Another medical profession serial killer is Genene Jones. A 21st-century example is Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer who murdered elderly patients in the nursing homes where she worked. Female serial killers are rare compared to their male counterparts. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. Titterington, state that 'the Justice Department indicated 36 female serial killers have been active over the course of the last century.
Kelleher and Kelleher created several categories to describe female serial killers. They used the classifications of black widow , angel of death , sexual predator , revenge , profit or crime , team killer , question of sanity , unexplained , and unsolved.
In using these categories, they observed that most women fell into the categories of black widow or team killer. In simple terms, he described it as a woman who kills two or more husbands or lovers for material gain. Although Castor was not officially defined as a serial killer, it is likely that she would have killed again.
One 'analysis of 86 female serial killers from the United States found that the victims tended to be spouses, children or the elderly'. Peter Vronsky in Female Serial Killers maintains that female serial killers today often kill for the same reason males do: as a means of expressing rage and control.
He suggests that sometimes the theft of the victims' property by the female 'black widow' type serial killer appears to be for material gain, but really is akin to a male serial killer's collecting of totems souvenirs from the victim as a way of exerting continued control over the victim and reliving it. The methods that female serial killers use for murder are frequently covert or low-profile, such as murder by poison the preferred choice for killing.
Before her husband's death, Elizabeth took great pleasure in torturing the staff, by jamming pins under the servants fingernails or stripping servants and throwing them into the snow.
Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In , however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later. A article by Perri and Lichtenwald addressed some of the misperceptions concerning female criminality. Juvenile serial killers are rare.
There are three main categories that juvenile serial killers can fit into: primary, maturing, and secondary killers. There have been studies done to compare and contrast these three groups and to discover similarities and differences between them. Though it is rare, the youngest felon on death row is in fact, a juvenile serial killer named Harvey Miguel Robinson.
The racial demographics regarding serial killers are often subject to debate. In the United States, the majority of reported and investigated serial killers are white males, from a lower-to-middle-class background, usually in their late 20s to early 30s. She believes that the myth that serial killers are always white might have become 'truth' in some research fields due to the over-reporting of white serial killers in the media.
As a paradigmatic case of this media double standard, Walsh cites news reporting on white killer Gary Heidnik and African-American killer Harrison Graham.
Both men were residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; both imprisoned, tortured, and killed several women; and both were arrested only months apart in There is not much research about serial homicide in non-Western countries, or outside the U. In one study of serial homicide in South Africa, many patterns were similar to established patterns in the U. The motives of serial killers are generally placed into four categories: visionary , mission-oriented , hedonistic , and power or control ; however, the motives of any given killer may display considerable overlap among these categories.
Visionary serial killers suffer from psychotic breaks with reality, sometimes believing they are another person or are compelled to murder by entities such as the Devil or God. As the war wound down, Mullin claimed his father instructed him via telepathy to raise the number of 'human sacrifices to nature' in order to delay a catastrophic earthquake that would plunge California into the ocean.
Mission-oriented killers typically justify their acts as 'ridding the world' of certain types of people perceived as undesirable, such as the homeless, ex-cons, homosexuals, drug users, prostitutes, or people of different ethnicity or religion; however, they are generally not psychotic. This type of serial killer seeks thrills and derives pleasure from killing, seeing people as expendable means to this goal.
Forensic psychologists have identified three subtypes of the hedonistic killer: 'lust', 'thrill', and 'comfort'. Sex is the primary motive of lust killers, whether or not the victims are dead, and fantasy plays a large role in their killings. Their sexual gratification depends on the amount of torture and mutilation they perform on their victims.
The sexual serial murderer has a psychological need to have absolute control, dominance, and power over their victims, and the infliction of torture, pain, and ultimately death is used in an attempt to fulfill their need. As lust killers continue with their murders, the time between killings decreases or the required level of stimulation increases, sometimes both.
