Customer Reviews

Cellar of Horror: The Story of Gary Heidnik

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ken Englade's CELLAR OF HORROR details the bundle of insanity that was Gary Heidnik. Heidnik, who had been diagnosed for years as schizophrenic, held six women captive in his basement over a four month period spanning 1987/1988. His goal was ostensibly to have each of these women bear his children - he wanted ten - creating a family who would continue living in his basement. Heidnik sexually assaulted and tortured these women in a variety of repulsive ways, and two of them eventually died at his hands.
An interesting and unusual facet of Heidnik's psyche is that he was a white man with an IQ measured at 130 who preferred the company of mentally and physically disabled black women, though of the captives only one was disabled.

CELLAR OF HORROR was first published in 1989. As Heidnik was convicted in July 1988, I was afraid the book was going to be a rush-to-print slop job.
It most definitely is not. Englade is a professional. He doesn't tell the reader what to think; he does not at all inject his own personality into the account; and he doesn't pad his book with mindless repetition and filler. What he does is write fairly, reportorially, and intelligently.

A strong point of this book is that Englade has included a reasonable amount of background material on Heidnik, from his childhood on.
I would have actually preferred even more background, but there is still a lot more than is usually found in true crime books printed this close to the trial. I also think this would have been a better book if there had been an attempt to provide background information about the victims. And the picture section, while it contains 5 good pictures of Heidnik, has none of any of the women Heidnik abducted and held captive. I realize that this may have been a sensitive issue, but the victims are all named in the book and the four that lived testified at the trial, so it seems to me that their pictures, and/or more information personalizing them, could have been printed. This would have improved the book. In short I would have liked the book longer and with more depth.

Still, I still found CELLAR OF HORROR to be a fast paced and very well written account of a truly appalling crime comitted by yet another truly appalling lunatic. And I recommend it highly.

Ken Englade is the author of many true crime books. This one rates four stars because it is well written, using the English language well. It is easy to read. Initially, the book moves from Heidnick's past, then back to the crime for which he was arrested and sentenced. He held women in a cellar in terrible conditions and demanded sex so that he could have children. Half of the book focuses on the crime and the other half on the trial.

The reason the book does not get five stars is that it lacks investigation of Heidnick's childhood and family. It does briefly go into his hopitalizations for mental illness. So many opportunities for Heidnick to get the help that could have prevented this crime. Also, Heidnik accrued quit a bit of money through some sort of investment. Going into that also would have been interesting.

Finally, I did not give this book five stars because there were very few pictures. Pictures of childhood, details of the scene of the crime, pictures of the victims along with a postlogue of the current fate of the victims would have added immensely to the book.

The story of Gary Heidnik is one of the more disturbing in the whole genre of true crime. Ken Englade does a commendable job of outlining Heidnik's spiral out of control in "Cellar of Horror".

The facts show Heidnick imprisoned as many as five women at varying times to serve as a "baby making machines" for him. All of the women were African American with a background of mental deficiency or prostitution. The women were starved, tortured, raped, and beaten at varying times during their captivity. Two women died in captivity. One woman's remains were cooked, causing a tremendous odor in the neighborhood, and fed to dogs mixed in with dogfood. One of the more interesting aspects of the capitivity shows the social dynamics that caused one of the prisoners to gain favor over the others and align herself with her captor.

The trial shows a judge wiping her behind with the consititution to railroad the jury into a first degree murder verdict. Judge Abraham clearly wanted as little evidence of insanity presented as possible. She allowed the prosecution to present evidence which the defense was forbidden to present. This was among her many offenses. A more clear case of not guilty by reason of insanity may not be possible. Heidnik was given disability pay by the military and diagnosed with schizophrenia. In addition, he was in and out of mental health institutes over twenty times between his years in the military and his arrest for murder.

Ken Englade tells a riveting story in "Cellar of Horror". It is a relatively short read, but one that I had trouble putting down as I read it in two days. Because of its thoughtfulness, it is essential true crime.

I love true crime and this was an interesting story but to me the real message was that this guy should never have been out in the normal population in the first place. It ended up being more a commentary on the problems associated with housing and treating the severely disturbed and mentally ill people in our society. The author reported the story of Gary but it jumped around a lot and did much repeating of information and details. Not the best true crime novel, but it did tell the story of this lunatic.

Mr. Englade did a good job staying with the story, by just telling the story. You get an idea of what he (the author) thinks but that's it. I don't read true crime to learn about the thoughts and feelings of the author, I read them for the facts of the case. Gary Heidnik and the things that he did to those girls were horrible. After learning about what he wrote to a fiancee' while in jail, I do wonder how much of his problems were fake and what was real.

Statistics would indicate that mentally ill persons are no more dangerous than other persons. However, there is a catch. Some mentally ill persons are extremely dangerous... and you have no way of knowing who they are.

