If there was one fiction writer that popularized behavioral analysis, it was Thomas Harris. The creative mind behind one of popular culture’s most famous cannibals, Harris wrote the highly successful books Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.
The reason why Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling capture the fascination of readers is because of the research put into building this world. Harris spent his time researching psychological profiles from the department that was the inspiration for David Fincher’s Netflix series, Mindhunter. From this research, Harris created iconic characters that were inspired by real-life crimes. Lecter may have been born from the author’s creativity, but the serial killer central to The Silence of the Lambs was an amalgamation of many different killers.
Ed Gein was a popular figure who brought forth many screen adaptations. The Wisconsin native who robbed graves to make a skin suit inspired Norman Bates in Psycho, as well as the more heightened killer Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Harris also used Gein as a source to create Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), also known as Buffalo Bill. In The Silence of the Lambs, Gumb kidnaps women and starves them before killing them to make his famous skin creation. Harris also used Ted Bundy to create the character. Bundy would often pretend to be injured to lure women to his car which is the same strategy that Gumb uses to capture Catherine (Brooke Smith). But there is a lesser-known killer who was also incorporated into Harris’ famous work.
Who was Gary Heidnik?
As common with many serial killers, Heidnik had a tumultuous childhood. According to allthatsinteresting.com, he was subjected to abuse from his father before enlisting in the army. After being discharged, he used a small investment to start his own church — mainly to evade taxes. The United Church of the Ministers of God was the vehicle that Heidnik would later use to trap his victims. The rapist’s main targets were particularly vulnerable, and underserved by law enforcement and media coverage; most were Black women, some were developmentally disabled, and often his victims survived by sex work. He lured these women and girls, then confined them in the basement of his home.
Like the character of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, Heidnik took the women he abducted and sealed them in a pit in his cellar. He would sexually assault and torture six women over four months. John Douglas, the writer of Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit and FBI profiler, is one of the respected authorities on the case of Gary Heidnik. He was Harris’ contact for research during his writing process and has spoken extensively in many of these grim cases. He reported to Oxygen that Heidnik was the mold for one of Harris’ infamous characters.
“That’s what Tom Harris, when he wrote Red Dragon, he sat in on a class, and that was one of the cases that we presented to him. So he worked that into his character Buffalo Bill as well as Ted Bundy.”
The similarities between the fictional character and the real-life persona were uncanny. Douglas went on to confirm the specifics of the real-life case for the network.
“First, he kept some of the victims down in the basement. He sealed up all of the outside windows so that no one could hear or see anything that was going on in the cellar.”
The showrunner for Monster Preacher, Myles Reiff, also lent his extensive knowledge of the case to Oxygen. Heidnik was not captured due to the tireless efforts of law enforcement, but thanks to one of the killer’s victims who got away. Josefina Rivera astutely guessed that becoming Heidnik’s friend would be her best chance of getting out. She became an accomplice in hurting his other prisoners as a way of survival, both hers and that of the other women. Eventually, he started using her as bait to capture other women, and that was how she made her escape and helped rescue the surviving captives.
In 1987, Rivera used her rare privileges to slip his notice at a gas station and call the police. Though a raid resulted from the call, Reiff made clear that it wasn’t so easy for Rivera. At first, the authorities didn’t believe her because of her experience in sex work. Only after showing the proof of injuries that Heidnik had tortured her did the raid commence. This is a far cry from Clarice Starling’s (Jodie Foster) heroics in taking on Jame Gumb by herself with no initial backup. Heidnik was arrested and in 1999, died from lethal injection.