Kenneth Bianchi, one of the 'Hillside Stranglers', murdered women and girls of different ages, races and appearance because his sexual urges required different types of stimulation and increasing intensity. As his desire increased, he experimented with drugs, alcohol, and exotic sex. His increasing need for stimulation was demonstrated by the dismemberment of victims, whose heads and genitals he preserved, and by his attempts to create a 'living zombie' under his control by pouring acid into a hole drilled into the victim's skull.
Control and lust. Once it happened the first time, it just seemed like it had control of my life from there on in. The killing was just a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part.
I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with … acid and the drill. So after that, I started using the drilling technique. The primary motive of a thrill killer is to induce pain or terror in their victims, which provides stimulation and excitement for the killer.
They seek the adrenaline rush provided by hunting and killing victims. Thrill killers murder only for the kill; usually the attack is not prolonged, and there is no sexual aspect. Usually the victims are strangers, although the killer may have followed them for a period of time. Thrill killers can abstain from killing for long periods of time and become more successful at killing as they refine their murder methods. Many attempt to commit the perfect crime and believe they will not be caught.
Material gain and a comfortable lifestyle are the primary motives of comfort killers. Usually, the victims are family members and close acquaintances. After a murder, a comfort killer will usually wait for a period of time before killing again to allow any suspicions by family or authorities to subside. They often use poison, most notably arsenic, to kill their victims.
Female serial killers are often comfort killers, although not all comfort killers are female. Holmes killed for insurance and business profits. Some, like Puente and Holmes, may be involved in or have previous convictions for theft, fraud, non-payment of debts, embezzlement and other crimes of a similar nature.
Dorothea Puente was finally arrested on a parole violation, having been on parole for a previous fraud conviction. In , the oldest prosecution and conviction of a suspected serial killer Felix Vail took place in Louisiana.
He was convicted of murder 54 years after his wife's death in , which had originally been ruled an accidental drowning, and which occurred only months after Vail took out two life insurance policies on her.
The main objective for this type of serial killer is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, leaving them with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy as adults. Many power- or control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust as it would be with a lust murder but as simply another form of dominating the victim.
He traveled around the United States seeking women to control. Many serial killers claim that a violent culture influenced them to commit murders. During his final interview, Ted Bundy stated that hardcore pornography was responsible for his actions.
Killers who have a strong desire for fame or to be renowned for their actions desire media attention as a way of validating and spreading their crimes; fear is also a component here, as some serial killers enjoy causing fear. An example is Dennis Rader, who sought attention from the press during his murder spree. Many movies, books, and documentaries have been created, detailing serial killers' lives and crimes. In addition to the bodies found at his house, Gacy admitted to killing several additional men, disposing of their bodies in a nearby lake.
His attempts at presenting an insanity defense failed, and he was convicted on 33 counts of murder and executed by lethal injection in Jeffrey Dahmer at his initial appearance at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, where he was charged with four counts of first-degree intentional homicide, July 26, Dahmer was arrested after police found the body parts of 11 men in his Milwaukee apartment.
Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder in , when he was just He would go on killing until his arrest in , after an African American man escaped his clutches and hailed down police near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Dahmer had lived a shiftless life, dropping out of college and the Army and living with various family members before being kicked out by his grandmother and settling in the Milwaukee apartment.
Three years before his arrest—and with several murders already under his belt—Dahmer was convicted of drugging and sexually molesting a young teenager. After serving only a year, he was released and continuing his killing binge, which focused almost entirely on young men of color. In , Dahmer was sentenced to years in jail, but was killed by a fellow inmate just two years later.
Handsome, well-educated and brimming with charm, Ted Bundy seemed the unlikeliest of serial killers. Which made his decade-long, multi-state killing spree all the more surprising—and to some, appealing. Following a difficult adolescence, Bundy graduated from the University of Washington—and soon embarked on his murderous spree, killing his first victim in Seattle in Focusing primarily on attractive college co-eds, Bundy committed a series of murders across the Pacific Northwest.
He continued on to Utah and Colorado, killing several more women before being arrested. Despite being convicted of kidnapping, he managed to escape police custody not once, but twice, while awaiting trial in Colorado.
