Fishing in the Genesee Part One

We in Rochester live near the northern end of the Genesee River which starts in Pennsylvania and flows NORTHWARD until it reaches Lake Ontario at the port of Charlotte. The river cuts through the middle of downtown under the Susan B Anthony-Frederick Douglas Bridge. Rochester is proud of Anthony and Douglas In the winter it freezes over. Once upon a time, a deer got stranded on the ice and had to be euthanized even as hundreds of onlookers on the bridge watched in fascinated horror.

The lower portion of the Genesee River in Rochester offers some of the most exciting fishing
in New York State. Each year the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) stocks over 155,000 chinook salmon, 22,100 rainbow trout (steelhead) and 22,000
coho salmon into Lake Ontario near the mouth of the Genesee River. Downstream of the lower falls near the Driving Park Avenue bridge, the fish population changes seasonally to reflect that of Lake Ontario, including species such as brown trout, rainbow trout (steelhead), coho salmon and chinook salmon.

The upper falls in Rochester attracts most of the attention. Only well informed fishermen are even aware of the fabulous angling near Driving Park. I spent 65 years in Rochester and only visited the salmon hatchery once. I've crossed th other bridges hundreds of times.

One man who knew about the hatchery was Arthur Shawcross. Arthur loved fishing and was a regular presence. Lots of people knew Art. Art was a big man...six feet tall and over 300 pounds.

Arthur was also a serial killer. His first known murders were in 1972 when he killed a young boy and a girl in his hometown of Watertown, New York. Under the terms of a plea bargain, Shawcross was allowed to plead guilty to one charge of manslaughter, for which he served 14 years of a 25-year sentence. He killed most of his victims in 1988 and 1989 after being paroled early which led to criticism of the justice system. A food service worker, Shawcross trawled the streets of Rochester in his girlfriend's 1984 sky blue Dodge Omni (later using her blue-grey 1987 Chevy Celebrity), looking for sex workers to kill.

In the years of his murderous spree, Rochester was gripped in fear. Perhaps we would have been even more fearful had the vitims not been sex workers. 

When not fishing or mudering and cannibalizing, Shawcross was a familiar sight in the Monroe Avenue area of downtown Rochester. According to my son who went to school in the area, the bus driver pointed Shawcross out one day and warned the children to "stay away from that guy."

His killing spree finally ended in 1988

If you were a son or daughter of a WW2 veteran who lived in Rochester, it's likley that your first beer was a Genesee. The beer was brewed downtown.

My late friend Kevin's veteran father got a job at the Genesse Brewery right after the war. Kevin's father died early. When Kevin was working his way through colllege, he got hired by the brewery to load trucks in the night shift.

It was hard, manual labor but the pay was good. The fringe benefit was beer. Beer, fresh, cold Genny flowed through the water taps at all times. Kevin told me about this fringe benefit and invited me to share in it. If we were still drinking when the bars closed down, we could come up to the brewery and drink and bullshit to our hearts content.

One pre-determined night, when Al and I were still thirsty and the bars were closing, I took Kev up on his offer.

We arrived at the brewery at the designated spot. Kev met us and led us to the beer faucets. He gave us each a cup. My God, it was true. Endless, ice cold Genny beer.

We were drinking for about a half hour when the first cops arrived.

Oh shit, this was too good to be true.We were gonn get busted.

The cops were younger guys, not much older than Al and me. They took off their hats. They walked over to the beer tap. They poured themselves some beer. Pretty soon there were twelve people gathered in the brewery....8 cops and four non-cops. 

They wanted to know how we got there and how we got in. I explained about the invitation from my friend and that we had walked to the brewery from downtown and Kev was gonna give us a lift home.

They all knew Kev.

Everything was cool

The atmosphere was very relaxed. I listened to cops tell cop stories for a few hours while Kev finished his shift. Kev gave us a lift home.

I heard about a lot of weird shit goin' on by the river that didn't make the newspaper.

Over the rest of that summer we became semi-regulars at the brewery. We were part of the gang. 

Twenty years later dead bodies began to pile up on the Genesee.

I was no longer living in the city.

I tried to imagine what the off duty cops were talking about when they partook at the Brewery as the murders mounted and the city started wondering what tthe hell the cops were doing?

The River flows

It flows to the Lake

Wherever that River Flows

It's not for Heaven's sake.

Yup. The Genesee River flows upward into a lake but it's not just any lake. It's a Great Lake. It's so great tha we put the word Lake before the name of the lake. Lake Ontario..Lake Erie both shared by New York state and Canada.

Look at a map of the United States. The Great Lakes are an immediately recognizable splash of blue.

My personal favorite lake is Canadaigua which is one of the Finger Lakes. Nobody calls Canadaigua Lake Lake Canadaigua. It's not Great enough. No river flows into Canandaigua.

If you look again at the same map, you won't even see the Finger Lakes.

The Genesee River slows down in the winter when it becomes ice bound. Creatures get stranded on the ice and die. Debris freezes on the banks.

Remember the deer?

When a pair of discarded jeans was discovered near the river on December 31, 1989, containing an ID card for a girl named Felicia Stephens, police began an aerial search of the surrounding area. The local authorities sent out a helicopter to do some aerial fishing. On January 2, 1990, the helicopter spotted what appeared to be a naked female body lying on the ice surface of the river by a bridge in the forest. The body was not Felicia Stephens but that of missing sex worker June Cicero. She had also been mutilated post-mortem, as well as sawn practically in half.

Even more importantly, the helicopter spotted a man standing on the bridge next to a small van. He appeared to be either masturbating or urinating. Fortunately for the authorities, Shawcross had, as speculated, returned to the scene of one of his crimes to relive the pleasure of the attack. He was caught with his dick in his hand.

Shawcross got in his car and sped away. The copter got the plate.

The Genesee River Killer was at last on the hook.