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Dark Waters: Arthur Shawcross Day 12: 12 Nightmares Before Christmas

·48 min·4 clips

Arthur Shawcross keeps offering reasons, and none of them make the case feel any smaller. The episode picks up after earlier killings have already left police with a growing problem. Dorothy Keeler sits in the background, and the body count keeps pushing the story forward. Patricia Patty Ives goes missing in September of 1989 and is found in October. Her body turns up within a half mile of where Anna Marie Stephan had been dumped, and Patty was also a sex worker. Shawcross claimed he killed her because he caught her trying to steal his wallet, but the explanation feels more like another excuse than an answer. The repeated justifications start to sound like a pattern of their own. The episode points out that several victims were sex workers and that bodies were found in close proximity, which helped police understand they were dealing with a connected series of murders rather than isolated incidents. June Stout enters the story next. She was 30, had a mild learning disability, and was supposedly a friend of Arthur's. He said he saw her sitting near the river on October 23, 1989, asked her for a ride, and then claimed they began having sex before he killed her after she screamed. He said he cut her open with his knife so she would decompose quickly and left her covered with debris. The wound was described as a deer hunter's cut, with the body cut from throat to crotch. The episode keeps circling the same evidence, the same locations, and the same disposal pattern because that is where the truth sits.

As heard by us

A grim, careful look at Shawcross's case as the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.

Arthur Shawcross's case is presented as a grim, orderly build from body to body, excuse to excuse, until the pattern is impossible to miss. The writing works best when it keeps the timeline moving but still gives space to the details that count: the close dump sites, the…

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Why you'd press play

Watch Shawcross's excuses unravel as the bodies start connecting.

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