John Paul Fay was a creep and proud of it.
Angry and unemployed, he lived in his aunt’s basement, drunk on rum. He surfed the net, looking for gory crime-scene photos. He collected fake shrunken heads and fantasized about decapitating people. When his disgusted family referred to him as Dracula, he smiled.
He wanted to be a monster.
And then he met one.
“The Shawcross Letters: My Journey Into the Mind of Evil,” written with Brian Whitney, is the story of a weird and deeply disturbing connection — a pen-pal friendship between a maladjusted Massachusetts wannabe and a nightmarish, real-life murderer.
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Known as the “Genesee River Killer,” Arthur Shawcross of upstate Watertown first raped and killed two children in 1972. In exchange for leading authorities to one of the bodies, he was allowed to cop a manslaughter plea. He got 25 years. He served less than half, paroled as “no longer dangerous.”
As soon as he was sprung, Shawcross started proving them wrong.
Moving to Rochester, he started stalking women, most of them prostitutes accustomed to pale, staring men following them. No one paid much attention at first.
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Then the bodies started showing up.
In the end the police found 12 of them, strangled and battered, hacked and dumped. In 1990, Shawcross was identified as a suspect and picked up by local police. He quickly confessed. At the trial, he pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
He said he’d been brutalized as a child, had committed atrocities in Vietnam, heard voices. He boasted about being a cannibal. The prosecution said he was lying, just trying to score a bed in a mental hospital.
The jury found him sane and guilty. The judge gave him 250 years.
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Then, 10 years into his sentence, Shawcross found Fay.
The younger man had survived his own troubles. When he was 10, his battling parents split, with Fay’s mother getting a restraining order against his father — he’d tried to strangle her once. During the year-long separation, his father would load Fay in the car, driving around, drinking beer and stalking his estranged wife.
“Ironically,” Fay writes, “with the typical overtones of oddity and undertones of Freudian trips of unspecified perversity, it was the best year of my childhood. My initiation and well-earned first degrees of dealing with and managing mutants.”
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His parents eventually reunited, but Fay kept falling apart. At 12, he fell into a trance and started choking a friend “until the urge left my body.” He became obsessed with violence — saws, swords, extreme gore. He enlisted in the Marines, but was abruptly discharged when he was found chewing on his own forearms.
Fay went back to his dark room in Massachusetts and the darker corners of the internet, where he traded grisly collectibles — a real body bag, a fake severed limb. Particularly in bad-taste demand was serial-killer memorabilia.
Using the nickname “Sawman,” Fay began to buy and trade Shawcross’ prison art — pictures of songbirds, mostly. The killer, who was already corresponding with collectors, got Fay’s address and wrote him. Fay wrote him back, suggesting they team up and split the proceeds.
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Shawcross was enthusiastic.
“Now that you have parted with one item of mine, here are two more to get you started, Mr. Sawman,” he wrote. “Some handle you have there! It was the handle, Sawman, that got my attention. I have used a MACHETE on a few ... Head come right off!”
Most people would have ended the correspondence right there.
Fay wasn’t like most people.
The two men — the real-life serial killer and the loner who fantasized about them — began corresponding regularly. Fay sent him money, tape cassettes, grisly photos and, once, a picture of a pregnant relative. Shawcross sent him sketches, paintings and carefully dried four-leaf clovers from the exercise yard.
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Also badly typewritten letters, a mix of a murderer’s memories and a geezer’s ramblings.
“Hello John,” he wrote. “You can call me ART if you want. Thank you for the money order ... You forgot to mention a saw or two. MY specialty is the KEYHOLE SAW! It is what I used on THREE VICTIMS. Then you have the JIGSAW: Real handy that! ... Taxes are destroying this country ... I miss going to rummage sales. You meet interesting people. If you know what to look for you can make money on it. Gotta go, pal.”
The correspondence continued for years, cementing a bond Fay called “the closest to a wholesome relationship I’ve ever had.”
Shawcross continued to write, brag, draw. Fay continued to binge-watch gore films, seek out weird websites, dream about decapitating pretty strangers. The two enabled each other. Fay was Shawcross’ biggest fan. Shawcross became Fay’s new, encouraging father.
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It worked, in its own sick way, for a while. Fay began to prosper, helping produce a no-budget, straight-to-video horror, “Blown,” about a murderous blow-up doll. He found a literary agent, and started putting together a deal for Shawcross’ memoirs.
