Serial Killers

What is worse than serial murder? The fact that there are so many that a list such as this can be created. These are all serial murderers,.

During his 11 years of acting as a witch doctor, Ahmad Suradji killed 42 women. He had quite a ritual he followed – first he would bury the victims up to their waists and then slowly strangle them till they couldn’t yap anymore. Indonesia is the most populated Muslim country in the world with ridiculously incompetent police force so it took the police a while to get to the killer even though he wasn’t overly secretive about his murders.  In his confession, Ahmad Suradji told the police that he was killing those women because the ghost of his father who appeared in his dream instructed him to do so. Killing and drinking saliva of killed women, according to his father’s ghost was the surest way for Ahmad Suradji to become a mystic healer. He was executed by Indonesian firing squad on July 10, 2008.

Alexander Pichushkin was a unique breed of serial killer. His primary victims were homeless men living in Bitsa Park in southern Moscow. A total of 49 people died in the hands of Alexander Pichushkin as he was trying to catch up with Andrei Chikatilo – Russia’s most notorious serial killer who was convicted of killing 52 people. In a bid to outdo Andrei Chikatilo, Alexander Pichushkin asked the court to add 11 victims to the count of people he killed, bringing his total death toll to 60.   His preferred method of killing was by smashing the head of the victim with a hammer from the back. He said doing it this way prevented the victim’s blood from spraying all over his face. Alexander Pichushkin was sentenced to a lifetime in prison with the first 35 years served in solitary confinement.

Andrei Chikatilo is hands down the most notorious serial killer to have come from Soviet Russia (present day Ukraine). Guilty of killing 53 people, both men and women (including children) for sexual gratification, Andrei Chikatilo killed their victims in a variety of ways, but never spared any of them off mutilation. He was executed by fire squad on February 14, 1994.

Arthur Shawcross (born June 6, 1945) is an American serial killer, also known as The Genesee River Killer. He claimed most of his victims after being paroled early following a conviction for murdering a child. He was born in Maine, but the family moved to Watertown in New York State when he was young. Shawcross dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and when he was 19 he enlisted in the army. He fought in the Vietnam War where he was to later confess he had murdered and cannibalized two young Vietnamese girls, although there is nothing to back up this claim.  Back in civilian life, living in Watertown once more, Shawcross married 4x, but his wives invariably left him after a short time because of his violent and erratic behavior. It was there, in May 1972, that he murdered 10-year-old Jake Blake. He lured the boy to some woods where he assaulted and strangled him. Four months later, he raped and killed an eight-year-old girl named Karen Ann Hill. Arrested for these crimes, Shawcross confessed to both murders but was later able to obtain a plea bargain with the prosecutors. He would plead guilty to killing just Karen Ann Hill on a charge of manslaughter, instead of first-degree murder, and the charge of killing Jake Blake would be dropped. With little evidence to go on, prosecutors went along with this, and the self-confessed double child killer was given a 25-year sentence. Shawcross served 15 years before he was released on parole in March 1987. He had difficulty settling down as he was chased out of homes and fired from workplaces as soon as neighbors and employers found out about his criminal record. Eventually he settled in Rochester, New York, and lived with a woman named Clara. Starting in March 1988, Shawcross began murdering prostitutes in the area, claiming 11 victims before his capture less than two years later. They were usually strangled and battered to death, and were often mutilated as well. After the last victim’s body was found in January 1990, the police decided not to remove it and instead keep surveillance on the area, based on a psychological profile that suggested the killer would return to the scene. Shawcross was spotted masturbating as he sat in his car on a bridge over the creek in which the body of his final victim was floating. He was arrested and eventually confessed in custody.

The Bloody Benders was the nick name given to the Benders family from Labette County in Kansas, USA. The Benders owned and operated a small general store with inn for travelers striding off the beaten path. The patrons were mostly rich men, 11 of whom were brutally murdered by the family while staying in Wayside Inn. Within the inn, the Benders had a large room divided in the middle by the curtain. When a rich man paid them a visit, they offered him a seat of honor which had him turn his back to the curtain. Realizing that a lone male traveler would not resist the charm of a young woman pretending to be all into him, Kate Bender, the daughter of inn’s owner John Bender was set to keep the guest distracted by seducing him while John Bender, or his son John Jr. would come from behind the curtain and smash the man’s head with a hammer (Kate must have loved the feel of fresh brain running down her face). Bloody Benders would then take the body down to the cellar where they would slit its throat to ensure it somehow doesn’t come back to life (did anyone else think of Johnny from The Shining reading this?) and strip it of all his clothes and belongings. The corpse was then buried in the backyard. Despite serial killings, Bloody Benders were never captured to pay for their crimes. The story of Bloody Benders inspired several popular culture movies and novels. Some of the most notable are the Ken Hodgson novel Hell Benders (1999), a novel by Lyle Brandt titled Massacre Trail (2009), the Scott Phillips novel Cottonwood (2004), the Manly Wade Wellman novel Candle of the Wicked (1960), and They Bite (1943) by Anthony Boucher.

