regular client they know him they go with him they have successful sex he drives and back drops them off and no problem so they're not afraid to go with him it's just some nights it goes terribly wrong we're trying to think how can these prostitutes make these mistakes knowing that there is a perpetrator on the street that is that's snatching them right under police surveillance I think the prostitutes and maybe to a degree some of the investigators are looking for like a real weird guy or somebody really really out of sync with what was going on when in fact it was just the opposite you want to look for somebody who really was very much attuned to that scene and very comfortable in that environment but despite a massive police clampdown the killing continued undercover police officers now poured into Lisle Avenue posing as pimps and punters but Shawcross wasn't fazed by their presence he continued to hang out on the street I'm sitting on a stoop and I get shiny shoes on like a cup shoe his nice dress in this guy sits down beside me he starts talking about the case pointing out all the decoys I'm laughing at why were you laughing at it I thought it was hilarious you know he didn't know who I was but he had to open his mouth he thought he was talking to somebody on the team and he was actually talking to the killer yeah we subsequently found out that he did hang out at a Dunkin Donuts and and the police would be in there themselves talking about the homicide investigation and what they were doing not giving up intimate details but how they were focused on on looking at every vehicle that went down the road and maybe writing down plate numbers and running dadís he was listening to that information and and even told them that you know that that he had told his girlfriend to be careful out there because there was a bad guy out there that was picking up women and killing them all this time Shawcross kept up his normal routine working at the cheese factory going home to loyal wife rose but the girls kept going missing on the 17th of December 1989 June Cicero one of the streets most notorious hookers disappeared from Lisle Avenue she was the madam of the street she was the meanest prostitute in the city of Rochester and they all respected - in Cicero Shawcross had picked her up in the chevrolet celebrity that he borrowed from his mistress Clara how did June Cicero die how did you kill her strangle him mostly mail left him what's that he's stronger than with just one hand all right right there pressure point Shawcross drove the dead body of June Cicero out of town towards nearby Northampton Park it was snowing real bad one night and I went out route 19 I think it was and I crossed over on 31 headed back toward the city and there was no cars coming and I guess open the door and pushed her out she went over to bridge shoulders knocked some snow down went down in the water and he had closed the door and kept going the police were now to get a crucial break while searching Northampton Park for the body of yet another missing woman McCaffrey made a dramatic sighting we were less than two minutes into the flight from Northampton Park back to Rochester when we flew over Salman Creek and underneath the bridge I could see a body frozen in the ice it was the body of June Cicero and then McCaffrey spotted a suspicious-looking car on the bridge itself the passenger door was open and appeared that he had been urinating out of the car and that's what we could see and as the helicopter flew by he closed the passenger door and slid across into the driver's seat inserted to proceed easterly on route 31 it was what the police had been waiting for FBI profilers had highlighted the killer's pattern of returning to the dead bodies and McCaffrey decided to follow the Chevrolet as our driving Spencerport the helicopter is flying above me it didn't dawn on me what was going on but the body of June Cicero was found very close to where you were on the bridge you know that was just down a road away you know and I didn't register what was going on I forgot she was there [Music] it is my belief that Shawcross returned to the bridge to make sure that the body was far enough under the bridge so we couldn't observe it as the body of June Cicero was recovered from under the ice the driver of the suspicious car was taken into questioning by the police 21 months into their investigation police had now finally pulled in Arthur Shaw cross and when they ran his name through the system they found an astonishing personal history a trail of murder stretching back almost 20 years [Music] Shawcross had grown up around Watertown 100 miles east of Rochester in May 1972 an eight-year-old girl Karen Hill was reported missing fearing she drowned the police began searching the banks of the Black River and we went over the bank and I went one side officer passer went on the other side and he says here she is I walked over under the bridge we saw this little body buried and stood with the stones on her and her little feet sticking up we knew she was dead because the whole upper torso was buried in rocks and she was dead you know she was cold and those guys are tough policemen you have to understand and they were walking up from the embankment to shaking their heads I heard one of them say he stuffed her mouth with dirt and mud to keep her quiet and a sniffer dog led the detectives from the body of Karen hill to clover Street and the home of Arthur Shawcross Shawcross was then 27 years old and was living with his third wife penny he'd had a troubled childhood and a history of petty criminality he was arrested and brought in for questioning well he was a lot different then he was thin just out of the army he was in good shape looks like he had very strong arms restoring hands and when he was agitated really agitated he was scary you wouldn't want to be in the room with him alone he looked a little strange to be honest with you and I did not get in the cell with him like I ordinarily would I would always stay outside the cell so we had that still parties between us and talk to him there police now spent three days trying to get Shawcross to admit his guilt and it appears that he made some sort of a confession it wasn't a airtight compassion he said something to the effect either I could have done it or I might have