| Ed Savitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | Edward Isadore Savitz February 22, 1942 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | March 27, 1993 (aged 51) |
| Occupation | Actuary |
Edward Isadore Savitz (also known as Uncle Ed, Fast Eddie and Dr. Feel Good) (February 22, 1942 – March 27, 1993) was an American businessman who was arrested for paying thousands of young men for either engaging in anal and oral sex or for giving him dirty underwear and feces, which he kept in pizza boxes in his apartment.
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Ed Savitz was one of four sons by Russian immigrants Paul and Ann Gechman Savitz. The Savitzes ran an amusement arcade in downtown Philadelphia. Ed ranked first in his class of 278 students, and voted most likely to succeed. He won a full scholarship to study economics at the University of Pennsylvania, but dropped out after two years. In 1967, also after two years' study, he quit Temple University's graduate school of music. In 1963, he married his high school girlfriend Judith Widman, who later became a lawyer, specializing in family law. They were divorced 10 years later. In 1981, his brother, Joseph, a lawyer who once served as a Deputy Pennsylvania Attorney General, used barbiturates to commit suicide. In 1968, his brother Samuel founded The Savitz Organization, an actuarial consulting firm specializing in retirement plans and other employee benefit programs. Ed later became the vice president.
Savitz had an apartment on Rittenhouse Square and for years was known by the male youth of the area through word of mouth as a quick source of cash. From as far back as 1975, he offered teenage boys money, concert tickets and football tickets for their soiled underwear, and various sexual acts including: oral and anal sex, slamming his penis in a door, penis sword fights, urinating on him, vomiting in his mouth and defecating in his mouth through a potty chair. Savitz reportedly kept the feces in pizza boxes in his apartment. He told the boys to eat cheese to make the feces taste better.
Savitz mostly targeted boys from the Grays Ferry neighborhood and even had a St. John Neumann High School yearbook, which he used like a catalogue, circling the pictures of boys he wanted to see and promising referral fees for bringing them to him.
Savitz was first arrested in 1978 on an indecent assault charge. His record was expunged after completed a rehabilitation program. In 1990, he was found not guilty on charges relating to the purchase of a minor's soiled underwear.
The neighbors in his high-rise apartment building complained of young boys entering and leaving his apartment at all hours of the day and night. One neighbor described the boys she saw as mostly "heavy metal types," who wore black leather clothes and chains and had long hair. Savitz told neighbors that he was a social worker, helping the boys.
Savitz's third arrest followed a six-month investigation by the city's sex-crime unit. By early March 1992, investigators had gathered enough evidence to install a wiretap and hidden video camera in his home. On March 25, detectives watched as Savitz offered to pay two 15-year-old boys for oral sex. Police burst into the apartment and took him into custody. Savitz was charged with crimes of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual abuse of children, indecent assault and corrupting the morals of a minor.
Police found 5,000 photographs of boys and 312 bags of soiled boy's underwear at Savitz's apartment and a rented storage center nearby. His arrest also caused an AIDS scare in the Philadelphia area due to the large number of individuals that he had sexual contact with. AIDS hotlines were flooded with calls after his photo was released.
Bail was set for three million dollars, and Savitz was released. He was arrested again the next day when bail was raised to twenty million dollars after complaints involving two teenagers were verified.
Although Savitz tested HIV positive about a year before his arrest, he continued to have unprotected sex with boys until his arrest.
The trial was set to begin April 5, 1993, but Savitz died of AIDS in a prison hospice a week before on March 27.