Pit of despair

This is the story of the sick fuck who inspired the basement pit in Silence of the Lambs. Gary Heidnik kidnapped six women, raped and beat and imprisoned them. His goal was to impregnate the women and then raise a family in his basement. 

Englade covers Heidnik's crimes but he fails in creating a full profile of Heidnik quickly glossing over his childhood and claims of physical abuse at the hands of his father and his mother's alcoholism  to his multiple hospitalizations for his mental illness. On that note, I would like to point out Englade comes off as insensitive dick, he uses terms like nut job to describe Heidnik's psychiatric condition. 

After Heidnik's arrest this book turns into a boring courtroom procedural which makes this book feel longer than it actually is, at two hundred seventy-seven pages this should be a quick read, even for someone who reads as slow as I do, but Englade includes unnecessary courtroom details such as how hot the courtroom was and what the jurors were wearing, these details ut me to sleep. 

Also called into question is that of victim Josefina Rivera's role in the death of another victim and her treatment of her fellow captives. Was Rivera truly an accomplice to murder and the torture? If so was it because she grew sympathetic to Heidnik or was it a desperate attempt at appeasement to save her life? How desperate does one have to be to want to survive to live out another day of torture, rape and being forced fed human flesh? 

So was Heidnik insane or did he know right from wrong? I would say yes to both, of course you have to be mentally ill to kidnap six women and turn them into unwilling sex slaves to fulfill your personal goal of having a large family, but at the same time you can still know right from wrong. Heidnik did exhibit behavior of knowing what he was doing was wrong by disposing of a dead body by dismemberment and cooking some of the body parts to destroy physical evidence, he blasted a radio at full volume to cover up any cries for help that his neighbors might hear, he forced a victim (a woman that he knew for years) to write a letter to her family that she went to New York to throw them off of his trail and he mostly chose women who were mentally handicapped. 

The following is an interview with Josefina Rivera.