(Fallsburg, N.Y.) -- The New York State Corrections Office in Albany has confirmed that serial killer Arthur Shawcross, 63, has died.
Officials said he complained of a pain in his leg Monday afternoon. He was taken to the Albany Medical Center, where he went into cardiac arrest and died at 9:50 p.m.
Shawcross, also known as the “Genesee River” serial killer, was convicted of murdering 11 victims, from 1988 to 1990.
Shawcross eluded police for over two years. Between 1988 and 1990, he was an unknown killer, leaving a trail of dead bodies, and dead ends for those trying to catch him.
He was eventually arrested in January 1990, a day after State Police spotted him near the frozen body of one of his victims.
Many, but not all, of the victims were prostitutes; all but one was from Monroe County. Most of the victims were found near or in the Genesee River.
- Patricia Ives, 25
- Frances Brown, 22
- June Cicero, 34
- Darlene Trippi, 32
- Anna Marie Steffen, 28
- Dorothy Blackburn, 27
- Felicia Stephens, 20
- June Stotts, 30
- Marie Welch, 22
- Elizabeth Gibson, 29
- Dorothy Keller, 59
The law eventually caught up to Shawcross, who was known to return to the crime scenes to watch police recover the bodies of his victims. In his Monroe County trial, which was televised, Shawcross pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. But the defense did not convince the jury, and he was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to 250 years in prison.
He pleaded guilty to murder in a subsequent trial for the victim from Wayne County.
In 1972, he was convicted of killing and sexually assaulting two children in the Watertown area—10-year-old Jack Owen Blake and eight-year-old Karen Ann Hill.
He sexually assaulted and murdered Blake, and four months later, raped and killed Hill.
He was released after serving 15 years of a 25-year plea bargained sentence in March 1987. One of the conditions of his release was that he had to leave Watertown. After being rejected by many communities, he eventually settled in Rochester.
The first victim was murdered in March 1988.
He spent the last years of his life since his last conviction at Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y., creating a furor for trying to sell his artwork from prison. He was disciplined, because inmates are not allowed to conduct business behind bars.
Note: The list above represents the murders for which Arthur Shawcross was officially charged and convicted. Other victims of crime discovered during the same period of time, including Kimberly Logan, who was originally listed in this article, were not officially charged to Shawcross. In the video of the press conference linked above – starting around the 9:45 mark – the investigators take questions from reporters about “16 or 17” bodies found in Rochester around the time of the Shawcross murders, but investigators did not charge Arthur Shawcross with those additional crimes.
