Arthur John Shawcross, known by several chilling aliases including the Genesee River Killer and the Monster of the Rivers, was an American serial killer whose crimes spanned decades, first in Watertown and later in Rochester, New York. Born on June 6, 1945, in Kittery, Maine, Shawcross eventually moved with his family to Watertown, New York. Though he served in the US Army in Vietnam as a supply and transport company member, he later fabricated grotesque combat claims, including assertions of cannibalism and beheadings, which were found to be untrue.
The First Murders and a Controversial Release
Shawcross’s first known murders occurred in 1972 in Watertown. His first victim was 10 year old Jack Owen Blake, whom he raped and killed on May 7, 1972. Blake’s body was not discovered until September 5. Just before the body was found, Shawcross killed eight year old Karen Ann Hill on September 2, 1972. Police found Hill’s body buried under rocks beneath a bridge, her mouth reportedly stuffed with dirt and mud. A sniffer dog led detectives from the body to Shawcross’s home on Clover Street.
Shawcross was indicted for the murder of Karen Hill. However, facing only vague confession evidence regarding Hill’s death and lacking direct evidence for the Blake killing, police offered Shawcross a plea bargain. As part of this arrangement, he confessed and explained how he killed the boy. Shawcross pleaded guilty to manslaughter, receiving a maximum sentence of 25 years. The public was furious and outraged that a murder conviction was not secured.
In April 1987, after serving less than 15 years, Shawcross was released on parole. This decision was made after inexperienced prison staff concluded he was no longer dangerous, disregarding earlier warnings from psychiatrists who had labeled him a schizoid psychopath. Dr. Michael H. Stone later identified this parole as an egregious example of the unwarranted release of a prisoner.
The Rochester Killings Begin
Following his release, Shawcross struggled to find permanent lodging due to community hostility in several New York towns. He eventually settled in Rochester, a middle class city 30 miles from the Canadian border, with his fourth wife, Rose. He lived on Alexander Street, worked nights at a cheese factory, and spent his free time fishing the banks of the Genesee River. However, he also maintained a mistress and was a regular visitor to Lyle Avenue, a mile long strip that served as the city’s rundown red light district.
In March 1988, women began disappearing from Lyle Avenue. Dorothy Blackburn, a 27 year old prostitute, was found strangled in a riverbed. In July, Anne Marie Steffen, a 27 year old cocaine addict, went missing, and her decomposed body was found on the banks of the Genesee. Shawcross admitted he killed her, noting that strangulation typically took about four minutes until the body relaxed.
After nearly a year long break, the murders resumed in July 1989 with the discovery of 59 year old Dorothy Keeler, found down on Seth Green Island on the Genesee River. Shawcross claimed he killed her because she was stealing from him and his wife. Disturbingly, he later returned to Keeler’s corpse, removed her skull, and threw it into the Genesee River, explaining he went back to clean up.
The killings intensified throughout the autumn of 1989. Patricia Ives was found strangled in October. The violence took an even more sinister turn with the murder of June Stott. Stott was not a prostitute but acted much younger than her age. Shawcross admitted to snapping her neck and then returning later to split her open, eviscerating her right from the neck down to the vagina.
The Genesee River Pattern
The murder of June Stott marked a turning point for the police, as a clear pattern emerged. Most of the murdered women came from vulnerable backgrounds, had been slowly strangled, and their bodies were dumped around the Genesee River. Furthermore, the killer appeared to be revisiting and mutilating the bodies. Rochester police suspected they had a serial killer and brought in the FBI.
Investigators struggled to understand how the killer could still pick up prostitutes who were scared to death. The explanation, according to profilers, was that Shawcross was a regular client; they knew him, went with him, had successful sex, and were driven back home without issue, meaning they were not afraid of him, until some nights went terribly wrong. Shawcross was not the obvious weird guy police were looking for; he was attuned to the scene and very comfortable in that environment.
