More Books by
Jack Olsen
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More Books by
Jack Olsen
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Jack Olsen Arthur Shawcross  |
The Misbegotten Son: A Serial Killer and His Victims is a true crime story about Arthur Shawcross who after being found guilty of the murders of two children, was released only to murder ten prostitutes, one homeless elderly woman, and one young mentally ill woman.
Arthur John Shawcross was born in 1945 in Maine. After a short time his family moved to Watertown, NY. As a child he was socially awkward and and outcast among the other children who nicknamed him "Oddie". He had an extremely low IQ and was prone to bullying, bed wetting, and physical violence. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and joined the Army at the age of nineteen. He fought in the Vietnam War and later claimed, he had murdered and cannibalized two young Vietnamese girls.
After the service he moved back to Watertown. He was married four times. The
marriages didn't last long because of his violent and erratic behavior. He had a criminal history including burglary and arson before he graduated to the major leagues, becoming a murderer.
In May 1972, his first victim was ten-year-old Jack Owen Blake, a boy who lived near Shawcross in Watertown, New York. Shawcross had taken the boy and his older brother fishing just days before his disappearance. The boy's mother suspected Shawcross but no evidence pointed to his guilt. Police were unable to connect Shawcross to the disappearance.
Four months later, eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill,
who was visiting Watertown with her mother, disappeared. Her body was found under a bridge. She had been brutally raped and strangled. Shawcross was known to fish from the area under the same bridge. Police
managed to get a confession from Shawcross for the murder of Karen Ann Hill and secured enough information to lead to the recovery of the remains of Jack
Owen Blake.
Shawcross was arrested and confessed to both murders but made a plea bargain with the prosecutors. He would plead guilty to killing Karen Ann Hill on a charge of manslaughter, instead of first-degree murder, and the charge of killing Jack Owen Blake would be dropped. Since the prosecutors had little evidence to go on, they agreed to the plea bargain. Shawcross was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In March of 1987 he was released on parole after serving 15 years and eventually settled down in Rochester, New York.
In March 1988, Shawcross started murdering
again. A party of hunters were near an area which is part of the Genessee River Gorge.
The hunters saw
something in the water. The ice had just broken from the long cold winter.
The men saw what looked like a mannequin. A closer look revealed the face of a woman, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
Authorities were called and the woman was identified as Dorothy 'Dotsie' Blackburn, a 27 year old
drug addicted hooker who did her tricks on Lyell Avenue, a notorious area for prostitution in Rochester.
She had been reported missing a few days earlier by her sister. Her body had been severely traumatized. She suffered multiple bruises as well as bite marks in the genital area. The autopsy revealed there was no water in her lungs so drowning had not been the cause of her death. She had been murdered and her body dumped into the river. Her lifestyle opened up a long list of possible perpetrators. It could have been an angry drug dealer wanting to be paid, a dissatisfied customer, someone who knew her trade and that she dealt in a cash, making her a target for robbery. There were many unanswered questions and her police file grew cold.
On September 9, 1989 a man
picking up bottles to sell encountered bones protruding from an area. He called the
police. The evidence failed to yield an identification. Local police called in a specialist in forensic anthropology to recreate the victim's appearance from her skull
which resulted in the woman being identified by her father as Anna Marie Steffen
age 28. Dental records confirmed the identification. She was also involved in the local underworld life of the sex trade and
was a drug user. Though she bore many similarities to Dotsie Blackburn, their bodies were found far apart. No link was made and no suspicion existed that a serial killer was operating in the area. Her body was badly decomposed and
due to the absence of other gross injuries, her cause of death was strangulation.
Six weeks later hunters encountered another badly decomposed corpse of
a woman in the Genessee River Gorge.
She had been decapitated. Her neck had been broken and cause of death was
attributed to blunt force trauma.
An employee of the county jail read of the discovery and reported a missing homeless woman he was familiar with and whom he hadn't seen in some time. Police made a positive identification from the information provided. The woman was Dorothy Keller, aged 60.
Six days later a boy discovered a foot sticking from a pile of debris near the local YMCA. The body of Patricia Ives,
age 25, another Lyell Avenue hooker, had been found.
Four dead women, most of them prostitutes, three of which had been found over a short time span finally got police to see that they had a
serial killer in their community. The women had been at least partly concealed, and all had died of
strangulation. Signs of struggle were absent making police believe the killer was very fast, very strong, and very effective.
Hookers continued to disappear. The body of Frances Brown, age 22, was found, clad only in boots, and dumped down a slope in the Gorge. Another prostitute named Maria Welch had gone missing. The intense investigation led to the apprehension of some murderers, but many of the cases remained unsolved. There was still an unknown killer operating in the local hooker community.
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A man
went to the police to report the disappearance of his 26 year old girl friend, June Stott. She had a history of mental problems but was not a hooker. Police thought she wasn't at risk
because she had a history of simply going away for extended periods of time.
