What did Arthur Shawcross do?
Arthur Shawcross was an American serial killer dubbed “The Genesee River Killer,” and he was active between 1972 and 1989 in Rochester, New York. His first known murders were in his hometown of Watertown, New York, where he killed a young girl and boy. He took a plea bargain and was allowed to plead guilty to only one charge of manslaughter, serving 14 years of a 25-year prison sentence.
The majority of his murders happened in 1988 and 1989, after shockingly being granted early parole. Shawcross roamed the streets looking for sex workers to murder.
He was known to have killed at least 11 women, but was highly suspected of a 12th and potentially more. It’s baffling that he was able to get parole for murdering two children, and for that, the system has blood on its hands for the murders that followed.
How did they catch Arthur Shawcross for the second time?
Arthur Shawcross was spotted by an eyewitness urinating on a bridge over Salmon Creek where one of his victims had been dumped. This was two days after the body was discovered by aerial surveillance by the police. The dots were connected, and Shawcross was arrested on the 5th January, 1990.
What happened at the trial?
The trial took place in November, 1990, and he was charged with 10 murders. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, with a forensic psychiatrist testifying that he had brain damage, multiple personality disorder and PTSD after being sexually abused as a child.
There was also a claim that Shawcross moved into a separate internal personality known as “Bessie” when he killed, and it was argued that he be put into a mental hospital rather than prison.
It was determined that Shawcross did have a cyst pressing on the temporal lobe of his brain, as well as scarring on the frontal lobes, the areas responsible for decision making and self control.
However, he was sentenced to a 250-year life sentence for the murders, and would never see the outside of a jail cell ever again.
Where is Arthur Shawcross now?
Arthur Shawcross served his sentence at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, until his death at the age of 63 in 2008.
Netflix currently has a documentary on its platform titled Interview with a Serial Killer, which features prison interviews with the notorious killer and provides a fascinating insight into his murderous ways.
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