Vivienne Biedenkopf Written Spring 2023 for an independent study Edited Winter 2024 by Trap Staff ———————–——- F A N S O F T R U E C R I M E For fans of true crime stories there are moments of glorious satisfaction when, through our vicarious investigation, connections are made, and truths are revealed, no matter how gruesome or shocking. It becomes even more intense when the connections to the crime are close to home. What had been innocent landmarks become shaded in mystery and lights are cast upon idealized local histories revealing harsh alternative realities, as Charles Dickens called it, “a tale of two cities.” I’ve been a true crime fan for as long as I can remember. In my near 16 years, I probably have listened to hundreds of crime podcasts, read numerous crime stories and watched a handful of documentaries on some of the most heinous murders in history. I likely started younger than child psychologists would advise, but in my family, if something is for educational purposes it generally gets a pass. I was fascinated not by any criminal but by serial killers. I learned about as many cases as I could, and—like the investigators on the cases—made connections, drew conclusions, and was addicted to the big reveals. This pursuit went on for years until one case struck uncomfortably close to home. S E R I A L K I L L E R S The recent Dahmer series on Netflix brought a lot of renewed attention to his name and the crimes, along with criticism of the reenactment for being insensitive to the victims’ families. It was in the context of pop-crime that I discovered the less trending, Arthur Shawcross, Rochester, New York’s most brutal serial killer, whom I now know, lived just a couple miles from my house and across the street from my grandfather’s medical office. T H E G I L D E D A G E I live in Brighton, New York, a suburb of Rochester. Rochester is a mid-sized, lack-luster, historic city in the northwestern section of the empire state, located off Interstate-90, between Syracuse and Buffalo. Notable historic leaders associated with Rochester include Frederick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony, and George Eastman. Rochester is also famed for the companies that developed the Erie Canal and utilized the city’s hydroelectric power source, the Genesee River, to advance businesses. Rochester was founded in the late 18th century primarily as a flourmill center and by the early 20th century was one of the most entrepreneurial centers in the US. Iconic companies, Xerox, Kodak and Bausch and Lomb, were founded in Rochester. In the city’s golden age, Kodak employed over 60,000 people in Rochester and over 150,000 around the world. In the mid-20th century Rochester was internationally respected as a bustling center for imaging and innovation. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the city was promoted by its large corporations and chamber of commerce as a most desirable place to live. By the 1990s, however, the giant corporate presence started to weaken. Their businesses and the panache of Rochester were in decline. Xerox and Bausch and Lomb moved their headquarters from Rochester to Connecticut and Ontario, respectively. In 2012, the great Eastman Kodak Company filed for bankruptcy. The gilded age of Rochester was over, but local communal pride and an idealized vision of Rochester stuck. T A R N I S H E D P A S T According to family folklore, my mum convinced my European father to move to Rochester in 2007, eight weeks before I was born, because it was said to be home to major corporations and a good place to raise kids. My mum grew up in suburban Rochester when Rochester was in its prime, and clouded by nostalgia, she omits other, darker sides of Rochester when telling its tale, the darkest being the worlds of prostitution and murder. So, it was with fascination and surprise when I learned of a sinister side of Rochester’s past upon discovering the Genesee River Killer, Arthur Shawcross. Arthur Shawcross was an American serial killer who was active in the 1970s and 80s. He mutilated and murdered at least twelve victims in Rochester, and he brutally murdered two children prior to moving here. In the crime world, Shawcross is notoriously known for his gruesomeness and the disturbing nature of his crimes. Investigators reported the gutting, dismemberment and mutilation of mostly poor people. Those who are not true crime fanatics may have never heard of him. Despite the extent and fierceness of his killings, I found no evidence of public hysteria in Rochester at the time of his killings. My research on Shawcross was limited to local newspapers that revisited the story years later, crime websites, articles from psychology publications that debated Shawcross’s mental state, and an obscure documentary where viewers can chillingly watch and listen to Shawcross tell his horrific tale. All these sources revealed the seriousness of the situation in late 1980s Rochester, but interestingly there is no sensationalism, as can be found when researching the “big names” in crime history. The lack of sensationalism and having to dig harder to find information about this killer seemed fitting for a 20th century serial killer in Rochester. A heinous serial killer such as Shawcross had no place in an idealistic, historic narrative of the city. ------Continue reading from here if you came from the print artricle.