Arthur Shawcross

COMING SOON!

He rampaged through the jungle while serving in Vietnam, then continued his killing spree in Rochester, New York. The crimes of one of America's most prolific serial killers are explored.

Biography

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Arthur Shawcross
born: 06-06-1945
birth place: Kittery, Maine
died: 10-11-2008

First Crimes
By the time of his third marriage, it has been established that he had already claimed his first victim, 10-year-old Jack Blake, a neighbour’s child, on 7th April 1972. Shawcross had taken him fishing just a few days before he disappeared, but denied any knowledge of the disappearance, and it was five months before the boy’s body was finally located. He had been sexually assaulted and suffocated.

In September 1972 the body of eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill was found under a bridge. She had been raped and murdered, and mud, leaves and other debris had been forced down her throat and inside her clothing. Neighbours remembered that Shawcross had been seen with Karen in the vicinity of the bridge before her disappearance, and Shawcross, who had a history of minor run-ins with local children, came under immediate suspicion.

He was arrested on 3rd October 1972, and finally confessed to both killings, although he was only charged with Karen Hill’s killing, given the lack of evidence tying him to Jack Blake’s death. He received a 25-year jail sentence, and third wife Penny divorced him shortly thereafter.

After serving less than 15 years of this sentence, he was released on parole in April 1987. The well-publicised resettlement of a child killer in the Binghamton area of New York State was greeted by a public outcry, and he was forced to leave the area after a few months, along with his new girlfriend, Rose Whalley. His criminal record meant that he would be unwelcome almost anywhere, and the authorities made the decision to seal his criminal record, to prevent a recurrence of the public alarm in Binghamton, before moving Shawcross and Whalley to Rochester, New York, where she became his fourth wife.

In Rochester, Shawcross took on a succession of menial jobs, and his lacklustre marriage to Whalley meant that he was soon seeking solace elsewhere, both from prostitutes as well as his new girlfriend, Clara Neal.

Second Crimes
It did not take long for Shawcross to return to his murderous ways. Whether he made a conscious decision to target prostitutes, whose disappearance might not cause as much of an outcry as children, or whether the women taunted him for his sexual inadequacies, as he later claimed, his first victim was discovered by hunters on 24th March 1988. She was 27-year old prostitute Dorothy Blackburn, and her body was found in the Genessee River, dumped there following a vicious attack, which included bite marks in the groin area, and strangulation.
With little evidence, and no public impetus to solve the murder of a prostitute, her case languished for over a year. There were other murders of prostitutes in that time, but given the danger of the profession, nothing untoward was noticed that linked any cases, until the discovery of the body of another prostitute, Anna Steffen, on 9th September 1989. She had also died of asphyxia, and her body had been dumped in a similar way to that of first victim, Blackburn. But her body was found far from the original murder scene, so again the possibility that a serial killer was at work was not recognised.

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Links relating to this biography:
Crime & Investigation Network