Behind bars, Shawcross typed away, telling Fay to get a big advance. Maybe there would be a movie deal.
Not surprisingly, it all fell apart pretty quickly. No publisher would offer any money without seeing the entire book; Shawcross wouldn’t show anyone more than a few pages until he got paid.
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“I am very unhappy in what you have informed me of!!!” Shawcross wrote Fay as the deal dissolved. “Something in your ball court is not right. What happened to an advance? ... I feel something just is not up to par! I am sorry John. We have got a lot to speak about because at this moment I don’t feel safe in giving up the whole thing without something to show for it. I am broke all the time. David Berkowitz has money up the ass.”
It dawned on Fay that he had now infuriated a serial killer, who knew where he lived. A psychopath who had fans across the country, and admired the way Charles Manson got other people to do his work for him.
It seemed like the bloody drama Fay had always dreamed of was finally coming.
Yet it never did. Shawcross, who’d always been overweight and out of shape, started getting sick. Fay, whose drinking and drug use was increasing, started getting sicker. The correspondence petered out. Shawcross died in prison of a heart attack in 2008, at 63.
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Fay fell further, moving on to hard drugs. He crashed cars, bounced in and out of jail, threatened to cut off a girlfriend’s head when she brought home the wrong Chinese takeout. Eventually he landed in a state hospital, committed for detox and a psychiatric evaluation.
Since Fay’s release, he’s straightened up — at least enough to pull together his old letters from Shawcross and help string them into a narrative. It’s been a kind of therapy, he writes, “a way of wringing out a soul oversaturated with devils.”
Whether the devils won is unclear. His author bio describes him as “a fan of horror and offbeat movies, student of the martial arts, and avid experiencer of altered states of mind, who may or may not be in recovery or jail by the time you read this.”
read more
Angry and unemployed, he lived in his aunt’s basement, drunk on rum. He surfed the net, looking for gory crime-scene photos. He collected fake shrunken heads and fantasized about decapitating people. When his disgusted family referred to him as Dracula, he smiled.
He wanted to be a monster.
And then he met one.
“The Shawcross Letters: My Journey Into the Mind of Evil,” written with Brian Whitney, is the story of a weird and deeply disturbing connection — a pen-pal friendship between a maladjusted Massachusetts wannabe and a nightmarish, real-life murderer.
Wife of Ohio cop shooting suspect hid in bushes to call for help: 'He shot the police officers'
Known as the “Genesee River Killer,” Arthur Shawcross of upstate Watertown first raped and killed two children in 1972. In exchange for leading authorities to one of the bodies, he was allowed to cop a manslaughter plea. He got 25 years. He served less than half, paroled as “no longer dangerous.”
As soon as he was sprung, Shawcross started proving them wrong.
Moving to Rochester, he started stalking women, most of them prostitutes accustomed to pale, staring men following them. No one paid much attention at first.
NYC correction officer suffers fractured spine in planned attack by six inmates on Rikers Island
Then the bodies started showing up.
In the end the police found 12 of them, strangled and battered, hacked and dumped. In 1990, Shawcross was identified as a suspect and picked up by local police. He quickly confessed. At the trial, he pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
He said he’d been brutalized as a child, had committed atrocities in Vietnam, heard voices. He boasted about being a cannibal. The prosecution said he was lying, just trying to score a bed in a mental hospital.
The jury found him sane and guilty. The judge gave him 250 years.
Massachusetts mother who reportedly practiced voodoo charged with fatally stabbing sons in ‘ritual incident’
Then, 10 years into his sentence, Shawcross found Fay.
The younger man had survived his own troubles. When he was 10, his battling parents split, with Fay’s mother getting a restraining order against his father — he’d tried to strangle her once. During the year-long separation, his father would load Fay in the car, driving around, drinking beer and stalking his estranged wife.
“Ironically,” Fay writes, “with the typical overtones of oddity and undertones of Freudian trips of unspecified perversity, it was the best year of my childhood. My initiation and well-earned first degrees of dealing with and managing mutants.”
11-year-old boy dies after saving his friend who fell through thin ice at Queens pond
His parents eventually reunited, but Fay kept falling apart. At 12, he fell into a trance and started choking a friend “until the urge left my body.” He became obsessed with violence — saws, swords, extreme gore. He enlisted in the Marines, but was abruptly discharged when he was found chewing on his own forearms.
