When one of our beloved Tip-Sters - Laurencia all the way from Maine! - sent Melissa an email to suggest this gruesome little tale, we were surprised to learn that its subject - Pennsylvania's own Gary Heidnik - was one of TWO real-life killers writer Thomas Harris used to create his monstrous "Buffalo Bill" character in "Silence of the Lambs."  We knew that Harris had used mass murderer Ed Gein to create his character, but we'd never heard of Heidnik.  Laurencia - who's actually written a treatise on this case - set us straight on the story - which - yes! - comes complete with kidnapped young women held hostage in a dirt pit in a basement - and in this episode of JUST THE TIP-STERS Melissa fills us in on all the details of Gary Heidnik's icky lifetime of ickier crimes, culminating in a four-month spree of kidnapping, torture and murder...and at least one human head boiling on the cooktop range...

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