He moved to Florida, where he killed several members of a sorority and his final victim, a year-old girl who he raped and murdered. When Bundy was finally apprehended while driving a stolen car a week after his last murder, his trial quickly became a media sensation. It was the first murder trial to be fully televised, and featured Bundy front-and-center acting as one of his own defense attorneys.
He became a media star, welcoming journalists to his cell, receiving letters of admiration from lovelorn fans and even marrying one of them and providing an endless list of clues about additional murders he may have committed, in the hopes of delaying his execution. The unidentified madman lured prostitutes into darkened squares and side streets before slitting their throats and sadistically mutilating their bodies with a carving knife.
That summer and fall, five victims were found butchered in the downtrodden East End district, sparking a media frenzy and citywide manhunt. A number of letters were allegedly sent by the killer to the London Metropolitan Police Service also known as Scotland Yard , taunting officers about his gruesome activities and speculating on murders to come. After taking his final victim in November, the killer seemed to disappear like a ghost. The case was finally closed in , but Jack the Ripper has remained an enduring source of fascination.
Garavito was beaten and molested as a child. He fled from his abusive home life at an early age, choosing to live on the streets instead. It is thought that he started killing around when a large number of young boys aged began disappearing from the streets of Colombia. His targets were mostly poor or homeless children. Garavito would tie the youngsters up and sexually abuse them before killing his victims.
In total, he is believed to have murdered about children. But it was several years before a serious investigation was launched, as many of the disappearances went unreported. In , several mass graves were discovered. The following year, evidence left at another crime scene led police to Garavito. They linked him to the crimes with DNA evidence and discovered journals detailing his horrific killing spree. Garavito was convicted of murders and sentenced to 1, years in jail…but could be out as early as Prison sentences in Colombia cannot exceed 40 years, and his sentence was cut to 22 years for helping police find the bodies of his victims.
More than 50 years later, people are still fascinated by the mystery of the Zodiac — a notorious serial killer who was never caught or conclusively identified. The first Zodiac murders took place a few days before Christmas in near San Francisco, when two people in a parked car were shot. A string of similar attacks followed in the next few months. But the killings gained attention when several letters were sent to the media by the murderer. Zodiac letters coined his iconic pseudonym and contained codes and cryptograms with taunting messages from the killer.
Only seven victims have been conclusively linked to The Zodiac, two of whom survived. But in his final letter in , the killer claimed he had committed 37 murders. Police formed a sketch of the victim from survivor accounts and sifted through a mountain of evidence — from handwriting analysis to hotline tips. They identified several key suspects, but no one was ever charged. The Zodiac case has been the subject of movies, documentaries, podcasts and much more.
Despite recent attempts to trace DNA from the Zodiac letter stamps, it is considered a cold case. Alexander Pichushkin is a prolific Russian serial killer who is believed to have murdered 62 people over 14 years. It is believed this may have affected his impulse control, but he also became increasingly hostile as he was bullied throughout his youth.
He first killed when he was just 18, and went on to murder a huge number of people. He started by luring victims into the sewers to kill them. He later switched to a more bold and brutal method, killing using a hammer. Police captured Pichushkin in after retracing the steps of his final victim and finding surveillance footage of her leaving a train with her killer.
Pichushkin was taught to play chess by his grandfather and was an outstanding player. When police raided his home, they found a chessboard with dates written in 62 of the 64 squares — believed to represent each of his murders.
In he was convicted of 49 murders and jailed for life, with the first 15 years of his sentence ordered to be in solitary confinement. Hamilton Howard Fish — known as Albert Fish — was a highly disturbed serial killer who committed a series of brutal crimes in the New York area. Fish spent some of his childhood in an orphanage and blamed his later behavior on the abuse he suffered there. When he was 20, he moved to New York City and started working as a prostitute. At this time, Fish also started sexually abusing young boys and developed an obsession with mutilation, self-harm, and cannibalism.
Albert Fish claimed to have killed more than people, though police only linked him conclusively to five murders using physical evidence. He was said to target victims who were mentally handicapped, who he said would not be missed, as well as women and children.
