Hi listeners. A note. I don't usually give trigger warnings. The series inherently is unsettling because it focuses on crimes.

I make a point to present things respectfully and am careful not to be gratuitous with my descriptions.

I'll do that here too, but the case has a few elements I can't downplay if I want to tell it accurately.

Please take care.

Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking. They change laws, change society, or even earn the

label, Crime of the Century. But the stories that made headlines and decades past

aren't necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author,

and in each episode of this show,

I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today,

but was huge when it happened.

This is Crimes of the Centuries.

Arthur Shawcross gave a reason for the awful things he had done.

He said his childhood was filled with sexual abuse.

It began, he said, when he was just eight.

He said his aunt Tina came to his parents home frequently and always reached into his pants to

molest him. Soon, he said, his mother Betty took up the habit. Already had started out a pretty good

student, but that changed, as he told it, when the abuse started, so much so that he was barely

getting promoted into the next grade. Solon and angry, he was the kid no teacher could reach,

though it's hard to know how hard and he truly tried.

The abuse from the adults in his life was so profound

that he remembered every disturbing detail vividly.

...