------ O R I G I N S O F A K I L L E R Arthur Shawcross was born on June 6, 1945 in Kittery, Maine. His family moved to Watertown, New York when Arthur was very young. At that time, Watertown was a small frontier town near the Canadian border, a far cry from the military base city my family and I know from our annual summer trips driving to Canada. As a child, Shawcross exhibited problematic behavior, including frequent bed-wetting and bullying. Psychologists today characterize bedwetting as one part of the Mac Donald Triad: a series of behaviors, also including killing animals, and an obsession with fire, that when demonstrated in childhood, indicate the possibility of violent tendencies later in life. Unsurprisingly, he was also known to be an arsonist. Shawcross had a below average IQ and dropped out of school after failing the ninth grade. In his late adolescent years, he committed some small crimes and received his first probationary sentence. Disturbingly, Shawcross has made claims that his mother molested him and that he had sexual relations with his sister. The family has denied this, claiming that he had a “normal” childhood and that he was imagining these traumas. Were they a family trying to protect themselves or were they telling the truth? It was found later that Shawcross would change his stories as he was interviewed and investigated, and because of this, we have no way of knowing the truth of Shawcross’s childhood. At age 21, Arthur Shawcross was drafted into the army for the Vietnam War. At this time, he also divorced his first wife and left his 18-month-old son, never to see him again. In Vietnam, Shawcross claimed he witnessed atrocities, but it was later found out that he was never in such a position where this was possible. His fabrications make it difficult to piece together a biography. Irrespective of truth, it seems like Shawcross wanted to be associated with gruesomeness and atrocities. It is also possible that he was a master manipulator, who spun his experiences into something that could rationalize his actions. After returning from Vietnam, Shawcross married his second wife, Linda, but he was divorced soon after due to his criminal behavior. In 1969, crimes of arson and burglary earned Shawcross a five-year sentence at Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison off I-90, only forty miles west of Rochester. After serving for almost two dozen months, Shawcross was released early on parole due to his role in helping a guard during the Attica prison riot of September 1971. He returned to his hometown of Watertown, New York, and that is when the killings began. T H E F I R S T K I L L I N G S Shawcross’s first two victims were young kids in Watertown in 1972. The first was a ten-year-old boy, Jack Owen Blake, whom he took “fishing.” Jack Owen Blake had blond hair, freckles, big ears, and a pug nose. He was a sweet and fun-loving fifth grader and the seventh of nine children. The boy’s body was found five months later with signs of sexual assault and strangulation. Just before the discovery of the boy’s body, 8-year-old Karen Ann Hill’s body was found under a bridge. She had been raped, and sources say that there was mud, leaves, and debris stuffed in her mouth and clothes. Neighbors saw her with Shawcross near the bridge right before she disappeared, and he was arrested the next day. He pleaded guilty to both killings and was sentenced to a maximum of twenty-five years. After serving fourteen years of his sentence, Arthur Shawcross was released due to lack of evidence tying him to the Jack Blake case and after it was concluded by social workers that he was “no longer dangerous.” They could not have been more wrong; he was just getting started. T H E G E N E S E E R I V E R K I L L E R After being released from prison, Shawcross moved around a lot. It was hard for him to settle anywhere, as his criminal record was made known to the public. He moved to Binghamton, Delhi, and Fleischmanns, NY, and eventually to Rochester with his girlfriend, Rose Marie Walley, in June of 1987. They temporarily lived in a hotel for transients and eventually settled at 241 Alexander Street, in the East-End of Rochester, which, ironically, was across the street from a hospital. My grandfather used to have his medical office on Alexander Street. In a multigenerational connection, my grandfather drove by the house of this killer on his way to and from work every day. Today the Shawcross house is a refurbished condo, painted a somber black. And it’s no longer just one of the homes of Alexander Street. It’s the home of one of the most notorious serial killers in history. When Shawcross moved to Rochester in 1987, his criminal record was sealed to prevent public alarm. The public had no idea a vile killer had moved to town. Less than a year after moving to Rochester, in March of 1988, Shawcross began killing again. His first victim is believed to be Dorothy Blackburn, a 27-year-old prostitute whom he strangled. The body was found in the Genesse River. So many of his victims were found in proximity to the Genesee River, that the press named Shawcross the “Genesee River Killer”, adding a new, dark dimension to the river I know so well as the home to my rowing team. The next murders were believed to have occurred in September, October, and November of 1989. It is said that it was not until the body of 26-year-old June Stott, who was neither a prostitute nor drug user, was found on Thanksgiving Day, that the FBI was brought in to assist local law enforcement. Patterns of behavior led investigators to believe they were dealing with a serial killer and they organized “war rooms” to investigate the killer’s identity. It was determined by profilers that the killer returned to the crime scene, either to conceal the body or because he found pleasure in the fresh kill. Between December of 1989 and January of 1990, three more bodies turned up. They were all young, female prostitutes. Shawcross’s victims ranged in age, from as young as eight years to as old as 59 , but most were young women in their 20s or 30s. He believed all his victims deserved to die. Authorities did run background checks, but the sealing of Shawcross’s records prevented him from coming up as a possible suspect. On January 2, 1990, police had finally made a breakthrough. A man was spotted on a bridge near one of the murder victims by a police helicopter. He managed to get away, but the police were able to background check the license plate on the van he drove, leading to the arrest of Arthur Shawcross on January 4, 1990. The Genesee River Killer’s 21-month long killing spree was over. There were