He used knives and cleavers to mutilate and torture his victims. After killing his final victim — a young woman named Grace Budd — he sent a letter to her mother describing how he ate her remains. It was through this letter that police traced and caught Fish. He was convicted of murder and executed by electric chair in Randall Woodfield is a multi-state serial killer who claimed the lives of up to 44 people through Portland, Oregon, and California. How many serial killers start out as NFL hopefuls?
At least one, as Woodfield was once a talented football star. He is from an affluent family and was a star athlete in high school, with coaches and teammates describing him as soft-spoken and gentlemanly. But it was at this time that he started displaying dysfunctional behavior. After his footballing failures, Woodfield moved back to Portland and was jailed in for sexually assaulting and robbing women at knifepoint. After release, his crimes escalated.
Woodfield killed for the first time in , before committing a series of robberies at gunpoint along the I-5 interstate corridor, sometimes wearing a fake beard as a disguise.
He also committed several murders in early , with most victims being sexually assaulted and shot in the head. Woodfield was caught after being identified by surviving robbery victims. He was investigated and charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and armed robbery, receiving a life sentence plus an additional 90 years. Woodfield was only convicted of one murder, but evidence has later linked him to as many as 44 killings.
Jack the Ripper is one of the most famous unidentified serial killers ever — a murderer who stalked the streets of London, murdering and mutilating a series of women and evading capture. The infamous Ripper murders are steeped in legend. They start with five victims who were killed between August and November Each of the victims is believed to have been a prostitute. They had their throats cut and were mutilated in increasingly vicious ways. In some cases, the Ripper removed organs from the bodies, leading to suspicions that the culprit was a surgeon or butcher.
Several other murders from have been linked to Jack the Ripper, but experts believe they are unconnected due to the differences in M. The nickname Jack the Ripper was first signed in letters supposedly written by the killer and sent to the police. However, it is widely believed that they were fakes, written by journalists to boost interest in the case.
Police investigated more than suspects, but Jack the Ripper was never caught. Larry Eyler was a serial murderer who targeted teenage boys and young men, dumping their bodies along interstates throughout the Midwest. Openly homosexual, Eyler was well known in the Indianapolis gay scene in the s, known to be quiet and laid back, but with a well-hidden sadistic and violent streak.
When he started killing in , Eyler usually plied victims with alcohol, before stabbing, slashing, and mutilating them — dumping the bodies along interstates in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Wisconsin.
Many of the victims were homosexual. After receiving a tip, a special police taskforce started to investigate Eyler.
He was eventually charged, but several key pieces of evidence were excluded because officers failed to follow proper police procedures. Eyler was bailed…but killed a year-old boy just six months later. He dumped the dismembered body in several different trash bags in the bins outside his apartment but was caught by the janitor.
This time, the case against him was conclusive and he was sentenced to death. Before his death, he confessed to more than 20 murders in total. Juan Corona was a Mexican serial killer who slew his victims with a machete and then buried their remains on a farm. Corona first entered the U.
But he suffered a mental breakdown just five years later and was deported after being treated for paranoid schizophrenia with shock therapy. He moved back to California legally with a green card in Though he had anger problems, nobody suspected Corona as a mass murderer until By that time, he worked as a coordinator who contracted migrant laborers to work on local farms.
But Corona was killing some of these workers — hacking them to death with a machete and then burying them in shallow graves on one of the farms.
Corona was caught when a farm owner spotted a fresh hole filled in on his property. Police found a body in the grave, before discovering the remains of 24 other men who had been killed from February-May It is suspected that further victims existed but were not found.
Officers found evidence linking the crimes to Corona, both in the graves and at his home. He was found guilty and given 25 life sentences. After appeal, he was found guilty again in a second trial.
Corona later suffered from dementia and died in prison in , aged David Berkowitz was a serial killer who gunned down a string of victims and spread fear through New York City in the s. Postal worker Berkowitz was obsessed with starting fires as a child, before moving on to violent crimes. Berkowitz botched his first murder attempt when he tried to stab two women on Christmas Eve, After his initial failure, Berkowitz went on a shooting rampage throughout New York.