Fay went back to his dark room in Massachusetts and the darker corners of the internet, where he traded grisly collectibles — a real body bag, a fake severed limb. Particularly in bad-taste demand was serial-killer memorabilia.
Using the nickname “Sawman,” Fay began to buy and trade Shawcross’ prison art — pictures of songbirds, mostly. The killer, who was already corresponding with collectors, got Fay’s address and wrote him. Fay wrote him back, suggesting they team up and split the proceeds.
Neighbor finds K-9 who fled from Long Island home after spotting German shepherd’s shield
Shawcross was enthusiastic.
“Now that you have parted with one item of mine, here are two more to get you started, Mr. Sawman,” he wrote. “Some handle you have there! It was the handle, Sawman, that got my attention. I have used a MACHETE on a few ... Head come right off!”
Most people would have ended the correspondence right there.
Fay wasn’t like most people.
The two men — the real-life serial killer and the loner who fantasized about them — began corresponding regularly. Fay sent him money, tape cassettes, grisly photos and, once, a picture of a pregnant relative. Shawcross sent him sketches, paintings and carefully dried four-leaf clovers from the exercise yard.
Pregnant firefighter denied ‘light duty’ assignment
Also badly typewritten letters, a mix of a murderer’s memories and a geezer’s ramblings.
“Hello John,” he wrote. “You can call me ART if you want. Thank you for the money order ... You forgot to mention a saw or two. MY specialty is the KEYHOLE SAW! It is what I used on THREE VICTIMS. Then you have the JIGSAW: Real handy that! ... Taxes are destroying this country ... I miss going to rummage sales. You meet interesting people. If you know what to look for you can make money on it. Gotta go, pal.”
The correspondence continued for years, cementing a bond Fay called “the closest to a wholesome relationship I’ve ever had.”
Shawcross continued to write, brag, draw. Fay continued to binge-watch gore films, seek out weird websites, dream about decapitating pretty strangers. The two enabled each other. Fay was Shawcross’ biggest fan. Shawcross became Fay’s new, encouraging father.
California driver slams Lamborghini into construction trailer, wrecking $235,000 car
It worked, in its own sick way, for a while. Fay began to prosper, helping produce a no-budget, straight-to-video horror, “Blown,” about a murderous blow-up doll. He found a literary agent, and started putting together a deal for Shawcross’ memoirs.
Behind bars, Shawcross typed away, telling Fay to get a big advance. Maybe there would be a movie deal.
Not surprisingly, it all fell apart pretty quickly. No publisher would offer any money without seeing the entire book; Shawcross wouldn’t show anyone more than a few pages until he got paid.
Bronx mechanic who attacked ‘Help me Howard’ reporter hit with $5,000 bail
“I am very unhappy in what you have informed me of!!!” Shawcross wrote Fay as the deal dissolved. “Something in your ball court is not right. What happened to an advance? ... I feel something just is not up to par! I am sorry John. We have got a lot to speak about because at this moment I don’t feel safe in giving up the whole thing without something to show for it. I am broke all the time. David Berkowitz has money up the ass.”
It dawned on Fay that he had now infuriated a serial killer, who knew where he lived. A psychopath who had fans across the country, and admired the way Charles Manson got other people to do his work for him.
It seemed like the bloody drama Fay had always dreamed of was finally coming.
Yet it never did. Shawcross, who’d always been overweight and out of shape, started getting sick. Fay, whose drinking and drug use was increasing, started getting sicker. The correspondence petered out. Shawcross died in prison of a heart attack in 2008, at 63.
Father slashed in face while walking with 1-year-old son in Bronx says attacker yelled 'F--k your country'
Fay fell further, moving on to hard drugs. He crashed cars, bounced in and out of jail, threatened to cut off a girlfriend’s head when she brought home the wrong Chinese takeout. Eventually he landed in a state hospital, committed for detox and a psychiatric evaluation.
Since Fay’s release, he’s straightened up — at least enough to pull together his old letters from Shawcross and help string them into a narrative. It’s been a kind of therapy, he writes, “a way of wringing out a soul oversaturated with devils.”
Whether the devils won is unclear. His author bio describes him as “a fan of horror and offbeat movies, student of the martial arts, and avid experiencer of altered states of mind, who may or may not be in recovery or jail by the time you read this.”
read more
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