John Jamelske

Jamelske is an American serial rapist-kidnapper who, from 1988 to his apprehension in 2003, kidnapped a series of women and held them captive in a concrete bunker beneath the yard of his home in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York. His story was the basis of the character Jamie Gumm in Silence of the Lambs. Jamelsek raped each of his victims and inflicted cigarette burns on them. After the discovery of the dungeon, police also found several video recorded entries with at least one woman on the tape. In the tapes, the viewer can see Jamelske dancing, singing, and also exercising with the woman. He prefaced each rape with a Bible study, in which after a review of a certain passage and discussion he would then begin to rape the victim.