done it what did you do to young Karen help I ain't saying I told you I wouldn't talk about that I wasn't talking about anything that happened in Watertown why not cuz I make there I'm not talking about anybody in Watertown you can either take it believe it but another child was missing too four months earlier 10 year-old Jack Blake had also disappeared Shawcross had often gone fishing with the young boy and police suspected that he was responsible but they had no hard evidence and with only a confession linking him to the death of Caron Hill police decided to offer Shawcross a deal tell them what he'd done to Jack Blake and faced a lesser charge for the murder of Karen hill so we had a conference in which mr. Shawcross explained to them what happened and what he did and how he killed the Blake boy this was part of the plea bargain arrangement that he would would explain that case for them Shawcross directed police to the body of the young boy which they found by train tracks just out of town he was naked and it seemed he'd been raped before being strangled to death [Music] but as part of his plea bargain Shawcross wasn't charged with the killing of Jack Blake and faced a reduced charge for the killing of Karen Hill mr. Shawcross pled guilty to manslaughter he was given the maximum sentence 25 years oh the public was outraged they were furious and they were very upset about the plea bargain I'm sure the public wanted a murder conviction people wanted justice and no matter the law had to be upheld and nothing could be done more than what was done but it was terribly frustrating for everybody that not more it could have been done Shawcross served less than 15 years of his sentence before being released on parole in April 1987 just 15 months later he had settled in Rochester and his trial of murder had begun again but headshot grassman held responsible for murder in the second degree and received what would have been a well deserved maximum sentence of 25 to life at the time I know one thing as sure as I'm sitting here he would not have committed these other homicides [Music] now armed with the knowledge of the Watertown killings the police in Rochester were convinced they had their man and they began to put the screws on Arthur Shawcross there were several the prostitutes that were still missing and they played on that the interviewers and they said look art there's there's there's girls out there that are missing that that that we know you killed they had a stack photographs of the victims like a bunch of playing cards and he took the stack and like a deck of cards dealt out the ones that he was responsible for and then they went back and talked to him about each one in the David confession to each and every one why did you confess to it why I just got tired of it after 14 16 hours later tired of water all what was coming out I just couldn't handle it police now had their confession and Shawcross was charged with the murder of 11 women as he was sent for trial there was no doubt that he had committed the murders but why had he done it as medical experts began to examine him serious questions emerged as to whether or not Arthur Shawcross might actually be insane [Music] Arthur Shawcross has now been arrested and was awaiting trial for the murder of eleven women there was no doubt he had killed them but his defense team now set about exploring a fundamental question what made Arthur Shawcross act so violently everybody knows there's something wrong with Arthur short clothes he's not a normal person everybody you know that just from the beginning so what is it could there be something neurologically wrong with him eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus has examined the brains of numerous serial killers and believes that damage to certain areas of the brain is a major factor in causing extreme violence the brain scan of Arthur Shawcross fitted this pattern if you have a lesion on the MRI you've got an abnormality in the EEG coming from exactly the same place and behavior that's rather bizarre that comes from this part of the brain I think it's likely that the abnormality of the brain has something to do with his behavior so much that I think that had he not been neurologically abnormal I think he probably would not have been a serial murderer but brain damage alone is rarely decisive Shawcross was also subjected to an in-depth examination by a senior Yale psychiatrist what we discovered and then we're able to verify was the fact that he was horribly mistreated sexually as a child in the course of the interviews he relived some of that experience which was out of his conscious awareness dr. Lewis led Shawcross through a series of interviews some conducted under a form of hypnosis what's happening what what are you doing Ryu moaning peanuts Bart what's happening what happened what did mommy do mom's got you there what is she doing what and what happened why are you crying and what do you say to me buddy [Music] Oh what did your mother do my mother gave me oral sex she performing oral sex on me for several years and I was 14 years old a dead intercourse and I ran away I put his pen sign a note on my pillow my bedroom I'm going to Syracuse and I turn around went to Canada I just didn't want to go home because you were being abused yes sure I was he very young he ran away from home he used to hide under the teacher's desk he was an extremely bizarre and troubled child very very early on so that there's a consistency to to this history of of abuse dr. Lewis argued that the brain damage had caused him to suffer a phenomenon known as partial seizure just prior to the murder there would be some event very often some disagreement or some threat to him where the woman may have said I'll tell your wife about this or something and then he would see bright bright white light and then the next thing he know he would wake up and he would wake up often in his car and he would look beside him and there would be a body he did not have conscious knowledge of what he was doing or conscious control over what he was doing defense experts argued that like many other serial killers Shawcross suffered a toxic combination of physical and mental damage I would say it's three things interacting it's brain damage mental illness and the experience of having been abused