The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
Gary Heidnik died by lethal injection in 1997 for the murders of two women in his North Philadelphia home. When he was captured, police found other women being held captive in his basement. Heidnik was born in 1944 and raised in Ohio, but his family disowned him by the mid-1960s. Over the next twenty years, he was hospitalized two dozen times and attempted suicide on seventeen occasions. In 1978, he was convicted on kidnapping charges involving a developmentally disabled woman. In the mid-1980s, he abducted women, some of them prostitutes, whom he chained to pipes in his basement. Neighbors reported hearing loud noises, constant rock music, and occasionally the odor of burning flesh. But Heidnik's crimes were only discovered when a woman he had held captive for more than four months managed to flee from his car and contact the police. He was arrested immediately, and police found two other women in his basement chained to pipes and another inside a pit that Heidnik had dug. The captives reported that a mentally retarded woman had starved to death alongside them and that Heidnik had electrocuted a sixth. He fed them a mixture of dog food and ground human flesh, and body parts were found in a freezer.
In his 1988 trial, Heidnik pleaded insanity but was sentenced to death. He never contested the verdict, but the case traveled through the appeals process after being taken up by an anti-death penalty group. They claimed that Heidnik was schizophrenic and that to execute the mentally ill is immoral.