Heidnik's House of Horrors

These houses are the standard fare of the neighborhood, which is well filled with Victorian twins, as we call them. However, one of the two on either side of the alley was the home of Gary M. Heidnik from 1967 to 1976. Neither of the two old timers who brought my attention to this could recall which house it was, but when Gary made national headlines as a serial kidnapper, rapist, and killer in 1987, the police followed his trail back here to Cedar Avenue and excavated the cellar and the back yard, looking for dead bodies --finding none. Heidnik was, at the time, remembered on this street because he shot a tenant in the face here. His modus operandi was to charm retarded women of a nearby human services agency, and (at first) rape and torture them, but later on and a few miles to the north, he dug a torture-pit in his basement and killed at least two. He would cut up his victims and put the parts in his freezer. There were unconfirmed rumors of cannibalism. Heidnik was executed in 1999, and was the last person, as of now, to be executed in Pennsylvania.