Fact-Checking Buffalo Bill: What "It Puts the Lotion on Its Skin" Really Means in Film Lore

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While audiences frequently associate Buffalo Bill with Ed Gein or Ted Bundy, the architecture of the Catherine Martin pit scene originates almost entirely from a single, horrific investigation: the case of Gary M. Heidnik. In March 1987, Philadelphia police raided a home at 3520 North Marshall Street, uncovering a real-life chamber that stunned seasoned homicide detectives.

Heidnik, an unlicensed minister and convicted felon, had kidnapped six women between 1986 and 1987, holding them captive in a subterranean pit dug into his unfinished basement floor. Heidnik covered the opening with wooden boards and weighed them down with heavy car batteries and appliances. Like Gumb, Heidnik subjected his captives to systematic starvation and cold-water torture, frequently using an electric wire hooked to water-soaked chains to administer shocks.

Thomas Harris, who spent years observing criminal trials and consulting with the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, grafted Heidnik’s claustrophobic cellar setup onto the Buffalo Bill case. Heidnik was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and executed by lethal injection in July 1999, remaining one of the darkest influences on modern psychological fiction.