Bobby Joe Long, a distant cousin of Henry Lee Lucas, viciously raped and murdered at least nine women from May 1984 to November 1984 in Tampa, Florida. He was born October 14, 1953, in Kenova, West Virginia. While he was quite young his mother left his father and took Bobby Joe to Tampa, Florida. They moved around Tampa frequently, staying with relatives or in rented rooms. He and his mother slept in the same bed until he was 13. His mother tended to be overly protective and dramatic, but still Bobby Joe Long managed to suffer a series of severe head injuries beginning at age five, when he was knocked unconscious in a fall from a swing and had one eyelid skewered by a stick. At 6 he was thrown from his bicycle, crashing headfirst into a parked car, with injuries including loss of several teeth and a severe concussion. At age 7, he fell from a pony onto his head and remained dizzy and nauseous for several weeks. He also seemed to have gotten into countless fist fights with relatives and classmates.  Between 1980 and 1983, Long terrorized the Florida communities of Miami, Ocala and Fort Lauderdale as the “Classified Ad Rapist,” preying on housewives in mid-day attacks. Dropping by while their husbands were working, Bobby Joe Long typically produced a knife, bound his victims, raped them violently, and robbed their homes before he fled. Between May and November 1984, Bobby Joe Long strangled, stabbed and shot at least nine victims, with a tenth suspected but never charged against him. In early November, he abducted a 17-year-old girl off the street and raped her, but let her live. Two days later he raped and killed one last victim, before being arrested and charged. The girl who had been spared was able to describe him and his car to police. He was sentenced to death for raping fifty women and killing nine.

The Cannibal Brothers: Shen Changyin and Shen Changping started a business selling Lanzhou auto parts but it didn’t go very well. Faced with severe financial loss, they teamed up with three women (victims who promised to get them more victims if they spare them) and embarked on a new business model – serial killers. Within less than a year – between June 2003 and August 2004 – the five had killed 68 prostitutes whose livers and/or kidneys they cut out and cooked as food. This earned them the name of Cannibal Brothers. The corpses were then burned with Sulphuric Acid and flushed down the toilet. Chinese authorities soon traced the serial killers down and apprehended them, including their female accomplices. The brothers as well as one of the women were sentenced to death, the other two women were sentenced to 20 and 3 years in jail.

Carl Eugene Watts is the first African American serial killer. He is believed to have killed more than 130 women, all of whom were white. Not being too picky about his victim’s age, some of the women Carl Eugene Watts killed were mere 14 years old while others were 44.  Carl committed his first murder in 1974 when he was only 20 years old. He would kidnap his victims from their homes and subject them to systematic torture before delivering final blow.  After apprehension, Carl Eugene Watts originally confessed to murdering 12 women but changed his confession to 40 murder victims later. Subsequent confessions implied that there may have been more than 80 victims. While exact number has never been certain, the police suspect that Carl Eugene Watts was behind at least 90 unsolved murders with some speculating that the number exceeds 130, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history.  Carl Eugene Watts died of prostate cancer while serving his two life sentences in Michigan prison.

Carl Panzram was one of America ‘s most ferocious, unrepentant serial killers. Embittered by years of torture, beatings and sexual abuse both in and out of prison, Panzram evolved into a man who was meanness personified. He hated everyone, including himself. “I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency,” he said, “my only regret is that I wasn’t born dead or not at all.” He lived a nomadic existence, committing crimes in Europe, Scotland , the United States, South America and once killed six men in a day in Africa and fed their bodies to hungry crocodiles. In 1920, at the age of 29, Panzram committed his first murder, killing some sailors in New York he lured away from a bar, shooting them and dumping their remains into a river. Panzram also shot a man dead for trying to rob him. He later raped and killed two small boys, beating one to death with a rock and strangling the other with a belt.

