Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 3

Wednesday, March 25. 1987 PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS Page 3 HORROR ON MARSHALL STREET Human Body Parts Found; Man Arrested By SCOTT FLANDER and EDWARD MORAN Daily News Staff Writers Three women being held captive in chains were found by police early today when they entered a homemade dungeon in a house in North Philadelphia. At least two other women believed to have been imprisoned earlier may have died. During a search, police said, they uncovered human body parts in the kitchen some charred in an oven, others in a stewpot on a stove, and an arm in the refrigerator. The assortment of parts indicated the deaths of at least two people, police said.

The owner of the house on Marshall Street near Tioga, Gary Michael Heidnick, 43, was arrested and charged with four counts of rape and four counts of kidnapping. Police said they believed Heidnick took women to his house for sex and then imprisoned them. He was being held at the Police Administration Building, 8th and Race streets. Two of the women in the basement, both in their late teens, were suffering from malnutrition and dehydration and were believed to have been imprisoned at the house on North Marshall Street for up to four months. One of the two women was identified as Lisa Thomas, of Jessup Street near Cumberland.

She told the Daily News that she believed at least two other women had been imprisoned in the house and had died. Thomas and the other woman were lying partially clothed on mattresses on the floor and were chained and manacled in muffler clamps. Police said that when they entered the basement of Heidnick's house, the women shouted, "Praise the Lord, Hosanna, we're free, we're saved." They told the officers a third woman was "in the hole" and pointed to a piece of plywood on the concrete floor, weighted down by 100-pound bags of sand. Officers uncovered a hole in the basement and found a woman believed to be in her early 20s in chains. Police said she was in good condition and apparently had been imprisoned for one or two days.

Two of the three women were admitted to Episcopal Hospital, where they were being treated for malnutrition and dehydration. "They are alert and ambulatory," an Episcopal spokesman said. "They've been talking to the officials. And they were very hungry, so we did feed them." Neighbors described Heidnick as a veteran who apparently conducted religious services in the house and frequently entertained women guests. They said Heidnick owned a Rolls-Royce, late-model Cadillac, Lincoln Continental, a van and an older See CHAINS Next Page Staff Photography by Rick Bowmar Paulette Thomas, mother of Lisa Thomas, with Lisa's son, Haneef Cooper; the ex-captive is "a strong person, tough" her mother said 'Me Put Chains on Rfly Legs' Victim Tells of Beatings, Sex and Deaths of 2 Women I 5 She had left her home on Jessup Street near Cumberland on the evening of last Dec.

22 to go to a girlfriend's house to get a pair of gloves she'd left there. On Lehigh Avenue near Germantown Avenue, she said, she was attracted to a late-model Cadillac occupied by a lone male. He struck up a conversation with her that led to his inviting her to dinner. She accepted. The man, she said, was Gary Heidnick, who owns the Marshall Street house.

Police have identified the owner of the house as Gary Michael Heidnick, 43. They have charged him with four counts of rape and four counts of kidnapping. Thomas said she and the man went to a restaurant on City Avenue for dinner, then went to his home on Marshall Street "to watch some videotapes." Then, she said, she fell asleep, and "the next thing I knew he was choking me Thomas said she came to know the two other women See VICTIM Page 5 By RON AVERY Daily News Staff Writer A he next thing I knew he was choking me II and he handcuffed me. He took me down to the basement and put chains on my legs. He beat me with a wooden stick.

There were two other women down there. They were chained, too." Speaking this morning from her bed in Episcopal Hospital, 18-year-old Lisa Thomas told the story of the horror that had been her life for the past three months. Her ordeal ended last night, when police, alerted by a woman who had escaped, rescued Thomas and two other women from the basement of a house on Marshall Street near Tioga where they had been held. During her imprisonment, she said, she saw two other women die, one of whom apparently was electrocuted. She said she was forced to have sex with her captor every day, was clothed only in a shirt, and was fed nothing but dog food and dog biscuits.

Her story had an ordinary beginning. Lisa Thomas: "We're free!".