Gary Heidnik was executed on July 6, 1999
A self-styled "bishop" Gary Heidnik was executed on July 6, 1999, for kidnapping six women and keeping them as sex slaves in his basement in Philadelphia. Tracey Lomax in an interaction with CNN recalled every detail of the case against the man who kidnapped her sister Sandra Lindsay and five other black women.
Ms Lomax revealed how Heidnik held them in a water-filled pit and abused them before killing Lindsay and one other victim. She recalled that Ms Lindsay was starved and handcuffed to the rafters. Decades later, Heidnik remains the last man to be executed in Pennsylvania.
Heidnik's crimes are featured in the upcoming episode of People Magazine Investigates: Surviving A Serial Killer.
The publication reported that the killer was living in an unimpressive home in the northern part of the city in 1986 and he was quite well off. He was honourably discharged from the Army, having shown signs of mental illness. Because of that discharge, he received checks from the government. Utilizing a genius-level IQ, Heidnik turned those checks into millions of dollars by investing in the stock market.
Although he didn't invest his money in a lavish home, he opted for a Cadillac and a Rolls Royce.
That's not all, he started his church, the United Church of the Ministers of God, and ordained himself as a bishop. The People reported Heidnik used the church, which he ran out of his home, for tax write-offs.
Heidnik's eventual defence attorney, Chuck Peruto, reveals what his client intended to do with the women he planned to kidnap and rape.
"His goal was to get them pregnant in his basement to raise a perfect race," Peruto says. "They were going to be half-Black, half-White. They weren't going to have outside influence from the world."
Two of the victims, Lindsey and Dudley died as a result of the torture inflicted by Heidnik in the basement. Rivera, who spent four months in captivity, was eventually able to escape, leading to the rescue of the three remaining women and the arrest of Heidnik, the publication reported.