THE TRIAL OF ARTHUR J. SHAWCROSS—Michael Benson

THE TRIAL OF ARTHUR J. SHAWCROSS—Michael Benson

From True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History by Dan Zupansky

April 20, 2026 · 1h 1m

About this episode

The episode discusses the live broadcast of the trial of Arthur J. Shawcross, a serial killer, and its impact on viewers.

In 1990, Monroe County’s daytime television viewing habits were disrupted by a TV first: the live broadcast of The People v. Arthur J. Shawcross. Never before had home viewers anywhere been given access to gavel-to-gavel coverage of a sordid murder trial. The show lasted eleven weeks, September to December. Viewers that normally followed daytime dramas or game shows were instead focused on the trial of a serial-killer who’d confessed to killing ten women in Monroe County, and one more in Wayne County, but whose lawyers claimed he was insane and not responsible for his actions. Fans of courtroom dramas like Perry Mason, now saw the real thing, sometimes lazy in its pacing, but raw and unfiltered in its subjects and language. The show ran on cable station WGRC (Greater Rochester Cable) and was set in teak-paneled Courtroom 206 of the Monroe County Public Safety Building, which had been equipped and wired as a TV studio. A few watched the first day’s broadcast, were repulsed and changed the channel. Most viewers however were fascinated and watched for the rest of the fall. The show’s villain obviously was Shawcross, yet he put no work into his role. . Throughout, he sat at the…

People in this episode

Host: Dan Zupansky

Guest: Michael Benson

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: WGRC

Places: Monroe County, Wayne County

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