Gary Heidnick

Biography

Gary Michael Heidnik (November 22, 1943 – July 6, 1999) was an American murderer and serial rapist who kidnapped, tortured and raped six women, murdering two of them, while holding them captive in a self-dug pit in his basement floor in Philadelphia between 1986 and 1987. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in July 1999, the last person executed in the state of Pennsylvania as of January 2026. He later became one of the inspirations for the character of Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs.