Famous US Serial Killers
He started killing in 1978, just 18 years old, and wasn’t arrested for murder until 1991, after a would-be victim escaped and led police back to his Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home. It was there that some of the gruesome details of his life of killing were seen via photos of mutilated bodies and body parts strewn across the apartment. He even had a vat of acid he used to dispose of victims. In all, he killed 17 people, mostly young men of color. He served time in prison twice—the first time for molestation and the second time for murder—and was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.
Jeffrey Dahmer
He loved the attention his murders garnered him, and many in the United States were more than happy to give him that attention. The western U.S. was his hunting ground, with an unknown number of murders piling up—mostly college-age women—from Washington and Oregon all the way to Utah and Colorado. He was once arrested in Colorado and convicted of kidnapping, but he escaped custody, moving to Florida where he killed multiple times more. His final arrest and its aftermath captured the attention of the nation, as the accused murderer acted as his own lawyer during what is believed to have been the first televised murder trial, welcomed interviews, and boasted of the fans he had created. He was eventually executed in an electric chair in 1989.
Ted Bundy
We don’t really know who the person behind one of the older and most notorious murder sprees was. The killer appeared in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 and murdered five women—all prostitutes—and mutilated their corpses. Police surmised the killer was a surgeon, butcher, or someone skilled with a scalpel. The killer mocked the community and the police by sending letters outlining the acts. Although many suspects have been named over the years, the killer has never been identified.
Jack the Ripper
________ murder three or more victims, but each victim is killed on separate occasions. They usually select their victims, have cooling-off periods between murders, and plan their crimes carefully.
Serial Killers
He rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then as Führer in 1934. During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939.
Adolf Hitler
A construction worker known by his suburban neighbors as outgoing, was involved in politics and even acted as a clown for birthday parties. He was no clown. he came under suspicion in 1978 when a 15-year-old boy, last seen with him, went missing. That wasn’t the only time families of missing boys had pointed fingers at him, but it was the first time authorities took them seriously. Soon after, a search warrant granted police access to the home, with the smell of nearly 30 bodies buried in a four-foot crawl space under his home. He was convicted of 33 counts of murder, with additional counts of rape and torture, and was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
John Wayne Gacy - Killer Clown
The killer fashioned this name for himself in taunting letters he sent to the Bay Area Press. He left ciphers to be decoded and out of the four he sent, only one was definitely solved. The killer operated in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His last letter said: Me- 37 and SFPD (San Francisco Police Dept.)- 0. He claimed to have killed 37 victims but the newspapers confirmed only 7. The case file is still open.
The Zodiac Killer
Name or Nickname: Is believed to have killed at least 218 patients, although the total is quite likely closer to 250. This doctor practiced in London and between 1972 and 1998 worked in two difference offices, killing all the while. He wasn’t caught until a red flag was raised by several people, including an undertaker who was surprised by the sheer number of cremation certificates he was a part of, along with the fact that most of the cases were elderly women found to have died in bed not at night but rather during the day. Police mishandled the investigation, and he kept killing until he got greedy and tried to concoct a will for a victim that named him beneficiary, which led the victim’s daughter to become suspicious. He was finally convicted in 2000 and committed suicide while in prison in 2004.
Harold Shipman Also known as “Dr. Death
What kind of killer commits murder of two or more victims, but at more than one location. Although their murders occur in separate locations, their ______ is considered a single event because there is no "cooling-off period" between the murders.
Spree Killers
Starting in the late 1920s, he launched a series of five-year plans intended to transform the Soviet Union from a peasant society into an industrial superpower. His development plan was centered on government control of the economy and included the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, in which the government took control of farms. Millions of farmers refused to cooperate with his orders and were shot or exiled as punishment.
Joseph Stalin
Between 1974 and 1991, He murdered 10 people in Wichita, Kansas. He even sent letters to police taunting them under his alias name ____ which stood for ‘Bind, Torture, Kill’. His technique was to stalk his victims before breaking into their homes, binding their limbs and finally strangling them. He disappeared in 1988, but remerged in around 2005 when he sent a floppy disc to the press which helped in tracing him. He confessed to his crimes and is serving 10 consecutive life sentences with the earliest release date possible on February 26, 2180.
