Accused Phila. Torture Slayer Attempts Suicide

A man charged with murder after police found half-naked women shackled in his basement and body parts in his freezer tried to hang himself in a jail shower during the night, authorities said today.

Gary Heidnik used his T-shirt to hang himself from a shower pipe at the Philadelphia Detention Center, prison Superintendent David S. Owens said.

The 43-year-old Heidnik had an abrasion around his neck but was in good condition today at the Giuffre Medical Center.

Owens said an officer assigned to watch the suspect in the shower temporarily lost sight of him through the steam.

Heidnik, who has a history of psychological problems, was arrested March 25. Police found three starving women chained in a basement dungeon and human limbs in his kitchen.

One of the slaying victims was electrocuted in a watery torture pit in his basement, according to authorities, and one captive said another died after hanging by a hand from the ceiling for days.

Also charged in the second slaying was a friend of Heidnik’s, Cyril Brown, 31.

The suicide attempt Thursday night was one of several Heidnik has made over the years, according to his younger brother, who said in an interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer today that the two were raised in an atmosphere of violence and racism.

Terry Heidnik, 41, said their mother, Ellen, was an alcoholic and that their father believed “life has no value if it is a black life.”

Gary Heidnik, who is white, told an investigator in a 1978 case that his father frequently beat him, was prejudiced against blacks and hated his wife because she had affairs with black men after the couple divorced in 1946.

Police have said Heidnik preyed on mentally retarded blacks. The two slaying victims were black women, and one was mentally retarded.