History Life

Childhood and Early Life

 The family moved from his birthplace, Kittery to Watertown,
New York. He was not a good student and felt socially isolated
from his peers who regarded his behavior as odd such as bed-
wetting and bullied.
 Shawcross claimed to have had a violent, unhappy childhood
with a particularly domineering mother.
 Shawcross also made extreme reports about his early sexuality.
He claimed his aunt sexually molested him when he was 9, and
that he had sexual relations with his younger sister. He also
admitted to his first homosexual encounter at the age of 11, which
he says was followed by experimentation with bestiality.
 However, his parents and siblings all denied his claims and described
events were largely the product of his imagination.
Education

 He had a low IQ, dropped out of high school and was not educated
beyond the 8th grade.
 He also had tendency to bullying and violence and that he came
under suspicion for a series of juvenile arson attacks as well as
burglaries. He dropped out of school after failing to pass the 9th
grade, and the next few years were punctuated with violence and
jail sentences.
Rise to Fame

 He got involved in burglary and arson and 1963, he was placed on

probation for damaging a store.
 In 1964, Shawcross married first wife Sarah and had a son. Two
years later, he was again put on probation, on a charge of unlawful
entry.
 After divorced, he married for second time.
 Arthur Shawcross was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967 and sent
to Vietnam (October 1967 - September 1968).
 After his discharge from the US Army, he went back to Clayton,
New York. His second wife divorced him around this time because
of abuse and her suspicion that he was a pyromaniac.
 In 1972, he married for the third time and divorced him soon after
that because Shawcross was involved in raped and murdered.