About a
week before Thanksgiving, the body of Kimberly Logan, a black Lyell Avenue hooker,
was
discovered. On Thanksgiving day, another body was discovered, this time covered by a piece of carpet and discarded in a swampy area. This victim had endured even more brutal
treatment from her killer than the previous victims. She had been cut open from her
breastbone to her vagina. Nearby a knife and bloody towel were discovered but no fingerprints were recovered. The victim was June Stott, the woman reported missing earlier by her boy friend. Cause of death was
strangulation.
Another woman was found on November 27. The victim was Elizabeth Gibson, another prostitute. She was found by a hunter, dumped in a swampy area of a neighboring county. Cause of death was
once again
strangulation. The only thing different this time was there was a witness.
Jo Ann Van Nostrand, a prostitute who had been frightened earlier by a John, had seen Gibson in the company of the same John who had scared her, a man known to her by the name "Mitch". She heard of the discovery of Gibson's body and went to police with her information. Previously she had told police that "Mitch" used a gray van to troll for girls. Police finally felt they had a solid lead, something concrete to help them find the killer.
Using this information police convinced a local bar owner to raffle off a TV, producing a sizable list of names of men who frequented the area. From this list police found a suspect, a 38 year old man who drove a gray van, had a taste for kinky sex, and was known to frequent Lyell Avenue. Further investigation revealed this suspect had alibis from his employer for the time when most of the murders occurred. Police had arrived at a dead end and had to go back and start over again.
On December 15, 1989, the body of Darlene Trippi, age 32, was found
dumped
in the water near some houses. As usual, she had been choked to death.
In January 1990, a pair of black jeans was found frozen by the roadway near Salmon Creek. An ID card belonging to a black hooker, Felicia Stephens, age 19, was also found. Her boots were discovered in a different area. It was assumed she had become a victim of the predator.
Also in January 1990, during an aerial search, the police discovered a woman lying face down, spread eagle on the ice of the stream near a bridge. She was dressed in a white top, no other clothing was present. The woman on the ice was identified as the missing prostitute June Cicero, age 34.
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Shawcross' victims were usually strangled, beaten to death, and often mutilated. Most of them were found near the Genesee River which earned him the nickname, "Genesee River Killer". Later, he would claim that he murdered the prostitutes in revenge for supposedly having sex with an HIV-positive prostitute and ate their body parts in order to speed up the death process.
In January 1990, after the last victim's body was found, the police decided to leave the body and keep surveillance on the area. This tactic was based on a psychological profile that suggested the killer would return to the scene. Shawcross was spotted masturbating in his car on a bridge over the creek in which the body of his final victim was floating. He was arrested and eventually confessed.
In November 1990, Shawcross was tried for ten of eleven murders. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury found him sane and guilty. The judge sentenced him to 250 years in prison. A few months later, he was tried for the one remaining murder to which he pleaded guilty and was given a life sentence.
The
convicted Genessee River Killer, Arthur Shawcross,
after complaining of a leg pain, died of cardiac arrest at an Albany, NY
hospital on Monday, November 10, 2008. Shawcross was age 63 at the time of death.
Other best selling books by Jack Olsen:
SON: A Psychopath and His Victims (1983) is the story of Kevin Coe, Spokane's South Hill rapist whose rich and influential mother was sent to prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor who convicted her son.
Give a Boy a Gun: The True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West (1985)- "Give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man," Claude Dallas, Sr., said this about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and "mountain man'' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens. Was this a case of self-defense or outright murder?
Cold Kill:
The True Story of a Murderous Love
Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (1989) is an incredible account of a rural Wyoming doctor who relied on his patients' naiveté and Mormon female submissiveness to rape generations of women on his examining table.
Predator: Rape, Madness, and Injustice in Seattle (1991) - This book focuses on three men: McDonald ("Mac") Smith, a serial rapist who preyed on women; Steve Titus, a carefree partygoer who was wrongly convicted of the predator's crimes; and Paul Henderson, a reporter for the Seattle Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for tracking down the truth.
Charmer: A Ladies' Man and his Victims (1994) - A true crime story of George Russell, Jr., a charismatic young African American from an affluent Seattle suburb who targeted and killed three beautiful women and whose charming outward appearance kept him from suspicion.
Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder (1996) - Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied.
Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation (1998) - This true crime features a delightful hero: a female private investigator who calls herself "Rat Dog Dick." Rat Dog relies on an ancient Everex 286 computer (Evil Evie), a Toyota Tercel (The Frog Prince) that is so outrageously green it's useless for surveillance, and a big, funny-looking dog (Beans). Once she gets her teeth into the "Foxglove" case in which several old people have dwindled and died quickly after being "befriended" by a local Gypsy family, Rat Dog is outraged that the police are ignoring clear evidence of elder abuse.
Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt (2000) - This is a story of true crime American injustice. Pratt, a war hero and leader of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murder based on the perjured testimony of a paid FBI informant. After spending twenty-seven years in prison, he was finally declared innocent and released.
I: The Creation of a Serial Killer (2002) - In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people...
Copies of these best selling true crime books are available at Amazon.com - Click Here
Jack Olsen |
For more information on Jack Olsen, click on this link Jack Olsen
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