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Speaker 1: those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
Speaker 1: represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
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Speaker 1: Monster presents Insomniac. If you've never heard of Arthur shaw Cross,
Speaker 1: I think you're going to find him to be one
Speaker 1: of the most revolting characters you've heard about in a long,
Speaker 1: long time. His crimes spanned decades, his punishments along the
Speaker 1: way were far too late for the atrocities that he committed,
Speaker 1: and maybe the worst detail of all, there were children involved.
Speaker 1: For me, the stories that involved kids always seem to
Speaker 1: be the hardest ones to understand, and they're definitely among
Speaker 1: the hardest to ever forget. After listening to this show,
Speaker 1: I think you'll find yourself wanting to forget Arthur shaw
Speaker 1: Across too. I wish I could get him out of
Speaker 1: my head, but so far that's been impossible. I'm Scott
Speaker 1: Benjamin and everything I'm about to tell you is real.
Speaker 1: This is Insomniac. The date was January three, and police
Speaker 1: were searching Northampton Park, located sixteen miles east of Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York, after a missing woman's clothing an I D
Speaker 1: Card had been found in the area. Just minutes into
Speaker 1: a helicopter surveillance flight, New York State troopers had already
Speaker 1: spotted something. They saw a woman's body, partially clothed, face
Speaker 1: down on the surface of the ice underneath the bridge
Speaker 1: that crossed over Salmon Creek. They didn't know it yet,
Speaker 1: but they had just stumbled across the frozen, mutilated body.
Speaker 1: I've yet another missing woman, not even the one they
Speaker 1: were initially searching for. It was a prostitute named June Cicero,
Speaker 1: age thirty four, and she had been missing for more
Speaker 1: than two weeks. Remarkably, at that very moment, a car
Speaker 1: was parked in the same bridge and the driver had
Speaker 1: his door open with his legs outside of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: It was difficult for the troopers to determine exactly what
Speaker 1: he was up to from high above, but he appeared
Speaker 1: to either be urinating on the bridge or possibly masturbating.
Speaker 1: As soon as he noticed the helicopter, the man threw
Speaker 1: something out onto the ice and drove away, but the
Speaker 1: state troopers followed his every move from the air and
Speaker 1: called in ground units to tail him into town. Within minutes,
Speaker 1: he was picked up, taken to the nearby Brockport Police Barracks,
Speaker 1: questions photographed, and then released overnight. Authorities kept the suspects
Speaker 1: home under surveillance. Well detectives dug up every bit of
Speaker 1: information they could about the man they found just a
Speaker 1: few feet away from the frozen body on the ice.
Speaker 1: What they would discover that evening and in the days
Speaker 1: and months to follow would horrify every officer on the
Speaker 1: force and later infuriate the entire community of Rochester, New York.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a closer look at the case
Speaker 1: of the Rochester strangler, or as it's sometimes called, the
Speaker 1: case of the Genesee River Killer. For this story to
Speaker 1: have the full impact, you need to know that is
Speaker 1: considered normal for a serial killer to experience a cooling
Speaker 1: off period between their deadly attacks. In fact, that's one
Speaker 1: of the key behaviors that set serial killers apart from
Speaker 1: other types of killers. Spree and mass murderers claim all
Speaker 1: of their victims at once, all in the same day,
Speaker 1: and often all in the same location, with one violent outburst.
Speaker 1: A serial killer follows a different pattern, one that includes
Speaker 1: an active period when the homicide happens, followed by an
Speaker 1: emotional cooling off period when the killer returns to his
Speaker 1: or her normal life, followed by another active period, and
Speaker 1: so on. If the result is a body count that
Speaker 1: rises above three, you have a serial killer in your hands. Typically,
Speaker 1: that cooling off period is a matter of days, weeks,
Speaker 1: or sometimes months. But in the story I'm going to
Speaker 1: share with you today, the killer deviates in these norms
Speaker 1: and take an unusually long cooling off period between his
Speaker 1: first and second series of victims sixteen years. In fact,
Speaker 1: he also completely changes the target of his crimes between
Speaker 1: his second and third victims. It's very rare for a
Speaker 1: serial killer to change his method of operation, but he does,
Speaker 1: and you'll find out why. We're going to start in
Speaker 1: early nineteen in a small upstate New York city of Watertown,
Speaker 1: where an unspeakable tragedy was about to strike the community.
Speaker 1: It was the spring of nineteen and Arthur John shaw
Speaker 1: Cross age was an employee with the Watertown Public Works Department.
Speaker 1: He had just married his third wife, Penny, in late April.
