Many of the most horrifying acts of violence are committed by serial killers. Always looking for next victim, these murderers kill again and again, never fully satisfied by their bloody deeds. Their twisted motivations—and even more twisted techniques—land the people in this group among the most frightening criminals in history.
Matt Smith (‘The Crown’) will be playing (the recently deceased) Charles Manson in the upcoming movie ‘Charlie Says.’ The feature film by ‘American Psycho’ director Mary Harron depicts the Manson murders and is set to begin filming in LA this spring.
Zac Efron has shared the first picture of himself as Ted Bundy. The ‘Baywatch’ star is playing the serial killer—who murdered at least 36 women—for the upcoming film, ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,’ a story from the perspective of Bundy’s longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer.
David Berkowitz, known as Son of Sam, murdered six people in New York City from 1976 to 1977, claiming he received orders from a demon-possessed dog. He is one of the most notorious serial killers in America.
H.H. Holmes was the alias of one of America's first serial killers. During the 1893 Columbian Exposition, he lured victims into his elaborate "murder castle."
The Zodiac Killer is believed to be responsible for at least five murders in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s.
Known as the "BTK Killer"—which stands for "bind, torture, and kill"—Dennis Rader terrorized the Wichita, Kansas, area from the 1970s to the '90s.
Dubbed the "Night Stalker," Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer who broke into California homes, raping and torturing more than 25 victims and killing at least 13 over a two-year rampage.
In 1966, Richard Speck committed one of the most horrifying mass murders in American history when he brutalized and killed eight student nurses living on Chicago's South Side.
Serial killer Gary Leon Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, murdered at least 49 women in Washington state before he was caught in 2001.
Infamous murderer Jack the Ripper killed at least five London female prostitutes in 1888. Never captured, his identity is one of English's most famous unsolved mysteries.
Notorious sex offender and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 men between from 1978 to 1991. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms, and then murdered by a fellow prison inmate in 1994.
British serial killer Harold Shipman, who worked in England as a medical doctor, killed over 200 of his patients before his arrest in 1998.
Jack Unterweger was an Austrian serial killer who murdered several women before committing suicide in 1994.
Jerome Brudos was a serial murderer and necrophile who murdered four women in Oregon during the 1960s. He was known as the "The Lust Killer" and "The Shoe Fetish Slayer."
Serial killer Edmund Kemper murdered six young women in the Santa Cruz, California, area and several members of his family.
An abused child who later earned her living as a sex worker, Aileen Wuornos was found guilty of killing six men and was later executed in a Florida prison.
Serial killer Bobby Joe Long sits on Florida's death row for his brutal murders of 10 women in 1984.
Four decades after vicious serial killer John Wayne Gacy killed at least 33 boys and young men in the Chicago area, authorities have ID’d one his unidentified victims — “Victim No. 24” — as 16-year-old James "Jimmie" Byron Haakenson.
Wayne Williams is suspected of murdering more than 20 black youths from 1979 to 1981 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Charles Sobhraj gained infamy for a string of murders in the 1970s and his successful escapes from high-security prisons.
Myra Hindley was a serial killer of small children, murders she committed in partnership with boyfriend Ian Brady.
Serial killer Joel Rifkin killed 17 women in the 1990s before the police tried to pull him over for a missing license plate (and discovered his latest victim).
John Bodkin Adams is best known for standing trial in the suspicious deaths of 163 former patients in England.
Serial killer Roy Fontaine, originally Archibald Hall, killed a former lover, his employers, an accomplice and another man in England in the 1970s.