every one of those things is a factor in it they interact so that if you didn't have one of them the likelihood of violence would be tremendously reduced the defense entered a plea of not guilty by means of insanity in essence they argued that Shawcross was not responsible for his actions it was an argument that provoked derision from both prosecution and police alike few things are more tragic than the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts and I think that's the answer there it's a beautiful theory but it was just laid low by the facts claim his mother put a broom handle inserted it into his anus and shoved it up was his description that clearly would have resolved it in major trauma there was no evidence of any such trauma during the trial I received a call from his mother she questioned why is he saying these things I never why why they claiming these things your mom has obviously denied that anything like that happened everyone would can you pitch what would happen to a person she admitted she did [ __ ] like that to me I mean they say they said you know I score the Shockers say well there was no sexual abuse and you younger how they know I know cuz I I was there I know what I had go through well they say they checked all the medical records I didn't have medical records when my mother was abusing me you think my mother took me to a doctor because she was giving me oral sex that's [ __ ] if he was lying and he hadn't been sexually abused that would confound you would will indeed a it's almost inconceivable that he was not sexually abused crucial to the defence case was the argument that sure crosses mental seizures meant he had no knowledge of what he was doing if you didn't know what you were doing at all why do you make efforts to hide anything why do you deposit the bodies in a genesee Gore jury where they're less likely to be found I think all those facts really speak to someone who knew exactly what he was doing prosecutor thinks that his upbringing was completely normal this is just a man who was bad he's evil and he killed those women because he wanted to do it and he enjoyed doing it but that's not normal I don't know matter what the prosecutor feels is normal that's not normal is somebody who kills a person mentally ill probably is somebody who kills 11 people here and has killed two kids before got issues absolutely but that's not the claim it's not the argument that they're not in some way the issue is you don't qualify for consent an insanity defense Shawcross knew what he was doing and if you know it's wrong then you're responsible for your ass that's the way it works during the trial the defense also argued that Shawcross had been brutalized by his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam what happened in Vietnam a lot of things happen in Vietnam yeah I went to Vietnam as a weapon specialist and I had my own bunker and just outside of Khartoum Vietnam Central Highlands Shawcross claims he often ventured out into the jungle as a one-man unit hunting down enemy via Cong and I see a woman in her 30s coming down this hill carrying two eight K's on this side in to aks on this side barrel down so I reach over my shoulder like this right behind my neck and I pull out a brand-new machete when she backed out and I come up behind her on took her head right there I took a couple of hits but the head came off she body dropped to the ground you just bled out he claims he then set about cooking the dead woman's body to extract information from her friend I split the body in half opened up a pouch and I had some c4 plastic explosives lit a cigarette just touched it and it started lit up like a miniature Sun and I just laid the flesh up on top of that stick right and I bit into them into the flesh itself you know just staring at her eyes and she urinated and defecating on herself and she talked to me and broken English so she told me everything I wanted to know I go in and I reported in salute Lila carp the colonel and he gets up and he says you one sick son of a [ __ ] but I love you none of that that we can tell is true this Vietnam experiences are greatly inflated and exaggerated there's no indication you ever went out and shot anyone much less cannibalize did any of the things that he claims to have done but despite his vivid recollections of combat Shawcross found few comrades in Vietnam but I can't remember nobody's name in Vietnam and that messes me up war often forms very close relationship she didn't film friendships with anyone out there no you gotta remember anyone's name no how long were you there for thirteen months what was your official position in Vietnam I was a specialist weapons specialist we were able to actually track down in preparation his commanding officer sergeant I think I even remember his name sergeant Weaver he was a supply clerk he didn't go out on these secret missions you know I'm not a bullshitter anything I tase facts of life you don't believe it that's your prerogative you can do what you want you know everybody reads what they want believes what they want you know here's what they want after hearing three weeks of evidence the jury were unconvinced by the argument that Shawcross was insane they found him guilty on all the counts of murder he was sentenced to 250 years in jail [Music] Shawcross has spent the last 18 years in a maximum-security prison he's confounded numerous attempts by psychologists to understand him and like many other serial killers his crimes have given him a McCaw of notoriety I get letters all over the world I get a lot of college student collar professors doctors lawyers psychiatrists psychologists you know all kinds of people from all walks of life do you see yourself as something of a celebrity here of course it won't weigh well everybody knows what I'm here for do you enjoy the attention sometimes sometimes you get to be a hassle and from his prison cell Shawcross continues to invent ever more imaginative justifications for his killing of the women in Rochester when I picked those women up I thought I had aged because one of the women who stopped in the car told me one of the women I took out his HIV positive I didn't know which one of them were so I went back and picked up all the ones they dated in two streets in Rochester and I started killing them and