Speaker 1: Shaw Cross had only recently been released from a state
Speaker 1: prison after serving time for burglary and arson. He had
Speaker 1: set fire to a paper mill in April of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty and then to the cheese company that he worked
Speaker 1: for in September of the same year. Well serving his
Speaker 1: prison sentence, shaw Cross had spent just a few months
Speaker 1: at the Attica Correctional Facility before being transferred to Auburn
Speaker 1: prison in the summer of nineteen seventy. Later that same year,
Speaker 1: on November four, an inmate riot broke out in Aubera.
Speaker 1: Thirty guards were seized as hostages, and the inmates had
Speaker 1: control of nearly the entire prison. The riot only lasted
Speaker 1: one day, but it took a combined total of more
Speaker 1: than six hundred state troopers, additional prison guards and sheriff's
Speaker 1: deputies to regain control. In the situation had cooled down,
Speaker 1: it was revealed that inmate Arthur shaw Cross had save
Speaker 1: the life of a prison official during the riot. For
Speaker 1: the he was granted early parole and was released after
Speaker 1: serving just twenty two months of a five year sentence.
Speaker 1: So in October of Arthur shaw Cross was a freeman,
Speaker 1: and he returned to his daily life in Watertown, New
Speaker 1: York at the parole board, knowing what was about to
Speaker 1: happen in that small, charming city over the next year,
Speaker 1: they never would have let him out. Early shaw Cross
Speaker 1: enjoyed fishing, and due to this hobby, he spent a
Speaker 1: lot of his free time in and around the surrounding
Speaker 1: creeks and rivers, mainly the Black River, the waterway that
Speaker 1: runs right through the middle of town. As a result,
Speaker 1: he often shared the river banks with the children of Watertown.
Speaker 1: One young boy, Jack Owen Blake, age ten, became one
Speaker 1: of Arthur's favorite fishing buddies. On May seven, just seven
Speaker 1: months after shaw Cross was released from prison, Jack Blake
Speaker 1: went missing. The Blake Boy's body wasn't initially found, but
Speaker 1: suspicion immediately fell on Arthur shaw Cross. Arthur and Jack,
Speaker 1: along with Jack's younger brother, had benefitshing together just days
Speaker 1: before he disappeared. Shaw Cross repeatedly denied any knowledge of
Speaker 1: the boy's disappearance, and since there was no evidence against him,
Speaker 1: including nobody, he remained a free man. Four months later,
Speaker 1: on September two, two and while the search for Jack
Speaker 1: Blake was still on, it happened again. Another child went
Speaker 1: missing in Watertown. Lots of us tell variety lies on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. Most are small, but occasionally a few
Speaker 1: whoppers too. We intentionally make false statements to others to
Speaker 1: ease social interactions, protect someone's feelings with a small white lie,
Speaker 1: or use a lie to simply avoid the unpleasant consequences
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Pathological lying, on the other hand, is
Speaker 1: when the behavior becomes compulsive or habitual. It's when a
Speaker 1: person lies consistently for absolutely no personal gain other than
Speaker 1: maybe to bolster their own character, regardless of how one
Speaker 1: founded those claims. Maybe. Pathological liars typically try to present
Speaker 1: themselves in a favorable light, whereas the hero not the
Speaker 1: bad guy of the story. Pathologic a line was one
Speaker 1: of many issues Arthur Delwyth throughout his life. Well in prison,
Speaker 1: he self reported sexual abuse between himself at a young
Speaker 1: age and his mother, his aunt, his sister, and a
Speaker 1: couple of his cousins. Later, he would claim as an
Speaker 1: adolescent he had sex with a variety of barnyard animals too.
Speaker 1: Each of the accused family members has denied all of
Speaker 1: Arthur's sexual abuse allegations, and not one instance was ever
Speaker 1: proven to be true. What we do know of his
Speaker 1: past is somewhat troubling. Arthur was a bedwetter until the
Speaker 1: age of nine, and his mother repeatedly shamed him for that.
Speaker 1: We also know that he was sexually excited by lighting fires,
Speaker 1: and that he liked to torture and kill small animals,
Speaker 1: including fish, cats, squirrels, and birds. That's all three points
Speaker 1: of the McDonald try. It a set of three factors
Speaker 1: that suggests future violent tendencies and serial offenses from an
Speaker 1: individual if three or any combination of two are present
Speaker 1: together bed wedding, fire setting, and cruelty to animals. Again,
Speaker 1: Arthur exhibited all three traits. He also had at least
Speaker 1: three known closed head brain injuries between the ages of
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty two. At the age of sixteen, he
Speaker 1: was hit in the head with a discus and spent
Speaker 1: several hours unconscious. At age eighteen, he was struck in
Speaker 1: the head with a sledgehammer, again he was unconscious for
Speaker 1: several hours, and at age two, while he was in
Speaker 1: the army, he felt from a forty ft ladder striking
Speaker 1: his head and rendering him unconscious once again for several hours.
