10 Most Notorious Serial Killers in History

Before the 1900s, there was no proper documentation of the activities of serial killers, the term was not even used until 1974. Historical criminologists however suggest that the world has been terrorized by notorious serial killers at several points in history. This set of individuals usually derives pleasure from inflicting pain on others and feels a compulsive need to do so. They also exhibit varying degrees of mental illness or psychopathy.

Wikipedia defined a Serial Killer as a person who murders three or more persons, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. As earlier stated, psychological gratification is the usual motive for serial killing, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victim.

Other motives as stated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention-seeking.  Often time the victims also have something in common; for example, demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. Here are the 10 most notorious serial killers in History

1.  Jack the Ripper

The unidentified killer, Jack the Ripper was noted as the first modern serial killer.  He killed at least five women, and possibly more, in London in 1888 and was the subject of a massive manhunt and investigation by the Metropolitan Police, during which many modern criminal investigation techniques were pioneered.

While not the first serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper’s case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy.  He was a proficient and strategic serial killer who managed to mask his identity even from the famous Scotland Yard police force.  He was largely active in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, which is why he is also sometimes referred to as the “Whitechapel Murderer.”

Jack the Ripper targeted female sex workers; he considered them easy targets because they lived near the slums, which had less of a police presence. What made the murders so gruesome was that he grotesquely mutilated the corpses. He has also been called the most infamous serial killer of all time, and his legend has spawned hundreds of theories on his real identity and many works of fiction.

2. H. H. Holmes

H. H. Holmes was one of the first documented modern serial killers in the United States, responsible for the death of at least nine victims in the early 1890s. Before his execution in 1896, Holmes lived a life of crime including insurance fraud, swindling, check forging, three to four bigamous illegal marriages, horse theft, and murder.

Numerous reports have it that Holmes built a building as a base for his atrocity. The building, referred to as Murder Castle had  multiple hidden rooms in the building which were used to torture his victims before killing them

Despite his confession of 27 murders Holmes was convicted and sentenced to death for only one murder, that of accomplice and business partner Benjamin Pitezel. It is believed he killed three of the Pitezel children, as well as three mistresses, the child of one of his mistresses and the sister of another.  Holmes was executed on May 7, 1896

3. Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts.

Dahmer killed his first victim in the summer of 1978 when he was just 18 years old. He picked up a teen hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks, took him to his house, and strangled him to death. He also keeps the body parts of his victims as trophies and admitted to cooking and eating his victims.

Dahmer was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. He was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

4. Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown and likely significantly higher.

Ted typically approached women in public places, either asking for help by feigning a physical impairment such as an injury or impersonating an authority figure. Once tricked into being led away, they would be bludgeoned unconscious and taken elsewhere to be sexually assaulted and killed.

Bundy was often regarded as charismatic and handsome, traits he exploited to win the trust of both his victims and society as a whole. He received three death sentences after his rearrest in 1978 and was executed at Florida State Prison in Raiford on January 24, 1989.

5. Richard Ramirez

Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar who was born in Texas in 1960. He became a heavy drug user and developed an interest in Satanism. Known as the “Night Stalker,” Ramirez was active between 1984–1985. Influenced by his psychotic Cousin Mike, Ramirez, obsessed with violence and murder

He killed a total of 14 people and tortured dozens more before being captured in 1985. His killing spree of brutal murders, rape, and robberies lasted a total of 14 months. In the murder of Vincent Zazzara and his wife Maxine, Ramirez shot the husband and then brutally assaulted the wife by stabbing her to death.

In 1989, he was convicted and sentenced to death for thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults, and fourteen burglaries. He never felt remorse, and when he was sentenced to death by gas chamber, he replied: “Hey, big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.”

6. Dean Corll

Dean Corll was an American serial killer and sex offender who abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered a minimum of 28 teenage boys and young men between 1970 and 1973 in Houston and Pasadena, Texas. He was aided by two teenage accomplices, David Owen Brooks, and Elmer Wayne Henley.

Dean lured his victims with an offer of a party or a lift to one of the various addresses at which he resided between 1970 and 1973. They would then be restrained either by force or deception, and each was killed either by strangulation or shooting with a .22 caliber pistol.’

The crimes, which became known as the Houston Mass Murders, came to light after Henley fatally shot Corll. Upon discovery, it was considered the worst example of serial murder in U.S. history. Brooks and Henley confessed to assisting Dean in several abductions and murders; both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

7.  John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois. By day, he was a clown performer at children’s parties. Gacy lured his victims with the promise of construction work and then sexually assaulted and murdered them, usually by asphyxiation or strangulation. To his victims, he often referred to himself as “Pogo the Clown.”

On May 10, 1968, Gacy was charged with sexual assault and arrested. Police then found that he had buried a total of 27 bodies under his house.  His conviction for thirty-three murders (by one individual) then covered the most homicides in United States legal history. Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980, and was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.

8. Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman, also known as “Dr. Death,” is one of the most notorious serial killers in history. He 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 different 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 Shipman 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 Shipman 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.

9. Predo Lopez

Predo Lopez also known as The Monster of the Andes is a Colombian serial killer, child rapist, and fugitive who murdered a minimum of 110 victims, mostly young women and girls, from 1969 to 1980 and claimed to have murdered over 300 victims across Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador.

He was eventually arrested in Ecuador in 1980 after attempting to abduct a 12-year-old girl.  After Lopez’s 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 was sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum penalty for murder in Ecuador at the time.

Released from prison in Ecuador in 1994, after which he was deported to and institutionalized in Colombia, López was released from psychiatric care in 1998 and is currently a wanted fugitive in connection with a murder committed in 2002. As of the time of this report, López’s whereabouts remain unknown.

10. Javed Iqbal

Javed Iqbal Mughal was a Pakistani serial killer and pederast who confessed to the sexual abuse and murder of 100 young boys, ranging in age from 6 to 16. Iqbal strangled the victims, dismembered the corpses, and dissolved them in acid as a way to conceal the evidence.

Iqbal stated that his motive for committing his murders was his infuriation at a perceived injustice at the hands of Lahore police who had arrested him on charges relating to an act of sodomy against a young runaway boy in the 1990s. No charges were brought in relation to this offense. His mother had “been forced to watch decline” before suffering a fatal heart attack. He had therefore resolved to make 100 mothers cry for their sons as his mother had been forced to do for him before her death.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death in the same manner that he killed the boys, being strangled first, then cut into a hundred pieces, in front of the parents of the victims, one piece for each victim, then dissolved into acid.  Iqbal died by suicide before any sentence could be carried out.

Sources:

• https://www.britannica.com/list/7-of-historys-most-notorious-serial-killers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country