He typically targeted pairs of people sitting together, usually in parked cars. The shooter killed seven people in total, leaving others with serious gunshot wounds. He appeared to have a type — women with long dark hair — and many women changed their look to avoid being targeted. The murders left New York in a state of panic. Berkowitz was eventually caught after his car was discovered filled with guns, ammo, and maps linking him to the shootings. He submitted a guilty plea and is now serving life in prison.
Gary Ridgway is the second most prolific American serial killer, murdering 49 confirmed victims over a reign of terror spanning more than 15 years. Ridgway has a low IQ and suffered psychological problems from childhood. He fantasized about killing his mother and stabbed a youngster when he was just 16, though his six-year-old victim survived.
Later he joined the Navy and saw combat in Vietnam. While he was married three times and became devoutly religious, Ridgway was obsessed with having sex with prostitutes.
When he started killing through the 80s and 90s, most of his victims were also sex workers. He would have sex with the woman, then strangle her, usually with his bare hands. Ridgway dumped the bodies of his victims in wooded areas around the Green River. Sometimes he crossed into other states or purposefully contaminated dumping scenes to confuse the police. He also often returned to sexually assault the bodies. A suspect in the killings as early as due to his penchant for prostitutes, police only managed to link Ridgway to the murders using DNA evidence in He confessed to killing 71 people to avoid the death penalty and was convicted of 49 murders.
Pickton owned the farm near Vancouver with his siblings. But farmworkers started to notice several women including multiple sex workers who visited the farm going missing. Police eventually raided the farm as part of a massive investigation into missing women across British Colombia.
They excavated the land and found human remains from numerous murder victims, as well as items belonging to the women. Pickton was charged with the murder of 27 women in total, but reportedly admitted to an undercover officer that he had killed 49, and hoped to make it an even In court, he maintained he was not guilty.
In a long and drawn out trial, with appeals on both sides, Pickton was found guilty of second-degree murder of six victims, with the other 20 murder charges stayed. In he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Charles Manson was an infamous cult leader who encouraged his followers to commit a series of murders in the s. Manson is unlike most other serial killers in that he did not kill the victims himself. But he was convicted on several counts of first-degree murder for his role in the killings.
After his release in , Manson started to attract followers and created a California commune. Some followers believed Manson was a manifestation of Jesus and devoted themselves to him.
He and his band of acolytes were later referred to as The Manson Family. This group was responsible for a series of killings, including the high-profile murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate. One theory is that the deaths were designed to incite a race war. Manson and several of his followers were sentenced to death for their crimes.
This sentence was later downgraded to life imprisonment when California abolished the death penalty. During his trial, Manson carved a cross into his forehead which he later had adapted into a swastika tattoo in prison.
Manson never showed any remorse and died in prison in after a battle with cancer, aged Javed Iqbal was a Pakistani serial killer who sexually abused and murdered young boys in just six months. Iqbal targeted boys between the ages of 6 and 16 — mostly orphans and runaways who were living on the streets. He was only caught after six months of committing brutal murders because he sent a letter to his local newspaper confessing to the crimes. In the letter, Iqbal said he had raped and killed boys by strangling them with a chain, then dissolving their remains in acid and dumping it into a river.
A manhunt was launched, and Iqbal handed himself in a month later. Police also arrested four of his accomplices. Iqbal later denied any guilt and recanted his confession, but was sentenced to death. The court ordered that he be killed with the chain he used on his victims and that his body be dissolved in acid.
He hanged himself in his cell before this could happen in apparent suicide — though it is speculated that he was killed by police while in custody. Bobby Joe Long was a serial killer who preyed on single women and took pleasure in raping and killing his victims.
Long suffered several head injuries as a child in West Virginia and was known to have a dysfunctional relationship with his mother. After moving to Long Beach, CA, he started contacting women through classified ads, offering to fix their household appliances. If they were alone in their home, he would rape the women.
