From the time he was incarcerated, Arthur Shawcross consistently refused to be

interviewed and it took several years of spasmodic correspondence before he

changed his mind. When he did, the confirmation came in the form of a blunt,

handwritten note, which said simply: ‘I will see you.’

As part of the preparation for the interview, I set about talking to everyone

who had been involved with Arthur’s life and crimes, particularly Clara Neal,

who, in her wisdom, feels that Art should be released.

‘I will keep him on tablets so he won’t murder again,’ she promised. ‘Besides,

we are getting married soon. I really love him. He is such a wonderfully gentle

man.’

At 10.15am, Monday, 19 December 1994, the first interview started at the

Sullivan Correctional Facility. Before being admitted into the serial killer’s

presence, the guards explained to me that Shawcross was still considered a

highly dangerous and formidable killing machine.

‘He can revert to type within a microsecond,’ they said. ‘Should his features

whiten, then tighten up, or should he break into a sweat, then get out of his way as fast as you can. He is strong enough to rip your head right off.’

Weighing in at around 20 stone, Arthur Shawcross is 5ft 11in tall. With a

potato-shaped head topped with thin, silvery hair, a bulbous nose and small,

black, ever-watery, pig-like eyes set close together, he is quite an intimidating

sight. Massive arms hang from immensely strong sloping shoulders, his chest

merging into a pot-belly which hangs over his belt. From his waist down, the

shape of Shawcross is reversed. From the rolls of fat that circumnavigate his

middle, he has short, stumpy legs that terminate in very small feet. All in all, one

gets the impression that he is top-heavy and could topple over at any moment.

For the first of four interviews, we came face to face in a small locked cubicle.

No one else was present while Shawcross was engrossed with eating his lunch.

He greedily stuffed the food into his mouth, and his eyes were furtive, darting

around as if someone was about to snatch his food away.

After he wiped the grease and food particles from his mouth, he was asked

why he had eaten the body parts of many of his victims. Shawcross smiled, and

said, ‘Yes, sir, I have. The human meat, well, ah, it tastes like pork. I eat meat,

uncooked meat, and it’s like that. I eat hamburgers raw. I eat steak raw, an’ I eat

pork raw. I don’t know why I ate parts of people, but I just did. Period.’

For a long moment, Shawcross fell silent. His podgy fingers fiddled nervously

with a Styrofoam cup. His eyes scanned the ceiling as if he was searching for an

invisible fly, then he added, ‘Yeah, an’ I ate another one with the bone. I just

remembered that.’

God, I thought. How can someone ‘just remember that’?

Although the truth of the matter is that Shawcross never fired a gun in anger

while serving in Vietnam, he nevertheless wanted to boast about his service

career during this period. Talking about his favourite subject was a good way of

gaining his confidence and, true to form, Shawcross came up with the goods. He

explained that he had killed up to 50 people while out on what he called ‘search

and destroy missions’. He claimed, that he was tasked to destroy any living

human he came across.

Despite the improbability of Arthur’s gruesome acts, Arthur obviously

enjoyed talking about them if only to cause shock waves. When pressed, this

intellectual pygmy came up with a multitude of often-conflicting reasons in his

efforts to mitigate his heinous behaviour. These ranged from various types of

child abuse, especially incest, to his self-perceived Rambo-type activities carried

out in Vietnam: ‘The Army taught me how to kill. but it didn’t teach me how not

to kill. I have been a god unto myself. I’ve been the judge, the jury and the executioner. I have murdered, butchered and totally destroyed 53 human beings

in my lifetime. I just wanna know why.’

Arthur’s excuse for murdering prostitutes was equally bizarre. At first, he

stated that he was ordered by God to murder them because they all had AIDS.

When questioned about the obvious fact that he had also raped and killed two

young children, and two quite decent women, he clammed up and could not

provide an answer. And, as the interviews progressed, he tripped himself up at

every turn.

He admitted that he had murdered many of the women after having had sex

with them. On another occasion, he strangled his victim because she bit his penis

during fellatio, all of which somewhat flies in the face of him being ordered to

kill them because they had AIDS. Another luckless soul he battered to a pulp

after she had accidentally trapped her head in the window of his car. He went

further to say that after dragging her two blocks, he stopped, and she calmly

climbed into the car and asked him if he wanted sex. But, then, he changed his

excuse once again: ‘I went out with 80 to 100 women, including hookers. I was

trying to find out why I was impotent, something like that.’

One girl had been murdered because she allegedly accused Art of stealing her

purse. Another was slaughtered because she had stolen money from his home,

and then threatened to tell Mrs Shawcross that her husband was having an affair.

Then Arthur argued that he was suffering from a rare genetic disorder, and this

was why he turned to serial homicide, changing tack almost immediately to

blame his four wives for denying him sex so that he had to go out and find

hookers to kill. Finally, he said that bright lights give him terrible headaches, and

this is the cause of his problems.

In an effort to tap into the black abyss of Shawcross’s mind, I questioned him

about the emotions he experienced prior to, and during the acts of murder. True

to form, he did not disappoint with his answer.

‘It was a combination of the quietness of the area, the starlight, an’ I got

sweating an’ stuff. I can’t control that. I strangled most of them, an’ it ain’t like

on TV where they just drop dead. In real life, they can hold their breath for three

minutes, and up to seven minutes before they susscumm [sic]. One woman, well,

just as I was strangling her, she said, “I know who you are.” Then she went limp

an’ she didn’t feel nothing. She just went limp.’

Asked why some of his victims’ bodies bore multiple bruising, while some

had been disembowelled and others had had vegetation debris forced into their

body orifices, he started to become agitated. His fingers and hands constantly

fidgeted, and his eyes darted around the room.

After a few moments, he regained his composure, replying, ‘Yes, sir. Some of

the bodies, yeah, they had bruises on them. That’s where I knelt over them with

my body weight, or I dragged ’em into the rushes down by the water’s edge. I

cut ’em open so’s they’d rot a lot quicker that way. Kinda gutted ’em like fish

an’ stuff. The other stuff. Well, I just don’t need to talk with you about this just

yet.’

Then he had the gall to ask me to be the Best Man at his forthcoming marriage

to Clara Neal!