The Countess Erzsébet Báthory:  When talking about the most violent serial killers, we can’t avoid mentioning some of the cruelest individuals from history. Erzsébet Báthory was a Hungarian countess notorious for slaughtering at least 600 young virgin girls whom she’d drain of blood so she could bathe in it to improve her complexion and maintain youthful appearance. Given high count of victims, Elizabeth Bathory is considered to be the most prolific female serial killer in history.  While Erzsébet Báthory was never tried, her accomplices were executed and the countess herself sent to spend the rest of her life under house arrest. She died after four years of living bricked in a set of rooms within her own castle (Cachtice Castle in present day Slovakia).

The Moorhouse Murderers:  David and Catherine Birnie – a couple from down under kidnapped and abducted 5 women during their productive years in the 1980’s. The youngest one was mere 15 years old. Until the death found them, the kidnapped women were repeatedly raped and brutally tortured before being buried in the forest. All of them but one. The last one – 17 year old Kate Moir managed to escape and alerted the police. Not an end a serial killer would wish for.  Both David and Catherine were handed down a life sentence for each of the victims they’d killed. I suppose if we had the means to know which new born boy is a resurrected David Birnie, he would be thrown in jail right after birth and sit there locked up until death and this whole process repeated three times. And yes, David Birnie is dead. He committed suicide by hanging himself to death in his prison cell in 2005. Catherine is still behind bars with strict orders from the judge to never, under any circumstances be released.

Dean Arnold Corll, teamed up with David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley whom he paid $200 each to find him potential victims. 27 young men died in the hands of this serial killer in a case that became known as “Houston Mass Murders”. Everything went fine for him until one day, one of his accomplices could not take it anymore and killed the serial killer.

 Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born November 23, 1945) is a Scottish serial killer who lived in London. During a murderous spree lasting five years, he killed at least 15 men. Nilsen did not fit the standard profile of a serial killer. As a child he was repulsed by cruelty to animals. As an adult he worked to help the downtrodden at his job with the Manpower Service Commission. Even in his murders, Nilsen killed out of a grotesque form of love. He “killed for company.” Nilsen was a homosexual and experienced a series of failed relationships. In 1978, he picked up a boy in a pub and brought him back to his London apartment. Afraid the boy would leave him in the morning, Nilsen killed him in his sleep. He kept the body around his apartment for days, posing it bathing, eating dinner, watching T.V., sleeping in bed, and in other activities as though it was his boyfriend. This pattern continued, with Nilsen recruiting “companions” at local pubs, until a plumber found bones and rotten flesh in the apartment’s sewer system. Nilsen was sentenced to life in prison in 1983 after confessing to 15 murders.

Fritz Haarmann had begun his crime rampage in September 1918, a time in which Germany was suffering economic depravation and severe food shortages. A young runaway by the name of Friedel Roth disappeared from home on the 25th, writing to his mother only to say that he would not return home until “she was nice again.” Various friends of the boy were forthcoming with information and eventually led the police to #27 Cellerstrasse, the home of a man they claimed had seduced Friedel. A detective surprised one Fritz Haarmann in bed with a young boy and he was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for seducing the juvenile. Unbelievably, the rooms were not searched and, upon interrogation five years later, Haarmann confessed that the “murdered boy’s head was stuffed behind the stove wrapped in newspaper.”

Gary Leon Ridgway:  The first 5 victims of  were found by the Green River earning him the name of the Green River Killer. He specialized in killing female prostitutes and made a statement that killing bitches was his career (he didn’t specifically use the word “bitches” but I betcha he must have thought that).  Gary Leon Ridgway was found guilty of aggravated assault and first degree murder of 48 women for which he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole

Gerard Schaefer: This homicidal Broward County, Florida, ex-policeman, though convicted in 1973 of only two mutilation murders, is believed to be responsible for at least thirty more killings. A sadistic sex-beast by nature, Schaefer would lure young women off the roads with the help of his badge to rape, torture, mutilate and murder. He enjoyed tying his victims to trees and leaving them there while he went to work as a police officer. Teeth, jewelry and clothing from several missing girls and young women were found in a trunk in his mother’s attic.

John Robinson: In all, there are 11 women either dead or missing that are linked to John Robinson. All of these women either vanished or were killed over a 16 year period. Robinson, a married middle-aged father of four, had a hunger for murder and money. Robinson was a sadomasochist, and met some of the women though his internet identity as the “Slavemaster.” Others he met through personal ads and other means.  His secrets were uncovered when two metal 55-gallon barrels were located on his property in rural Kansas and each barrel contained a female body. A few days later, three more female bodies were found in barrels in a storage locker rented by Robinson in Missouri. Robinson was convicted of the murders of the two women found in Kansas, and a third woman who’s body was never found. He was given the death penalty.  Unbelievably, Robinson gave the baby of one of his victims to his brother and sister-in-law to raise, telling them it was a legal adoption. He even charged his own brother $5,500 in bogus adoption fees. Robinson also cashed about $43,000 in social security and alimony checks meant for three of his victims.