Speaker 1: Years later, an MRI scan of Arthur's brain would show
Speaker 1: that he had developed a cyst in one temporal lobe
Speaker 1: and residual scarring on both frontal lobes from the discus
Speaker 1: and sledgehammer incidents. He dropped out of school after his
Speaker 1: second failed attempt at ninth grade, and eventually was drafted
Speaker 1: in the army at age nineteen. During the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: Arthur also bragged about his tour of duty and his
Speaker 1: battlefield heroics in Vietnam, greatly exaggerating the role he played
Speaker 1: and even admitting to several grotesque wartime atrocities. He bragged
Speaker 1: about solo jungle missions where he killed women and young girls,
Speaker 1: torturing them, raping them, cutting their heads off and nailing
Speaker 1: them to trees or sticking them on posts, and then
Speaker 1: cannibalizing parts of their bodies. There's no proof any of
Speaker 1: this ever happened. He claimed to be an expert sniper
Speaker 1: during the war, and then he could fashion a rifle
Speaker 1: silence or out of a rubber nipple from a baby's bottle.
Speaker 1: He also claimed battlefield kill count of thirty nine enemy soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yet according to Arthur's commanding officers, the truth is Arthur
Speaker 1: was a supply clerk and never saw combat. In the
Speaker 1: years to follow. Back at home in Upstate New York,
Speaker 1: Arthur would eventually mutilate several of his victims, and while
Speaker 1: occasionally there were body parts missing, it was impossible to
Speaker 1: prove that he ever consumed any of the missing parts,
Speaker 1: including Jack Blake's heart and genitals, and much later, the
Speaker 1: vaginas of three of his female victims. The date was
Speaker 1: September two, just four months after the disappearance of Jack Blake,
Speaker 1: and there was another child missing in Watertown. This time
Speaker 1: it was Karen Ann Hill, age eight, who was visiting
Speaker 1: with her mother for the Labor Day weekend. The Watertown
Speaker 1: police were now searching for two missing children. They found
Speaker 1: Karen Hill first. Her lifeless body was discovered under a bridge.
Speaker 1: She had been raped, mutilated, and strangled. Mud leaves and
Speaker 1: other debris had been forced down her throat and inside
Speaker 1: her clothing. Once again, Arthur's shaw Cross, now aged, was
Speaker 1: an immediate suspect. A police investigation revealed that he and
Speaker 1: Karen Hill had been seen together on the day of
Speaker 1: her disappearance. The neighbors reported that Arthur was seen eating
Speaker 1: ice cream on the bridge, right near where the body
Speaker 1: was discovered. Arthur again denied any involved and the disappearance
Speaker 1: of the child, but after a full day of police interrogation,
Speaker 1: he finally cracked. With his defense attorney present, shaw Cross
Speaker 1: decided that he had had enough and asked police, what
Speaker 1: would happen to me if I told you something? In
Speaker 1: the hours that followed, he admitted to killing Karen Hill,
Speaker 1: but he also let them know that he had additional
Speaker 1: information to share. He could lead them to the body
Speaker 1: of the still missing Blake boy if they were willing
Speaker 1: to make a deal. Shaw Cross told them exactly what
Speaker 1: they wanted to know. Four months earlier, it was he
Speaker 1: who had lured ten year old Jack Blake into the woods,
Speaker 1: stripped him naked, sexually assaulted him, and then strangled him
Speaker 1: to death as part of a police bargain in exchange
Speaker 1: for showing the police where the body of Jack Blake
Speaker 1: be found. The authorities less in the charge against shack
Speaker 1: Cross and manslaughter for the rape and murder of Karen Hill,
Speaker 1: and all of their charges were dropped entirely. He would
Speaker 1: not be charged in the rape or murder of Jack Blake.
Speaker 1: For his crimes, Arthur shaw Cross was sentenced to just
Speaker 1: twenty five years in prison with the possibility of early parole,
Speaker 1: and well, that already seems like a light sentence for
Speaker 1: murdering two children, it gets even worse. Despite the warnings
Speaker 1: of prison psychiatrists, after less than fifteen years behind bars,
Speaker 1: social workers and prison staff members incorrectly determined that shaw
Speaker 1: Cross was no longer dangerous and granted him early parole
Speaker 1: in April. Why did the prison psychiatrists advise against his release, Well,
Speaker 1: reason was that shaw Cross had revealed that he had
Speaker 1: returned several times to the site where he dumped Jack
Speaker 1: Blake's body to have sex with the corpse. He also
Speaker 1: confessed to removing the boy's heart and genitals and eating them.
