

After incorporating the United Church of the Ministers of God, Heidnik founded the Church of Heidnik as its ordained minister, Brother Heidnik. Heidnik made his first of many suicide attempts after his mother committed suicide by overdosing on medication and alcohol in 1970, which have resulted in frequent hospitalizations.

In 1967, he purchased a three-story house and started frequenting the Elwyn Institute, a house for the developmentally disabled. In 1964, Heidnik started taking nursing classes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, completing them a year later and receiving an internship at Philadelphia General Hospital.
#Gary heidnik misshapen head full
He was honorably discharged a year after his enlistment, receiving a full disability pension and being diagnosed with "schizoid personality disorder". Army, once being stationed in West Germany during his time there in the summer of 1962. In 1961, when he was eighteen, Heidnik, through his father's encouragement, dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S.

His schoolmates called him "football head" because of it. While he was still a child, Heidnik fell from a tree, smashing his skull and suffering a misshapen cranium, which is believed to have caused behavioral aberration. Sometimes, he even dangled him out the window, shaking him by the ankles. Heidnik's father would punish him severely for wetting the bed by hanging the soiled sheets by his bedroom window for everyone to see. Heidnik and Terry both hated their stepmother, but their father always sided with her when it came to conflicts. As a result, Heidnik and his brother, Terry, went to live with their father, who later remarried. Born on November 22, 1943, in Eastlake, Ohio, Heidnik's parents divorced due to his mother's alcoholism.