Born in 1952, Larry Eyler became known as the “Highway Killer” after some of his victims were found alongside highways. In his early 30′s Eyler started picking up men under the guise of consensual sex, with a bit of bondage thrown in. Once he got the victims to a secluded area and handcuffed them, Eyler would brutally beat the victim, and then kill them. Most of his victims were found disemboweled, with their pants pulled down.  Eyler was connected to one of his crimes by a tire track he left at one of the scenes, and was later observed dumping 8 trash bags in a dumpster. Police found the remains of a 15-year-old boy inside. Eyler was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Eyler confessed to the attorney handling his appeal that he had committed 21 murders. He offered to give information on these murders if his sentence would be commuted to life. The state refused to make a deal. Eyler died in 1994 at the age of 41 of AIDS-related complications. Two days after his death, the attorney handling his appeal went public with the details of the 21 murders Eyler claimed as his own. His confessions matched the physical evidence at the scenes, and the 21 cases of serial murder were closed.

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos admitted to raping and murdering 140 young boys but after he draw a map of the locations of the remains of his victims, it became clear that there could be more than 300 boys whose life ended in the hands of this serial killer. Luis Garavito didn’t spend much time torturing his victims. He would just violently rape them and then slit their throats.  Due to weak Colombian laws, no one can be sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, yet because Luis Garavito assisted the authorities in locating the corpses, his time was reduced to 22 years. Since he was apprehended in 1999, and he could be out in 10 years.

Starting in the summer of 1929, Peter Kurten held the city of Dusseldorf, Germany, in a grip of fear. Almost every week a fresh corpse was found, horribly slashed or bludgeoned to death, sometimes sexually assaulted. Most of the victims were young women, although men and children were not excluded. This unassuming killer sent police friendly letters explaining where undiscovered corpses lie, even going so far as to draw them a map. His atrocities continued for 15 months totaling over 30 murders. Kurten told authorities he liked to kill, “the more people the better. Yes, if I had had the means of doing so, I would have killed whole masses of people — brought about catastrophes”. He prowled for victims nightly finding sexual gratification in the slayings. The one way he achieved the ultimate satisfaction in killing was to catch the blood spurting from a victim’s wounds in his mouth and swallow it. Hence, Peter Kurten became known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf. Kurten was guillotined in Cologne, Germany on July 2, 1931. In his last moments, he said he wondered if he would hear his own blood spurting after his neck was severed.

Beginning in July 1975 with his first attack, Peter Sutcliffe killed 13 women and left 7 others for dead. The seven survivors were told how lucky they were, but with physical, emotional and psychological scars that would never completely heal, they didn’t feel very lucky. Some would even believe that they would have been better off if the man they had known for so long as The Ripper, had succeeded in killing them. Sutcliffe committed his first known assault in Keighley on the night of 5 July 1975. He attacked a 36 year old woman who was walking alone, striking her unconscious with a ball-pein hammer and slashing her stomach with a knife. Disturbed by a neighbor, he left without killing her.

Ted Bundy is one of the most recognizable names among serial killers. With over 30 murders below his belt, he’s also one of the most prolific ones. Ted Bundy’s victims were white, middle class women between 15 and 25 years of age who wore hairstyles or otherwise looked similar to his fiancée Stephanie Brooks. One notable characteristics of Ted Bundy was that he collected heads of his victims as souvenirs. He also raped his victims both while they were alive and when the spark of life went bye bye making him our first necrophiliac on the list of top 15 most violent serial killers. Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair according to the law of the state of Florida in 1989.

 Thug Behram was a member of Indian Thuggee cult and is widely considered to be one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. Between 1790 and 1840, Thug Behram is believed to have strangulated 931 people to death with a ceremony cloth.  According to an investigation by an East India Trading Company officer James Patton, Thug Behram only personally killed 125 men, but was present during the killing of 931. The Thuggee cult as a whole is believed to be responsible for deaths of up to million people. English word “thug” is derived from the name of the cult. 

Yang Xinhai committed 92 murders and 23 rapes between 1999 and 2003, in China. What got him arrested was his DNA sample. Yang Xinhai was executed by a gunshot to the back of his head.