Hospitalized in various psychiatric facilities on no fewer than 21 occasions, Gary Heidnik was a paranoid schizophrenic with a genious IQ. His primary goal in life was to imprison 10 women, impregnate them all, and raise a family in his basement. After successfully kidnapping 5 women over a period of 4 months, Heidnik maintained control of his captives with chains, daily beatings, repeated rapes, starvation, and other tortures. What he did not consider was that someday one of them would escape. When that happened, all hell broke loose in Philidelphia.

The author composes an interesting history of a man with a highly intelligent mind haunted by the specter of mental illness. Well written and gramatically sound, Englade also does a fine job of humanizing the victims... however pitiful and disenfranchised they may have been as prostitutes, the handicapped, and the mentally retarded.

Without going into too much detail about the individual verdicts reached by the jury, it is apparent that neither the prosecuting attorney nor the jurors understood the dynamics of mental illness or the distinction between intelligence and severe mental instability. As a practicing mental health professional, I think I might have come to some different conclusions about what constitutes guilt and innocence. BONUS: For those readers enjoy heated courtroom drama, the moodiness and contradictory rulings of Judge Lynne Abraham, as well as a chaotic conglomerate of "expert witnesses" and their testimonies will not disappoint!

True Crime novels are either really good or really bad with few falling into that range of mediocre (many of Ann Rule's). This is a good one. True Crime in its own respect attracts a specific person type, afterall, when you think about it, someone who buys a book to read about the despicable crimes of others inflicted upon humanity is a little odd. In this retelling, Ken Englade presents the crimes of Gary Heidnik in Philadelphia. Heidnik came from a broken home, confused about his own race. He joined the army and was seemingly doing well. His high intelligence not withstanding, he got into loan sharking in the army. After being discharged, he started his own church, whether this was for tax reasons or not, he focused his 'congregation' on mentally and physically disabled people.

Heidnik fathered numerous children, none of which he was able to obtain guardianship of. So feeling the world 'cheated him out of a family', he comes up with the plan to procure women and chain them up in his basement where he beats them, sexually abuses them, and plans on having them bear him children which he will raise there. Things fall apart for him when they start dying and he has to dispose of the bodies. He even went so far as to get a mail-order Filipino bride to try and have a family 'the right way'. Throw in that he seemed to have a good mind for finance as he took $1500 of his money and using the church front, turned it into $556,000 through stocks, and you have a man with the brains and distrubing and deranged methods for carrying out his plans.

The second half of the book deals with his legal proceedings and arrest which largely seemed like filler material to turn a 100 page book into a 275 page book. But, withing this portion you begin to question whether one of the girls turns into an accomplice. More importantly, has Gary Heidnik been faking his mental illness his entire life? He studied it, was a nurse for it, and was in and out of institutions 22 times but was he largely faking his schizophrenia to cover for his shortcomings in everything else in his life or, using his high intelligence, exaggerating a mental condition that he may have been able to control?

The book was published in 1988 so does not cover Heidnik's life in prison after the conviction and up to his death by lethal injection in 1999. The first half of the book is a full 5 stars as the author doesn't overfill you on gore and disgusting details but paints the obvious picture of this madman. The scond half of the book gets 4 stars for the court coverage that was more detailed than it needed to be but was well written to keep your interest.

Ken Englade's CELLAR OF HORROR was the riveting story of Gary Heidnik who held five women captive in his basement; all the while raping, torturing and starving them yet with the intent to impregnate them so that he could, in a manner of speaking, be immoralized.

While the story itself it one that can keep you entranced, the arguments for Heidnik's sanity are also just as enticing. Was Heidnik crazy or was he simply manipulating his doctors? Sadly enough, since Heidnik's sentence of death was carried out by lethal injection in 1999, no one may never really know.

This book is a very quick read, simply because readers can't put it down. Englade provides plenty of details on facts and plenty of arguments on the accused's sanities; enough to keep one thinking about it long after it's finished. I highly recommend this book to true crime genre fans!

- This story is more terrifying and stranger than most of the horror movies I've ever seen. Garry Hednik held 5 young women captive as sex slaves for months. He tortured them and killed two of them. He dismembered one of the corpses. He founded the United Church of Ministers of God and became its bishop. He made some money on stocks too!

- The writing style is very annoying and anti-climax. The author keeps jumping around from one year to another. For example, chapter one started on November 26, 1986. Then, chapter 3 started on November 29, 1961. Then, chapter 4 started on November 27, 1986. Consequently, the story is choppy, not suspenseful, and anti-climax. What a shame! It could have been a great book.

In short, it's worth reading once.

Ken Englade really does his research in presenting this dark, disturbing case about a very disturbed individual. The crimes are too horrific to write about here. The book is not for anybody who gets offended easily or doesn't have the stomach to read the gory parts. The Cellar of Horror is truly a well-written novel with bits and tidbits of information regarding the criminal's past, his biography, and his possible other crimes. Ken Englade is one of the best true crime writers out there. This book is an easy read but only for those brave enough to read it in the first place. It's not for everybody neither.