Arthur Shawcross

What the record shows

Arthur John Shawcross was a New York serial killer convicted of murdering 11 women in the Rochester area between March 1988 and December 1989. In December 1990 a Monroe County jury found him guilty of 10 counts of second-degree murder, and in February 1991 Judge Donald Wisner imposed 25 years to life on each count, a 250-year minimum that the district attorney called the longest sentence in state history, UPI reported. The Associated Press reported that three months later he pleaded guilty to strangling an 11th woman found in neighboring Wayne County. Separately, in 1972 he had pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the deaths of two children in Watertown, New York, and was paroled in 1987.

The Rochester murders began in March 1988 with Dorothy Blackburn, 27. According to UPI, nine of the ten women in the Monroe County indictment were sex workers, and most were strangled or suffocated. Victims named in the Wikipedia article and wire reports include Anna Marie Steffen, Dorothy Keeler, Patricia Ives, June Stott, Marie Welch, Frances Brown, Kimberly Logan, Darlene Trippi, June Cicero and Felicia Stephens. At trial a police witness testified that Shawcross said he killed Keeler, 59, in the Genesee River gorge in spring 1989 after an argument, striking her with a log. Elizabeth Gibson, 29, found on November 27, 1989, was killed in Wayne County and charged separately.

UPI reported that on January 3, 1990, a State Police helicopter searching for June Cicero found her body in a culvert near Northampton Park west of Rochester and minutes later saw a car speeding away. Troopers followed it to Shawcross's home. He was questioned on January 4 and, according to police accounts reported by UPI, admitted the killings and gave information that led investigators to the bodies of Marie Welch and Felicia Stephens. He was arraigned on January 5, 1990, pleading not guilty to eight murders; a 23-member grand jury returned a 10-count second-degree murder indictment on January 23.

Wire reports in January 1990 recounted that after his 1987 parole Shawcross was placed in the village of Delhi, where residents learned of his record and his landlord evicted him; he was then quietly relocated to Rochester, where he worked nights stocking shelves. The placements drew public criticism of parole supervision.

The televised Monroe County trial opened in the autumn of 1990 before Judge Wisner, with First Assistant District Attorney Charles Siragusa prosecuting. Shawcross pleaded not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect. The Associated Press reported that defense psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis attributed his conduct to brain damage, childhood abuse and Vietnam service, while prosecution psychiatrist Park Dietz testified that he was feigning illness. The jury deliberated about six and a half hours before convicting him on all 10 counts in December 1990.

In People v. Shawcross, 192 A.D.2d 1128 (April 14, 1993), the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, unanimously affirmed the Monroe County judgment. The court rejected claims that the trial judge should have inquired into a defense expert's complaint about defense counsel and that the jury should not have been told the consequences of an insanity verdict, and it upheld the denial of his suppression motion, finding that he had voluntarily accompanied police and was not in custody when questioned.

Shawcross served his sentence at Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg. In 2001 sales of his artwork at a state inmate art show drew protests from victims' families and led New York to end the show, the Associated Press reported. On November 10, 2008, he was taken from the prison to Albany Medical Center and died there that night at 63; the Wikipedia article gives the cause as cardiac arrest. A 2024 WHEC report noted that police had initially considered 17 women as possible victims.

Shawcross was born June 6, 1945, in Kittery, Maine, and grew up near Watertown, New York. On parole for burglary in 1972, he was arrested that September for the death of Karen Ann Hill, 8, and later admitted killing Jack Owen Blake, 10, who had disappeared in May. On October 17, 1972, he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and received an indeterminate sentence with a 25-year maximum, serving about 14 years before his 1987 parole.