He was not caught before moving on from California to Florida. In the Tampa Bay area, Long continued to answer adverts and raped more than 50 women in their homes.
He was eventually caught and convicted in , but was granted a retrial and the rape charges were dropped. Long moved on to murdering his victims in He killed 10 women in eight months, mainly targeting sex workers; five were prostitutes, while two were exotic dancers.
He would pick them up in his car and take them to his apartment, before tying them up, raping and strangling them. Prosecuted for kidnapping, rape, battery, and murder, he received 28 life sentences and four extra year sentences, as well as the death penalty.
Long was executed by lethal injection in Daniel Camargo Barbosa is a particularly prolific serial killer who raped and murdered young girls after escaping prison. Barbosa was fixated on virgins and started his criminal activity by sexually assaulting a series of young girls. When his fifth victim told the police, Barbosa was jailed for eight years. He was released in and decided to murder his next victim to avoid a repeat of his capture. He returned to dispose of the body the following day and was arrested.
Barbosa was sentenced to 30 years on a prison island. But in , after 10 years on the island, he managed to escape in a makeshift boat and fled to Ecuador. He lived on the streets, targeting poor and helpless young girls by offering them work and luring them into the woods to rape and kill.
The sadistic murderer was caught again in He calmly confessed to killing 72 girls in Ecuador, showing no sign of remorse. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in but was killed while behind bars in by a relative of one of his victims. Albert DeSalvo was convicted of strangling and killing a series of women in a murderous rampage through Boston in the s.
But these killings are still shrouded in mystery — and many do not believe DeSalvo to be the real Boston Strangler. From , police in Boston were chasing two separate criminals. They were hunting a serial rapist, as well as a killer dubbed The Boston Strangler who had raided the homes of 13 single women. The strangler sexually assaulted some of his victims before killing them — usually by strangling them with an item of clothing.
A troubled child from a violent home, DeSalvo was charged for the rapes after being identified by a victim. While awaiting trial, he also confessed to the strangling murders — first to fellow inmate George Nasser, then to authorities.
He later recanted that confession. DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison in and later withdrew his strangling confession while behind bars. He was killed by inmates in an unrelated dispute in But doubts remain over his status as the real strangler.
Many people believe Nasser was the real killer and persuaded DeSalvo to take the fall, while some experts say the crimes would have been committed by several different people due to the differences in M. The Golden State Killer is a serial criminal who raped and murdered his victims while taunting survivors and the police. This decades-old case has long been unsolved, but a suspect is now awaiting trial.
Police have connected three different crime sets with the Golden State Killer. It is believed that he started with burglaries in Visalia, ransacking more than homes in 20 months.
In he is believed to have moved to Sacramento and started sexually assaulting victims. He always planned an escape route and was never caught. The Golden State Killer started murdering his rape victims in , killing 13 known victims in total. He would also phone the police and attack survivors, taunting them with details of his plans. Authorities kept the case open and charged a suspect in based on DNA evidence.
Joseph James DeAngelo, now aged in his 70s, has been charged with murder and kidnapping. He served in the U. Navy during the Vietnam War and worked as a police officer for three years in the s. He will now face trial in Bela Kiss was a serial killer who murdered single women and drank their blood, before storing their bodies in metal drums.
Living in a small town near Budapest in Hungary, Kiss killed at least 24 victims over 14 years. He started by defrauding women; contacting single ladies through newspaper adverts and seducing them, before asking them to send him money.
Kiss invited these women to his home, where he would strangle them and store their bodies in large drums on his property.
He told neighbors and police that the drums were holding gasoline in preparation for wartime rationing. The killer was called up to serve in the military in While Kiss was away the police visited his home to use some of his stockpiled fuel. Instead, they discovered the drums filled with 24 dead bodies.
They were drained of blood and had puncture marks on their necks, leading authorities to conclude that Kiss was practicing vampirism. An alert was issued, but Kiss managed to escape and flee. The fate of Bela Kiss is unknown. There were later sightings of the killer in France and New York, but any additional movements and murders remain unconfirmed.
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