while I was doing I took vagina a three and hate it why I don't know probably just speed up to the idea of the AIDS disease so you heard it might kill you quicker problem just not a lot of people that I've ever spoken to have eaten human flesh the reason raw state greedy Stig's got fat on the end of it now similar but when you were holding by the police did you make any mention of the HIV no sir I did not suppose it some people might say well isn't that just an excuse to justify killing you believe what you wanna believe I told you how I killed why I killed you don't want to believe it that's up to you one thing however remains a taboo subject the killing of the two children in Watertown you're prepared to talk about what happened in Vietnam and killing all these prostitutes but I just wonder why you prepared to talk about it and not Watertown I don't want to talk about you say one more question I leave certainly he knows how we all feel about murdering children it's just obviously you know probably the most reprehensible thing anyone anyone can do and he understands that but the problem is he can't justify it he can't come up with a selling point or a way to mitigate that so he's just just not gonna talk about it but in 2001 someone was to enter Shore cross his life who'd force him to confront his darkest demons the daughter he never knew he had [Music] in 2001 Arthur Shawcross received dramatic news whilst on leave from the Army in the early 1960s he had a brief romance with a woman in Hawaii 40 years later the child from that relationship Maggie Deming discovered who her father was and decided to make contact my husband that for us was like you know don't go there you know do you realize that he killed children and I said well I can't just shut the door on this you know you know this is a part of my life that I just can't close the door what did you feel when you met him for the first time when he went to prison ha ha ha um apprehensive nervous I didn't didn't know what to think you know what to say hi dad he was very genteel he was very soft-spoken um very grandfatherly to my daughter he joked around a lot what about your daughter Maggie she's cool I've seen her just before you showed up does does your daughter Maggie know what you did does she know the details he has the information of everything I told her things you want to know but you're not gonna get like what uh you know what you're talking about things that happened in that other place well what's the town right the children that he had killed the children that their ages are about the same age as my children are now uh what he did to them like I said was a pretty graphic thing and that's gonna be between him and his maker that's gonna be treating him with his maker maggie has seven children of their own and she's been keen to make sure that they to have a relationship with their imprison grandfather my older children know what he done my younger children don't and my father kind of like said to me you know it's best that the younger ones don't know that sooner or later they're gonna find out they don't really advertise the fact that that their grandfather was a serial killer both Maggie and the grandchildren have become regular visitors to show cross in prison do you love Maggie very much did you love your grandchildren right I write to them all the time they send again the grandchildren the kids in the in school they send me their school tests and different things what they're doing in school send me pictures and I draw their picture I do portrait this is a horrible thought but I mean if someone were to you know rape and kill your grandchildren what should happen to them that's up to the law but what do you think should happen to them that's up to the law but what would you think of them as a father as a grandfather I would be devastated right do you have any comprehension of the suffering that you brought the families of the people that you killed I don't have any remorse for some reason but I find it strange that you can have you clearly feel affection for your your daughter and your very children are strange but you can't feel any empathy for all those people that the families of all the people that you killed and it's not there like I said him one saying it is saying I know something inside me is weird [Music] these events happened so far back in time these these things you really can't forget these sort of things you can't really forgive on the part of those parents you know having to live through that I don't regret the fact that he's my father I can't change it and I don't see all the Shawcross from Watertown with my children in 2008 in Sullivan correctional totally different people totally different there's always a bad man in me you never can get rid of it he's just behind a door somewhere I'm trying to keep him there I don't want to hurt nobody else really really I just a final question on that I mean what what why won't you talk about the two young [ __ ] it's over is it no because it because you're ashamed of it it's disconnect as this is over okay thank you very much for your time he put his arms round us and was just do exactly what I say he put his arm around my mouth and picked me up and put me in this bed I just froze I couldn't talk couldn't scream couldn't do nothing but the whole time I was just looking at Lisa and her face was up bright red and

Channel: Real Stories

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Rating: 4.6285067 out of 5

Keywords: Real Stories, Movies, Full length Documentaries, Arthur Shawcross, crime documentary, serial killer, serial killers, serial killer documentary, true crime, real stories documentaries, serial killer interview, psychopath documentary, serial killer (film genre), arthur shawcross, arthur shawcross interview, artur shawcross documentary, arthur shawcross interview with a serial killer, arthur shawcross watertown, real stories documentary

Id: NQNwjEkszvg

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Minnesota_Nice_87]

What's up with his neck?

[u/sonikaos]

His blinking was absolutely maddening to watch.

[u/coratmt]

I was friends with the two kids he killed. I was seven. It was fucked up. Jack lived behind me and Karen lived down the street.

[u/Ah-here]

Who is the interviewer, i keep hearing Louis Theroux ??