Speaker 1: His early release in prison, or even the fact that
Speaker 1: he was being released at all, it was a mistake
Speaker 1: that would only be amplified over the next three years.
Speaker 1: My nightmares, yeah, I'm still having them. I had another
Speaker 1: pretty disturbing dream this weekend. The last one was just
Speaker 1: a few days ago, around three am. Um, it's another really,
Speaker 1: really violent dream. I'm being chased. I was laying face down,
Speaker 1: yelling and violently kicking the mattress as hard and fast
Speaker 1: as I could. My wife was startled, terrified, and rightfully so.
Speaker 1: It's clearly someone who's serious about catching me. Seriously, there's
Speaker 1: a reason they want me in our moonlit bedroom. It
Speaker 1: looked like someone was attacking me on my side of
Speaker 1: the bed. Someone was By the next morning, the only
Speaker 1: lasting memory I had of that evening's nightmare but someone
Speaker 1: endlessly chasing me. As we raised up a very steep
Speaker 1: set of stairs, almost as steep as a ladder. He
Speaker 1: reached out to grab my ankles, and that's when I
Speaker 1: turned and began kicking him in the heads. That terrifying
Speaker 1: moment when the pursuer catches me like this is it.
Speaker 1: I've got a fight otherwise I'm dead. It's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a battle to death. This or anything about this
Speaker 1: is like I boy, I didn't stop, over and over again,
Speaker 1: as hard as I could, I didn't stop. I just
Speaker 1: kept going and going and going until the person is
Speaker 1: practically unrecognizable. Was it Arthur chasing me? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't say for sure it was him, but I
Speaker 1: can't tell you. There was no more sleep for me
Speaker 1: that night. I guess you can kind of understand why
Speaker 1: I didn't want to record that when my family around
Speaker 1: me or near me. So I'm kind of confessing to this,
Speaker 1: even though it's something that never really happened. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I got a deal with that. Um. That's about it
Speaker 1: for now. I hope he doesn't haunt your dreams the
Speaker 1: way he has mine. A common trait among captured serial
Speaker 1: killers is that even though they're locked behind bars, they
Speaker 1: want to believe that there's still somehow in control of
Speaker 1: what's happening outside of the prison walls. Arthur shaw Cross
Speaker 1: was no different. We've established his tendency to lie about
Speaker 1: nearly all aspects of his life, a pattern that he
Speaker 1: continued in prison, but he did so in a somewhat
Speaker 1: puzzling way. He attempted to manipulate all of his interviewers, detectives, doctors,
Speaker 1: anybody that would listen to him by changing his story.
Speaker 1: The way he answered questions would very greatly based on
Speaker 1: who he was talking to. If it was a male interviewer,
Speaker 1: Arthur would play up his heroic but completely fictional actions
Speaker 1: on the battlefield in Vietnam. If it was a female interviewer,
Speaker 1: are they are going to long detailed descriptions of his
Speaker 1: mutilation killings and described to them how much he enjoyed
Speaker 1: removing parts of his victims, and then how much he
Speaker 1: enjoyed eating those parts, And if he detected a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of sympathy from his interviewer, his narrative voice switched
Speaker 1: over to his alleged but never proven claims of sexual
Speaker 1: abuse at the hands of his mother and aunt. He
Speaker 1: would add graphic details to his stories of abuse to
Speaker 1: see if he could elicit an even greater sympathetic response
Speaker 1: from across the table. Again, manipulative behavior isn't necessarily surprising
Speaker 1: from a serial killer, and it was always fairly easy
Speaker 1: for those Arthur spoke to see right through his made
Speaker 1: up stories. They knew he was a liar and he
Speaker 1: was never going to change. How Arthur shaw Cross dealt
Speaker 1: with his early release from prison and how we chose
Speaker 1: to fill his free time doesn't even begin to tell
Speaker 1: the story. You would undergo an extraordinary physical transformation as
Speaker 1: he struggled to find a new home and unfortunately and
Speaker 1: all new group of victims Next time on Insomniac. Insomniac
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and Josh Thain. Music composed by
Speaker 1: Makeup and Vanity, set and cover by Trevor Eisler. Follow
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Facebook at insomniac Pod, on Instagram at
Speaker 1: insomniac podcast, and at our website insomniac podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.