Dennis Raider: BTK Murderer
While working as a prostitute, she killed seven men in Florida for their money and confessed to shooting them, claiming all of them had either raped or attempted to rape her. She died in 1992 by lethal injectio
Aileen Wuornos: The Monster
Name or Nickname:One of the world’s most prolific serial killers might still be out there. ______ is linked to more than 300 murders in his native Colombia and in Ecuador and Peru. At least one-third of those murders were tribal women. After his arrest in 1980, police found the graves of more than 50 of his preteen victims. He was later convicted of murdering 110 girls in Ecuador and confessed to 240 more murders in Colombia and Peru. He didn’t even spend 20 years in prison, as he was released in 1998 for good behavior. More than 20 years since, his whereabouts remain unknown.
Pedro Lopez Monster of the Andes
What type of killer, kills four or more people at one location during one continuous period of time, whether it is done within a few minutes or over a period of days. ________ usually commit murder at one location. ________ can be committed by a single individual or a group of people. Killers who murder several members of their family also fall into the ________category.
Mass Murderers
A Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.
Mao Zedong
_______ worked as a nurse in many hospitals but kept switching jobs as he was fired for suspicious behavior from many of them. He confessed to murdering 40 elderly patients in New Jersey from 1984 to 2003. He did this by poisoning his patients to death with unprescribed medication. He stated that he wanted to relieve the patients from their suffering much like an angel would. Experts say he had more than 300 victims. he has been imprisoned for life.
Charles Edmund Cullen: The Angel Of Death
Chicago has had its share of killers, but perhaps none more haunting than the pharmacist who turned a hotel into a torture castle. Ahead of the 1893 world’s fair, He moved to Chicago and started outfitting a three-story hotel with all manner of nefarious contraptions, including gas lines, secret passages and trapdoors, hallways to dead ends, chutes to the basement, soundproofed padding, and torture devices strewn throughout a maze. The gas allowed him to knock out his guests before the worst of what was to happen came next, often on his surgical tables. He then burned the bodies in the building’s furnace, selling skeletons to medical schools and running life insurance scams. In all, he copped to more than 30 murders—found only after a fellow scammer turned him in for falling short on a financial agreement—before he was hanged in 1896.
H.H. Holmes
Name or Nickname:
The Colombian is probably one of the world's worst serial killers. He confessed to the torture, rape and murder of 147 young boys. But the number is believed to be over 300. He was found guilty on 139 counts, which should amount to 1,853 years in prison. But Columbian law limits it to 30, which is what he was sentenced to in 1999. He may be released earlier for cooperation and good behavior.
Luis Garavito: The Beast
Type of serial killer- Usually psychotic, the ________ is compelled to murder because they hear voices or sees visions ordering them to kill certain kinds of people.
The Visionary
He oversaw an unprecedented and extremely brutal attempt to remove Cambodia from the modern world and establish an agrarian utopia. While attempting to create this utopia, Heinitiated the Cambodian genocide, which lasted from 1975 to 1979 and caused the deaths of at least 1.5 million Cambodians.
Pol Pot
Between 1979 and 1980, he raped, tortured and murdered at least 21 young men. _____ would dump their bodies along freeways in South California. After being convicted for 14 of his killings, he was executed by lethal injection in 1996. His sadistic side was still seen during his prison sentence where he corresponded with many of his victims' families about how their children reacted to his torture.
William Bonin: The Freeway Killer
He is perhaps the most dangerous Texan in history. He claimed to have killed at least 70 people. He brutally murdered people between 1985 and 1999 including stabbing a 13-year-old girl 16 times. ____ broke into the bedroom of a 10-year-old girl, stabbing her and left her to die. But despite her injures, she managed to survive and gave a detailed description of him to the police. He was sentenced to death & remains on death row in a high security prison in Texas.
Tommy Lynn Sells: The Brutal Texan
Name or Nickname:
The cattle-breeder from Indonesia admitted to killing 42 girls and women between 1986 to 1997. As a part of his ritual, he used to bury them waist deep. Bodies were found in a sugarcane field with their heads facing his house, which he believed would give him more power. _______ was sentenced to death by a firing squad in 2008.
Ahmad Suradji: The Sorcerer
Type of serial killer- Targets a specific group of people who they believe are unworthy to live and without whom the world would be a better place.
Mission-Oriented
His cruel methods of punishing his enemies gained notoriety in 15th-century Europe. He would impale his enemies on a stake in the ground and leave them to die.
Vlad the Impaler