Shawcross actively involved himself in the police environment. He would sit on a stoop on Lyle Avenue and point out police decoys to an undercover officer, who was sitting right next to him. He also frequented a Dunkin Donuts where police discussed the homicide investigation, listening as they talked about how they were focused on writing down plate numbers of vehicles. He even told officers to be careful because there was a bad guy picking up women.
On December 17, 1989, June Cicero, described as the madam of the streets and the city’s meanest prostitute, disappeared from Lyle Avenue. Shawcross strangled her using mostly his left hand. He later drove out of town, opened the car door in a snowstorm, and pushed her body over a bridge into the water at Northhampton Park.
Arrest and Confession
The crucial break came while searching Northhampton Park. On January 3, 1990, an aerial search spotted June Cicero’s body frozen in the ice under a bridge over Salmon Creek. A suspicious looking car, a Chevrolet, was also spotted on the bridge. The driver, Arthur Shawcross, was seen closing the passenger door and sliding across to the driver's seat as the helicopter flew overhead. Given the FBI profilers’ understanding of the killer’s pattern of returning to dead bodies, police followed the car and took Shawcross in for questioning.
After 21 months of investigation, police finally pulled in Arthur Shawcross. They were armed with the knowledge of his previous killings in Watertown. Interviewers played on the fact that several prostitutes were still missing. Shawcross eventually confessed to the murders of 11 women, saying he simply got tired of the water the what was coming at me after 14 to 16 hours of questioning.
The Insanity Defense and Verdict
During the subsequent trial for the murder of 11 women, Shawcross’s defense entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The defense argued that Shawcross suffered a toxic combination of factors: brain damage, mental illness, and severe childhood abuse. Eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus confirmed that Shawcross’s brain scan showed abnormalities consistent with lesions and bizarre behavior originating from that part of the brain, suggesting that had he not been neurologically abnormal, he likely would not have become a serial murderer.
Dr. Lewis, a senior Yale psychiatrist, verified that Shawcross had been horribly sexually mistreated as a child, claiming his mother had given him oral sex for several years and that his father had intercourse with him when he was 14. The defense further argued that just prior to a murder, he suffered from partial seizures, seeing bright white light, after which he would wake up in his car with no conscious knowledge or control over his actions.
However, the prosecution and police derided the insanity plea. They argued that facts such as his efforts to hide bodies in the Genesee Gorge spoke to someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Furthermore, his sensational claims regarding military service in Vietnam were found to be exaggerated and untrue. The prosecution argued that Shawcross was simply a man who was bad and evil and killed the women because he wanted to and enjoyed it. The key issue was whether Shawcross knew his actions were wrong; if he did, he was responsible.
The jury remained unconvinced by the insanity argument and found Shawcross guilty on all accounts of murder. He was sentenced to 250 years in jail.
Life in Prison and Lack of Remorse
Shawcross was incarcerated at the Sullivan Correctional Facility. He gained macabre notoriety, receiving letters from college professors, doctors, lawyers, and psychiatrists from around the world. He continued to invent justifications for his killings, claiming he was targeting the women because he believed he was exposed to HIV and that he had eaten the vagina of three victims to speed up the AIDS disease.
In 2001, Shawcross met the daughter he never knew he had, Maggie Deming, who began visiting him in prison along with her seven children. Maggie noted that the children he had killed were about the same age as her own children. Despite the horror of his crimes, Maggie maintained a relationship with her father, stating she did not regret the fact that he was her father.
Although Shawcross displayed affection for his daughter and grandchildren, whom he wrote to and drew pictures for, he stated he felt no remorse or empathy for the families of the people he had killed. He admitted that something inside him was weird. The one subject he consistently refused to discuss was the murder of the two children in Watertown, likely because he could not come up with a way to justify or mitigate it.
Arthur Shawcross died on November 10, 2008, at the age of 63, after experiencing cardiac arrest at Albany Medical Center. His story is like an alarm that failed to ring twice; the initial manslaughter conviction in Watertown and his subsequent early parole opened the door for a wave of violence in Rochester, demonstrating the catastrophic consequences of misjudging a dark predator.