at least 12 victims in the Rochester area. T R I A L A N D A R R E S T Arthur Shawcross agreed to cooperate with the police, confessing to eleven murders (he was never charged with the 12th). Between his arrest in January of 1990 and his trial in November of 1990, he wrote a shocking eighty-page long confession. It was revealed that Shawcross always blamed the victim for their death, saying that they did something that made them deserve to die. When describing his murders, Shawcross reportedly had no emotion or remorse. During his trial, Shawcross’s attorneys tried to argue that he was insane, but the court didn’t agree. A famous psychologist, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, testified that Shawcross had brain damage, multiple personalities disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a history of being sexually abused. Lewis is famous for her work on the Ted Bundy case and her belief that people are not born evil. She argued that because of his mental state, Shawcross should be institutionalized instead of going to prison. The court disagreed. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 250 years in prison, and this time, he wasn’t getting out. In a bizarre complement to Shawcross’s ghastly nature, he spent his years in prison creating colorful artwork of butterflies, wildlife, and nature. He mailed some of his drawings and paintings to art dealers, resulting in his work being posted on the internet and Shawcross being compensated. The same twisted mind that was responsible for the deaths of many was now capitalizing off of it. Interestingly, this exposition wasn’t shut down because a monster was now being viewed as an artist, but because it is illegal for inmates to sell their artwork. Arthur Shawcross died in prison in 2008, at the age of 63. W H Y O B S C U R I T Y ? Reading of and listening to investigators who were on the case, it is evident the Shawcross case exhausted law enforcement for over 15 months. And one certainly could argue their job was made more difficult by the sealed records that prevented a city from knowing a convicted killer was in town. The FBI moved into Rochester, the story was covered in newspapers, and top psychologists in the country, like Dorothy Otnow Lewis, were involved in the Shawcross trial. Yet, the name Arthur Shawcross didn’t seem to instill mass hysteria at the time, and today is still rather unknown. Unlike Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Son of Sam, and Jack the Ripper, it is a challenge to find diverse and reliable sources on Arthur Shawcross. To gauge popular awareness of the Genesee River Killer, I surveyed 10 peers on their familiarity with Son of Sam, Jack the Ripper and Arthur Shawcross. None of them had heard of Shawcross. Jack the Ripper, who murdered and mutilated prostitutes in 19th century London, is legendary. But what makes Ripper famous is not the terror he inflicted upon London but that he is known as the first serial killer to have mutilated his victims. The London public was likely shocked by his actions but not terrorized. David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam”, confessed to murdering eight women, fewer than Shawcross, yet is one of the most well-known serial killers, likely because of the terror he inflicted on one of the largest cities in the world, New York. In the 1970s,Berkowitz targeted and shot dead “everyday” women with long dark hair. Because Berkowitz targeted women with long, brown hair, hundreds of women in New York City cut their hair short and bleached it blond. Berkowitz had an effect on “everyday people”, which I believe propelled his notoriety. Shawcross’ victims, on the other hand, were mainly women in the world of vice, not a concern of the everyday civilian, and perhaps, an undesirable side of Rochester's history it does not want to implicate itself with. Prostitution is illegal in the US, making association with it a crime. While it may not instill terror upon the public, it is estimated that women involved in street prostitution are over sixty times more likely to be murdered than non-prostitutes, making it not only the oldest, but the most dangerous occupation. Is Shawcross’s relative obscurity because he was not terrifying to enough people? Is it because his victims were the marginalized, undesirables of a city that was trying to hold onto an ideal narrative? Could it be that the public is not surprised by the deaths of prostitutes? Or does it only seem that Arthur Shawcross is relatively unknown, from my perspective, and that of my peers, who live in a world outside the world of vice and law enforcement? The answer to “why obscurity” is likely a combination of all of these, and more. Irrespective, for sure a Genesee River Killer does not synch well with ideal histories of the mighty Genesee River and a prided Gilded Age of Rochester. R E F L E C T I O N O N T R U E C R I M E I have heard that a dilemma for essay writers and journalists is how to get close to your subject but not so close that you become the subject. That concern does not fit well with true crime story junkies who vicariously insert themselves into the stories and are addicted to the big reveal. The subject here is Arthur Shawcross, but the subject is also an idealized historical narrative of my hometown and the great reveal that something very horrible took place here. Discovering Arthur Shawcross was a thrill, made more real by every heinous detail. I got to uncover an alternative tale of the city of Rochester. My excitement was fueled by a dark satisfaction of tarnishing the privileged Gilded Age. I was drawn to this subject for the buzz, but I will conclude with a somber admission. My excitement, and the excitement of thousands of serial killer fans driving the pop culture of true crime, exists because innocent victims died, many of them horrifically. Their lives, along with the larger world that they existed within, are excluded from the historical narratives of wealth and glory that we look back upon.